Spanish Lessons (Study Abroad Book 1)

by Jessica Peterson

  I scoff, my eyes glued to my feet. “Do you always play the white knight for all your idiot American students? Coming to their rescue in cafes across Madrid?”

  “No.” The heat of his gaze breaks over the crown of my head, dripping slowly, like honey, down the rest of my body. “Just for you, white girl. And stop saying you are an idiot.”

  “Are you going to at least let me pay?”

  Rafa grabs our bottles of beer off the counter, the necks tucked between the fingers of his right hand. “Next time.”

  Even the way he moves—the way he does things—is sexy. It’s impossible not to stare.

  We settle at a tiny little table in the back of the café. Rafa takes the chair, I take the booth. I crack open my Econ textbook with a groan. Each minute is an eternity, but I have a better grasp of the material than I did during our first tutoring session. It doesn’t hurt to have a super hot Spanish guy murmuring nothings in your ear, even if those nothings have to do with Keynsian economics and the class divide in Franco-era Spain.

  We finish our beers. Rafa stands, says he’ll buy us another round.

  I grab my wallet. “Absolutely not. If you don’t let me pay this time, I am not going to drink it.”

  Rafa cocks a brow. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Is that a challenge?”

  “Do you want it to be?”

  I narrow my eyes. “Don’t tempt me, Rafa.”

  He holds up his hands. “I wouldn’t dare, Vivian.”

  For a minute we stare each other down. A smile spreads slowly across his face. I bite the inside of my lip to keep from bursting with laughter.

  I bolt from my seat, the table wobbling in my wake. Rafa is half a second behind me, his footfalls light for someone so tall. I glance over my shoulder, the laughter coming now, and he reaches for me, curling an arm around my waist. He tugs me against him, his deep, masculine laughter filling my ears.

  “Te,” he breathes, “atrape!” Caught you!

  “Oh no you don’t,” I manage, twisting out of his grasp. People stare as we dart past, but I don’t care. Something about being chased makes me giddy, gleeful even. It’s like I’m six again, being chased around our backyard by my younger brother. I don’t know why we laughed so hard then. But we did.

  I’m laughing harder now. Maybe because I’m a little buzzed from the beer. Maybe because being chased by Rafa is so, so much more fun than being chased by my four-year-old brother.

  Breathless, I reach the counter. Rafa slides into place next to me, hipchecking me away from the register. I hipcheck him back, but he ignores me, digging a couple Euro bills out of his wallet. I lean against him and keep pushing. He trips on his feet, laughing, and pushes back.

  The barista dude shoots us a look that could kill.

  “No!” I say, slamming my money on the counter before Rafa can pay. I glance at the barista. “Por favor, voy a pagar por dos cervezas.” Please, I would like to pay for two beers.

  Rolling his eyes, the barista takes my money and slides two green bottles across the counter.

  Rafa turns to me, his face flush with laughter, eyes dancing. “Muy bien, Vivian! Even if you are using your Spanish to buy the beers I want to pay for.”

  I look up at him, grinning. “You gotta let me pay for something, Rafa. You’re only saving me from flunking this semester. I mean, no big deal or anything.” I hand him his beer. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “Just this once, then,” he says, clinking the heel of his beer against mine. “Salud.”

  “Salud.” I take a sip. It’s cold, so refreshing that for a minute I close my eyes to savor it—savor this moment, me and Rafa drinking beer at five o’clock on a Monday night in Madrid, my ribs sore from laughing so hard. This is one of those magical moments Rachel was talking about. I don’t want to be anywhere else—be anyone else—on earth right now.

  I open my eyes and see Rafa gazing down at me, a funny look on his face.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing.” He looks away, a small, almost pained grin tugging at his lips. “It is nothing. What else do you like to work on today?”

  “I have an essay to write for Spanish Lit—we’re supposed to choose a Neruda poem and analyze it.”

  “Neruda! Yes. I love him.”

  I slide back into my perch on the booth; Rafa takes his seat across from me. “You love Spanish love poetry?” I ask, digging my notebook out of my bag. “I thought you liked writing about soccer.”

  “Fútbol.”

  “Right. Sorry. Fútbol.”

  Rafa shrugs. “I like sports, and I like art, too. All kinds of writing and reading I like.”

  I place a packet of photocopied poems on the table between us. Rafa slides it toward him, rotating it so he is able to read the poems.

  “Do you have a favorite Neruda poem? They gave us so many—half the battle is just translating them and choosing one to write about. I’ve studied Neruda before, but never any of the poems in this packet.”

  “I do. I hope it is in here. It is one of the twenty love poems—número catorce…” Rafa folds the pages over the staple in the top left hand corner of the packet, searching for the poem.

  “Number fourteen?” I translate. “That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

  “Trust me, you will like it. Neruda, his poems are…what is the word? Fuerte. Explícito. How do you say it in English?”

  I blink. “Strong. Explicit.”

  “Yes. Ah, here it is.” He tilts the page on the table so we can both read it.

  “Yikes,” I say. “It’s a long one.”

  “It is worth the effort. Vale.” Rafa begins to read the poem aloud, his voice low, his tongue languid as it moves easily over each ridge and mountain and valley of the words on the page. The poem is complex; I am able to translate about three quarters of it, but some of the words and phrases I have never seen before. I stop Rafa several times, asking what a word means, an expression.

  He keeps reading, the two of us straining to see the poem. The sensuality of Neruda’s words, coupled with the lilting way Rafa says them, makes my head spin.

  I stop him again, leaning over the table to point at a line, our fingers touching over the last word.

  Without saying a thing, Rafa turns the page to face me and stands. He slides onto the booth next to me, setting his beer on the table in front of us. “This way, you see better, yes?”

  “Sí.” I scoot over, my body thrumming with the awareness of his beside me. He’s very close. Close enough that we look like one of those annoying couples sitting on the same side of the table on a date.

  “Tienes razón, Rafa.” I say. “Esta poema es…fuerte.” You were right, Rafa. This poem is strong.

  Strong isn’t the right word, though. This poem can’t be described using an adjective; it’s weightier than that. It deserves a verb, or a noun at least. It’s not strong; it’s longing in another language. It’s a feeling, a captured moment. A meditation on love and sex and meaning.

  We finish translating the poem. I take a sip of my beer. Rafa does the same. I can hear him swallow. I glance at him from the corner of my eye. His eyes are dark, hooded, what I imagine Neruda’s eyes looked like when he wrote this poem.

  I finger the edge of the page, looking away. “I see why this is your favorite poem. It’s beautiful.”

  “I was very romantic in my teenage years,” he scoffs. “When I was sixteen I had a very big crush on the daughter of my parents’ friends. She didn’t like me very much.”

  I make a face. “Really? I don’t believe it.”

  “I was awkward still,” he says, shrugging. “I thought I would go crazy thinking of her. Neruda knew my mood.”

  “Do you still think about her?” I meet his eyes.

  He grins. “No. She isn’t the one I think about.”

  His gaze lingers on my face one beat, then another.

  “What about you?” he asks, carefully. “Is there someone you think about?”

&n
bsp; My restless fingers move to the damp label on my beer bottle. I’ve only known Rafa for, what, a week now? But our friendship—if you can call it that—already feels broken in, comfortable. Easy. I want to tell him everything. I want to know what he thinks.

  “No,” I say. “There used to be a guy, a little less than a year ago. My story is the same as yours. I liked him. A lot. More than I have ever liked anyone. We would talk for hours, you know? About everything. Our families, our dreams. Stuff I never really told anyone else. I felt like we had something special. The way I felt when I was with him—it was really nice. But then I found out he had a girlfriend, and he didn’t like me the way I liked him, so. Yeah. God, I hope I’m not weirding you out, telling you all this.”

  “I want to hurt this idiota who hurt you,” Rafa says. “But no weirding out. I asked, and I will listen to whatever you want to say.”

  I meet his eyes. He is so sincerely interested it makes my heart flutter.

  “I was pretty devastated,” I say, looking away. “I mean, he was a total dickweed. Totally not worth it. But it hurt.”

  “It hurts like hell,” Rafa says.

  “It does.”

  “But hopefully it hurts less now?”

  I glance up at him. “Yes,” I say. And for the first time, I actually mean it.

  He smiles at me. “The love that is not returned is the worst. But sometime our day will come, yes? Sometime the person we want will want us, too.”

  I want you, Rafa.

  Only I can’t have him. I like him, I do. How could I not? It’s his smile, his eyes, the things he says and does. It’s the beer and the way he read the poem and the way he dances. He’s excellent, and I like him.

  But I am good at tamping down my feelings. At smothering them until I can convince myself they don’t exist. There is too much at risk—my heart, my hard-won sense of what I want—to feel anything for Rafa besides distant, torturous admiration.

  The kind of admiration Neruda would approve of, I think.

  I open my notebook to a blank page. “Let’s get some bullet points down that I can use in my essay. The image of the wind, maybe that’s an allusion to the shifting nature of one’s feelings…”

  “En español, Vivian.”

  Chapter 12

  Friday

  Toledo

  All of us—fifty Meryton in Madrid students, plus Elena and a few of our professors and student liaisons, Rafa included—catch a bus on Friday morning to Toledo. It’s a short ride, a little less than an hour. But with Maddie in the seat beside Rafa, laughing and flirting and cuffing his shoulder like they’re old pals, it feels a hell of a lot longer. He’s the only one who can seem to make her smile these days; up until this morning, she’s been pretty down. I overheard a conversation she had with her mom last night, and she could hardly talk she was sobbing so hard.

  I didn’t think things could get worse with her family, but they are. I’m happy to see her happy.

  I just wish she would be happy with someone besides Rafa.

  “Wow,” Maddie wheezes, hand on her chest. “I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. It feels good. Like, really good. Thanks for that.”

  “Thank you for laughing at my jokes. My friends are always telling me how I am not so funny.” Rafa turns to face her. “Why haven’t you done more of it? The laughing, I mean.”

  “It’s a long story,” she replies, her smile fading as she stares into her lap. “And not a pleasant one. Trust me, you don’t want to hear it.”

  “Hey.” Rafa ducks his head, imploring her to look at him. “Hey, Maddie, of course I want to hear it. I am always here to listen for a friend.”

  She’s looking at him now, a funny gleam in her eyes. “Friends? We’re friends?” There’s a hopeful note in her voice. It makes my stomach clench. It’s obvious she sees it, too; Rafa’s handsomeness. His overwhelming wonderful-ness.

  “Of course we are,” he replies easily. “Now tell me why you haven’t been laughing, and then maybe after we laugh some more.”

  She studies him for a minute. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. I am thinking you really need someone to listen, yes?”

  “Yes,” she almost breathes. “Yes. That would be nice.”

  Maddie’s gaze flicks to me. I look away, quickly, turning back to Al, who’s sitting next to me. He offers me some of the digestivo cookies his aunt—Rafa’s mom—packed him for lunch, and starts to chat away about his thoughts on Madrileño sleeping habits. (“I’ve figured it out. They just sleep less than we do. Way less.”) My head hurts from listening to two conversations at once: ours, and Maddie and Rafa’s.

  I can smell the woodsy scent of Rafa’s aftershave. He’s wearing a blue and white check button down today, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hair is still a little wet from the shower, curlier than normal. I wonder what he looks like in the shower. Naked—probably very naked. My vision goes a little blurry as I imagine what that nakedness would look like, exactly.

  “Hello?” Al is saying. “Earth to Vivian.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Sorry. I didn’t have time for coffee this morning. So you think we should adopt the siesta in the States, huh? I’d vote for that.”

  The bus gets quiet when we round a bend and sweeping view of Toledo fills the windows. The city is set high on a rocky hill beside a river that glistens turquoise in the morning sun. A square castle, each of its four towers topped with pointy spires that impale a wide open sky, dominates the city; medieval walls loop across the hill like pale ribbons.

  I glance away from the window and find Rafa looking at me, that funny expression softening his face again. He’s wearing sunglasses, but I can still see the outline of his eyes through the lenses.

  “What?” I ask, grinning.

  “It is fun, seeing your thoughts,” he replies.

  “You can see my thoughts?”

  “You wear them on your sleeve, remember?”

  Rafa remembers everything.

  I bite my lip. “I do.”

  “Toledo is beautiful, yes? Wait until you see the El Greco paintings they have here. You will love it.”

  My heart skips a beat—for Rafa and for El Greco.

  “El Greco?” Maddie’s head appears over her seat. “He’s one of my favorites. I like how dark his work can be.”

  “Very dark,” Rafa says. “Very moody.”

  “Like Neruda’s poems,” I say.

  It’s his turn to grin. “My student is learning.”

  “Poetry hardly counts.”

  “Of course it counts. Especially if it’s Neruda.”

  I catch Maddie’s gaze again. She’s watching me. Watching us.

  We divide ourselves into several smaller groups—I’m with Rafa, Mads, Al, Laura, and a couple others—and make our way into the city. It’s hot; the sun bears down on us like a burning weight, radiating off Toledo’s ancient stone streets and walls. Walking behind Rafa, I see his shirt is spotted with sweat. The nape of his neck is wet; I want to run my finger along the skin there, taste the salt of his sweat.

  I blink. Stop. I have to stop. First the nakedness, now the sweat. I’m going to melt if I don’t get my mind out of the gutter.

  Our professor takes us to the cathedral, a synagogue, a bakery, a silversmith’s shop. I follow the group through Toledo’s steep, winding streets, sweat dripping into my eyes. All the while Maddie and Rafa are talking, talking, sometimes in English, mostly in Spanish. Rafa is charming as ever; I love hearing the happy lilt of his voice as he speaks, seeing him look down at Maddie as she does. He’s handsome, and he’s a good guy, a good listener. I only wish he was listening to me.

  I watch them and a familiar knot tightens in my stomach. I’m starting to think this whole situation was a bad idea. I should have told Maddie about my feelings for Rafa, regardless of whether or not I could act on them.

  I should have kept it to one beer with Rafa during our tutoring session on Monday. And I should have picked a different Nerud
a poem, one without a billion explícito allusions to sex.

  But it’s too late. It’s obvious that Rafa helps Maddie forget about her family, for a little while at least. What kind of monster would I be to ruin that? Rafa isn’t mine; he’s totally fair game.

  We duck into yet another church, this one smaller. Our group lets out a collective sigh of relief as we step into the shadowed cool put off by stone. My legs ache and my dress sticks to my skin. Now Rafa and Maddie are whispering. I look at Maddie, who is smiling like an idiot as Rafa tells her a story in Spanish that is probably both hilarious and wonderfully inappropriate.

  “Why don’t you just tell him?”

  I nearly jump at the sound of Laura’s voice. She walks beside me, eyes focused on the couple a few paces in front of us. I may be sweating like a pig, but Laura merely glistens; it compliments her tan.

  I look at her. She looks back. She knows; I don’t know how, but she knows I like Rafa. Maybe she isn’t the rich girl fembot I thought she was.

  I look away. “Please don’t say anything.”

  “I won’t. But you should still tell him you like him. You’ve been watching him all day.”

  “I know. I can’t, though—I can’t tell him. Telling him would make it real. It would give him the wrong idea. I don’t want to date him, Laura, because I think I would end up liking him. A lot. Too much. And then what? We’d have to break up when I leave. And that would totally suck.”

  Laura arches a brow. “Really? Having great sex with a hot Madrileño all semester would totally suck?”

  “The sex would just be a distraction I don’t need.”

  Her eyes move back to Rafa. “He is very distracting.”

  “I know,” I say. “Lord, do I know.”

  “So does Maddie. Are you cool with that?”

  I swallow, hard.

  “Here,” Laura says, swiping a thumb underneath my eye. “You had a little mascara smudge there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know,” she says, rubbing her thumb against her forefinger, “whatever’s going on between you and Rafa could really be anything. Maybe it’s a six-month love affair. Maybe it’s a fun little thing where you let him touch your boobs every once a while. Maybe it’s the real deal. But we’re only in Spain for a few months. Then we get on a plane and go back to real life in Durham. You don’t think you’ll sit on that plane and not regret taking a chance with señor hotpants over there, no matter how it ends?”