That Bubbling Feeling: A Feel Good Roommate Romance Novel

Chapter 3

Kai, The Next Summer

Last year’s move to Madrid was an explosion of emotions that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with, but there wasn’t much room to ponder it anyway. I would’ve been foolish to skip out on the opportunity to have a good education. So, when my parents decided to follow a few of our relatives over to Spain with the promise to pay for my college tuition, I had little choice but to follow. Sure, I was ripped away from everything I so deeply loved and cherished, but it was the right move for the family and my future.

It wasn’t so bad. The upside was that the pain of being forced away from my life was so great, so deep, that eventually it ripped all the way through me until I felt nothing. A free fall into my emotions. A clean slate. A hole to fill with whatever I desired. I took the whole thing as an opportunity. I was granted a new life, a safe life, a decent life. That was nothing to sneeze at. Not everyone was so lucky.

And I enjoyed myself this past year in Spain. I enjoyed a lot of other people, too. But my brain wasn’t in it. My body continued through the days without change as my mind struggled immensely to find the meaning behind it all. I felt like an alien who had been dropped on planet Earth and left with no other defense than to blend in. Not that I didn’t. I was relatively good at pretending to be likable. But every time the hole inside of me filled, it emptied just as fast.

I just turned twenty. Twenty-year-olds party. They have sex, they drink, they make stupid decisions. I did all those things, though they could’ve been categorized just fine beneath the latter. The problem was that I didn’t feel I was enjoying them as much as other kids my age, but I ignored that as best I could. I needed to coalesce with the masses.

I moved through the hours taking in the color of smoke in a dark discotheque, the pain of fluorescent lights in a dull classroom, or the feel of a chilled down comforter the next morning in some unknown apartment. That’s what everyone else did, so that’s what I did too.

I spoke much less these days. I spent most of my time smiling, pretending to listen, or better yet understand, as the world around me spoke in tongues. Inside remained a complex set of controls and compartments, whirring away behind a plain smile, to be shared only with myself and, of course, Jonah.

It was morning now, perhaps. Or mid-day. I was swirled up in one of those cold, white down comforters, staring out of some stranger’s bedroom window overlooking the city, though nobody back home knew that. My skin was fully wrapped in crisp fabric, except my neck and head. The window, so typical of a snobby adult’s penthouse, framed a perfect view of the sea. From floor to ceiling, I gazed. The sky was far past pink to the point of blue, and the water curved inside the arm of the beach, lined with tall buildings and hotels. It was beautiful, no doubt, but funny. Madrid doesn’t have a beach. Then again, blonde isn’t my type, yet here I was.

I began rolling my neck and shoulders, stretching as I always did before making my first move of the day. Looking to the lower right corner of the bed, I noticed a small collapsible table. On that table was a glass of orange juice, a magdalena, and a note. I crawled on all fours and fished my underwear and a T-shirt from deep beneath the covers to put them on. Then, propping myself up on widened knees, I drank the juice with my left hand and picked up the note with my right.

Gone to work.?

I rolled my eyes. Good effort.

My toes slid out from beneath myself, and I stabilized onto the hardwood floor, a movement followed by the sound of slapping feet as I walked across a wide-open living room. A round, metal table stood in front of a gray couch, covered in empty glasses and bottles. In the reflection on the flat screen, the kitchen island could be seen, dressed in half-eaten sweets and oily pizza boxes.

A rummaging sound coming from a room toward the back of the apartment caught my attention, and I set my course for it. I walked down a short but well-equipped hallway and, after passing two doors, I peered into the third which was slightly open. Pushing my fingertips to the wood, the door opened swiftly and quietly, and I saw what appeared to be some type of animal fussing around under a pile of white sheets and pillows.

Ana’s head shot up from the fluffy swirl. I lifted my orange juice glass with a smirk as my friend from English class pushed a mess of hair out of her face and clicked her mouth to get rid of a bad taste. I entered and opened the window by the head of the bed.

“You smell that?” I asked her. She was now looking around confusedly as outside air rushed into the room.

“Mm. The ocean,” she mumbled. “Reminds me of mornings in Corf— Wait a second! Oh my fucking god, Kai. Where the fuck are we?” She giggled and jumped up to look out the window.

“Madrid, of course.” I began passing Ana pieces of her outfit from the night before. “Come on, then. Let’s get out of here before these two get back from work and ask for our Instagrams. I can’t believe we let a pair of strangers convince us to ride out here with them.” As if we hadn’t ended up in Toledo with a pair of Dutch tourists just last week, or at a fancy downtown hotel with three French exchange students on a summer program the week before. Dirk was quite nice to me indeed. Henri and Laurent were too. But none of them were nice enough to give out my contact information.

I walked out of the room as Ana tripped along behind me, trying to get her left leg into last night’s shorts. “Uhm, hello? That’s a free follower. We trekked like a hundred hours yesterday just to get here. You best believe my guy got my Insta. I’m trying to brand myself here.”

I rolled my eyes, smiling to myself. Ana and I faked connections in a lot of the same ways, though she actually seemed to believe herself most of the time. I envied that. I wished I didn’t think so much. I liked having fun and making stupid decisions, but there was an odd gap in my mind that prevented me from being fully convinced by my own actions, and it was really quite annoying. It would’ve been nice to just be normal.

We readied ourselves before heading down the hall and into the elevator. I didn’t know what time it was, but it felt like we’d hardly slept. I gave myself until street level to hate myself before switching my mind off. Exiting the apartment building, we stepped onto what felt like a fully heated griddle but was just a street in southern Spain in mid-August; a heat so distinguished it’s not usually compared to other things, rather, other things are compared to it.

Ana and I walked in the direction in which we’d seen the beach from atop our temporary penthouse stay. While passing the third corner on the left, we came across a souvenir shop.

“I need some sunglasses to protect my eyes from this damn sun,” she said, wiping a line of black makeup from the corner of her eye out to her temple and setting her course toward the door of the store. “And then we are going straight to get some coffee.”

“What else would we do?” I asked lazily as I followed her in. To use an incredibly situation-appropriate cliche, this was not our first rodeo.

Ana and I had been friends since day one of university. Rachel met us that same weekend, though she was in a loving, committed relationship now, so she didn’t hang around as much as she used to. Since that first weekend, it had been movie marathons, sleepovers, late-night grocery runs, and lots of adventures.

Mattress surfing down the dorm building stairs turned into foam parties in Corfu, and setting up a movie night in the common room turned into pirated films on a laptop in a hostel somewhere in England. But from one end of the world to the other, we never shied away from a good time. There were even tattoos to prove it.

Each of us now wearing a pair of sunglasses with a plastic tag sticking out from the bridge, we moseyed up and down the shop aisles looking for the perfect tacky trinket to commemorate yet another impromptu adventure in yet another city.

“I might just go classic magnet.” Ana held up a hunk of junk in the shape of a red umbrella with the word BENIDORM slapped across it. “I think we’re in Benidorm, by the way.”

“Cool. That explains why blondie spoke English. She must be German or something,” I said from the other side of the aisle. I was holding a miniature beach-themed picture frame with the same Benidorm logo across the bottom.

“Watchya gonna put in it?” she asked, glancing at the item in my hands.

I shrugged and began walking to the register. “Who knows? A strand of blondie’s hair. The receipt from this very purchase. The possibilities are endless.” I looked at her with a goofy, albeit empty, grin.

She tossed her arms around my shoulders with a chuckle, hanging on me from behind as I completed our transaction with the cashier. Judging by the way he stared past my head, I could only assume she was making kissy faces at him. We’d both just gotten laid like…a few hours ago. When did this girl rest?

Having paid, clipped the tags from our noses, and secured the cashier’s Instagram handle, we headed back out into the heat. Ahead of us, the earth curved into a roller coaster fall, opening straight to the beach. It looked so big, so monumental. And I felt so small and so lost. For a moment, I wished I was home on the couch with Jonah and Oli. Everything I needed in one place, comfortable and protected within the familiarity I so desperately craved. But I couldn’t have been further away. My heart began to collapse, so I distracted myself, searching for a wipe to freshen up my face. I needed to somehow feel clean. I needed the grime of life to be gone.

I began shifting the straps of my small, black backpack around on my sweaty shoulders, feeling the slight breeze cool the damp spots left behind on my body. The bag fell in front of me, dangling off one arm as I reached in, in search of my diversion.

“Can you pass me one of those?” Ana extended her hand to me as I pulled a wet wipe from its plastic package. I passed her one.

That backpack was our lifeline during those first couple years of college. From backup thongs to tubes of mascara to band-aids, it had everything we needed for nights out and accidental vacations. I carried it with me constantly, and it was cute enough that I appeared to be making some sort of fashion statement. I mean, if we were going to party hard, we might as well have been organized about it.

Organized. I scoffed to myself at the thought. Right. As if organized people followed strangers to unfamiliar cities by accident. Well, not by accident. We had agreed to come here, but there was wine involved. There was nearly always wine involved. Organization, not so much.

What’s more, I had no idea how we’d get home, and I wasn’t even positive what day it was. I finally whipped out my phone, which had only 36% battery and kindly informed me that it was Saturday, and quickly began searching. According to the bus schedule I pulled up, we only had one viable option out of here today and only forty-five minutes to make it to said option. While I’d been working at a bar in the center of Madrid for the better part of the last year, I wasn’t exactly a millionaire. Quite the opposite. So, I wasn’t about to pay for another night in this town. The overpriced picture frame and sunglasses were enough of an indulgence.

Ana and I began pumping our legs to reach the bus station, gritting through the pain of sweaty, smothering air on dehydrated hangover brains and simultaneously glancing around for a passing taxi. My knees screamed as my feet stomped on the sidewalk, quickly skipping to the right and left to avoid passers-by. A taxi finally stopped for us, and getting into the hot car was practically worse than running down the street. I clung to the leather seat which seemed to melt right into my skin and tried not to throw up as I stared out the window.

Only ten more minutes. It’s only a ten-minute ride, the driver had said.

And then a five-and-a-half-hour bus ride back to Madrid, you fucking idiot.

Fuck.

This was so fitting. Life was a party, and parties meant hangovers. Ana caught my eye and laughed at the absurdity of our situation, and I forced an amused grin back. Surely, this would be a story to tell that I’d laugh at one day, right? That was what people always said. Live while you’re young. Make memories that you’ll cherish when you’re older.

Surely, this was one of those memories.

Surely, I’d one day be comfortable in the home I’d built, looking back on the time I followed a stranger, had sex with them, almost threw up in a car, and wasted money on a ride home that I shouldn’t have even needed.

Right?