“You ended up in a laundromat crying and eating churros.”
“¡Churros excelentes!” Poppy counters. “Best I’ve ever had.”
The table laughs. Even Catherine smiles—genuinely, not that fake one she’s been using all night.
“Okay, fine.” She sets down her wine glass. “So, I was in Barcelona for a brand trip—you know, one of those ‘authentic travel experience’ campaigns where they want you to look effortlessly chic while discovering hidden gems.”
“Already sounds like a disaster,” Chris murmurs.
“The brief specifically said—and I quote—‘no tourist traps, no obvious landmarks, find therealBarcelona.’” She uses air quotes. “So I decided I was going to be arealtraveler. No GPS. Just vibes and a paper map I bought from a street vendor.”
“A paper map,” Violet repeats. “In 2024.”
I think of the maps I’ve used over the centuries. Hand-drawn charts of coastlines that no longer exist. Street plans of cities that have been razed and rebuilt three times over. The idea of Poppy clutching a tourist map in Barcelona, determined to navigate by instinct alone, is both foolish and oddly endearing.
She continues. “It seemed romantic! Like I was Julia Roberts in a real lifeEat Pray Loveadventure. I was going to find this little tapas place my followers recommended. Someone said it was ‘three blocks past the cathedral, turn left at the blue door.’ Simple, right?”
“How many cathedrals are in Barcelona?” I ask.
Her eyes meet mine. “Apparentlyseveral. That was my first mistake.” She takes a sip of wine. “My second mistake was assuming ‘blue door’ meant, you know, an obviously blue door. Not a door that was painted blue in the ’80s or something, and is now more of a sad gray-green.”
Catherine snorts. The sound surprises me—genuine amusement. Poppy notices, too. I see her file it away, a small victory in the ongoing campaign for her mother’s approval.
I watch Poppy light up as she tells the story, her hands moving, her voice animated. She’s good at this—drawing people in, making them feel included. Building connection. It’s what she does for a living, but there’s nothing calculated about it right now. She’s just... herself.
“So I’m walking. And walking. And the streets keep getting narrower, and my phone is dead because I’d been filming content all morning, and suddenly I’m in this neighborhood where nobody speaks English, and all the street signs look the same.”
I can picture it with painful clarity. Poppy, stubborn and proud, refusing to admit defeat. The Gothic Quarter swallowing her whole—those labyrinthine streets that have confused travelers for centuries. I walked those same streets in 1847.
“By hour three, I’d given up on the tapas place,” she continues. “I just wanted to findanythingfamiliar. A Starbucks. A McDonald’s. A tourist wearing an ‘I Heart Barcelona’ shirt. But no. I was in the Bermuda Triangle of Gothic Quarter side streets.”
“This is where the laundromat comes in,” Violet prompts.
“I’m getting there!” Poppy waves her hand. “So it starts raining. Not cute movie rain—angryrain. And I duck into the first open door I see, which happens to be this tiny laundromat run by a woman named Marta who spoke exactly four words of English.”
She pauses. The table waits. Even I find myself holding what would be breath, if breathing were still necessary.
“‘You are lost, yes?’”
The table erupts in laughter. I notice Preston glance over from across the room—drawn by the sound, by Poppy at the center of it. His expression flickers with something I recognize: the belated realization that one has discarded something valuable.
Too late, I think.Far too late.
“Marta took one look at my mascara running down my face and my destroyed paper map and just... handed me a bag of churros.” Poppy’s voice softens. “She had a whole bag of them and said ‘¡Churros excelentes!’ while miming eating them as she pointed at a plastic chair.”
“So you sat in a laundromat eating churros,” Chris says.
“Fortwo hours.” She nods solemnly. “Marta let me charge my phone behind her counter. She showed me pictures of her grandchildren. Her washing machines had this rhythm that was weirdly soothing? And the churros were—I cannot stress this enough—incredible. Still warm. Perfect amount of sugar. I’ve never had better churros in my life, and I’ve been actively searching for the ‘¡Churros excelentes!’ ever since then.”
The table laughs again.
“Did you ever find the tapas place?” I ask.
“No. Marta’s grandson eventually drove me back to my hotel on his Vespa. I had to turn my ‘authentic Barcelona experience’ into ‘unexpected adventures’ await.”
“It got like eighty thousand likes,” Violet adds.
“The algorithm loves a disaster story.” Poppy shrugs. “And honestly? Sitting in that laundromat with Marta, watching the rain and eating churros—thatwasthe authentic experience. Just not the one I planned.”
