“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…
