Finding true love with a man 15 years younger | members only access

For a few months, I nursed a ridiculous, hopeless crush. First, some backstory. Married and divorced in my 20s, I’d lived with a few good men and dated for decades. My sharp brand of humor

and athletic shape led some tolerant dudes to put up with a bunch of less appealing stuff, including pickiness. For those brave enough to want to go out with me, I had a long list of

requirements. Including zero interest in getting remarried. Life was good, and I knew how to be alone. The secret: books. Another secret: nonhuman companions. A serial monogamist, I’ve been

in love with dogs, cats, horses, a donkey, a mouse, a rat and a pot-bellied pig. In my 50s, I had a relationship with a kind man with multiple graduate degrees who dressed in cashmere sport

coats and had the chiseled good looks of a movie star. ​He loved me, but I could not commit. Before I figured out how I really felt about him, he died in a car accident. Grief-addled, I paid

full price for a pair of pants for the first time in my life. _Carpe freaking diem_, I thought. My crush on Toby was ridiculous because he checked none of the boxes on my list, and hopeless

because no way would he ever be interested in me. A hipster with colorful tattoos, a shaved head and earrings, Toby wore thrift store clothes and commuted by bike to his job as a cook in

the tiny bakery where I went every morning to write. He was tall, hot and fit — and nearly 15 years younger than me. “Nothing like catastrophe to help you understand how true the cliché

is: You only live once.” I admired him from a distance until we discovered we had the same taste in literature. I fell hard. Then COVID hit. The bakery shuttered; Toby emailed me: The

libraries had closed. Did I have books he could borrow? Did I have books. We got together for an epic walk. Remember when every day was Blursday? During that weird, scary time, we had to

negotiate if Toby could come inside my house. We chided each other: “You’re touching your face!” We had to talk about whether we were seeing other people. Literally seeing: “Who’s in your

bubble?”