Chapter 1 #2
“Honestly, I spend most of my time worrying about you.” Alma glanced over with a small smile. “Work is the same.”
“Oh so the genetic sequences for the DNA genome biology haven’t changed at all?” Grace asked, pleased with the note of teasing in her voice. It was nice to tease Alma again, to make fun of herself for something as simple as never having the tiniest clue about Alma’s research.
Alma grinned and shook her head. Grace knew enough to know Alma did some kind of fancy biological research about cell proteins and genomes, or something like that.
Grace could never keep up, and Alma was so steeped in the science, so brilliant, that her explanations sounded more like lectures for Biology PhD students than fifth grade science books, which meant they left Grace completely baffled. “Exactly correct,” Alma affirmed.
“Tell me about Obinna, then,” Grace said, slapping a hand against her suitcase.
She knew Alma had stopped talking about him on purpose.
Their relationship was still so fresh and exciting, only six months in, and Alma was head over heels, but she’d been keeping it to herself lately, trying not to rub it in after everything with Grace and Derek had imploded.
Alma opened her mouth to speak, but then she paused. “We don’t have to talk about it,” she said at last.
Grace reached out a hand and squeezed her best friend’s arm. “I’m happy for you. It’s wonderful. You don’t have to hide it from me.”
Grace could see Alma considering how to proceed, the way she pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, but still Alma’s eyes twinkled like they just couldn’t help themselves. “He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever been with, Gracie.”
“So not a total dirtbag who treats you like crap?”
“Not at all,” Alma replied, not even slightly offended by her best friend’s assessment of her past liaisons. “He’s so sweet and romantic. He takes me out on picnics! And he puts his arm around me as we stroll through the park, and he tells me I’m beautiful.”
“He’s not lying.”
Alma waved a hand. “But then at night he’s so…masculine.”
“Masculine?” Grace raised a brow.
“Sexy. There’s something about his thighs. I don’t know how they’re so firm.” She started fanning herself with one hand, while the other hand gripped the steering wheel.
Grace laughed and clung to her suitcase as they bounced over a rough spot in the road. “I’d like one of those for myself.”
Alma nodded. “We’ll find you one, mi media naranja. Now you are single, and all the boys will go crazy for you.”
“Doubtful.”
“Just wait,” Alma said.
They were nearing the heart of the city, streets and buildings inching closer to each other as they drove.
With every turn down a new, narrow street, Grace’s eyes went wider.
The cobblestone roads, the blend of Moorish, Renaissance, Gothic, and Baroque architecture.
Beautiful stone structures towered over them, as if they were perfectly normal scenery at a stoplight.
It was absolutely breathtaking. It didn’t seem possible that Grace could live in it.
“Thank you, Alma,” Grace said suddenly. “Truly.”
“I’ve told you to stop thanking me. I get to live with you again. I never thought this would happen.”
Grace pressed her face to the window as she noticed the huge bunches of colorful flowers hanging from streetlamps that lined the road. “I just don’t know how I would have survived all of this without you. I don’t think I could have.”
Grace really couldn’t believe it, actually, the way Alma had been there for her.
She’d called every day, texted constantly.
She’d planned to hop on a plane and show up in Chicago, but Grace finally managed to convince her that she just needed to deal with a few remaining details before moving to Spain, and Alma shouldn’t upend her life.
It had been nice to know she would have, though.
She would have dropped everything, and that meant the world.
Alma shook her head. “You’re tougher than you think, Gracie. I keep telling you.”
“Yes, you keep telling me, but I don’t know why you think that. It’s not true.”
Alma didn’t reply, just smoothed a hand over her hair.
Grace stared at the Spanish shop names and the window displays, impressed by everything.
There were palm trees here, which gave her yet another reason to feel like she was on vacation, that it was all just a break from reality and not her real life.
Real life was the ice-covered streets of Chicago, gusts of wind slamming against her back on Armitage Avenue.
It was the boxes on the side of the road while she waited for the moving truck, tears running down her face.
It was loneliness and an aching in her chest that never went away. Real life couldn’t include palm trees.
“Almost there,” Alma said. “We’ll see if my brother is actually going to be a gentleman and come help with your bags like I told him to.”
Grace startled. “Your brother?”
“Yes?” Alma’s tone was filled with sarcasm. “You remember I have a brother, right?”
The brilliant and beautiful Alma Ferrer-Martín had only one flaw, and it was one she couldn’t help. It was the fact that she was related to Rafael Ferrer-Martín.
“Of course I remember you have a brother. I just thought he was still in the States.”
Alma shook her head. “He’s been back a few months now. He started his own little company here.”
Grace rolled that over in her mind for a moment.
She couldn’t be too surprised about missing out on that tidbit of information.
It was yet another thing she’d failed to ask about, too distracted by her own series of crises.
Grace just hadn’t realized quite how much Alma had skirted around the details of her daily existence. To not even mention her brother…
Not that it would have changed anything.
Grace would still have moved across the ocean even if she’d known Rafael would be there.
She didn’t really have a choice, but she could have prepared herself, as least, with the knowledge that her new life in Spain would also include run-ins with Alma’s super-jerk sibling.
“Are you happy to have him around?” Grace asked. Alma and Rafael had always weirdly seemed to get along, despite their differences.
Alma considered the question. “Yes, it’s nice that he’s nearby. It’s good for us, I think.”
Grace felt a scoff rising to her lips, but she smothered the sound.
It was possible that Rafael had changed, of course.
She should give him the benefit of the doubt.
They met only once, during that summer in college.
He’d been living with friends in Barcelona for the summer, so they all had spent a lot of the visit together.
He’d been gracious enough to give the grand tour to his little sister and her friend, and it had clearly been a burden to him, but Grace thought he could have at least pretended to have fun.
Instead, he’d been stern all week long. He hadn’t laughed at a single joke she made, and she’d made a lot, from stupid puns to humor about the phallic shapes of certain architecture.
She’d even tried slapstick (unintentionally) when they’d visited a giant garden, and a bird pooped in her hair.
It was disgusting, of course, but Grace and Alma were in stitches, doubled over and almost crying.
Rafael never even cracked a smile. He was always so disapproving, like he thought they were utterly immature, like his three additional years of life had provided him with experience and insight that far surpassed theirs.
He couldn’t handle their fifty cent tequila shots or their embarrassing dance moves, their uninhibited laughter or dirty jokes.
He’d been insufferable.
Alma didn’t seem to mind it. She’d just rolled her eyes and shrugged it off.
But for Grace, it felt personal. It was her first time meeting her best friend’s family, and she’d wanted to make a good impression.
She’d asked him lots of questions about himself or about whatever piece of Barcelona history he was explaining, trying to take an interest, to get on his good side.
But even if he was just a stick in the mud, it felt very much like he didn’t like her, as if she was the real burden who was killing his grown-up vibes.
That was, until he’d tried to kiss her.
“Grace?”
Alma had been talking about something, and yet again, Grace was being a terrible friend, lost in her own head and picking at memories that would be better left alone in the dark recesses of her subconscious. She snapped out of her reverie and looked back at the driver’s seat.
“What? Sorry.”
“I was just thinking about ordering in tonight for dinner. I thought you would be tired.”
“Yes, that sounds great.”
She was coming up on thirteen hours since she’d left Chicago on her overnight flight, and she was looking forward to falling into a bed.
She knew Alma would want to show her around her hometown, and Grace was excited to see it, but she was also drained from traveling, from uprooting whatever semblance of a life she had left and flying across the world.
“Here we are,” Alma announced.
They pulled up to Alma’s apartment building, which was smaller than Grace had expected, only a few stories.
There were little balconies over the street.
Pedestrians sauntered down the sidewalk speaking rapid Spanish.
Grace noticed a Domino’s Pizza down the block, and she breathed a sigh of relief, as if somehow Domino’s could save her.
Alma whipped into a parking garage, hopped out of the car, and signaled for Grace to follow.
“Leave the suitcases for now,” she said. “We’ll see if Rafael’s able to help.”
Grace bit her lip and sauntered through the garage, around the corner, and up the stairs of the residential complex all the way to the third floor, where Alma unlocked the door to the last apartment at the end of the hall.
“Ah,” she said, as she walked inside. “Estas aqui mi hermano. Que lindo.”
Alma opened the door wide to allow Grace to walk in behind her, and there was Rafael, perched on the arm of a little sofa, staring at his cell phone. Apparently, he had a key to the place, which wasn’t entirely surprising. Whatever his faults, Grace knew Alma trusted her brother with her life.
It made sense, of course, that if Alma was the most beautiful woman Grace had ever seen in real life, then Rafael was the most attractive man.
It was one of the reasons she’d been so disappointed he didn’t like her when they first met, if she was being honest. It also made the almost-kiss even more confusing, because, God, to kiss a man that gorgeous, what must that have been like?
Her body—her lips—had wanted to do it. But after the way he’d behaved that whole trip, she just couldn’t.
She still didn’t know what in the world he’d been thinking.
The whole incident was completely out of character, and they’d both pretended it never happened.
Grace could almost convince herself she’d imagined it, but the look in his eyes…
Was best forgotten, she reminded herself again.
When Rafael finally glanced up from his phone and turned to reply to Alma, those eyes scanned over to Grace. Something warm rushed through her body in an instant, which was annoying. She didn’t even like this guy. It was unfair that just because he was hot her body couldn’t help reacting.
He didn’t speak. Alma noticed this, too, and switched to English for Grace’s benefit. “Aren’t you going to say hello, Rafa? You remember Grace, right?”
Grace shuffled uncomfortably as he glared at her. She felt like she was on display, an old relic from the past laid out in a glass case at a museum.
“Yes,” Rafael said without smiling, his dark eyes focused on her face. “Hello.”