Page 29 of One Year Ago in Spain
~M
July 14th
Dear Claire,
You aren’t coming with me to Madrid.
I will not lie. I am disappointed. I wanted you to meet myfamily in person, especially my mom and dad, and my sweet abuelita, and my bossy sister, and my brilliant little brother. I wanted to introduce you to my best friends, who all grew up with me in the same neighborhood. And of course, I wanted to propose.
But maybe this is just the universe telling me it wasn’t supposed to work out this way, that there is something better in store.
So I will be patient. Because I think we are worth waiting for.
~M
July 17th
Dear Claire,
Today is my first full day in Madrid—most of yesterday was spent on the plane, so it does not count—and I miss you already.
I have been swarmed by my family, though, which has been a welcome distraction from missing you, and my mom and abuelita have stuffed me with enough food that I could probably survive hibernation through the summer.
There’s no time for hibernation, though, because tomorrow, I head out to the coast with my friends forLa Aventura Loca. That’s what Carlos has dubbed our guys’ trip, ha-ha.
I wish you were here, churri!
~M
July 20th
Dear Claire,
Tomorrow, Carlos, Diego, Leo, Facu, and I are going to take a speedboat out onto the ocean. You would hate it, I think. Too fast, too reckless—especially the way that Diego drives—but it will be a lot of fun.
Yesterday, we went night diving. Everything was dark, Claire, darker than you can ever picture. When you are sixty feet deep in the ocean, it is astounding that there are no city lights, no stars, nothing to illuminate your way.
All we had were small, weak flashlights that allowed us to see the lobsters and the octopuses and the other nocturnal sea creatures that scurry out of rocks and swim among the coral. I wish you could have seen it! There is a whole other world beneath the surface, Claire. We exist above, in full light. But it’s like they live in an opposite dimension—underwater in pitch blackness. They cannot comprehend our existence, and it’s difficult to understand theirs.
We don’t even have adequate words to describe how octopuses move. They are like mercury, liquid yet solid, changeable from one instant to the next.
I have never seen anything more beautiful in my life, except for you.
~M
Matías
Ten Months Ago
In his earlydays in New York, Matías often felt that the city was an entirely different world from anything he’d known before, even though he’d come from just across the ocean. Madrid was a bustling metropolis, too, but New York’s personality couldn’t have been more opposite. There was the attitude toward food, of course. Matías was still figuring out New Yorkers’ habit of eating straight from takeout containers while in front of their computers. But there was also the rush—Madrileños took their time with everything, from reading a book under a tree in the middle of the afternoon to catching up with a friend to barhopping. New Yorkers, on the other hand, always seemed to have an endpoint, a goal.
Helikedthe people of New York a lot; he was just adjusting to their differences. Like when Matías met the chair of the fine arts department of the academy for coffee, the first thing she said after she sat down was, “I’m so glad we could get together. Never fear—I won’t take much of your time, because I’ve got a thing I have to leave for in half an hour. But I just wanted to have a chance to welcome you in person before the academic year begins.” Matías had been momentarily confused because he hadn’t been concerned at all about her taking up his time. Wasn’t that the point of meeting up?
Yet none of this bothered him. To anyone else, thebrusqueness of this city and the people’s insistence on not making eye contact or saying hello when walking past each other might have been off-putting, but to Matías—with his insatiable curiosity—it was fascinating.
“It’s like I’m inside a nature documentary,” he said to Claire on their next date, a mid-Saturday stroll through Central Park.
“So we’re the animals and you’re David Attenborough?” she said with a smirk.
