“We’ll see.”
The call ends and the living room falls silent.
For a moment, Rebeca stares at the black screen of her laptop, as if she were expecting the conversation to continue in some invisible way. Then she opens one of the pizza boxes. The warm aroma of melted cheese and tomato fills the air with acomforting immediacy. She serves herself a slice, opens the can of soda that came in the bag, and sinks onto the couch.
She turns on the TV without paying much attention to the program on the screen. Because her mind immediately wanders back to the phrase her mother had said just minutes earlier.
“Rebeca has always been the perfect match for Martina.”
She takes a bite of the pizza while letting out a small, humorless laugh.
“Yeah, right…” she mutters to herself. “Just look at who she ended up with.”
If she’s learned anything in recent years, it’s that stories that seem perfect from the outside can crumble with surprising ease. Even so, the memory of Martina pops into her mind with the same intensity as always. The way she saw her during dinner. The way their eyes met several times, as if neither of them knew exactly how to behave after so long. The slight tremor in Martina’s voice when she said she felt the situation was awkward. The way her eyes lingered on her lips for a second too long…
Rebeca takes another sip of soda. The sound of the wind beating against the windows makes her look up. In a matter of minutes, the sky has changed completely. Clouds swirl over the city with a dark density, and the first gust of rain hits the glass hard.
The storm arrives with almost theatrical speed.
The raindrops begin to fall heavily, pitter-pattering against the windowsill as the sky briefly lights up with a distant flash of lightning.
Rebeca watches the scene from the sofa.
“So it really was true.”
She had been warned several times about the unpredictable weather on the coast, but seeing it unfold like this, so suddenly, has something fascinating about it that leaves her completely mesmerized. For a few minutes, she simply watches the rain fall. The constant sound of the drops against the glass creates a sort of sound bubble around the living room. The storm turns the space into something intimate, cozy, almost welcoming.
Rebeca leans back against the sofa and lets out a slow sigh.
The pizza is good. The rain is perfect. And, against all odds, she begins to feel that perhaps choosing Santander as her new—and, she hopes, final—adventure wasn’t a mistake.
Her phone vibrates on the coffee table, and Rebeca reaches out to pick it up. Bruno’s message on the screen makes her smile.
“Are you feeling better yet?”
The question is enough to bring a faint smile to her lips. Bruno has that strange ability to sense when someone needs a little gesture of companionship, although she feels a slight pang of sadness knowing they won’t be able to see each other like they used to.
Rebeca rests the phone on her knee as she thinks about how to reply.
She looks back at the window. The rain continues to fall heavily. For a moment, the image of Martina pops into her mind again. The faint blush that rose up her neck when Rebeca told her she liked how she talked about her work. That blush she remembered perfectly from other nights, from otherconversations that ended in slow kisses and their bodies seeking each other out of need.
Rebeca looks down at the phone and her fingers finally move across the screen.
“Yes. Much better. I think I’m slowly getting used to living here.”
She presses send.
She sets her phone on the table and leans back on the sofa as the sound of the storm continues to fill the room.
For the first time since she arrived, the apartment is starting to really feel like home.
And, even though there are still too many unresolved issues, Rebeca can’t help but think that perhaps this city holds more answers than she imagined. The rain beats harder against the windows, thunder rumbles in the distance, and in the silence between one clap and the next, Rebeca closes her eyes for a moment. She feels the rapid beating of her own heart, the echo of a gaze that hasn’t stopped haunting her since she arrived, and the certainty—equally unsettling and sweet—that Martina Valcárcel is still, after all, the only person capable of making her feel so alive and so lost at the same time.
Her phone vibrates again.
“I’m glad. If you need to vent, you know where to find me. And if not, you know where to find me anyway. But don’t stay alone with that inner storm, okay?”
Rebeca smiles and types a quick reply.
