The Last Sunrise

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Wear comfortable shoes, we will be walking a lot today,” Julián tells me as I wake up.

“Huh? Where are we going?” I stretch my arms out, trying to grab ahold of his waist but he dodges me, grinning. I reach for one of the down feather pillows and chuck it at him.

“Come on, baby. Time to wake up.” He’s buzzing with excitement, but I have no idea why.

The room smells like espresso and sugar. He must have been up for a while. Dressed in a denim button-down shirt and beige shorts from his stash of clothing in my room, he looks delicious and ready to take on the day. I can feel the crust in my eyes as I groan, rubbing at them, wishing for some of his energy. The sunglasses he claimed to hate just days ago are already on, pushing back his curly hair out of his face and off his forehead.

“You changed your mind on the glasses?” I can’t help but tease him.

He shrugs. “They’re here, I’m here… We’ll be out in the sun today.”

“Just admit you like them.” I stick my tongue out at him.

With a wink, he pops another Nespresso pod into the machine. “Never.”

“You’re insufferable.” I plop back against the mattress.

“As are you, amor meu.” I know enough Spanish to know what that means. I flip over and bury my face in the pillow, making fake snoring sounds.

The soft whir of the espresso churning and filling the cup is the only noise I hear. Just as I’m about to pop my head up and see where he went, I’m yanked by my feet and dragged out of the bed. I shriek and he belly laughs as he throws me over his shoulder, carrying me into the bathroom as I kick my feet and try to tickle his sides. Just my luck, he’s not ticklish at all.

“Time to get up, princess. Your coffee’s done and you should brush your hair.” He points to my head as he softly lands me on my feet. I look in the mirror, but my hair is fine, mostly.

“Gotcha. I’ll give you twenty minutes before I become even more obnoxious.”

“Is that possible?” I ask, lifting the shirt of his I slept in over my head and tossing it onto the floor.

“You have no idea, baby.”

“Okay, okay. But can I have a hint?” I whine, pouting my lips.

“We’re going to the past,” he says simply as he hugs me from behind.

I cock my head, staring at him in the mirror. Excitement brushes over my skin at whatever he’s planned for today.

“You should change, though you look incredibly sexy in my clothes.” His eyes touch me, caress me as they scan his cutoff shirt barely touching my thighs.

I get dressed, a swimsuit under trouser-style shorts and a white tank top. The neck is high, my shell necklace twinkling in the center. Julián brings me the espresso he made me, and my medication, and about one hundred kisses, distracting me and smearing the lip gloss I keep attempting to apply. It’s all over his chin and cheeks by the time we go to leave, and I rub a wet hand towel across his face, before making him wear sunscreen again, much to his dismay.

“I haven’t seen you two in ages!” Amara’s voice is a scream when we reach the lobby.

Julián grumbles as she comments on how chic and grown-up he looks, how she knew he would love the sunglasses after all. He curses her out in Spanish, and she laughs, looking around the lobby behind us.

“Word has it your mom and her suits have been on a warpath the last few days, so be careful roaming around here, since I know you’re trying to avoid her,” Amara whispers.

I wonder if word has spread from the event that Isolde Pera’s daughter passed out in the pool during the most important event of SetCorp’s plan here, or if the partygoers were oblivious, continuing to drink and stuff their faces as it happened. At least there’s resolve there, knowing that while they were drinking and enjoying themselves, money was being put toward a good cause. I make a mental note to ask Lena how much money was raised later. I know my mom won’t offer the information easily. I can imagine my mother waltzing back inside the event, saying my health declined again, using something minute like a stomachache, so I had to return to my room. I feel guilty as I look at Amara, debating what I should divulge to her and not, but before I can get too in my head, Julián gently tugs my hand, and I kiss Amara goodbye before we head out for the day.

“Let’s hang out soon! Don’t keep her to yourself!” she yells at Julián with a smile. He flips her off and out we go.

The air is warm; my driver is leaning against the car I’ve barely used this summer. He tips his head to me, knowing I won’t be using him. He’s probably relieved to be paid still and not have to drive me around.

“Do you think I should tell Amara… about my health stuff?” I ask Julián as we leave the entrance of the hotel.

“Do you want to tell her?”

A sigh lifts and lowers my shoulders. “Not sure. I feel like I’m doing something wrong by not telling her. I’ve come to care about her so much so I don’t want to hide it from her, but I also don’t want it to become the main topic of our time together. I want to be the fun, normal Ry she knows and not ruin that. For her sake, and mine,” I admit.

Julián stops walking and stands in front of me, bending down to kiss the corner of my mouth. “You get to decide who and when and why you share anything about yourself and what you’re going through. Amara will understand either way, and it’s your body, your life, and most importantly, your choice.”

I kiss his lips and slowly, gently, wrap my arms around his torso, burying my head in his chest. How have I lived my life without making my own choices up until now? It’s so freeing to be reminded that this is my life and I can choose to do what I want with it. I’ll tell Amara someday, but it won’t be today. Today I’m going to enjoy the company of the man who’s brought joy, peace, and so much strength into my life and not think about anything except that.

After twenty minutes or so of strolling through tiny cobblestone streets hand in hand, Julián stops in the center of a street corner, holds me gently by the shoulders, and turns me to face a home with a small pink door and flower baskets on all the windows. He opens the tote bag he brought with him that he wouldn’t let me so much as touch or peer inside of and pulls out a stack of what looks like photos.

“What…” I begin to ask as I immediately recognize the women in the top photo. The colors are faded, the corners are turned up. “How on earth did you…”

Julián hands me the photograph and I stare at my mother’s younger face and relaxed posture, with her arms stretched out to the side like a flying bird. She’s in a pair of shorts with her shirt tied up her stomach and the smile on her face makes my heart ache. I can’t recall a time in my entire life when I’ve seen her smile that way. Her mother is next to her, staring at her in wonder, with her head slightly turned. Their resemblance is uncanny, their smiles identical. My grandmother’s hair had just started to turn gray on the sides, and the now-pink door is red in the photo.

I look at the photograph a few seconds longer before turning to Julián, who’s watching me with a satisfied smile on his face. He knows how important it is to me to try to understand where I came from, where my mother came from, how she became the woman she is today…

“Thank you. This is so meaningful, Julián. I barely have words.”

His thumbs wipe at my wet eyes and he nods, knowing that sometimes silence is better than words. I love that about him. He points for me to stand in front of the door and pulls a small disposable camera from the bag. I hand him the photo and spread my arms wide, just like my mom’s. I try to match her smile and a sense of peace trickles through me as the sunlight washes over my skin.

He clicks the camera and I throw my arms around him. “Thank you for this, so, so much. I’m so grateful. Especially knowing how you feel about my mom…”

“How I feel about your mother has nothing to do with how I feel about you. How I love you is not related to her, or to anyone except you and me. This is about you and my joy in making you happy, giving you good memories.”

“How you… what?” Only Julián would declare his love in such a casual way. As if the earth underneath my feet wasn’t shifting, as if the breath in my lungs wasn’t evaporating.

“How I love you,” he repeats slowly, like I couldn’t hear him clearly the first time.

The shock is still settling in, and I ask, “You love me?”

He moves closer, kissing me on my forehead, the sun beating down on us, the chirping birds falling silent. “Of course I do.”

“I love you,” I manage. “I love you so much.” It seems almost silly to say and the way we’re both just casually declaring our love in the middle of the street is so us, so causal, so messy, so ridiculous.

Julián’s smile is wide. Slightly crooked, it makes me want to wrap my arms around him and never let go. “I know you do.”

I roll my eyes, gently pushing at his chest. “Don’t ruin the moment,” I growl.

He shrugs. “I’m not. I’m simply saying the obvious. You had to have known I love you more than my own life, more than the sea, the sky, the air that I breathe. My love is simple, as it should be.”

I lean into him, unsteady and on a high. I love him so much it hurts. It might kill me, but he’s worth my last breath.

“I love you, my Ry. And you love me, simple as that, and we have an audience.” He looks up to the windows above, and sure enough, more than a few nosy heads have popped out of their windows to listen and watch us. I bury my head in his chest, and he laughs, waving to them.

As the sound of their windows closing fades, he pulls the stack of pictures back out and passes them to me, reaching back to grab ahold of my hand. He knocks on the door with a heavy fist. The old wood echoes and hollers under his touch.

“Julián, we can’t just—” I stop as an elderly man opens the door, and I can tell by his expression that he knows Julián well.

“Julián! Mirat! Feia temps que no et veig. Has crescut molt, fill meu!” he says, grabbing him into a big hug and nearly lifting him off the ground.

“Sí, he estat ocupat treballant i ajudant el meu pare. Aquest és el meu amic, Oriah.” He turns to me and I reach my hand out to shake the man’s hand.

His eyes are the color of melted, gooey honey and his smile is warm and comforting to match.

“You again, Oriah,” the man says, a knowing insinuation in his voice. “Isolde, your… mother. I can see.” He touches my face, which would normally make me uncomfortable, but I feel incredibly at ease with him, despite having never met him before, it feels like I have.

He knows my mom—well, an old version of her who slipped away a long time ago—and possibly my grandma, who I didn’t get the chance to know the way I wished I would have. But maybe now is my chance to learn even a little bit about her through this home, through this man. This is everything I wanted this summer, to have a connection to my mom and where she came from and what made her who is she is.

The man puts his hand on Julián’s back and Julián holds on to my hand as we walk into the house. It’s clean and simple, oil paintings and greenery hanging from the ceiling and covering the archways. It’s not big, but it’s perfect. The walls are made of stone and each door is in the same shape as the front door, a lovely arch. I instantly feel at home, rooted to a part of my family that I didn’t dream I’d ever get the opportunity to feel. Julián introduces his great-uncle Jordi, whose name pushes at my memory from a place I can’t recall. They carry on casual conversation in Catalan and I look around the living space. I try to image my mother here, carefree and smiling, in love for the first time, before she hardened and the world and greed got the best of her.

“Look around and meet me in the kitchen when you’re done, my love. Take your time.” Julián kisses my temple and continues to talk to the man who I assume owns this house now. He’s got to be at least seventy or so, but his young, bright spirit feels like wildfire, even with the language barrier.

I move into the kitchen, taking in the details. It looks like something from a romance movie from the 1940s set in Spain. The details are so plentiful, they’re hard to take in in one pass. The wooden cart used as an island is covered in choppy knife marks from decades of meals prepared. I run my fingertips over the marks, wondering how many were from my abuelita. I imagine her cooking here, the thick smell of garlic and tomato in the air, dancing around with the windows open, the breeze full of ocean water, singing the songs she used to make up that my mother always told me about.

There’s a bowl of lemons, another of limes, fruit and fresh vegetables filling the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. Long strands of garlic bulbs hang near the edges of the windows. There’s color everywhere I look. So starkly different from our white and stainless-steel kitchen back in Texas. There’s never a single item on the island, nothing on the countertops. In the rarity that my mom does cook, she cleans up before she serves us and it’s always spotless and untouchable, like her. Not here, though. Here in this home moments of life are etched into everything. My heart aches at the loss of something I’ve never had and my mother took for granted. My hand presses on my chest as I walk toward the paned window, following the dusty sunbeams shining through. Did my mom dream about her future here as she watched the neighbors laugh and smile with their families? Did she know that her life would be so stale in comparison, so lonely and colorless?

A colorful line of clothes sways, drying in the breeze, as a woman and her child play hide-and-seek between a woven quilt as it waves, making a rainbow. The shrieking laughter of the child makes my eyes wet. I turn around, holding the happiness I feel for them in my heart, not able to watch them for a moment longer. The white porcelain sink is cold against my back, helping me regulate my emotions before I go find Julián. The last thing I want him to see is me crying, mourning a childhood and family history that will never be mine.

Spaces like this make me wish I was a creative, a writer or a photographer. A painter. There’s an emotion that comes along with being in places like this that’s hard to explain or convey, but it feels so deep, as if a core memory is being made right now. The camera clicks and Julián smiles behind it, lowering it from covering his eyes.

“Identical,” he says, showing me a photograph of my mother in the kitchen. It’s almost eerie how similar the background still is, how my mom’s posture used to be so much more relaxed, like mine.

“Can’t I see the rest yet?” I grab for the stack of photos, but Julián is quick. He blocks me and presses his mouth against mine, rendering me blissfully helpless.

His mouth becomes hungrier, surprisingly so, considering Jordi is in the small house with us. Julián’s hands push into my hair, and he grips it, making my eyes water a bit. I bite at his bottom lip, and he lifts me onto the counter. His mouth moves to my bare neck, and I gasp as his hands grip my bare thighs below the line of my shorts.

A quiet cough breaks us apart. With swollen lips and wide eyes, I wipe my mouth off, trying to look anywhere but at the man in the doorway with a huge smile on his face. I’m mortified but Julián doesn’t mind one bit. Men.

Julián apologizes with a laugh and helps me down from the counter. Jordi says something to Julián and Julián translates to me.

“He wants to know if you want to hear some stories about your mom and abuelita. Apparently, the men in my family have a long history of loving the women in yours.” He winks, and I look at the man.

“Wait, he couldn’t be my grandpa, right? Oh my god, what if we’re related?” I whisper.

Julián bursts into laughter, kisses my temple, and shakes his head. “Your grandpa hasn’t been alive for a long time.” He gently reminds me that my grandma was also a single mother for most of her life. “And we are not related. I may be morally gray, but that’s where I draw the line.”

I nod at how ridiculous the thought was, but today’s been a whirlwind of emotions already and my mind is clearly on a high.

“Can you tell him I’d love to hear anything he can tell me?” I lean into Julián’s side, and he wraps his arm around my waist, leading me into the main sitting room.

We sit on the floor and Jordi comes in from the kitchen with a wooden platter covered in bright food. Peppers, Romanesco broccoli, sweet potatoes, eggplant, cabbage, all cut into small, wonderfully placed pieces. In the center, there are three types of dips, one green, one reddish, and one white with little green flakes. Pieces of fragrant roasted garlic and shallots are sprinkled among the fresh food. The smell is beyond decadent, making my stomach growl. The aroma from the yeast in the just-out-of-the-oven bread, the almonds everywhere: it takes all my self-control not to dig in like an animal. The two shots of espresso I downed before we left the boat this morning were not much of a sustainable breakfast. But this, this is fresh and heavenly. I thank him and he begins to tell me tales and memories about my family. Julián takes the time to translate every twenty seconds or so.

I learn that my mom used to be called “tomàquet petit” because she was so feisty and was always eating whole, raw tomatoes, which is weird to me because she has always told me she hates them, despite her vegetable-heavy diet. As Jordi shares memories of the version of her who grew up here and of my abuelita, who he was head over heels for, I feel so close to them. I can imagine them in this home, my mother yapping away and my grandmother cooking. I had never gotten to know her, or anyone in my family here. The moment my mother’s mom passed away, my mom at just seventeen packed a single suitcase and less than one hundred dollars and came to the States to live with her aunt, who had married a man in Texas years back and encouraged my mom to study business there.

Barely out of high school, but a whiz at charm and street smarts, my mother blew through her studies; with a full scholarship from the University of Texas, she graduated at the top of her class, and then got pregnant with me. Parts of the timeline didn’t add up in my brain, but I didn’t need to question every single detail when the past differed from person to person, each one putting their own stamp on what happened from their perspective. And I was okay with that; it made us all more human.

One thing was for sure: giving birth to me, having my sperm donor run off and never come back, and my… complications had drastically changed my mom’s life and who she was to the core. My mind wanders as I dip a piece of broccoli into the thick red sauce and close my eyes, imagining for a moment that my mom sat here in this exact spot on the floor, with this man and his delicious food, music playing softly in the background, daydreaming about the happy, fulfilled future she would never have. She left the only love I’ve known her to have, and there had to be more of a reason than anyone else knew. I would never be able to ask her, but curiosity eats at me as we feast.

After we finish our meal, Julián leads me outside to the back patio. A row of luscious almond trees and an iron table fill the small but enchanted space. The sun is out, bright and glorious but not scorching. It really is the perfect day. Another photo is held in front of me, my mom lying back on the iron table, her feet dangling off the edge and her face propped up on her elbow. She’s using the other hand to block the sunlight.

“Who do you think took all of these?” I ask Julián as I awkwardly climb onto the table.

I would normally feel insanely silly doing something like this, but he’s making it feel so fun, so immersive, that even as the table creaks, we both laugh and Julián pulls the camera back out, studying the shot and the photograph in his hand.

“My pare did. I found them in a chest in the boat. He took them all, I asked. Of course, I was pissed and wanted to rip them to shreds but I couldn’t bring myself to. Just like the letters.”

The click of the camera surprises me as the flash goes off. I reach up to cover my eyes and Julián rushes over to me. “I’m sorry, are you okay? I don’t know why the flash turned on.” He examines the camera and presses a button, then another. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” The tone of his voice is so serious, as if he’s studied what flashes can do to me.

“It’s okay. Can you show me my mom’s old room?” I climb off the table quickly, letting my heart rate slow and my panic dissolve as Julián’s hand wraps around my own and he leads me back inside and upstairs.

The room is vibrant and more colorful than I thought it would be, and if it weren’t for the lack of dust anywhere, I would assume it’s been untouched all these years. I go to the window first to see the view she had for years and jump back in surprise. I blink and it’s gone, but I could have sworn…

“Are you okay?” Julián’s voice brings me back to reality.

“I think the photos and being here is messing with my mind. I swear I saw my mother walking there.” I point to the corner of the street. It’s empty and she’s not there… of course she’s not. I definitely imagined it.

There’s a bed next to the window, a small desk, and a few stacks of schoolbooks. I walk over to the desk and trace the thick, curved wood. There’s something carved into it: Iz i Mateo is etched deeply into the desk. I open one of the books, again, no dust to be found. I’m a little nervous to tell Julián what I’m thinking, but it comes out anyway.

“Imagine how much happier they would have been if they stayed together. I know we wouldn’t be here, but take us out of the equation for a moment. Neither of their lives has been the same since. My mom is miserable and doesn’t so much as look at a man. Your pare has been cooking her favorite foods, keeping memories and photographs. How is it possible they were so in love, but separated? It seems cruel and like their lives after are a punishment from the universe.”

Julián sits down next to me on the bed and takes my hand in his. “Let’s never find out how that feels, okay?”

I nod, knowing it won’t do any good to remind him that our time has an expiration date and not only the end of summer. Something more infinite. I send a silent prayer to the universe to punish me for all eternity for the pain he will feel when I’m gone.