He wagged his finger at us and then scampered off to the next person.
I looked to Dave who was rolling his eyes. “So,” I said. “What building are you in?”
“Eight,” he said, dangling his keys in front of me. “Want to go check it out?”
I gave him a wary look. He smiled—cute dimples—and said, “Let’s go.” He jerked his head over to the door and started walking. He had quite the swagger, shaking his little butt that was half the size of mine. I kind of wanted to bite it.
I followed him out, looking for Mateo and Claudia but not seeing them in the chattering crowd, and he picked up his duffel bag. I decided to go back for mine later.
As we walked up the road to his cottage, he brought out a pack of cigarettes and shook it in my face.
“You want?”
I shook my head. I smoked sometimes but usually when I was drinking or feeling down. Right now I was sober and delightfully optimistic, something I just realized I hadn’t been in a really long time.
I watched him light up with a gold zippo and studied his hands. I liked men’s hands, obviously. His fingers were skinny and slender and looked just calloused enough that I could tell he played guitar. Maybe bass. He had tattoos across them, Asian symbols or scripture of some sort.
“What do those mean?” I nodded at them.
He glanced at his hands as if he was surprised to see them. “I don’t know. I got them in Thailand. I was drunk.”
I laughed. “Good story.”
“Better than waking up with a young boy you thought was a woman.”
I grimaced and he shot me a smile. He had crooked teeth but it suited him. “That didn’t happen to me, don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t,” I said. “I can tell you know the difference between a man and a woman.”
He cocked his brow but said nothing until we got to his cottage. He was in a duplex style one, single story and very charming.
“Wow,” I said as we stepped inside. There was a really small kitchenette off to the side but what was impressive was the gleaming wooden floors, the iron chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and the cream colored couches complete with plush woven throws. The white stone walls had Spanish tapestry hanging from it. I didn’t follow him into the bedroom where he put down his bag, but I assumed it was just as nice.
The fact was I hit a wall and my body was suddenly exhausted. I guess waking up early in London and all the traveling, plus leftover jet lag, was starting to affect me. I was about to tell Dave I was going to head back to my room to get settled and have a nap when his roommate showed up.
She looked to be in her late twenties, maybe older. She was tall, almost as tall as Dave, and just as thin, though her skin had a nice healthy glow to it, the kind that came from lots of yoga and coconut water. Her name tag said she was Beatriz. She eyed our tattoos and piercings and gave us a shy smile, probably thinking we were a couple and she’d interrupted something.
We quickly made introductions and after Beatriz put her bag away, Dave had brought out a bottle of grappa liquor he’d bought a few days ago. The two new roommates settled on the couch and I perched on the armrest and we all raised our glasses before taking back the foul-tasting poison.
The shot was a bad idea. I’d only learned that Dave was from Ann Arbor, Michigan and was a guitarist in an “ironic punk” band (whatever the fuck that meant) and Beatriz was from San Sebastian and was a local news anchor who wanted to try going international, before the room was spinning and I could barely keep my eyes open.
I excused myself and said I needed to unpack and I’d see them at dinner. I left them behind in the warm glow of their living room, feeling the slightest bit lonely all of a sudden. I shrugged it off and gathered just enough energy to make it back to the reception area and pick up my bag.
Again, I didn’t see Mateo or Claudia, even though there weren’t many people mingling anymore. With great effort, I swung up my backpack on my shoulders. I was so looking forward to putting it down in my room, unpacking and never having to see it for a month. I loved the idea of backpacking but after struggling with mine for one day, I wasn’t too sure how cut out for it I was. It was probably my fault for taking so many pairs of shoes. Narrowing them down to five pairs had taken up an entire day and was a traumatic experience.
My building was right across from the reception/dining hall and at the edge of the property. A bucolic low-stone wall, crumbling and spliced with dried moss, lined it on one side, bordering a barren field as it swept down the hill to the narrow road below. It was early evening now, around five o’ clock or so, and the air was growing colder and the sun was starting to dip toward the mountains.
My first night in Spain was upon me.
And I all I wanted to do was just to crash onto my bed and sleep. I couldn’t even fathom unpacking. Even the idea of food seemed overwhelming.
My apartment was on the upper level of the cottage, so I staggered up the wooden steps to the second floor and stuck my key into the door. The apartment looked more or less the same as Dave and Beatriz’s, except that there was a balcony that ran all along the front with French doors that led out from the common area onto it. Two iron wrought chairs and a tiny round table beckoned you to sit for a spell.
I beelined it to my room and had just enough energy to appreciate the white bedspread complete with Spanish embroidery, the dark wood floors and furnishings and the wonderful dying light that streamed in through the large, gauze curtained windows, before I dropped my bag to the floor and collapsed onto the bed.
Just five minutes, I thought to myself.
Thirty seconds later, I was out.
Chapter Four
Here’s the thing about me—I’ve never been very good at fitting in. I know that goes without saying in some respects but when you think about it, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have found my tribe/gang/group/family over the years. Sure, in high school I hung out with the “skids” but only because I liked to smoke pot and get tattoos and listen to punk and metal. But I was smart too—I liked to learn, I wanted to attend a good university, whereas they did not and wouldn’t even go onto community college. So while I was accepted and had made some friends, none of them were the best of friends, those people that had your back, that made you feel like you could be yourself. I was part of my peers and yet apart from them at the same time.
Same went for university. People were far more tolerant and they were less cliquey but for whatever reason, I still had problems finding the right “team.” My closest friend was Jocelyn, who I met during my first year, but she moved back to Saskatchewan (no idea why you’d willingly go back there) and so we only saw each other once a year if lucky. Our interactions were reduced to emails and Facebook messages, which is how most relationships operate these days anyway, but still. I missed the face-to-face interaction, the laughs over watching stupid skits on YouTube or getting drunk at local dive bars and betting on who would hook up with who.
Yet, the moment that I stepped off the bus in Acantilado yesterday, I felt like if I hadn’t found my place, I was at least halfway there.
Not everyone was immediately likeable or even friendly, but for the most part, people were pretty fucking cool. At least, all of the Spaniards were. Though they took the program very seriously, they also wanted to have fun—my kind of people.