Prologue
Prologue
“This is a novel. Any reference to real people is purely coincidental.”
You know those stories that start with the main character falling apart because she fell in love with the wrong guy?
The handsome one, mysterious, emotionally illiterate, who ignores her while she keeps staring at him like he’s the last bottle of water in the desert?
Yeah.
That wasn’t my case.
I wasn’t crying over a specific guy.
I was crying over the complete absence of guys.
I cried because I couldn’t find a boyfriend.
And, to be even more specific, I cried because at twenty years old I still hadn’t managed to lose my virginity.
Yes, I know. It’s not a race. There’s no deadline. What matters is feeling ready.
All beautiful things—usually said by people who had already had sex.
In 2019, I had given up.
Given up on the idea that, among all my friends—few, but still more active than me—I would be the one left as “pretty, but…”
Pretty, but too shy.
Pretty, but with braces.
Pretty, but not interesting enough to be chosen.
I was convinced I would stay single for life.
And with my vagina metaphorically closed for renovations.
I lived in a small Italian town in the middle of the Alps.
You know those places where everyone knows everything?
Where if you buy a pregnancy test at 5:00 PM, by 6:30 your grandma already knows?
Exactly.
The mindset there is simple: people watch, comment, and judge.
And I constantly felt watched. Even when I probably wasn’t.
Physically?
I wasn’t ugly.
I wasn’t some goddess either.
I was… proportional.
165 centimeters of indecision.
Good legs.
A decent ass.
Honest boobs.
Confidence, on the other hand, was missing.
I had been wearing braces for five years. Five.
My smile was more metal than a rock concert.
Every time I laughed, I felt like I had a sign on my forehead that said:
“Not ready for adult life yet.”
And yet today, looking back at pictures from that time, I don’t understand what I thought was so wrong.
My lips were already full. My curly hair did its job. My olive skin didn’t betray me.
My brown eyes—neither too dark nor too light—are the same ones I have now.
The problem wasn’t the mirror.
It was my head.
I’m not Arab.
I’m not Italian, even though I grew up there.
I’m Cuban, raised in the Alps.
An interesting mix, on paper.
Much less interesting when you feel out of place everywhere.
But this story doesn’t stay in the mountains.
This story gets on a plane.
Destination: Berlin.
How did I end up there?
Great question.
Officially: to change my life.
Unofficially: to gain experience.
Honestly? To see if, in a big city, someone would look at me the way you look at a possibility—not like just another small-town acquaintance.
I wasn’t looking for love. Not yet.
I was looking for desire.
Chaos.
Mistakes.
Validation.
I wanted to feel chosen.
And maybe, for the first time, to do the choosing myself.
I didn’t have a clear plan.
I had a suitcase, a one-way ticket, and an embarrassing amount of postponed fantasies.
What I didn’t know was that every guy I would meet would leave something behind.
Sometimes an emotional bruise.
Sometimes a message that never came.
Sometimes a night that would change me more than I wanted to admit.
I thought I was going to Berlin to lose my virginity.
I didn’t know I would lose much more.
And find parts of myself I didn’t even know existed.
My name is Lola.
And this is the story of how I stopped waiting for life to begin…
and decided to start it myself.
Even if in the most disastrous way possible.
