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IN A LITTLE TOWN IN ALICANTE...
Alex and Priscila met in the summer of 1995—the summer of “Scatman’s World,” by Scatman’s John, Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” and “Boombastic” by Shaggy. But the songs Priscila liked the most were the ones booming in the kitchen when her mom (and not her brothers) was listening to the radio: “Back for Good” by Take That, or Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic.”
That summer, Alexander St. Claire’s maternal family—his grandfather, to be more specific—handed over the management of the most read newspaper in the entire Costa Blanca to his son-in-law, Alex’s dad, married to the heir to their empire, their first-born daughter. And for that reason, the St. Claires moved from London—where they had lived—to Priscila’s little town.
The St. Claire’s newspaper had started out as a small-town journal and grown into a colossal newspaper as the years progressed. But its origin, its heart, remained in this little town where Alexander’s grandparents still lived, peacefully retired in a house in the hills; a fact that made every single one of the locals feel so proud.
Alex’s grandmother didn’t want her daughter living far from her, and in her opinion London was far, far away. So she persuaded her husband to make the decision. They decided to give the position to Alexander’s father because, they thought, that way their daughter would have the time to raise and enjoy her family.
But Alex’s mom had always loved her job more than she loved her children, so it didn’t go as planned. No big changes in Alex’s life on that front.
Priscila was only five years old—she would be six on December 31st—the first time she saw her new neighbor. But the instant she looked at him, something bumped in her chest, something she couldn’t name; not now, not ever.
She lived in a private residential area, made up of twenty single-family homes with some common spaces for all the neighbors, the swimming pool among them. That morning in July, cloudless and clear as usual, Priscila was playing in the kids’ swimming pool with her four older brothers: River, Marcos, Hugo and Adrián—named in order from oldest to youngest—when they heard the unmistakable hum of a van getting closer. Four vans, to be precise.
Priscila and her brothers were the only ones there; at ten in the morning, the sun’s heat was still precarious, so there weren’t many adventurous residents daring to take a swim that early. But her parents had given up and surrendered a long time ago to the fact that their children were aquatic—the five siblings didn’t care if it was raining, thundering, or snowing.
But when they heard the vans coming, they came out of the pool—Priscila at the rear—and leaving a trail of water behind them, they followed the noise to the wooden fence to take a look at the street. One by one, they peered through the gaps between the palings to find the source of that sound.
River, the oldest, stuck his head out through one of the gaps and his siblings did the same, each one lower than the last. By the time Priscila arrived at the fence, there wasn’t any room for her and she had to kneel on the ground. They jostled until they found a comfortable position, all together. Priscila shuddered when her cold skin touched Adrián’s and when she leaned her face against one of the boards, her nose filled with the smell of wood and chlorine.
“The new neighbors,” said the oldest of the siblings. River was thirteen years old and knew all about anything new happening in the residential complex. Probably in this case, he got the information first-hand, since his ex-half-girlfriend used to live in that house—the house in front of theirs.
“I only see two boys, no girls in sight,” said the next brother in descending order, the eleven-year-old.
“Hurrah!” the four boys yelled in unison.
Priscila, as the youngest behind four brothers, was pretty tired of men. At her tender age, that’s what she called them: men. But that gangly kid with the disheveled brown hair on the other side of the road looked like an angel to her, even if she’d always thought angels would be blond.
She felt a thump in her heart and she smiled, although she didn’t know why.
Alex was eight, but he had a brother ten years older than him, and he was accustomed to playing defense, all bold and boastful. His excuse was that he’d learned it from John, his brother, but in truth it was just a shield. So when his eyes met Priscila’s for the first time—and it wasn’t difficult for the boy to spot all five heads through the wood panels—he looked at her over his shoulder and adopted a cocky attitude; if he’d ever learned anything in life, it was to show off in front of other kids. Even more in front of girls.
That year was the first year Priscila began seeing the summer in different colors. That summer was green. Funny thing. Green was the color of Alex’s T-shirt.
Destiny played its cards and put them in the same school, but despite that and the fact they also were neighbors, it took them another whole year to catch each other’s eye again.
SUMMER 2016 (PRESENT DAY)—THAT SAME LITTLE TOWN IN ALICANTE . . .
After paying the driver, I open the door of the shabby old cab we took from the airport and head for Cala Medusa. Jellyfish Cove—mycove. I don’t bother with the suitcases, or even saying goodbye. Eagerness is killing me. It’s been almost four years since I left with no intention of coming back.
And here I am.
I walk the dirt road through a lush forest of evergreen trees and wild, messy bushes. My footsteps are light and agile, and by the time I reach my destination I’ve stripped off almost all my clothes. They hit the road first, and the sand afterward, leaving a trail of garments for Jaime to follow once he’s taken care of our luggage.
As soon as my soles touch the sand, I close my eyes and inhale deeply, absorbing the air. The wet sand of the cove’s shore smells salty. Smells of chlorophyll, heat; smells like . . . home.
I needed to come here first. Here before anywhere else, even before my parents’ house. If my mom and dad had picked us up from the airport it wouldn’t have been possible—that’s why I persuaded them not to, and asked my brother Adrián to meet me here instead.
“Welcome home, Priscila,” I whisper to myself softly, very softly.
Without even thinking about it, I run into the uprush and dive headfirst through the first wave that welcomes me back. I’d forgotten how warm these waters are; I’d forgotten how it feels to see my hands underwater, brightened by the June sun; to grab fistfuls of sand and set it free, bit by bit; the taste of the salty water on my lips and in every fiber of my being. And the quiet. I’d forgotten the quiet.
I’d forgotten so many things.
But here, it feels like I never left, like time never went by. I’m aware my hands are the same now, at twenty-six years old, as they were at twenty-two. And the pristine water; even the sun itself is the same. But if that’s so, then . . . what has this four-year hiatus meant?
When I come up to breathe I hear Jaime’s voice.
“Pris! What the fuck are you doing in there?”
I spin around and wave at my co-worker, my roomie, my best friend. “Come on Jaime! Dive in!”
Jaime is from Spain too, but he’s been living and working in the States for years now. And I’d be lying if I said that being here with him isn’t one of the strangest things ever. It’s like my two separate worlds are aligning themselves, in parallel, as if they’re going to fuse. My present and my past.
“Are you crazy? This is not like swimming butt naked in the Tahoe! This is your hometown! And it doesn’t look big enough for this.”
“Nobody comes here! There are tons of jellyfish!”
That’s why it’s called Jellyfish Cove. Well, that’s not its official name, just the one my brothers and I—and the girl who used to live next door—gave it a long while ago. And then . . . then he started calling it that too.
I erase the image that oh-so-bravely tried to vault my containment wall—the one I built up for all the things that happened at the end of the summer of 2012—and I keep enjoying my cove.
“Jellyfish? Are you fucking kidding me? No way am I getting in there.”
Leaving the serenity of the sea, I stalk towards Jaime to make him come in with me. I need to share this with him. But when Jaime reads my intentions, he starts running in the opposite direction. I chase after him, my underwear stuck to my body and the sand glued to my wet feet. Luckily, Jaime trips over a log in the sand and I catch him. It takes me a single minute to strip him down to his boxers and convince him to come with me to the water’s edge. And just one more minute to push him into the waves and saturate him, head to toe.
“Fuck yeah! The water’s terrific!” he says, amazed.
“I know!”
“But what about those jellyfish?”
“Don’t worry about them, I can see them coming; I know this cove like the back of my hand. Also, they’re small and don’t do much. I’ll protect you, inlander.”
We laugh and play at ducking each other’s heads under the water while the midday sun burns our backs, forcing us to stay under the surface. Or that’s what we’re doing until—
“Hey, you two! Hey! Get out immediately!”
My pulse stops the instant I hear him; it freezes in my veins in a second, as if by magic. Oh my God. That voice . . . It’s his voice. I would recognize it despite the passing of time, and even if I’d heard it in the middle of a thousand other sounds echoing in unison. It’s him.
My heart is bumping so fast I’m afraid I won’t be able to control it. And the quivering that comes with that erratic heartbeat is much worse, because the tremors are clearly visible for anyone. I could pretend, blame the water, but no one would believe me; it’s too hot out there, the water too warm to cause any shivering.
I spin toward the yelling and shield my eyes from the sunlight, trying to make out the outline of the guy shouting from the beach, megaphone in hand. But I’m sure it’s him. And I can’t believe my bad luck. Almost ten thousand inhabitants in this town and it had to be precisely him. The first one I see on my return. I just arrived! I haven’t been here more than five minutes. Damn it!
“Who’s he?” Jamie asks, frowning, his hair dripping. “Is he yelling at us?”
“Yeah. Hide!”
“What? Where?”
I push him, sinking him with me, pressing his head into the depths until we’re on our knees under the surface. I bring a finger to my lips, compelling him to be quiet, to hold his breath and not come out while I try—unsuccessfully—to control my tremors and my frenetic heartbeat. My eyes sting in the brine and Jaime is a blur in front of me, even in these crystal-clear waters. I guess he’s looking at me as if I were nuts, with an I-don’t-know-how-long-you’re-planning-to-be-down-here-but-my-lung-capacity-is-not-enough-to-handle-this-anymore face.
I can hold my breath for much longer than this. Much longer. And that’s thanks to the guy waiting impatiently for us on the shore. But Jaime can’t, so when my friend bobs up to the surface, I emerge with him.
“I said, out!” Clearly my hiding plan didn’t work out; the megaphone man is still shouting. “Don’t make me come in and get you myself! Swimming is not allowed on this beach!”
“He looks like a lifeguard,” my friend says once we’re on the surface and out of the water.
Yes, he does. But I didn’t know he worked as a lifeguard now. Did I know swimming in this cove is forbidden? Yes, that I did know. Also, I might have downplayed the jellyfish thing a bit. But those things never stopped me from swimming in these waters. And they hadn’t stopped him, either. The lifeguard, I mean.
Reluctantly, I follow Jaime to the beach, and I can tell the precise second our visitor recognizes me; I see how his facial expression changes. From pissed off but indifferent to . . . stunned, incredulous. Affected. But he hides it well; he’s always been quite good at the art of hiding emotion.
“Sorry,” says my friend, completely unaware of the flood of feelings surrounding the guy in the red swimsuit and me. “We didn’t know swimming wasn’t allowed on this beach.”
“She knew,” says the other one, with one of the cockiest poses I’ve ever seen. He’s pointing at me with the megaphone, all indolence. “That, I know for sure.”
Jaime starts explaining, “Well, the thing is, my friend hasn’t come here for a while—”
“Four years,” he interrupts, his tone distant, cold and sharp. Like everything about him.
I study him thoroughly. I can’t help it. My brain registers all his physical changes inch by inch. His chestnut hair, slightly longer now; a light scar on his right eyebrow, right above another cut, one I do know; the way he’s looking at me, which is not the way he used to look at me, not by a long shot. But my brain recognizes the similarities too: his dark eyes, almost black, bright and expressive; his tanned skin, the well-defined muscles in his body, his messy and unruly hair.
“Ah, yeah . . . I think so,” my friend answers, confused, turning his head to look at me with a what the fuck? look.
“And what brings you back?”
This is the first time he’s talked to me directly and when our eyes meet . . . When our eyes meet, those four years disappear in a flash and all the feelings that overwhelmed me the last time I saw him wash over me again, destroying everything in their path. Pain, disappointment, fear, anger. And there I was, thinking all those feelings were buried deep down. Thinking that coming back to my hometown was safe, because I felt nothing. I remembered nothing.
And as a perfect climax to this retrospective, something else comes back to me: other feelings and sensations, the ones that flooded my whole being before the torment came. Luckily—or from practice, I’m not sure—I recover in time and incarcerate them in their prison, the way I’ve been doing all these years.
But then I realize I’m in my underwear, wet from my toes to the last hair on my head, totally exposed before him. I try to cover my breasts, it’s something instinctive, just as Jaime steps in front of me in an attempt to shield me with his body.
“Don’t bother,” the lifeguard says, full of rancor. “Nothing there I haven’t seen countless times before.”
“What?” asks my friend, twisting to face me.
But the lifeguard gives me no respite. “Is it me, or are they smaller? Your tits, I mean.”
I don’t get the chance to say anything; I barely react to his last comment, because before I can find something clever to answer back, he starts walking towards the forest. “Welcome home, Queen of the Desert,” he calls, without turning back. “And don’t go into that water again!”
I stand there, introspective, watching him walking away from us. Trying to think up a witty retort. Nothing comes to mind, and he’s so far away now I’m afraid he wouldn’t hear me if I had one. So I give up.
I’ve been fantasizing about not bumping into him. For months, I’ve been daydreaming about the likelihood of not seeing him at all. But I was aware we were going to live in the same town for thirteen-and-a-half weeks—like in that Kim Basinger movie—and that fact made me reconsider those fantasies and prepare myself for the moment I would see him again. And, in my head, the encounter didn’t go this way.
Up until now, I hadn’t known for sure how I would behave. I wasn’t sure if I’d try to look angry, or unaffected, or if—once again—I’d hide under the protective cloak of my easy jokes. I’d learned how to stretch the sense of humor I use in my workplace into my private life, to use it as a shield.
I’d thought I’d have a few days to decide which attitude I’d use—weeks even. But it didn’t happen that way, and seeing him surprised me so much I couldn’t manage any of them; I just stood there, absorbing his shots—loaded with his nasty streak—and said nothing.
He seemed mad. Mad at me. And I don’t get it. After what happened between us in the past, it turns out that he’s the one . . . What? Upset? It should be the other way around.
“Hey,” Jaime says, rubbing my arms caringly. “You’re shaking. Are you cold?”
“Yes,” I lie. Or maybe it’s not a lie at all. I’m freezing. It has nothing to do with my body temperature, but still. At least, once he left, the heart bumping calmed down. “Let’s go.”
I’m still hissing in outrage when we reach our luggage. The suitcases are lying rudely on the sand at the entrance to the woods. I sit on one of them, pulling my clothes on, waiting for my brother to come and pick us up.
“So . . . you know that hottie lifeguard, huh?” Jaime asks.
Well, that took him a while.
“A bit.” I whisper and tie my hair with the black elastic band I carry around my wrist. “We had something, a while ago.”
I don’t want to give him more details.
“Hmm . . .”
But, of course, he wants those details.
“He was my first no-tongue kiss at the age of seven.” I confess, folding my arms over my chest. I just put my clothes on and they’re already damp. I’m grateful though; it’s so hot any cold is welcome.
“Hmm . . .”
What? More details?
“And my first French kiss when I was twelve.”
“Hmm?” he insists.
“Oh, come on!” I surrender, throwing up my hands in exasperation. “He was also my first time, and my first boyfriend!”
“About time! I thought you’d never spill the beans!” he says, mimicking me and raising his hands toward the sky. “Impossible for him to know the size of your tits if you’d just given him some pure and chaste kisses.”
I’m about to retort something like it depends on the kiss, but our conversation stops abruptly when we hear steps rustling through fallen twigs and leaves on the ground. Someone’s coming.
“Adrián!” I jump from where I’m sitting on my suitcase and run to give my brother a proper greeting.
“Hello there, little sis.”
He welcomes me with open arms and I hug him, hiding my head in the crook of his neck. He’s the thing I missed the most after I left. He’s come to visit me every time he’s been able to and the last time he came was a little less than a month ago, but I missed him anyway. Being here with Adrián is like coming back to the past—the blissful one, when we were mere children.
I was a happy kid. I had a great childhood, always surrounded by my four brothers. But mostly by him. My Adrián. He’s only 364 days older than me, less than a year, so we used to go everywhere together. From kindergarten when we were two, to college, when we parted ways. He’s my biggest support in the world.
“Ahem!” Jaime pretends he’s clearing his throat. “What? I don’t deserve a hello, blondie?”
Adrián and I let go.
“It’s been a while since the last time you saw Jaime, right?” I ask my brother, gesturing toward my best friend.
“Around three years.” Adrián says, offering his hand.
My brother and Jaime lived together for a few weeks at the beginning, when I moved into Jaime’s apartment, but they haven’t seen each other since then. Every time my family came to spend Christmas with me in Boston, my friend was here in Spain, celebrating with his family. And the few other times outside of Christmas that Adrián’s come, they didn’t meet. Like the last time, when Jaime was out of town on a business trip.
“Three years and eight months. Day up, day down.” Jaime specifies once he lets go of Adrián’s hand. “It’s impossible not to keep track of how long it’s been since I saw that beautiful face.”
My brother looks at him, unaffected. Then he tells us to follow and starts walking to his car, carrying a couple of suitcases with him. He’s always been quite immune to what people think about him, both the good things and the bad. In fact, bite me is his motto in life—in other words, he doesn’t give a shit.
Once we’re in the car heading to my parents’ house, Jaime keeps going and going. “Damn. Your brother is handsome as fuck. I didn’t remember him as well as I thought. He’s so pretty my eyes hurt. The rest of your lineage is pretty too, but not that pretty.”
Turning around, I look at him from the passenger seat. “All my brothers are handsome,” I declare. And I’m not stating that because they’re family. It’s the honest truth. All four are blond-haired, but some have lighter coloring than the others. Adrián, for example, is sandy blond; River’s hair has darkened with the passage of time to a light brown with golden streaks; Hugo is super blond, like Adrián; Marcos’ hair is as dark as River’s.
“This one beats them all, Pris. He’s got a Hollywood vibe, like a movie star—makes him even more magnetic.”
“For fuck’s sake, I’m in the car with you! I can hear you!” Adrián’s yell cuts our conversation off. I guess everyone has their limit.
I study the landscape through the windows and give Jaime a thousand details about the scenery surrounding us until the next song comes up on the radio. As soon as I hear the very first guitar chords, I recognize the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” and start dancing in my seat. And Adrián dances along with me—we know this song by heart. We’re Beatles folk, there’s no doubt about that.
We start singing together, the doo doo doo doo thing included; we even mime the guitar that goes after that part.
“You two could star in a documentary—Our Village: Memories of Childhood Summers.” Jaime says.
“Here comes the sun!” We’re singing louder now, ignoring him.
“Fuck, so this is the way people behave around here . . .”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I say, resting my arm on the open window of my brother’s convertible. I’m enjoying the fresh air tangling and drying my hair. I’m taking pleasure in the moment, captivated by the landscape, trembling at the memories and familiarities that come with it. Fixing my eyes on the sky, I remember the last time I saw it: it was as blue as it is now, and equally extraordinary, but back then, I just saw it black. Sad and disappointing. It’s amazing how your perception of the same image—or idea, even—can change so much depending on your headspace.
Twenty minutes later we’re turning into the steep, narrow street that will bring us to my parents’ house, where we’ve lived all our lives.
“Here we are,” I announce in ecstasy a few minutes later, opening the car door for Jaime to get out.
“So, this is where my little Pris grew up?” Jaime asks me, studying everything around him.
“Yep, here it is.”
I watch him as his eyes alight on the house painted the color of the sun. He smiles. And I smile, too. I’ve always loved my home. It’s beautiful and cozy, although I’d have to admit that sometimes it was kind of small for a couple and five rowdy children with a huge inclination towards keeping junk as if it were treasure.
They must have heard us because Mom, Dad, and my other three brothers spill out of the house to welcome us at the door. We kiss and hug in the small front garden, like the overemotional family we are. Because we—the Cabanas—we’re kissing, cloying people. And I haven’t seen them since last Christmas, even if I talk to them every day—over Skype and other social media—to make the distance less hard.
My parents love Jaime, and my brothers do too (well, Adrián doesn’t, but that’s because he doesn’t care about anyone outside our family). It was love at first sight on both sides, ever since they came to visit me shortly after I landed in Boston to start as an intern at the newspaper where I still work.
I love my job there. I’m the creator of the most read comic strip in Boston. It’s published weekly, with Jaime’s drawings. He’s the newspaper’s star illustrator and he works in several sections, mine among them. I create the vignettes in my head and he makes them real on the paper. We fitted from the beginning, and in a few months I went from the funny intern who made jokes with her imaginary squirrel, Pristy, to the head of one of the most read sections in the newspaper. After a while, I began writing some breaking news articles too; that’s how I make a living.
To be able to spend all summer in Spain, Jaime and I had to make a deal with our boss: we’ll send him the comic strips from here, “on time and with no delay.” Clearly, he thought that needed saying twice. But there’ll be no articles for now, so we’ll have to draw on savings to survive these three months.
As soon as we cross the threshold, the smell of coffee overtakes my senses. My mom is kind of obsessed with coffee and I grew up absorbing its essence all around the house: in the kitchen, in the living room, and even in the garden.
Jaime and I go up the spacious dark wood stairway, suitcases in hand, while my parents and brothers get done with the welcome appetizers. In my family, we do appetizers for anything and everything.
When we go into my bedroom, Jaime gasps. I follow his stare and I realize why he’s so startled. My wall paintings; I forgot about them.
“Holy shit! This is fucking amazing!”
He swears like a trooper, that’s for sure. And I don’t get tired of reprimanding him every single time he curses. But it looks like he doesn’t get tired of hearing me complain either, since he keeps going and going.
Leaving our suitcases on the floor, we study the murals. Every wall—except the one with the large window—is decorated with paintings, brilliantly done. Many months of hard work are invested in these images. But it was worth it.
I still remember the smell I had to live with for weeks until it was finally done. The paintings portray my favorite places in town: the cove, the Rock, and the view from my window to the house across the street.
“Who painted it?” Jaime asks.
“Adrián. He made it when I was seventeen.”
My brother was going through a tough moment in his life right then—a very special person had just left and he took it out on the walls. But I better not tell Jaime that, because he’ll want details, tons of them and . . . I feel like I’m betraying my brother by talking about her. I feel like I’m betraying him already just thinking about her.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“You didn’t tell me Adrián could paint like this.”
“He has a fine arts degree. Drawing is his passion.”
“Fuck . . . I had no idea. Is that you?”
Jaime moves closer to the painting of the cove and touches the wall gently, caressing with his fingertips the figure of a girl in a swimsuit who looks a lot like me. The long, dark blond hair with the enormous bow in it is a huge clue.
“Yes.”
Then he touches the male figure next to the girl, the one with dark hair and yellow shorts. “And who is he?”
“The neighbor from the house across the street,” I say, feeling my insides stir while I gesture to the wall with the house painted on it.
“The neighbor from the house across the street?” Jaime repeats.
“How are you doing up here? The welcome vermouth is ready.” My dad pokes his head through the half-closed door, interrupting us, and that saves me from answering Jaime’s question.
But when Dad sees where Jaime’s hands are—hovering over the head of my neighbor from the house across the street—he asks me The Big Question. The same one he’s been asking me for the past four years: “Have you talked to your husband?”
That last word echoes in my ears and makes me shudder. And it’s one of those big, intense shudders. I sigh and try to downplay it, feigning the most laidback posture I can manage and showing nothing but indifference on my face. I don’t know if I achieve my goal.
I answer the question affirmatively for the first time in four years. “Yes, indeed.”
“Excuse me? Your . . . what?” Jaime yells, puzzled, his finger still hanging over the painting.
“My husband,” I say, pointing to the boy in the drawing he was touching seconds ago. “The neighbor from the house across the street.”
“We’ll wait for you downstairs,” my dad says, his expression something halfway between concerned and apologetic. He must have assumed that, by this point, I would’ve told Jaime everything. But that isn’t the case. My life before I arrived in the United States has remained an absolute secret from my best friend. And, arguably, even from me.
I sigh again, sitting down on my childhood bed. And as soon as we hear the click of the door closing, the grilling begins.
“Fuck! Are you married? This isn’t one of your Cabana jokes, is it?”
Jaime’s been witnessing my interactions with my siblings for years. My weekly calls with my brothers, tons of hours on the phone, talking and joking. But not this time; this is not a joke. I shake my head in answer to his question.
“And this is your husband?” he asks, gesturing to the male figure on the wall.
I nod.
“And he lives in the house across the street?”
Again, I nod.
“And are you going to tell me when the hell you talked him?”
“Do you remember I told you the guy at the cove—the one dressed like a lifeguard, with the red swimsuit and the megaphone—was my first no-tongue kiss, my first French kiss, my first time, my first boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he’s also my husband.”
“Hmm, home sweet home. About time! So, that was the famous husband . . . He’s a hottie, you left that bit out of your thoughts, didn’t you little Pris? By the way, why does he hate us? What did you do to him, blondie? I have a feeling this summer’s going to be interesting.
Oh, and another thing now that you mention it: that Kim Basinger movie? It’s nine weeks, not thirteen.
Pristy the Squirrel: My boss’ homecoming.
