We look up at the sound of an approaching train.
“Your phone number,” Rafa says. He’s blushing a little bit. “Can I get it? Maybe we can do the Sorolla Museum together. It’s fun for me, too, showing you around.”
I look at the station’s cave-like mouth. The tiled wall glistens as the train’s headlight hits it.
Rafa is a really cool guy. And the fact that he’s asking for my number makes him even cooler.
I know I shouldn’t give it to him. This whole night happened because I thought—I knew—I wouldn’t see Rafa again. I never expected to have so much fun together. I never expected him to like me as much as I liked him.
But here we are, his hands on my body and my heart thumping in my chest. I glance at him from the corner of my eye. He’s so cute.
I do it, quickly. I give him my number, and he types it into his phone. “I don’t know if it will even work,” I say. “I’m not entirely sure how the whole country code thing changes it, so…”
“Then I give you my mine.” Rafa grabs my phone and types his number on the keypad. He hands it back and meets my eyes. “If you do not hear from me, it is because the number you gave me is wrong. You must call me then, yes? I want to see you again.”
The backs of my knees tingle. “I’d like that.”
My train is here. It hisses to a stop. The doors glide open.
“Thanks again. For everything,” I say. “Buenas noches, Rafa.”
Good night.
Rafa offers me a lop-sided grin. He bends down and presses a kiss into my cheek. “Buenos días, Vivian.”
Good morning.
I take a seat on the train facing away from the platform. I don’t want Rafa to see the hugely embarrassing smile I’m sporting at the moment.
But at the last minute, after the doors shut and the train is pulling away, I sneak a glance over my shoulder. Rafa is still there, rakishly handsome in his unbuttoned shirt, watching me with his hands in his pockets. He takes one hand out and holds it up, splaying his fingers in a sort of wave.
I wave back, my face alive with the memory of those hands on my skin.
I look down at my phone.
Rafa saved his number under the name Justin Timberlake.
It’s only six, and already he’s made my day.
***
Back at Stella’s apartment, I have trouble falling asleep. Even as my body is restless with excitement, my heart throbbing as I relive the kiss a hundred, a thousand times, my head knows better.
I met Keith the first week of my sophomore year back at Meryton. Like Rafa, he was cute and charming, and from the first night we played flip cup together at his frat house, I knew I wanted him.
We sexiled our roommates so much they hated us by the end of the semester. In retrospect, I see the warning signs—he only texted me on the weekends, late at night; we never went on a real date, the dinner-and-a-movie thing—but I was so obsessed with him, so eager to find the “one” and fall in love, I ignored them.
When I fall, I fall hard. And I fell really hard for Keith. I was naïve enough to believe that people who connected like we did—people who really liked to hump each other on a weekly basis—became boyfriend and girlfriend. I wasn’t hooking up with anyone else. I didn’t want to hook up with anyone else. I wanted Keith.
But Keith didn’t want me. Not like I wanted him, anyway. And that was devastating. I remember the inconsolable sobs I muffled in my pillow; I remember the unrelenting pain, and the months of looking for him, pitifully, everywhere I went, wanting to be with him more than I wanted anything else.
I remember the lightheaded panic I felt when I heard he hooked up with a girl in my dorm. It was horrible, trying to pretend I’d moved on, too, when just seeing him at the dining hall sent my heart skittering.
I promised myself I wouldn’t let anyone devastate me like that again. I promised myself I would protect my heart, and not fall for a guy who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stick around for the long haul.
A guy like Rafa. If I fall for him, and if by some miracle he falls for me, we’ll only have five months together before an ocean—an honest to goodness ocean— separates us permanently. I’ve already been through the special hell of having to let a guy I really liked go after one semester together. I’m not gonna do it again.
I just wish I could stop thinking about that damn kiss.
***
That Afternoon
“Viv.”
I stir at the poke on my forehead, my senses blinking awake. The first thing I notice is the heat; I can feel the sun on my face. Drool trails down my cheek onto the pillow. I can smell the cigarette smoke in my hair. My lips are sticky with the taste of sangria.
Rafa. I wonder if he texted me.
“Viv!” Poke poke. “Hellloooo, Vivian!”
My eyes fly open. Sunlight streams through the window, blinding me. My eyes smart, neon dots and streaks blurring my vision. Something—someone—is bouncing on the trundle bed beside me, her finger poking frantic Morse code onto my forehead.
I catapult upright, my entire being lighting up with excitement.
“You’re here!” I cry, tugging Maddie into a bear hug. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God, I can’t tell you how happy I am you’re here!”
“Oh my God you are crushing me!” Maddie laughs, the two of us clinging to one another like the survivors of a shipwreck. You’d think we’ve been apart for years, decades even, when we’ve only suffered a separation of three months. Summer has a way of feeling like forever when you’re in college.
I inhale the familiar coconut scent of her shampoo. I remember Maddie telling me she used it as lube once, when desperate times called for desperate measures; how hard we laughed when she divulged her then-boyfriend called his junk a “piña colada COCKtail.”
Already I feel twenty times less homesick.
“We’re freaking here,” she says into my hair. “How insane is that?”
“It doesn’t feel real, does it? You get on a plane in Philadelphia and wake up halfway across the world. I feel like I got teleported here. I keep expecting to run into a Klingon every time I turn a corner.”
“Dude, forget Klingons. Is it just me or is everyone in Madrid ridiculously hot? I was totally creeping on guys and girls out the window on my ride in. They dress like…I don’t know. Like they’re going to some royal nightclub or something.”
My heart seizes. Ridiculously hot doesn’t begin to describe Rafa. I can picture his face clearly; I see the shapely lines of his face deepen as the corner of his mouth quirks into a grin. I feel the starchy weave of his white shirt, the tickle of his Prince Harry bracelet on the small of my back.
I shiver.
“You okay?” Maddie asks. “It’s hot as balls in here.”
“Yeah,” I manage. “Yeah, fine. Sorry. Madrileños are totally hot. And the way they dress…it’s pretty insane. We have some shopping to do, that’s for sure.”
“I still can’t believe we’re here. I’ve been looking forward to this semester for, like ever, but it always felt so far away, you know? And now it’s happening and I can’t really process it yet.”
“I know. Studying abroad always sounded so sexy when everyone talked about it back at Meryton. The travel, the partying. Writing a paper on a Picasso you could actually see at a museum down the street. I mean, I knew I wanted to go abroad if I could. But now that I’m here—it’s exciting. And weird.”
“Totally weird,” Maddie says. “I almost puked during the cab ride because I was so nervous. The driver kept watching me in the rearview mirror. I think he knew.”
“I think he was checking you out.” Guys are always checking Maddie out.
“Doubtful,” she says. “So, hey, Viv, I love you like a sister and everything. But are you ever gonna let me go? I kinda can’t breathe.”
“But I don’t want to let go. We’re sharing a marital bed now, which means you’re my wife and you have to hug me. Plus I haven’t seen you in, like, forever.
And you smell good.”
“You smell like a bar.”
I grin. “I do.”
I let her go, propping myself up on my pillows.
Maddie pulls back, crossing her legs on the bed beside me. She tucks her curtain of shiny brown hair behind her ears, and when I look up it’s all I can do not to gasp.
Her pretty dark eyes are sunken and ringed with purple; they are dull and bloodshot. Her eyelids—no, her whole face—is swollen, like she just cried for the whole eight hours of her flight.
She looks like she got punched in the face.
A knot tightens in my stomach. We chatted a lot over the summer, mostly about study abroad stuff, a little harmless boy stuff, too. She never let on that there might be a problem. But it’s obvious that something is seriously wrong.
This is not the Maddie I saw three months ago at the end of sophomore year. That Maddie was stretched out on a blanket in Meryton Gardens, sneaking sips from a margarita-filled thermos we passed between us while we laughed about the costumes we’d made out of trash bags and bungee cords for that night’s party. Sure, she was stressed about how she’d done on her exams, but she was happy. Vibrantly so.
For a minute I don’t know what to say. It’s not just her appearance that makes me think something’s wrong. There’s a sadness about her, a heaviness I sense in the slump of her shoulders and the way she wraps her arms around her waist, that makes me think it’s more than jet lag.
“Mads,” I say.
Her eyes glisten. She winces against a rush of tears. “I know, Viv. I know I look like shit.”
“Stop it.” I reach across the bed and put my hand on her knee. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But I’m here if you need someone to listen. Always.”
And I mean it. After Keith told me about his girlfriend, I was in bad shape. Like, really bad. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop crying. But Maddie stuck by my side through the whole horrible thing, showing up to our dorm room with a three-pack of boxed tissues and a handle of good vodka. She stewed with me in man-hate while we passed the handle back and forth. In the weeks and months that followed, she really helped pull me back together. Of course I’m going to offer to do the same for her whenever she needs me.
“Thanks, Viv. I really appreciate that.” Her voice is thin. She takes a deep breath, lets it out. She meets my eyes. “My parents are splitting up. It’s nasty. And, um. They’re gonna put our house on the market and my dad moved out last week, so. It’s, like, official.”
Shock pulses through me as the information ricochets inside my head. Holy shit. Mr. and Mrs. Lucas are getting divorced. Maddie’s parents—her picture perfect, generous, handsome parents—are getting a divorce.
“Oh my God,” I say, grabbing her hand. “I’m so sorry. Maddie. My God! What happened?”
Maddie heads off a tear with the back of her thumb. “Stupid stuff. Horrible stuff. It was, like, totally out of the blue. Mom was so hysterical she could hardly speak.”
“What the hell?”
“It’s awful, Viv. Just really, really awful.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “So, like. Did your dad do something, or was there a specific argument they had…?”
Maddie shrugs. She plucks at the tiny wet dots her tears make on the cotton blanket. “It sucks. I can’t stop crying. I try to keep it together around my brother—he’s really freaked out by the whole thing—but it’s hard.” She scoffs. “I used to think that when parents got divorced, there was always this Leave It to Beaver moment. You know, when the mom and dad sit the kids down at the dinner table and give them the whole ‘we still love each other, but…’ spiel. Then the mom and dad play nice and take the kids out for ice cream and maybe buy them a pool because they feel so bad about everything. That definitely did not happen at my house. Everything was so perfect before. And now…well. My family’s the opposite of perfect.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze. “I can’t imagine how that feels. I mean, wow. D’you think you need to be home this semester? Maybe be with your mom? Your brother?”
“Fuck no!” She laughs. “I don’t want to be home with those crazy assholes. I love them, don’t get me wrong. I miss them. A lot. But honestly, Viv? I think it’s good for me to be away from the whole situation. And I wasn’t about to miss out on a semester in Spain with you. Aren’t you glad I didn’t leave you to deal with our señora’s crazy fucking dog alone?”
“Ohmigod that dog is crazy. I locked myself in our room yesterday because I was terrified of him.”
“Don’t worry. We have six whole months to figure out how to kill him and make it look like an accident,” Maddie says. “Anyway. I think being here will keep my mind occupied, you know? Classes and travel and all that stuff.”
“I don’t disagree,” I say. I notice that she isn’t answering my questions. Not directly, anyway. Something is going on here that she’s not telling me. Something bad. “But I’m here for you if you change your mind, or need to vent. You know I’m happy to listen. If you’re okay, I’m okay.”
“Oh, puh-lease, you’re gonna make me gag with all that Dr. Phil crap,” she says, and we laugh. It’s a particular gift of hers: cracking us up in the middle of our emotional and existential crises. (Back at Meryton, we had them on the regular.)
“I wonder how Dr. Phil would feel about us drowning our problems in sangria.”
Maddie stretches her legs out in front of her, plucking the socks off her feet with her free hand. “I know I feel pretty damn great about it.”
“I had a feeling you might.” I give her hand one last squeeze. “Really, Mads. I’m sorry about your parents. As your wife, I want to be there for you.”
She offers me a smile. “You’ve always been my better half, Viv,” she says. She slides to the edge of the bed. “C’mon, let’s talk about something else. Anything else. I gotta do a little unpacking, and then I say we go sample some of that sangria.”
I lean back on the pillows. Wow. Just wow. I feel terrible for Maddie. I can’t imagine what it must be like, to have your family fall apart on you. To see your mom hurt like that. I take for granted that my parents have their shit together, and that they get along. Just thinking about them splitting up makes me want to cry.
“Stop thinking about it,” Maddie says, unzipping her suitcase. “If you’re thinking about it, then I’ll think about it, too. I didn’t sleep at all on the flight because I was thinking about it. I’m sick of it.”
“Okay,” I say. “What should I think about then?”
“Taking a shower, maybe?”
I grin.
I wonder what time it is; if I got home at six-thirty, that means I’d need to sleep until, oh, at least noon to not feel like a zombie all day.
I glance at my phone. A surge of nervous anticipation prickles through me. Did Rafa text me? I want to know, badly.
And the fact that I want to know so badly is all the evidence I need that giving Rafa my number was a bad idea. If he texts me, then what? What in the world do I text back? “Hey, thanks for the churros, let’s pretend the kiss never happened, sorry but I’m looking for true love and there’s no way true love can work with you. Mostly because you live in Spain and I don’t want to fall for a guy I have to leave, but also because you’re ridiculously hot and probably all the girls touch your peen on the regular.”
I mean, I’m done sharing penises with other girls. I want my own already. One that belongs just to me, forever and ever.
But if Rafa doesn’t text me, then I’m going to feel like shit. The things I felt with his hands on my face were…potent. Extraordinary. Even now, my pulse flutters at the memory of that damn kiss. The look in his eyes just before he sealed the deal. The way he tasted as his mouth moved over mine.
I know it was just one night. One kiss. But nights like that don’t happen very often for me. I don’t have a ton of experience with guys, but I know t
hat what I had with Rafa was special. We hit it off, big time; we connected in a way I haven’t connected with another human since Keith.
Knowing he doesn’t feel that way about me will be kinda crushing.
Still, I feel a small buzz of excitement as I reach across the bed and grab my phone from the desk, tugging it off the charger.
“So you obviously had a late one last night,” Maddie says. She lifts a stack of folded shirts from her enormous suitcase and puts it in a drawer. “I want to know everything. Where did you go? What did you do? Who did you do?”
“We went to this cool little bar in a neighborhood called Chueca,” I begin. “A couple people were there. Al, Katie…and there was this guy…”
My phone screen lights up. 1:43 PM. I have never, ever slept this late.
There are the usual alerts—social media stuff, a missed alarm that I forgot to reset—a missed call from my mom, a reply to the text I sent Katie when I got home, and two texts from Maddie.
That’s it.
No text or missed call from Justin Timberlake.
My heart plunges into an icy well of disappointment.
For a hot minute I indulge in the fantasy that the number I gave him didn’t work, and that I have a romántico text waiting for me somewhere in the international cellular ether. But if Katie’s texts came through, and so did Maddie’s…I mean, wouldn’t Rafa’s, too?
What did you expect, I scold myself. It was one night. One kiss.
I’ve been in this position often in the past few months: meeting a cute guy on a Saturday night, maybe making out with him, laughing and flirting and having a good time. Not once—literally, not one freaking time—has anything ever come of it. I don’t know why I would think a cute guy would be interested in a relationship, would be interested in me, after the experiences I’ve had. I know better than to get my hopes up.
“A guy? Like, a guy guy, or just a guy?” Maddie’s head pops up over the open flap of her suitcase. “Viv, did you make out with a random Madrileño last night? Please, please tell me you did, and that it happened in a public place.”
Spanish Lessons (Study Abroad Book 1) Page 6
