Junior

Is it possible to fall in love having known someone for only 48 hours?

His name is Junior and he’s from Brazil but lives in Madrid. He has creamy olive skin, greenish hazel eyes and curly black hair. His native language is Portuguese but he’s learned to speak Spanish through living in Spain. He knows a bunch of English nouns but can’t really form a complete sentence. Needless to say, I’ve spoken more Spanish over the past couple of days than I have in the past ten years combined.

We met when he tried to help me hook my computer up to the Internet at our hostel. I wasn’t having any luck on my own and none of the staff would help me, so he took a look. We sat there for half an hour, hunched over my laptop, clicking on buttons, refreshing web browsers, but didn’t have any luck. He couldn’t read any of the words on the screen, but it didn’t seem to faze him and he kept plugging away, searching for the solution. Eventually I told him, in Spanish, that it was okay; I could go to an Internet café the next morning. He finally conceded defeat and stood up to leave and it was then that I realized damn, this dude is pretty hot.

The next night I saw him again in the hall as a few of us headed outside for a walk. We made eye contact and neither of us looked away for a few seconds. I asked him if he wanted to come along on our walk. He said yes, but that he needed to be back at the hostel by 2:00 a.m. to go out dancing with his friends.

Junior, Aman, and Logan and I wandered down Las Ramblas amongst street venders, drunken tourists, beer peddlers, and club promoters. The sky was black but the cobblestone streets sparkled like rubies, with neon lights reflecting in puddles and smoke snaking through the air. Junior followed close behind me, lightly touching my waist when cars approached. We stopped at a vegetarian deli to buy salty French fries and take blurry pictures then headed to a bar around the corner where we sat around a table speaking broken Spanish and pantomiming patiently when all words failed.

I never knew that I could flirt in a different language, but that night I learned that not only is it easy, but it’s ten times more fun. Junior was lively and playful and not at all shy and I was giddy and buzzing and happy to have all of his attention.

We went to a club later on and Junior and I danced with broken glass crunching beneath our feet and hundreds of sweaty people whirling all around. The music was loud and invigorating, shaking the walls and electrifying my bones. Junior taught me to Samba and pointed out songs from Brazilian artists and acted horrified when I yawned at 4:30 a.m.

He kept his arm around me as we walked back to the hostel, past stoned transvestite prostitutes and drunks in handcuffs escorted by police. The air was warm and smelled of urine and cigarettes and a low hum of engines, voices and clatters could be heard from all around. I wanted to tell Junior how much fun I had with him and that I wanted to see him again, but I was too tired to think of the words and he already knew because it was written all over my face.

The next day we took a bus to a park overlooking the Mediterranean Ocean and he held my hand and took my picture and said, “Guapa.” We shared water and cigarettes and he played with my hair like he’d known me all his life. At first I was worried that we wouldn’t have anything to talk about because my Spanish is shit and his English is nonexistent, but somehow we were able to learn all about each other. He called me his doll, his sweet doll.

That evening we ate dinner at an Arabic deli and bought groceries at a local market down the street. We stood on the sidewalk with giant water jugs at our feet and hundreds of people rushing by. He had his arm around my neck and I munched on a chocolate chip cookie, feeding him bites every so often. It was dark by this time and we were on our way back to the hostel when he stopped suddenly and whispered in my ear, “Mira.” I followed his gaze and saw a street performer entertaining a child with hot dog balloons and blow-up swords. “Me encanta Barcelona,” he declared and pulled me closer.

We fell asleep on the roof of the hostel underneath a sprinkling of stars with the noisy city street fives stories below and a dirty mattress under our backs. He slept like a baby but I lay awake wondering how I could ever go home after seeing a city like this. I wanted to capture the feeling and put it in a bottle to keep forever and use sparingly for the rest of my life.

Junior went back to Madrid this afternoon. We spent the morning lazing around, tangled together, staring at each other, trying to burn every last detail into our memories. We knew that we would probably never see each other again, but couldn’t let that cloud our last few hours. I was quiet as we rode the subway to the bus station and he tried to make me laugh, doing a spot-on impression of Goofy, the Disney dog. After a panicked sprint to the station and some confusion over which bus was his, we hugged one last time and he called me his doll, his sweet doll, then got on the bus and blew me kisses through the window.

He told me he loved me this morning, but I didn’t say it back because how could I love someone I’ve known for 48 hours and can barely even understand? But as I stood in the subway fighting back tears, looking up each time someone walked by just in case it was him, I realized that perhaps I should reevaluate my skeptic ways because if this feeling isn’t love, then it’s something awfully close.