Guapa

The entire weekend, I was beautiful. Looking in the mirror my face radiated with joy and light danced and flickered in my eyes. My skin gleamed clean and smooth and my hair spilled out all around my face, bouncing against my cheeks like flames licking at sheets of paper. I was that girl on the train who can’t stop smiling to herself, peering through her fingers to see if anyone else can tell that her heart is wildly fluttering.

He was there waiting for me, just liked I’d hoped, when I arrived in Barcelona two hours late and bumbled down onto the platform and into the train station lobby. I found his face in the crowd and yelled, “Junior!” before racing into his outstretched arms and burrowing my face in his neck as he hugged me tightly and laughed, the puzzle piece fitting once more.

The entire weekend was beautiful, full of long nights and lazy mornings, tender kisses and long, loving gazes. We picked up right where we left off, flattering one another in broken Spanish with Barcelona as our backdrop and a handful of emails as our past. Staying in the same hostel where we met one month before, I ignored all the other guests and focused only on Junior, drinking in our time together, savoring each moment, memorizing his face and voice.

“Guapa,” he said. I can see the word on his lips now as he slips his hand around my waist and kisses my neck.

We had an entire relationship in the span of three short days. Cooking, grocery shopping, laundry. Our first fight happened on Saturday night as we walked to the train station to buy my departure ticket. I kept trying to skirt the issue, but Junior knew who I was going to see in Germany after leaving Barcelona and it upset him greatly. We had a difficult time quarreling with my limited Spanish, but once the word “jealous” was translated, things cleared up a bit.

He asked me to marry him as we walked along the pier on our way back to the hostel. Laughing, he dropped to one knee and held his arms open wide, loudly proclaiming his proposal in mangled English. I told him that I’m too young and he understood but it didn’t stop him from asking three more times the following day. I responded to his proposals with a sock in the shoulder.

There were moments, however, where it didn’t seem too crazy. As we sat on a mattress on the roof of the hostel he pulled a thin, knotted, sliver bracelet from his bag and slipped it on my wrist without saying a word. “Para mi?” I asked. “Si, si,” he replied, his Portuguese accent creating a swishy overtone.

It felt like a dream. Or maybe a movie. But whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly have been my life. Don’t sleepwalk through this, Mary, I reminded myself. This doesn't happen twice.

Monday evening we arrived at the train station with ten minutes to spare. A marching band played traditional Spanish songs in the distance as I wrapped my arms around his neck and cried into his shoulder, my tears forming tiny dark circles on his red t-shirt. He clutched me tightly and stroked my hair, rocking side to side. I pulled back and stared into his eyes one last time. What if this is it? What if I never see him again? He brushed my hair aside and wiped tears off my cheeks whispering, “Te quiero, my doll. Always, always, always.”

I got on the train and the attendant closed the door and locked it, leaving Junior on the other side staring at me, mouthing, “Guapa,” over and over. He leaned in and kissed the dirty train window and I pressed my hand to the glass, crying quietly. Yo no quiero salir.

As the train pulled away and he blew me kisses from the platform, I took a mental snapshot and burned it into my mind: curly black hair, red t-shirt, tan athletic cargo shorts, green flip flips and a black baseball cap. My Brazilian boy. I can’t forget him. I won’t forget him. He showed me what it is to be loved.