Grace looked around the room and decided to change the subject. “Your apartment, Alma. It’s amazing.”
She’d seen the place in videos, of course, or online when Alma was chatting with her by the window that looked out over the street, but it was even better in person. Small, but well organized and tidy. It reminded Grace of one of those little Ikea displays of what you could do with a small space, but it had more color and personality—bright, beautiful throw pillows and tasseled blankets, potted plants and shelves of science books. Even if Alma’s relationship with her father wasn’t as complicated as Rafael’s, Grace knew how important it had been for Alma to have a place of her own, something she had earned without the help of her rich family.
“Your apartment now, too,” Alma said. “We’re living together again, so feel free to make it your own. And don’t worry, I won’t complain as long as there’s a path through all of your clothes on the floor.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “I’m going to try very hard to be neat. You know I will. I managed last time we were roommates. Mostly.”
Alma smiled and walked over, wrapping her arms around Grace as soon as she could reach her. “A proper hug at last.”
Grace let herself lean against her friend, comforted by her warmth. When was the last time she’d even hugged someone? Her grandmother, over a month ago? She’d needed a hug so badly, and finally,finally,she had someone to care for her, someone who knew her life was a disaster and would love her anyway, someone who would call in so many favors to get her a job, who would offer her a home and whole new life at a moment’s notice. Alma was the best part of her life now. She was the only thing worth holding onto from the old one, and she was truly Grace’s savior.
Even when Grace was panicking about work permits and visas and starting to worry that moving to another country was just another giant burden on her to-do list, Alma had helped with all of it. Luckily, getting a visa as a lecturer at a university was quicker than a lot of other work permits, and they were somehow able to get her on track for the start of the next series of courses at the end of September.
“Let me show you your room,” Alma said, releasing Grace from the hug and linking their arms together before leading her over the fluffy Turkish rug.
She gave Grace the grand tour: the tiny hallway, the two bedrooms, the one little bathroom where Alma had already cleared a space for Grace’s toothbrush and face creams. Alma’s bedroom was much like the living area, tidy with touches of bright colors. One of the walls was papered with a plant print, and a stack of books was on the bedside table.
Grace’s new room was sparse—a bed, a nightstand, a big, opened window. It was ready and waiting for her to turn it into something of her own. “What was this room for before?” she asked.
“Oh, it was just an office, but I barely used it.” Alma waved a hand. “Let’s get your stuff.”
They slid the luggage into the room and stacked it in the corner, waiting to be unpacked and sorted. Then they ordered food and ate on the sofa. The TV was on in the background, but Grace didn’t understand a word of it, despite three years of high school Spanish and one conversational class in grad school. Instead, they talked and talked like they hadn’t in ages—not just about Grace and her string of disasters, but about Alma’s annoying colleague and her vacation in Portugal and even more about her boyfriend, Obinna, the agricultural engineer extraordinaire.
As the room grew darker, Grace’s eyelids started to feel heavy. The day—or days, really—of traveling was catching up to her at last, despite the adrenaline from being in the middle of Granada, from being reunited with Alma.
“Time for bed?” Alma whispered, and Grace nodded against her shoulder.
She barely managed to change into her pajamas and brush her teeth before she collapsed onto the little bed in her room, exhausted. There was an up-side to exhaustion, though. Maybe, just maybe, she was tired enough to trick her body into sleeping. For the past month she’d spent every night just hoping to fall into oblivion, and every night her brain had refused, whirring wildly in the darkness, rehashing all the memories Grace was trying to ignore.
She hoped Spain would be different. She hoped, at the very least, hours of standing in security lines, in-flight movies, and rolling her carry-on through multiple airports would be enough to settle her mind for one night. Grace was drifting off before she could comprehend that it had actually worked. It was the best sleep she’d had in ages.
In the days that followed, Grace set out to carve a new life for herself in southern Spain. Of course, Alma had a job. Alma had a life full of responsibilities, and she couldn’t wander around the middle of Granada during the day to help Grace get settled in, as much as she might want to spend every moment helping her best friend. It meant Grace would be largely on her own until her classes began. Alma did show her around the neighborhood, pointing in the direction of the university and the Alhambra. She took her to the grocery store and her favorite coffee shop. But otherwise, Grace was wandering, untethered, muddling through with her broken Spanish and trying not to get lost.
In the middle of the week, she had an appointment with the art department at the university, an orientation of sorts. Her classes would be taught in English, obviously, especially because there would be a large number of international students enrolled in them. It was thrilling and terrifying to think of teaching students from all over the world, but Grace felt up for it. Sharing her passion for modern art was the easy part.
The university was like something from a fairy tale, a far cry from the concrete towers in Chicago where she’d studied and taught before. It was a large and diverse campus, and some of the structures looked more like castles than anything else. She’d wandered through buildings with painted ceilings and marble statues, through grottos of greenery and stucco arches. It was impressive, to say the least. Intimidating, too.
Her new colleagues were welcoming, though, and even if Grace felt like a fish out of water, she could imagine herself putting roots here, growing into this place and finding a steady rhythm, something that would help her to get a grip again, to discover if she was still the same person as before, somewhere deep inside. It was something she’d been mourning with everything else—a lost part of herself that didn’t exist any longer. To some degree, she didn’t even feel like she had a personality anymore; she was just a walking ball of grief instead of a person, too sad and boring to have much to offer anyone.
She was forever changed, no doubt about that, but seeing the campus offered some kind of hope. Maybe she could fit there. Maybe someday the old Grace would peek out at the spiraling staircase in the middle of the universitybibliotecain a vast hall surrounded by books and remember what it was like to feel joy.
“We’re lucky, honestly, that you were able to join us,” Professor Medina offered at the end of Grace’s first faculty meeting. “One of our instructors decided to run off to Greece at the end of last term, and so many of the candidates for the position had very little teaching experience. This is a rigorous group of students. They need someone with your expertise.”
Grace was grateful for the man’s comment, especially since she felt guilty about the strange kind of favoritism that had gotten her the job. Alma’s mother knew the vice provost who had a background in art, and she’d revealed they were in urgent need of a new instructor. It wasn’t often that anyone was in urgent need of an art history instructor, hence why Grace’s old department had been completely dissolved. Despite all the other turmoil she’d suffered, getting the job was a strange kind of magic, even if it was a position for which she was well qualified.
She continued to aimlessly roam the campus and then branched out to aimlessly roaming the city, trying to picture what life would be like.
You don’t need to picture it anymore,she told herself.You’re already here.
But she still felt outside of it all—an interloper, an onlooker. She wasn’t completely certain whether her move to Spain had just been running away from grief and pain or if she was running toward something exciting and new. Okay, actually, she was certain. It was definitely the former, but now that she’d done it, she wanted to make life in Spain something worth running toward.
One night, Alma took Grace to dinner with Obinna, so she was finally able to meet the man who’d stolen her best friend’s heart. He was even more attractive in person, incredibly tall with one of the brightest smiles she’d ever seen, instantly disarming even though they’d never spoken a single time.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, and Grace swallowed, guilt rising in her throat. She hadn’t heard nearly enough about him, but she decided to rectify that as quickly as possible. If he’d managed to get Alma to commit for more than a couple of months, then he must be worth knowing, and Grace wanted to learn all about him.
They talked about his engineering job, which Grace understood only slightly more than she understood Alma’s research, and they talked about food and music and Granada. Obinna was exceedingly fond of his home in Spain, but he talked about his childhood as well.
“You grew up in Nigeria?” Grace asked him from across the table.
