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 likeher, 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.”
CHAPTERTWO
Rafael had knownplenty of American women, and as a twenty-something student in New York, he’d been fairly certain they were all the same. He’d taken the opportunity to sleep with quite a few of them, and it had been nice. Perfectly pleasant, really, but that was all. They were frivolous and self-absorbed and shallow. He wasn’t sure they could ever be serious about anything, and that suited Rafael just fine, since he wasn’t ever interested in spending more than a few nights with them. He couldn’t complain, honestly. He’d had a great time.
When he first met Grace, he’d assumed Alma’s little American friend would be just like all those other women he had judged so decidedly, and he felt validated by his initial opinion. He tried to talk about the mastery of the Torre Agbar in Barcelona, and the two of them just kept chortling about how it looked like a giant penis. Grace had been studying art history, for God’s sake, so he thought she might have a little appreciation for the great postmodern icon, but she had just laughed along with his sister, completely ignoring his explanations of how it was inspired by Monserrat, the mountain near the city, and it was supposed to be representative of a geyser rising into the air.
