They say the best things in life happen when you’re not looking for them. In my case, the best thing walked right into me at the Renaissance Marina Hotel in Oranjestad, Aruba, carrying a frozen margarita that ended up all over my favorite linen shirt. I should have been annoyed. Instead, I found myself staring into the most apologetic pair of green eyes I’d ever seen, completely unaware that this clumsy encounter would change my life forever.

But let me back up a bit. I hadn’t planned to be in Aruba at all. As a software developer from Seattle, I was supposed to be in San Francisco for a tech conference. When it got canceled last minute due to a scheduling conflict, I found myself with two weeks of approved vacation time and nowhere to go. The decision to book a trip to Aruba was made at 2 AM, fueled by insomnia and a desperate need to escape the perpetual Pacific Northwest rain.

I remember scrolling through destination photos, the bright turquoise waters and white sandy beaches of Aruba calling out to me like a siren song. The “One Happy Island” marketing tagline seemed almost too good to be true, but I was in no position to be picky. Three clicks and one slightly concerning credit card charge later, I was booked for ten days in what the travel blogs called “the jewel of the Caribbean.”

The first two days went exactly as you’d expect for a solo traveler in paradise. I slept in, tried my hand at windsurfing (spoiler alert: I was terrible), and spent far too much time taking photos of pelicans diving for fish near the pier. I sent the obligatory sunset pictures to my mother, who responded with increasingly unsubtle hints about my single status and reminders that my younger sister was already married with two kids.

Then came day three, and with it, Sarah Mitchell – though at the time, she was just the woman who’d accidentally baptized me in frozen margarita. After the initial shock of the cold drink hitting my chest, I noticed several things in quick succession: her sundress was the exact color of the Aruban sea, her hair was a mess of dark curls that seemed to have a mind of their own, and she was wearing mismatched flip-flops – one blue, one yellow.

“I’m so sorry,” she kept saying, frantically dabbing at my shirt with a handful of bar napkins. “I was reading while walking – terrible habit, I know – and I just didn’t see you.” She held up a weathered copy of “Love in the Time of Cholera” as evidence of her literary distraction. Later, she would tell me that she’d already read it three times before, but something about being in the Caribbean made her want to experience it again.

Sarah, as it turned out, was a high school literature teacher from Boston who, like me, had found herself in Aruba by chance. Her original plans – a girls’ trip to Miami – had fallen apart when her best friend had gone into early labor. Rather than cancel the vacation entirely, she’d decided to redirect to Aruba, armed with nothing but a hastily packed suitcase and a stack of books she’d been meaning to read.

We ended up talking for hours that afternoon, first at the hotel bar where the margarita incident occurred, then during a walk along Palm Beach as the sun set. There’s something about being in a foreign place that makes people more open, more willing to share their stories. Maybe it’s because you’re already out of your comfort zone, or perhaps it’s the knowledge that you’ll likely never see this person again that makes you brave.

Sarah told me about her students, about the creative writing club she ran after school, and how she’d once staged an entire Shakespeare festival in the cafeteria. I shared stories about coding late into the night, my dreams of starting my own company someday, and my secret passion for baking sourdough bread. We discovered we both had an irrational fear of pigeons and a shared love for terrible sci-fi movies.

The conversation flowed so naturally that we barely noticed when the sky transformed from brilliant orange to deep purple, and the first stars began to appear. It wasn’t until my stomach growled embarrassingly loud that we realized we’d missed dinner entirely.

“I know a place,” Sarah said, her eyes twinkling with adventure. “The concierge told me about this local restaurant in San Nicolas. Apparently, they make the best fresh catch you’ll ever taste.” She paused, suddenly seeming unsure. “Unless you have other plans?”

I didn’t have other plans. I didn’t want other plans. And so began what I can only describe as the most surreal week of my life.

Each day seemed to unfold like a chapter in one of Sarah’s beloved novels. We explored the California Lighthouse, where Sarah insisted on making up elaborate stories about every boat we saw passing on the horizon. We visited the Butterfly Farm, where she named each butterfly we encountered after famous literary characters. My favorite was a bright blue morpho she dubbed Mr. Darcy because it seemed particularly proud and aloof.

In the Alto Vista Chapel, the island’s first Catholic church, we sat in comfortable silence, watching the way the light played through the simple windows. Sarah later told me she’d been writing a poem in her head about that moment, about how sometimes the most profound connections happen in complete quiet.

One afternoon, we took a UTV tour through Arikok National Park, bouncing over rugged terrain to reach hidden beaches and natural pools. Sarah screamed with delight every time we hit a bump, her curls wild in the wind, and I remember thinking that I’d never met anyone who embraced joy so completely, so unconsciously.

It wasn’t all romantic adventures and perfect moments, of course. Reality has a way of sneaking in, even in paradise. We had our first argument at the Ostrich Farm, of all places. Sarah was upset about the conditions the birds were kept in, while I played devil’s advocate about cultural differences and tourism economics. We didn’t speak for two hours after that, both too stubborn to admit that maybe we were both a little right and a little wrong.

But even that argument felt important somehow. It showed us that we could disagree, that we could be angry with each other, and still want to share dinner together at the end of the day. Still want to watch the sunset from our now-favorite spot on Eagle Beach, where the sand was always a little less crowded and the view a little more perfect.

As the days passed, we fell into an easy rhythm, as if we’d known each other for years rather than days. We developed inside jokes about the iguanas that seemed to follow us everywhere, and we could communicate entire conversations just by raising an eyebrow or tilting our head. It was the kind of connection that people write books about, the kind that I’d always been secretly skeptical of until it happened to me.

The realization that I was falling in love with Sarah hit me during a sunset sail on our seventh day together. We were on a catamaran, and she was telling a story about her grandmother’s secret recipe for lobster bisque. The setting sun had turned her hair into a halo of copper and gold, and mid-sentence, she reached over and absently intertwined her fingers with mine, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. My heart did this strange flip in my chest, and I thought, “Oh. This is what everyone’s been talking about.”

But with that realization came the panic. We lived on opposite sides of the country. We had careers, lives, responsibilities. This was supposed to be a vacation fling, wasn’t it? The kind of story you tell your friends over drinks, that makes you smile when you’re old and gray, but not the kind that reshapes your entire life.

Sarah must have felt the shift in my mood because she squeezed my hand and said, without looking at me, “Stop thinking so loud. We’ll figure it out.”

And somehow, those simple words were enough. Because she was right – we would figure it out. We had to. The alternative seemed impossible.

On our last night in Aruba, we had dinner at Flying Fishbone, a restaurant where you can sit with your feet in the water while you eat. The sun was setting, casting everything in that magical golden hour light that makes everything look like a dream. Sarah was wearing that same sea-blue dress from the day we met, and she’d finally replaced her mismatched flip-flops with proper sandals (though she admitted she’d kept the old ones as a souvenir).

“You know,” she said, swirling her wine glass thoughtfully, “I’ve been thinking about long-distance relationships.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Oh?”

“Mm-hmm. And I’ve decided they’re completely overrated.”

For a moment, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Then she continued.

“Which is why I think one of us should move. I hear Seattle has some excellent schools that might need an English teacher. And I’ve always wanted to learn how to make sourdough bread.”

The relief that flooded through me must have been visible on my face because she laughed – that full, uninhibited laugh that I’d grown to love over the past week. “Did you really think I was going to let you go that easily?” she asked. “After you helped me name all those butterflies?”

That’s when I knew. This wasn’t just a vacation romance. This wasn’t just a story to tell. This was the beginning of our story.

We got married exactly one year later, right there on Eagle Beach where we’d spent so many evenings watching the sunset. Sarah wore a dress that matched the color of the sea, and yes, she did wear those mismatched flip-flops under it – something old and something blue, she said with a wink. Our families thought we were crazy, getting married after meeting on vacation, but anyone who saw us together understood. Sometimes you just know.

Now, five years later, we live in Seattle where the rain doesn’t seem quite so perpetual anymore. Sarah teaches at a local high school and has published two poetry collections. I started my own software company, and yes, she did learn to make sourdough bread – she’s actually better at it than I am now. We go back to Aruba every year, always staying at the Renaissance Marina Hotel, always ordering a margarita at that same bar where we first met.

People often ask us if we regret moving so fast, if we wish we’d taken more time to get to know each other in a “normal” way. But what is normal when it comes to love? Sometimes life hands you a perfect moment – a spilled margarita, a mismatched pair of flip-flops, a week in paradise – and you just have to be brave enough to recognize it for what it is.

They say the best things in life happen when you’re not looking for them. They say that Aruba is One Happy Island. And sometimes, just sometimes, they’re absolutely right about both.

As for that copy of “Love in the Time of Cholera” that Sarah was reading when we met? It sits on our bedside table now, its pages stained with sea salt and memories. Every now and then, I catch her reading it again, and when she notices me watching, she always says the same thing: “Some books, like some loves, just get better every time you come back to them.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Photo by Steshka Willems

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