The American

Chapter Eight

The feeling of displacement tends to follow me wherever I go—but tonight, I feel a familiar certainty overcoming me, the certainty that I have never been more alive than I am right now, along the streets of this mesmerizing province. It is like my body is no longer mine but a part of the night, manifesting with a greater passion than the early summer rain. Am I floating? I am quite sure I am. But how can I be, when every force in the universe is working to tether me to the ground? 

If I am not floating, then maybe I am flying. There is something about the moment that is more intoxicating than the strongest of drugs. Drunken on the neon lights saturating the damp pavements, I breathlessly navigate my way to the shoreline, where a deluge of ruthless waves are waiting to wash away my footprints.

Teo and I find refuge under a canopy formed by a line of citrus branches, where the rain falls with more benevolence than elsewhere. "I don't know what has come over me these last few days," I say softly. "It's like something snapped inside. Like I spent my entire life believing I was free but am discovering what it for the very first time."

A small smile manifesting on his lips, his eyes wander to the horizon, where the flaps of untended boats tremble vehemently and the fog obfuscates every inch of the sea, like we are at the end of the earth. "It's addictive, Margarita. That freedom."

"Yeah."

He is quiet for a while as he makes himself more comfortable on the sand. "Hey Mar?" he says a little later.

"Yeah?"

"If you could preserve only one memory in the world, one and the rest would be taken away from you, what would you choose? Would you choose a memory that is yours?"

I feel my world come at a sudden standstill. It's like the universe pauses all at once, at his one question. Because I know, deep in my heart, that questions like those don't come without reason. There is something in his mind, something that he wants me to decipher. Or maybe I am being foolish, as I often am when it comes to matters of the heart. 

I think about the memories I have yet to forget, the ones I have tucked away and those that I carry with me despite them being in the faraway past. And I find myself ruminating on one in particular. I don't know why. It has been years. I wonder if I should bring it up or if it is one of those things better left unspoken.

"Margarita?" Teo says. He is looking at me, awaiting an answer. "You okay?"

"Just thinking."

"Having a hard time?"

I shake my head, smiling weakly. "Quite the opposite, actually."

"Do you want to share it with me?"

I want to share everything with you, I want to say, but I settle with, "What's yours, Teo?"

He looks at me stubbornly. "You first."

But I am even more stubborn. I get it out of him anyway.

His memory has to do with a woman he met when he was sixteen, named Nuria. They met in Màlaga, surrounded by the Southern shore's depthless blue, under the light of the stars—or something like that. "It was the poetry of the entire experience, how we met under the lights the night of my sister, Marta's, wedding. Mama had been waiting her whole life for that day, so when it finally came, we partied every night for two weeks. Nuria had come from Australia, just for the wedding.

"We went on a couple of dates, got to know each other better. She had this dream to discover the best paella in all of Spain. She had been to Madrid, Barcelona, Segovia—but never Màlaga. So I took her to my favorite restaurant. It was in a quieter part of town, in one of my favorite corners of the city. We were in the middle of our first skillet of paella when she asked me what my plans are. For after college."