Page 54 of One Year Ago in Spain
Claire took the key to the studio from her pocket and passed it back and forth between her fingers for a few minutes.
Then she got annoyed at herself for being impatient.
When the proposal hadn’t happened as Matías hoped, he’d declared in his diary, “I will be patient. Because I think we are worth waiting for.”
He was more than right. So Claire would stay here at the café, waiting for him, for as long as it took.
But god, she missed him. It was a constant, burning weight in the center of her chest. Not sharp like heartburn; more like she had a piece of charcoal embedded inside her, and the embers never went out.
She closed her fist around the key, crushing it to her palm.
Matías appeared at the café entrance. He walked right past Claire and inside, as if he was going to order something.
What?How?
Claire gawked after him for a second. Then her eyes went down to her fist. She uncurled her fingers, where the key to thestudio lay directly on top of where Matías had kissed her before he left New York.
I’ll be right here with you,he’d said.
“Oh,” Claire whispered.
The first time, when he’d shown up at her hotel, she had just pressed her lips against her palm.
The second time, at the drink kiosk, she had had a bunch of coins cupped in her hand. But he hadn’t come to the park yesterday because she’d already known which euro was which by then, so she hadn’t poured them all out. Claire had just plucked them straight out of her wallet with her fingertips.
The third time, she’d been clutching a handful of underwear.
And now, the key…
But it couldn’t be as simple as anything touching her palm. Claire carried things all the time. If that’s all it took, Matías would be with her almost nonstop.
So what was the other common thread?
Claire had to drop the thought, though, because Matías reemerged from the café.
She wanted to jump up and run over to him, but she’d already done that yesterday, and Claire didn’t want him to feel like he was a rabbit who’d just sprung a trap—even though, truth be told, she had been lying in wait for him here.
Act nonchalant,she reminded herself. She picked up her phone from the table and put it to her ear, pretending to be on a call, while angling herself so he would see her.
He was about to pass her. And he was quietly talking to himself, which he did when he was lost deep inside his own thoughts, often working out an idea for a new painting.
Matías was going to walk right by her and not even notice.
Claire silently apologized to the waiter for what she was about to do.
She knocked her empty coffee mug onto the cement. The cup shattered, sending ceramic shards in all directions. “Oh my god!” Claire leaped up from her seat. “I’m so sorry,” she said to the waiter who was hurrying over. And the whole time, Claire made a point of being in a position where Matías could see her face, but she didn’t make eye contact with him; it was important thathenotice her first this time, if this setup was going to have any chance of being credible as a coincidence.
“Please,” Claire said to the waiter. “Let me pay for that mug.” She did her best to play the role of loud American tourist, making a fuss as she got her wallet out of her purse, all the while using big arm gestures that Matías surely couldn’t miss. She might as well be trying to help a plane land.
“Claire?” Matías said. “Is it you again?”
She faked being too flustered to recognize him for a moment, even though it was difficult not to stare, because when he stepped out of the shade of the building and back into the sunlight, it was obvious that he wasn’t transparent anymore, but translucent. His body didn’t go gauzy in the sun, but maintained all its color, just in a washed-out way that blurred at the edges.
Why the change? Was being with her slowly making him more solid as she strengthened his soul’s connection to her?
But Claire had to keep up her act, so she squinted and said, “Oh gosh, Matías. I’m so embarrassed for you to see me like this. I’m not usually clumsy. It’s just that this phone call—” She waved her cell in the air before realizing it was the home screen, with no active call.
Shoot.
