Spanish Lessons (Study Abroad Book 1)

by Jessica Peterson

  I move across the courtyard, desperate to get out, to be anywhere but here. I don’t pay attention to where I’m walking, and my flats catch on a step. I fly forward, righting myself at the last minute.

  Fuck this day for life.

  “Vivian!”

  I blink. Was someone just calling my name?

  “Vivian! Wait!”

  Glancing over my shoulder, I see a guy in a pink shirt dart down the steps two at a time. He’s flying in my direction. People look up as he passes. A couple people call after him, but he ignores them. He’s looking right at me.

  I turn back to the sidewalk. Rafa. What in the world does he want?

  I start to walk faster, wiping the tears from my face. I don’t want him to see me like this. Besides, I have nothing to say to him. Not yet, anyway. I need to regroup first, need to clear my head.

  I hear his footsteps behind me.

  “Vivian!” he pants. “Please, I just ate lunch, I am going to yack if you don’t slow down!”

  Even as a grin tugs at the corners of my mouth, I don’t slow down. In fact, I speed up. But whatever Rafa wants from me, he must really want it, because he catches up to me in one, two strides. He grabs my elbow, stopping me in my tracks.

  “Hey,” he says. He’s breathing hard. “Did I use it right again? Yack?”

  I look down at his hand on my arm. Sparks of electricity move through me at this smallest of touches. I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to talk to him. “Yes. You used it right, again. You’re a fast learner. Unlike me, apparently.”

  He squints his eyes against the dappled sunlight that streams through the leaves of the tree above us. He’s a little sweaty, his hair sticking to his forehead. This somehow makes him slightly less intimidating.

  Slightly.

  He doesn’t let go of my arm, and I’m not brave enough to wiggle free.

  “Vivian,” he says. “Are you all right?”

  I try to nod, but my eyes smart with a fresh wave of tears; my lips duck out as I begin to cry all over again.

  His fingers slide up my arm, the quiet noise of skin scraping against skin filling the space between us. “Hey.” He steps closer. “Vivian. Look at me. What’s going on?”

  I look at him, but only after I turn my head to the side. I can’t meet his gaze head on. “Just having a bad day. I’ll be okay.”

  “Here.” Rafa digs in the pocket of his jeans and offers me a rumpled tissue. “It’s clean, I swear it. I just took it from Elena’s office.”

  “Thanks,” I say, holding up my glasses as I swipe underneath my eyes. “I mean it. That was sweet of you to think of me. How did you know I was crying?”

  “I had a—how do you call it?—a sensation?”

  This time I can’t help it—I have to grin. “You had a feeling.”

  He nods at a bench underneath the tree. “Is it okay if we talk? For a moment only.”

  We sit. I fill my cheeks with air, let it out. It’s much cooler in the shade, thank God. I look down to see the tissue is streaked with mascara. Awesome.

  “Do you remember what I told you the night we met? That you would dream in Spanish by the time you leave Madrid?”

  I blink. “I do. I have a feeling you’re wrong, though.”

  “No. I would not have said that if I didn’t mean it. You have to have more confidence in yourself.”

  “Easy for you to say. I bet you speak what, five languages?”

  “Six.” He grins. “I like to brag, remember? So let me brag. It is only the first day of all the semester. You have much to learn, yes, but there is also much time. No student of mine has ever gotten less than an A in any class I tutored them in.”

  “Really?” I say, picking at the tissue in my lap.

  “Yes. Very really,” he says. “So I am bragging more, but I took the economics class you are now, only three years ago. On the first test, I got a C, too.”

  “No you didn’t,” I say. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  Rafa meets my eyes. “No. It was terrible. I was very embarrassed, because I knew I could do better.”

  “Yes,” I say, swallowing. “Exactly.”

  “And I did. I got an A in the class, but only after I received help from a tutor,” Rafa says. “It is not a good thing, to go through the semester with so much stress. Let me help you.”

  “I was just taken a little off guard, you know?” I bite the inside of my cheek. “It’s embarrassing. Like you said. The grade itself, and then having to talk about it with Elena and, um, you…”

  He runs his hands up the length of his jeans, toward his knees. His fingers are broad, tan too; capable looking. “I understand. If you want a different tutor, that is okay.”

  “I haven’t even thought about that,” I lie.

  “It was the first thing you thought about,” Rafa says. “Vivian, you wear your emotions on your sleeve. When you first saw me, I thought you were going to run out of the room.”

  “I thought I was going to run out of the room,” I say, and we both laugh. In an instant, I feel a hundred times better. I feel like I can breathe.

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” he says. “I think you should give me a chance. I can help you. And we do get along okay, I think.”

  I look away. Above us, the tree sighs in a small, hot breeze. Why is he so intent on being my tutor, when he clearly wanted nothing to do with me after our Saturday night rendezvous? It makes no sense. Shouldn’t he be running for the proverbial hills? Shouldn’t he jump at the chance to get out of tutoring the girl he didn’t mean to kiss?

  Bottom line: why does he care about me or my Spanish or my grades in the first place? So much so that he chased me across this little city block of a campus?

  “You have a lot of opinions,” I say. “You think I should take the art class. You think you can get me an A in econ. You think you are the best tutor to ever live.”

  He shrugs, a rakish grin tugging at the edges of his mouth. “I am. It is plain and simple. You are upset. It is clear you care very much about your grades. I am the best one to help you. So let me help you, Vivian.”

  It’s the stuff dreams are made of: a super hot foreign dude begging me to give him a chance. I don’t know what angle he’s playing, but he plays it well. He doesn’t try to hide his concern; his eyes glisten with it, and it’s really, really hard not to fall into him, not to fall under his spell the way I did Saturday night.

  Maybe he’s right. If what Rafa says about his killer tutoring skills is true, maybe he is the best person to help me get my GPA back on track.

  Maybe I need to put my wounded ego aside and get real. I’d be an idiot to pass up the opportunity to ace this semester. I need to ace this semester, or my dreams of beating out other Meryton students for a prestigious post-grad gig are toast.

  Whether or not Rafa cares about me like that, I know what my answer needs to be. I also need to get out of here, because I’m sweating through my dress and I’m starving. There’s also that whole recovering-from-epic-embarrassment thing to consider, although I do feel a lot better about everything after talking with Rafa.

  I loop the straps of my bag over my shoulder and stand. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it. My GPA needs all the help it can get.”

  “Vale. You will not be disappointed.”

  But you’ve already disappointed me, I want to say.

  “I gotta run,” I say instead. “Um, I assume Elena gave you my email and everything so we can get in touch?”

  Rafa stands; he slides his hands around his belt to the small of his back, tucking his shirttail into his jeans. I can’t help it; I check him out as the muscles in his back and arms strain against the fabric of his shirt. There’s just something so…right about it. Already my pulse is accelerating toward a sprint.

  “Yes,” he says, straightening. “Of course.”

  “Great. I’ll see you around.”

  I start walking, stiff with the awareness that he’s watching me. I’m
being rude again, I know I am, but I feel like I got massacred this morning. I need a little breathing space.

  Space Rafa refuses to give me.

  He jogs to my side. I wait a beat for him to say something. I wait another. He waves to a passing girl. Qué tal, Marta, he asks. She’s very pretty.

  “You never called,” Rafa says, softly.

  My heart skips a beat. “Neither did you.”

  “I did. I called and I texted.” He sticks his hands in his pockets. “You think I would not call you after all the fun I had with your white girl?”

  I want to smile at that. I want to believe him. So do the butterflies that have suddenly taken flight inside my belly.

  Stop it, I tell myself. Even if Rafa is telling the truth—even if he’s different from every other guy I’ve been with—falling for him can only end in heartache. I don’t want to go through all the pain and loneliness of leaving behind the guy I thought was the one. Keith fucked with my head and my heart, and I can’t go through that again. Now, more than ever, I have to keep things professional.

  Platonic.

  “Here, I will figure it out for us—we will need to text for the tutoring.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket, slowing our stride as he types furiously on the keypad. “Is this your number?”

  He holds the phone out to me.

  My heart skips a beat as my eyes move over the last four numbers. They’re scrambled, a 4 where a 6 should be, the last two numbers reversed.

  Rafa was right. We were in a rush at the Metro station, and either I gave him the wrong number, or he typed it into his phone incorrectly.

  Which means it’s entirely possible he did call, or text, or both on Sunday. I just didn’t get them.

  “Shit,” I say. “It’s not the right number.”

  “Vale, you type it this time.”

  I take the phone, reentering the correct number with fingers that tremble ever so slightly, and hand it back to him.

  “Vale,” he says. “I’ll send you a text—see if it works now.”

  On cue, I feel a vibration in my bag. I open it, digging around a bit until I find my phone. My pulse hiccups when I see “Justin Timberlake—Text” pop up on the screen.

  I slide my thumb across the screen to read the text.

  Estás guapa con este vestido.

  I look up. I know guapa means cute. Pretty.

  “You look pretty in that dress,” Rafa translates.

  “Oh.” I look down, stupidly, at said dress. It’s a black midi-dress, falling just below my knees; I belted it to make it look more stylish—more Madrileño. “Thanks.”

  My gaze slides up the length of his body. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “And you look guapo in pink.”

  “Gracias.” Rafa flashes that ladykiller grin of his, the lines around his mouth deepening in handsome pleasure. “Already you give adjectives the correct gender. See? Your Spanish is not so bad.”

  “I’ve got my adjectives down,” I reply. “It’s just everything else I need help with.”

  He holds out his phone. “I can resend the text I sent you last weekend if you like it?”

  I meet his eyes. Oh, how I want to know. I really, really want to know what he said in the text he sent me after we spent a magical Madrid night together. My heart throbs with the desire to know if he felt the way I did.

  “Here,” he’s saying. “Give me a minute only.”

  A smudge of movement catches my eye. I glance over Rafa’s shoulder to see a couple of Meryton students I recognize from my econ class. They’re chatting, smiling, probably flush with the satisfaction of having aced their take-home exams. Everyone at Meryton seems to get Economics but me.

  My heart ceases its throbbing and sinks.

  I not only have to get Economics, I need to ace it. In Spanish. And to do that , it’s probably best if I keep my raging Rafa boner in my pants so I can focus on the actual work during our tutoring sessions, instead of focusing on Rafa’s ridiculously wonderful—well, his wonderful everything. If I focus on that stuff, chances are I’ll fall for him, and I definitely can’t afford to do that.

  Besides. I freak out when I just see the guys I’ve hooked up with on campus. I can’t imagine having to sit down and talk post-war economics in Spanish with the guy who fingered me the night before. That’s, like, gotta be one of my worst nightmares. I seriously won’t learn a thing.

  “Really,” I say, sweat trailing down my temples, “that’s okay. Look, Rafa, I appreciate it, I do, but…um. I can’t—I’m not looking for something short term—I, like, don’t want to start something we can’t finish, you know? Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time. Like, a really great time, but…“

  “Something we can’t finish?” he says at last. “But we have many months, no? And is not some of the fun to live in the moment? See where it goes?”

  “I’ve done that.” I bite my lip. “And it didn’t work out. I’m sorry, it’s just…it’s a long story. But it hurt, and now I know what I want, and it isn’t…um, that.”

  He looks at me with questioning eyes. “You are very sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But we had so much fun, Vivian,” Rafa says. “I want to have fun again.”

  “We can have fun,” I say. “Just as friends, though.”

  He looks at me for a long, excruciating moment. I hate seeing the hurt in his eyes. I hate saying that word—but— it doesn’t feel right; but I know I’m making the right decision.

  “Vale,” he says at last. “We will be just the friends.”

  I look away. “Cool. If you wouldn’t mind texting me some times you’re free to meet for tutoring, that’d be great. I’d like to start as soon as possible.”

  He draws back a little. I wonder if I’ve really hurt his feelings.

  “Okay,” he says. “If that is what you want.”

  “It is,” I say.

  “Okay. I will see you soon, then.”

  “Great.”

  “Great.”

  He keeps walking with me. Again I get the sense he wants to say something, but he’s struggling with how to say it. Whether it’s a good idea to say it at all.

  Part of me is curious, ravenously so, for him to say it, whatever it is. Tell me what you said in your text. Tell me you like me and want to see me again. Tell me you haven’t felt the way you felt with me Saturday night in a long, long time.

  Another part of me—the rational part—doesn’t want Rafa to say anything. Because it doesn’t matter. Even if Rafa is different from every other guy I’ve been with—even if I’d be the star, and not the one-night stand—he lives in Spain. We’d be together for, what, five, six months? And then it would have to end. There’s no way we could be together, really together, without it ending in heartache.

  “Great,” he says at last. “Hasta luego, Vivian.”

  I’ll see you later.

  “See ya.” My throat swells inexplicably as I say it.

  Rafa veers to the right, back toward campus. I keep walking, even though I have no idea where I’m going.

  Chapter 8

  That Night

  Maddie and I stare at our plates. Stella is not in the kitchen—she left a note, saying she was heading out for dinner—so neither of us bother to hide our disgust.

  “What. The hell. Is that?” Maddie asks. She pokes at the blob with her fork. It looks like a scoop of mayonnaise, dotted with a confetti of frozen peas and sliced carrots. There is no meat, no salad, no wholesome, homemade meal.

  There is just mayonnaise.

  “I have no idea,” I reply, curling my lip. “But I’m pretty sure it is not delicious.”

  Maddie gives the blob a whiff before shoving her plate away. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t eat this shit. I mean. I know they warned us the food might be weird. But this is, like, beyond.”

  We look up at the sound of the closed door rocking in its frame. Chiquitin is on the other side, scratching to be let in so he can bite us an
d probably steal our dinner. I’m tempted to shove the mayonnaise in his face and run.

  “Wanna try to grab food somewhere?” I turn back to Maddie. “Katie sent me a text a little while ago, saying she was going to meet up with some girls for a glass of wine. I think they want to go to a place in our neighborhood.”

  “Hell yes. I think we could both use a glass or four of some vino.”

  Maddie stands. She steps on the trash can’s pedal, the lid flying back to hit the wall with sold thwunk, and tilts her plate over the can, watching as the blob slides slowly, slowly, off the plate. “Ugh,” she says. “It’s like a science experiment gone wrong.”

  My stomach grumbles. I sigh. We are a long way from the dining hall at Meryton, with its salad and sushi and soup stations. God how I miss that soup.

  This is going to be a hungry semester.

  ***

  The restaurant is a cute little place on a street not far from our apartment. It’s past nine o’clock, but the place is bustling, the smells of sautéed garlic and olive oil wafting through the open windows.

  Katie managed to nab a table toward the back, and Maddie and I wedge our way across the restaurant to get there. I glance at the food people eat as I pass. It looks delicious, if unfamiliar; much better than Stella’s mayonnaise blob. Everyone—and I mean everyone, even the obviously underage kids who I guess don’t have bedtimes—is drinking red wine.

  “Hey, chicas!” Katie says, rising to give us hugs. She introduces us to the two girls sitting with her, Rachel and Laura.

  I don’t know Rachel, although I recognize her from campus. But Laura I do know. Well, kind of. We’ve rubbed elbows at a couple Panhellenic meetings—she’s in one of the “core four” sororities at Meryton, which supposedly count the hottest, richest girls as members.

  Laura appears to be both hot and rich. Maddie and I try not to stare as we take our seats on the bench across from her. To say she’s gorgeous is an understatement; she catches everyone’s eye, from the waiters who pass by to the well-dressed women at the table next to ours. She’s rocking a stripped-down California hipster vibe, with long dark waves that perfectly compliment her flawless perma-tan. A stack of gemstone-studded David Yurman bangles wink in the low light as she picks at the straps of her teeny-weeny tank top.