PROLOGUE

I didn’t notice it at first — the way he filled the room with his presence and, at the same time, left no space for mine.
He had a quiet charm, the kind that draws you in not with words, but with the promise of intensity.
He spoke softly, moved with certainty, and carried the air of someone who knew the rules of life better than anyone else.

I mistook that certainty for depth.
I mistook control for confidence.
And I mistook the way he looked at me for love.

Our days soon settled into rhythm — tango, late jazz evenings out, morning breakfast with soft boiled eggs, the quiet hum of his computer in the same room.
He said he didn’t like change. I smiled and said I didn’t mind.
He said he wasn’t looking for commitment. I told myself that love could change him.

Little by little, I began to disappear — so slowly that I almost didn’t feel it happening.
My laughter became careful. My needs became small.
And the woman I used to be — the one who filled a room with warmth — learned to fold herself into the corners of his world.

At the time, I called it love.
Now I know it was the beginning of forgetting myself.

( out of Chapter 3, The Tanda) “ With M, I found a kind of connection I had never felt before, so I thought. Not better, not deeper, simply different. His embrace had a particular architecture: structured, confident, intentional. His chest communicated more than his words ever would. His lead was attentive, and he had an uncanny ability to calibrate himself to my movement. For those four songs, I felt seen — or at least, mirrored. And at that time in my life, I should have understood the difference.

Did dancing together help us connect outside the dance floor? I still don’t know. Perhaps tango amplified what we projected onto each other — the illusion of intimacy, the fantasy of harmony. Tango gives us the emotional blueprint of a relationship without requiring the work that sustains one. You can dance profoundly with someone you barely know. You can fall into a stranger’s arms and feel more understood than by the man you’ve lived with for years.

On the dance floor, everything is concentrated: trust, surrender, balance, listening. Off the dance floor, everything is diluted by reality….