Isla and the Happily Ever After (16 page)

“No, you see. Because here’s what we’d do: we’d catch a train early tomorrow morning, spend the afternoon and evening wherever, crash in a hotel, and then catch the train back on Sunday morning. We’d only be gone for one night.”

“And…how many times have you done this?”

He shrugs. “A few times last year. Just the once this year.”

“And you’ve never been caught.”

“Never.” Josh squeezes my hands. “Nate practically
expects
us to be out all night on the weekends. He doesn’t freak out if we aren’t in our rooms. This stratagem has only two rules: one, we limit ourselves to a single night away. Anything can happen in a night, and excuses are easy to make. And, two, we tell our plan to the people we’re in regular contact with so that they won’t go asking around for us.”

“So…Kurt.” This bothers me. He’d keep our secret, but he’d also be disappointed in my rash behaviour.

“He’s the only person who’d notice our absence.”

I bite my lower lip.

“Where would you go?” he asks. “Name a place that you’ve never been before.”

“Barcelona.” I’m surprised at how fast I answer.

Josh is less surprised. “Why?”

“Gaudí.”

“The architect?” Of course my boyfriend knows about Antoni Gaudí. He was a Modernista revered by artists of all kinds.

“I saw his work in an old
National Geographic.
It looked almost magical. I’ve never seen anything like it, not in real life. But maybe that’s stupid, maybe it’s too touristy—”

“No. It’s perfect. It’d be my first time, too.” Josh stops. His words have accidentally triggered the real subject beneath the surface of this conversation. He swallows a lump in his throat. “It’d be our first time together.”

And now we’re discussing something else. Something we both ache for.

The thought of Josh returning to America is unbearable. It’s only a week – I know this – but whenever I imagine his plane touching down at JFK, I feel…not just
ill,
but
wrong.
As if our impending separation were something so much worse. I want to be alone with him. No detention, no election. No Kurt, no Nate. Just the two of us, together, in all of the ways that two people in love can be together.

The bell rings. Our time in the closet is over.

“Let’s do it,” I say. “Let’s go.”

Our train is already speeding through the countryside when dawn breaks across France. The car is nearly empty, and we’ve selected a pair of seats with a table. Josh sits beside the window, because he needs the light to draw. He pencils thumbnails into a new sketchbook while I read about a cannibalistic plane crash in the Andes. One of his shoes rubs gently against mine. I rub it back. I’ve always thought the best relationships are those that are as happy and content in silence as they are in action, but until Josh, I’d only ever experienced it with Kurt.

My eyes grow heavy as the sun grows brighter. I lean against Josh’s shoulder only to feel his hand stop moving. “Oh. Sorry.” I sit up so that he can resume drawing.

But Josh removes his dark blue hoodie, places it on his lap, and guides me onto the makeshift pillow. I breathe deeply, inhaling his comforting scent. I’m lucky. I am so, so lucky. I feel his arm moving again as I drift into a half-awake slumber. A dreamlet. An image of one bed and two bodies, his curled protectively around my own. At some point, I fall into a real sleep, because soon he’s brushing my hair away from my face.

“This is our change,” he whispers.

We’re in Figueres, Spain. Catalonia. It’s the birthplace of Salvador Dalí and just across the border from France. I clamber into a sitting position as our train approaches the station. Josh grabs his sketchbook and flips back the tabletop. He groans as he stands. His limbs are crunched and stiff.

“You should have woken me up. You were in that position for hours.”

He slips back into his hoodie. “But
you
needed the rest.”

We’ve packed light – a backpack each – and we shove our books into them. The train comes to a stop, we hop out, and I shiver at an unexpectedly strong wind. The brilliant dawn has turned into a dusky morning. The sky continues to darken as our connecting train rattles towards Barcelona. The French countryside was green and grey, and the Spanish countryside is green and golden. But the threatening clouds deaden its warmth.

“I don’t suppose you brought an umbrella?” I ask.

“I don’t even own an umbrella.”

“Ah, that’s right. I forgot that your skin is water-repellent.”

Josh laughs in amusement. “I like you.”

I smile at my lap. An entire month of making out, and he can still do that to me. Who cares if it might rain?

Two hours later, we exit the Barcelona Sants railway station. The neighbourhood is urban and sort of…grubby. We pass a group of skaters, and the
clack
of a board hitting the cement is echoed by a much louder
clack
from the sky. The downpour erupts. The skaters shoot off across the street, and – on instinct – we chase after them into the closest café.

“Ohthankgod.” Josh weakens at the sight of lunch. “That worked out well.”

Our wet shoes squeak against an orangey-red tiled floor. Behind the glass counter, slender baguettes are stuffed with spicy pork, buttery cheeses and thick slices of potato. I order three different
bocadillos
–
chorizo, un jamón serrano y queso manchego, y
una
tortilla de patatas
– and we split them at a counter overlooking the congested cars.

Josh rips off an enormous hunk of the chorizo sandwich. “You know what’s great? We’ve never had to discuss it, but we share the same philosophy when it comes to food.”

“Variety?”

“And lots of it.” He points an accusing finger. “So, hey. You speak Spanish.”

“Spanish,
sí.
Catalan, no.” Catalan is the native language of Barcelona, though both are spoken here. “Taking a French class would’ve been cheating.”

“Any other languages I should know about?”

“Only Mandarin. Oh, and a little Russian.”

Josh freezes, mid-bite.

I smile. “Kidding.”

“Maybe that’s what you could do someday. You could be an interpreter.”

My nose wrinkles.

“Sandwich artist? Professional skateboarder? Train conductor?”

I laugh. “Keep trying.”

Our spontaneous lunch is delicious, because Spanish pork is beyond belief. It’s like fish in Japan or beef in Argentina. Or
anything
in France. Though admittedly, I’m biased. I study the custom map that Kurt drew for us last night. He stopped being disappointed in me when he realized I’d given him the perfect excuse to play cartographer. “Should we take a cab to La Pedrera?” I ask. It’s the first landmark that Kurt has marked. “Or should we check into our hotel first?”

Josh lifts away a lock of my wet hair. “This reminds me of last June.”

I raise my head and find him absorbed in memories. He wraps the lock around an ink-stained index finger. He uses it to gently pull me closer into a deep, open-mouthed kiss.

The hotel.

Definitely the hotel.

Chapter sixteen

The hotel that Josh reserved online is gorgeous. It has mosaicked columns and a babbling courtyard fountain and dozens of succulents dangling from planters on the walls.

Unfortunately, it was too early to check in.

The tension inside our cab is heavy. Tangible. I don’t know how we’re supposed to wait, but we’ve been left with no choice but to explore the city first.

We’re splashing towards the heart of Barcelona. Red-and-yellow-striped flags – some with the blue triangle and star of independence, some without – hang everywhere from apartment balconies, soaked with storm. The city’s appearance is distinctly Western European, but it’s also filled with colourful architecture and steep hills. Palm trees and leafy trees. Purple vines and red flowers.

“It’s almost like a Parisian San Francisco,” Josh says.

Either he’s trying to change the subject from the obvious one, or he’s thinking about his friends in California. Probably best to change the subject. “Speaking of, how are St. Clair and Anna doing these days?” I ask.

“Good.” He sits up straighter. “They’re pretty much living together now.”

“Wow. Already? Do you think they’ll last?”

Josh frowns. “Yeah, of course.” And then he sees my expression. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget that you don’t really know them.”

I don’t forget.

They watch me, stare back at me, every time I’m in his room. The wall-to-wall drawings make his friends a constant, unspoken presence. I wish I knew them better. I want them to know that
I
exist, that I’m a part of Josh’s life now, too.

“St. Clair and Anna are one of those couples that seem like they were made for each other,” he says. “Instant friendship, instant chemistry. He was obsessed with her from the moment they met. She was the only thing he ever wanted to talk about. Still is, actually.”

“I like Anna. I mean, I like St. Clair, too – he was always friendly to me – but I don’t know him as well. Not that Anna and I ever hung out.” I don’t know why I’m babbling. Maybe so I won’t feel untethered from this part of his life. “But she did live on my floor. And the first week of school, she told off Amanda Spitterton-Watts on my behalf.”

Josh grins. “She punched her, too. Last spring.”

“I know. That was weird.” I laugh. “But also awesome.”

Amanda was the Emily Middlestone of last year – the school’s most popular mean girl. I saw Anna throw the unexpected punch, and it was my testimony that kept her from being suspended. I felt like I owed her. And not just for sticking up for me in the past, but…she knew about my crush on Josh. She once caught me absent-mindedly doodling his tattoo. I thought for sure she’d tell him, but she never did. He never side-eyed me with that particular brand of I-know-you-like-me weirdness.

Anyway. I was grateful.

Our cabbie pulls over on Passeig de Gràcia, a large thoroughfare where every shop is emblazoned with an expensive name. Dolce & Gabbana. Salvatore Ferragamo. Yves Saint Laurent. But amid this luxury shines an actual jewel: Casa Milà, aka La Pedrera.

We dash below an awning and squint through the rain, across an intersection, at its curious stone facade. Over a century ago, a wealthy man named Milà commissioned Gaudí to design the building. Its grandiose structure is made entirely of waves and curves. There’s not a single straight line of construction. It was the home of Milà’s family, as well as several renters, but most of the locals despised it as an eyesore – exactly how the same generation of Parisians felt about their own recently built Eiffel Tower.

I wonder how I would have felt about it back then. I’d like to think I would have been one of the people who understood that it was special. That being singular is the exact thing that makes something – or someone – amazing.

“Nice roof,” Josh says. “But your Treehouse is better.”

I nudge him, my own singular and amazing someone, and he nudges me back. La Pedrera’s rooftop terrace is famous. It’s covered in strange, bulky chimneys. Some of them look like giant soft-serve ice-cream cones, others like soldiers in medieval helmets. Tourists march up and down Escher-esque staircases, around and around the chimneys, bumping umbrellas. They’re like boats adrift at sea.

“It’s like an ocean.” Josh’s voice is filled with admiration. “The wavy limestone, the iron railings.” And the balconies look like twists of tentacles and seaweed. Though it’s
possible
that the weather is adding to our overall perception. Our eyes travel towards the unsheltered line of people waiting to get inside.

“That’s, uh, some crowd,” I say.

“And some rain.”

I glance at him and give a tentative shrug. “Next?”

He grins with relief. “I don’t want to waste a single minute of this day.”

I feel the same way,
I think, staring at his dimples.

Kurt’s map walks us down the street towards a second Gaudí-designed house. We affix ourselves to the sides of buildings for protection from the rain, but it doesn’t matter. It soaks us anyway. “It’s your turn,” Josh says. “Tell me about your friends. Sanjita. What happened there?”

“So…you remember.”

“I remember that you were friends with her our freshman year. Did you split because she wanted to be popular? I asked Rashmi once, but she said her sister refused to talk about you.”

The stab to my heart is sharp and unexpected. “You asked your
ex-girlfriend
about my friendship with her sister?”

“Whoa. No. Not recently. While we were dating.”

“Oh.” Though I’m still confused.

Josh guides me below a neon-green cross, the sheltered entrance of a
farmàcia.
“Isla. I would
never
do that to you. I’ve had exactly one exchange with her since school began. About three weeks ago, she texted me to ask how I was doing. I told her I’m great, because I’m seeing you. She wished us well. She’s dating some dude at Brown.”

I wish this knowledge wasn’t as welcome as it is. I try not to think about Rashmi. I try not to think about her and Josh in my room last year. I try not to think about how they probably had sex in my bed. And maybe my shower. And maybe my floor, too.