Chapter 4 - Manuela
MANUELA
MONDAY
The customs officer barely glances at my passport before waving me through.
Outside the security area, the airport hums with early morning activity—roller bags rattling, carts stacked with suitcases, children half-asleep on strollers, parents sitting down and taking a moment to breathe.
The floor shines too much, like it was polished just for this party.
I chuckle at myself because I wouldn’t put it past Elle.
I blink at the brightness. Everything feels louder, greener, lighter.
The flight wasn’t bad, exactly. But it was long, and my neck is sore from the awkward angle I held it for most of the red-eye.
I don’t sleep well on planes—I’m used to the long distances, but the amount of bodies around me makes me jittery.
Last night, the man next to me had sharp elbows and a tendency to sniff every few minutes, which in turn made me incredibly paranoid because I really can’t get sick.
I didn’t say a single word to him, simply tried not to breathe in too deep.
At baggage claim, the carousel is already moving.
I stand behind a family wearing matching sweatshirts that say something about #FamilyTrip on the back, with the year in ginormous glitter font under the tagline featuring their last name and what I assume is supposed to be a funny play on words.
They’re arguing loudly in English about whose turn it is to check their connecting flight information.
I hug my coat tighter around me and keep scanning for my suitcase, half afraid it didn’t make it.
My carry-on duffel is slung awkwardly over my shoulder, the strap already digging into the spot where I hit my shoulder with the door on the way to the airport yesterday afternoon, and I wince without meaning to.
I finally spot my suitcase on the belt. The light blue-and-white ribbon my mother tied to the handle is the only thing that distinguishes it from the sea of black around it. I pull it off the belt and set it on the ground and start heading towards the exit.
I pause for a second near the arrivals area. Elle sent a whole itinerary for getting to Lucerne. A train to the city center, transfer at the main station, then about an hour to the final place where someone will be waiting for us. It’s not hard. Just… a lot.
And I’m more tired than I want to admit.
I got here a few hours later than the rest of the group, which should be at the house Elle and Jack rented by now. The cheaper flight was worth it, though it means walking in by myself, which only sharpens that familiar sense of being a step behind everyone else.
I sit on a bench near the sliding glass doors. A breeze sneaks in every time they open, soft and cool and smelling faintly of coffee and diesel. I close my eyes for a moment; I should get moving, but it feels good to stop.
There’s always this strange beat the moment right after I land in a new country, where I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Not because I belong here in any real way but because I belong in motion.
It’s been this way since I finished college and decided to stay in Buenos Aires, where life moved faster than in Tres Fuegos, and the quiet independence of growing my own career and owning my life gave me the momentum to keep going. It makes me feel capable.
Like I’ve built something of a life, even if most of the time I’m still trying to prove it to myself. And even as the last three years have been a constant reminder that sometimes things take longer than planned.
I pull out the train directions Elle sent a few weeks ago and double-check my route. One step at a time.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
I glance up. Connor’s standing a few feet away, leaning slightly on the handle of a suitcase that looks like it’s already lost a fight.
There’s a small rip on one corner, and the zipper is holding on with what looks like sheer willpower.
He’s got sleep lines on his cheek and his hair is doing something chaotic, like he ran his hands through it too many times and gave up halfway on each of those attempts.
“Oh—hey, Connor.” I blink up at him, caught off guard.
I didn’t even know he was coming, and now he’s suddenly in front of me, tall and very real in this crowded section of the terminal.
For a second I’m not sure if I should stand, wave, or just stare.
Of course Elle never mentioned he’d be here.
Why would she? He’s part of her world, not mine.
And besides, nobody knows that when I first met him, I had the slightest crush on him.
“I ended up on a different flight,” he says, dropping his bag with a sigh. “Had some miles to redeem, so I took what I could get. Figured I’d catch up with everyone here.”
“Ah.” It’s all I manage because I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that he’s actually standing here, talking to me.
“And then my flight got delayed out of JFK, and I spent six hours next to a guy who kept trying to explain the difference between sparkling water and club soda like it was an advanced chemistry lesson.”
I laugh. “There’s a difference?”
“Apparently,” he replies, lifting one shoulder casually. “Something to do with added minerals that give one of them a salty taste? I can’t even recall the details, to be honest.”
He drops the duffel draped around his shoulder with a soft thud and sits next to me. Not too close, just enough that I can feel the warmth of him in the cool morning air.
“Are you heading straight to Lucerne?” he asks. His brown eyes appear lighter today, even in the clinical light of the airport.
I nod. “Trying to remember which train I’m supposed to get on first. It’s all very organized in Elle’s spreadsheet, which is great, but also slightly overwhelming after an eight-hour flight.”
“I’ve got some notes,” he says, fishing his phone out of a pocket on his oversized coat and immediately scrolling through it. “Although I thought I’d just follow someone smarter looking than me and hope for the best.”
I raise an eyebrow. “And you landed on me?”
“Obviously.” He shrugs again, and the movement, combined with the way he’s saying it, makes my stomach flutter. “You give off capable energy.”
“Thank you,” I say, and then after a beat, “I think?”
We stand and start walking together toward the signs for the trains. His suitcase clunks every few steps, even on the smooth tile of the arrivals area, and I try not to let the scene make me laugh.
“You know,” he says, glancing over at me, “I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew this early. Figured we’d all just magically appear at the house looking suspiciously well-rested.”
“Well,” I say, “you’re halfway there.”
He raises a brow. “Yeah?”
“You showed up.”
Connor lets out a soft laugh. “And the other half?”
I shrug, grabbing on to my suitcase’s handle with a little more force than intended. “Debatable.”
“Ouch,” he says, pressing a hand to his chest. “That’s brutal.”
“Just calling it like I see it.”
He smiles, easy and unbothered. “Guess I’ll have to win you over on the train.”
The train platform isn’t too crowded yet.
We scan the board and find the right platform number, then walk toward it in companionable silence.
The train arrives within a few minutes, sleek and quiet, and we get on without issue, heading towards the suitcase racks.
I lift mine on, and Connor follows with a low grunt, almost like he’s laughing under his breath at himself—but the sound comes out rougher, heavier, and it catches me off guard.
It’s nothing, really, just a noise, but it lands too close to the base of my spine, sharp enough to make me suddenly, annoyingly, aware of him.
And when I glance up, he’s already watching me, like he’s just as surprised to notice me back.
We find seats near the window facing each other, and within a few minutes, the train starts moving. The view is already beautiful—green hills, small houses with flower boxes, glimpses of water just beyond the trees.
He stretches his legs out and leans back with a sigh. “So,” he says, eyes closed as if he’s intending to sleep the whole way to the first station where we need to change trains. “Any pre-trip regrets yet?”
“Not yet. You?”
He tilts his head to either side, stretching his neck. “Hmmm, ask me again in two days.”
I watch the countryside pass. It’s quiet in the train car. Peaceful, in that in-between way where no one expects anything from anyone yet. Where all you have to do is be exactly where you are, going in the exact direction you are heading in.
“You’re quiet,” he says after a while. Not in an accusing tone in the slightest, simply making an observation.
“I’m always quiet,” I say. I want to add that I’m not usually the quiet one in a group, but it’s unnecessary. We’re friend-adjacent, and he doesn’t need to know every detail of my life and my feelings.
“That’s true,” he says. “But I think it’s on purpose.”
I glance at him, the words catching me off guard.
His features are so relaxed, unlike anything I’ve seen recently.
Normally, he’s buttoned-up and stiff, eyes always on his phone or thumbs typing furiously, even with his girlfriend next to him, talking loudly and gesticulating wildly with every story she tells.
A lot of the men in the friend group are the same.
Finance, was what everyone told me. Like their chosen professions just keep them on edge constantly.
Connor doesn’t elaborate. He watches me for a beat before looking back out the window.
I lean my head against the glass, unsure what to say to that. It’s not a bad observation. It feels like more than I expected from someone who’s mostly existed in my periphery until now.
“You don’t talk much either,” I say.
“I talk enough.”
“Is this a competition?”
“Only if I’m ahead, obviously.”
That earns him a smile.
The train speeds up, gliding past a patch of farmland and a field of yellow wildflowers like the ones we have back in my hometown, except these look more distinguished—definitely European because it’s like they’re classy.
I could take a picture, send it to my best friend from back home, Martina, so that she can get her husband, Jacinto, to grow these for her, but it feels better to just look. To keep this moment to myself.
“Can I ask you som—” he says.
“How’s work?” I blurt at the same time.
We both pause, then laugh, the sound spilling out too loud for the quiet of the train car.
“You first,” I say quickly, waving a hand for him to go on. It's a basic question, definitely making small talk, but something I’ve seen so many people do in these types of situations before. It’s polite, I think, and breaks up the silence of the whole scene.
He leans back against the seat, considering. “It’s… fine. Busy.”
The words come out steady, but there’s weight behind them.
For a second, I don’t know what to say because it’s the most standard answer anyone can give.
Almost like being busy is something you should be proud of.
It’s also, I notice, the most words we’ve ever exchanged in the three years since I’ve been in New York, and I don’t hate it one bit. Even if it sounds rehearsed, scripted.
The train slows a little as we pass a cluster of green hills dotted with chalets, and a local train station is a blur outside the window. He turns slightly towards it, his knee brushing mine. It’s casual. Probably accidental. But I feel it all the way in my bones.
“I’m glad for the time off,” he adds after a second.
Connor’s eyes move from my eyes to my neck and linger on the crescent moon pendant I’m wearing, partially visible among my hair.
“And we’re actually required to take a two-week break every year because of…
” He trails off and gestures with his hand.
“Boring regulation stuff. So no one will be contacting me.” A faint smile. “Which is my favorite part.”
There’s a beat where I’m not sure what to say, so I match his smile. The train hums beneath us.
“Me too,” I say, soft but steady. “Glad for the time off, I mean.”
Connor leans back again, clearing his throat. “Alright. Your turn.”
“For what?”
“To ask something inappropriate.”
“Connor,” I say with a smile on my face.
I’m starting, finally, to feel tired and drowsy, the adrenaline of the flight over and the mixture of everything slowly fading.
I imagine my expression is sleepy and somewhat unhinged.
“I already asked a question. And it was not inappropriate, thank you very much. Extremely polite.”
He laughs, a hearty laugh that makes his body shake. He crosses one leg over his knee in that classic man pose and looks at me, a crinkle in both his eyes.
“I don’t have any inappropriate questions.”
“Liar.”
I think for a moment, hum to myself. I desperately want to ask about his girlfriend—the one who’s usually glued to his side at every social function we’ve ever overlapped at—but that feels completely out of bounds.
We’re friends. Or close acquaintances in the same orbit. Either way, it’s not my place.
“She’s not coming,” he finally says, eyes fixed on the window, tracking the blur of trees and fields and rolling hills just outside. “In case you were wondering.”
“Oh.” It’s all I can manage, taken aback. I noticed her absence from the social events where we’d see each other this year, sure, but assumed it was a fluke, with the summer keeping a lot of us busy. I didn’t expect him to name it.
He glances at me, then away. “Yep.”
There’s the noncommittal shrug again. The one shoulder lift that’s so easy to miss. Except it’s not. It’s the kind of shrug that hides something sharp underneath, like the full story is heavier than he wants to carry out loud.
I don’t blame him. We are, after all, just friends. Or maybe friend-adjacent.
We both look out the window after that. Nothing pressing or heavy. There’s something nice about the shared silence—it’s filling the space between us in a cozy, enveloping way, even if what just happened was charged with tension and hums with something new and unexpected.
Something I can’t name. Not while I’m tired and the train is still moving.