D: Great find!
D: You’re earning your nickname
Callan: No one hurts my friends
Callan: Now, I’ve heard the olive oil is insane in Spain
D: Are you asking me to bring you some back?
Callan: No, I’m asking you to buy some and give it to Zach to bring back lol
D: Chaos Yorkshire Terrier, you’re worth your weight in olive oil.
Callan:
FORTY-SIX
HE GAVE ME A HALL-PASS
I shovemy phone at Zach. With a tired yawn, he scans the convo. “Definitely worth his weight in olive oil.”
“We’re destroying Dyers’s life, aren’t we?” I declare happily as we jump into a cab and head out of Barajas and into the suburbs of Madrid.
“I’m not surewe’redoing anything. What was it Callan said? You’re the composer and Callan, Victoria, Shay, and this Conor guy are your orchestra.”
I snuggle into his side. “Do you think we should feel bad about all this?”
He huffs. “No. That ass is not only a bully, he’s a criminal. Evil. Dude deserves whatever they can throw at him and then some because pricks like that never see the inside of a jail cell.”
“Yeah,” I agree on a sad sigh. “You’re right.”
We’re six hours ahead of Florida and the flight was a doozy. Nine hours isn’t the longest, but we only managed to sleep right at the end. I woke up just before we landed and contemplated tossing my water bottle at Zach, who was doing a great impression of a corpse.
It’s also close to midnight on a Friday, which means chunks of the city’s still alive even if we’re half-zombies. The streets are buzzing with people justliving,and it’s so different to anything I’ve experienced in my whole life that I stare out of the back-seat windows in awe. Especially because it’s pretty warm here in comparison to New York and these guys are wrapped up like it’s blizzard weather.
Zach, who’s traveled out of the States more than I have, tips his head back and falls asleep.
But I don’t.
I can’t.
This was myabuela’shome.
I can feel the spindly roots of our family tree spurting through the soil, the tiny seedlings of my past bearing fruit.
I press my fingertips to the glass and stare as we pass the Ritz and get tangled up in the traffic of a massive roundabout.
Between us and the next part of the street, there’s this huge tree-lined walkway. The brittle bones of the branches sway and creak with the wind, but that lets me see the coffee shops and the kids parks and the beautiful fountains that decorate the space.
Eventually, we pull up outside our accommodations. It’s bitterly cold. There’s no snow in the air, but my breath is a frozen mist as Zach and the driver unpack our cases. That’s when I notice a pizzeria’s open on the corner. Knowing we’re lucky it hasn’t closed yet, I tug on Zach’s arm.
“You deal with the bags and I’ll grab us something to eat?”
Yawning, he nods.
I press a kiss to his lips before scampering away to the pizzeria. The staff behind the counter look even grouchier than Zach when I order enough to feed a hockey player. But fifteen minutes later, I have our food and plenty of bottled drinks to get us through to the morning.
Zach’s waiting on the front stoop with our shit. The perks of traveling with a sleepy muscled behemoth? He snags our backpacks with one hand and my extra-large case with the other and doesn’t even break a sweat, just yawns again when we have to traipse up to the elevator-free fourth floor.
