Bachata Heartbreak | Corazón de Bachata
"A heartbroken musician finds healing in the arms of the woman who requests his saddest songs"
Bachata Heartbreak
Corazón de Bachata
Every Friday night, she came to hear me play.
She'd sit at the corner table, order one glass of red wine, and watch me pour my broken heart into my guitar. When I played the sad songs—the ones about lost love and empty beds—she'd close her eyes and move her lips along with the words.
I didn't know her name. I called her La Viuda—the widow—though I had no proof she'd lost anyone but my imagination.
Tonight, she was wearing red.
"Dedicate a song to me?" she asked after my set, approaching the stage with her wine glass nearly empty.
"Which one?"
"The saddest one you know."
"Why would a beautiful woman want a sad song?"
"Because beautiful women have sad stories." She smiled, and it didn't reach her eyes. "Like you. I see it when you play. You're healing from something."
"We all are."
"So heal with me."
I played "Cuando Te Vas"—the song I wrote the night my wife left. The one I swore I'd never perform again because it hurt too much.
But for this woman in red, I played it.
When I finished, there were tears on her cheeks.
"That was for her?" she asked. "Whoever broke you?"
"Yes."
"She was stupid to leave."
"Or smart to go." I set down my guitar. "I wasn't an easy man to love."
"The best ones never are."
We walked along the Malecón after the club closed, the Miami waves crashing below us.
"I'm Esperanza," she said. Hope. "Ironic name for someone who lost it."
"Lost what?"
"Hope. My husband. My faith in men." She laughed bitterly. "Not in that order."
"How long ago?"
"Two years since he died. Four since I stopped loving him." She looked out at the dark water. "Is that terrible? To grieve someone you fell out of love with?"
"Grief is grief. It doesn't follow rules."
"Your song," she said after a moment. "It's about more than losing her. It's about losing yourself."
"You hear a lot in music."
"I was a music teacher in Santo Domingo. Before." She turned to face me. "Your technique is excellent, but your passion is what makes people weep. You feel everything."
"Curse more than a gift."
"Or the greatest gift, depending on who's receiving it."
She kissed me under a streetlight, tasting of wine and salt air and something desperate.
"I shouldn't do this," she breathed. "I don't know you."
"You've heard my saddest song. You know me better than most."
"Then take me home and play me another one."
My apartment was small—just a bedroom, a kitchen, and guitars on every wall. She walked around touching them like they were sacred objects.
"Which one?" she asked.
"Which one what?"
"Which one do you want to play for me tonight?"
I chose the nylon string—soft, intimate, meant for seduction rather than performance. I sat on the bed and began to play something new, something that had been building since I first saw her watching me with those sad eyes.
"What is this?"
"Something I'm writing right now. For you."
She sat beside me, then closer, then closer still until my arm brushed hers with every chord.
"Don't stop," she whispered.
"I can't play and touch you at the same time."
"Try."
I tried. I failed. The guitar ended up on the floor, and she ended up in my arms, kissing me like the music had been foreplay.
"I haven't felt anything in two years," she gasped. "Nothing. Then I heard you sing and something woke up."
"Let me wake up all of it."
We made love slowly, like a bachata—forward and back, push and pull, heartbreak and hope intertwined. She cried when she came, and I kissed the tears from her cheeks.
"That wasn't sadness," she said when I asked. "That was relief. I thought I was dead inside."
"You're not."
"Thanks to you."
We lay tangled together, and I traced the curve of her hip while she traced the calluses on my fingers.
"Will you write me more songs?" she asked.
"As many as you want."
"And will you play them for me?"
"Every Friday. Or every night, if you prefer."
She smiled—a real smile this time, one that reached her eyes. "I might take you up on that."
"Please do."
She kissed my palm. "Healing together sounds nice."
"It sounds perfect."
She came back every Friday. Then Saturdays. Then every night she could manage.
I wrote her a dozen songs, then two dozen. Each one less sad than the last. Each one more about finding than losing.
"This one's for you," I'd say from the stage, and her eyes would shine.
The bachata heartbreak became a bachata love story.
The best songs always do.