The Rain in Spain Read Online Free

she went inside, missing the magical space of the empty rooftop as soon as she left it. The tiny elevator closed around them like a cage.
    Her hand hovered over the buttons for each floor. There were only six. Their room was tucked at the end of the hall on the third floor, far from the noisy elevator and the rumbling pipes of the shared bathroom, its location the best the hotel could do in apology for the bed situation. Javi muscled the gate closed.
    She wasn’t ready. In their room they would sit opposite each other on twin beds and in the low light of the nightstand lamp she would let out all the words locked behind her teeth.
    “I was thinking of getting another drink. I found some interesting places today.” She looked at Javi over the head of the waiter, who was bouncing on his toes in impatience at her dithering.
    “It’s pouring.” He leaned against the elevator wall, but she knew him well enough by now to see the fists in his pockets, and his casual stance hid nothing.
    “I have my umbrella.” She’d carried it all day and cursed the rain that had followed them from Madrid to Barcelona, but never fell on the dusty, baked streets of Sevilla. He’d bought the Hallucinogenic Toreador one for her at the Dali museum, rolling his eyes when she squealed over it as he slid it onto the table at dinner, a surprise errand he’d run while she napped before their late reservation. “If you held it, we might not get too wet.” She held her breath.
    Javi’s eyes were always dark, rich and warm. At that moment, they were molten. The corner of his mouth curved up. She wanted to warn him to not be happy with her when she might end up breaking his heart.
    She pushed “0” and the elevator jerked into motion.

Chapter Two

    I n the lobby, the waiter slipped away to the bar. She stopped at the heavy wooden double doors to the street and folded her very practical hat into eighths and stuffed it in her straw bag. Javi held the umbrella at the ready, thumb on the button, and pulled on the door, opening the umbrella with a snap over her head as soon as she set foot onto the cobbled street.
    She could make this night a gift. A handheld walk through the way she lived, showing him how she touched and tasted a new city. One more chance to see if he could understand her and why she might never be what he wanted. Not the last chance, surely, though it felt like that sometimes.
    It seemed like she’d been holding her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for their entire marriage. The people who’d raised her had never understood her. She’d lost her home with them when she’d left it, felt like a stranger every time she visited, until eventually she’d stopped. How long could it take for Javi lose patience with her travels? To feel that she was a stranger to him, too? She feared he was already there.
    Magda told herself not to be melodramatic. Javi, however different from her, would be kind. She would spend this night showing him how she moved through the world, and then she would ask him if they could still love each other when what they needed was so different.
    He would tell her the truth, even if it broke them.
    The best presents, even the going-away ones, were about the recipient and not the giver, so she walked him through the twisting, narrow streets and alleys to the Irish pub that had landed, straight from Dublin, mere blocks from the Cathedral.
    The ceiling was high, a narrow strip of stained glass windows circling the large room around an enormous central bar. The high-backed wooden booths were all occupied, so they squeezed in at the bar. She caught Javi eyeing the Harp Lager tap with yearning.
    “You know you want it.”
    “I do not.”
    “Liar.” She leaned close and whispered in his ear. “They make a cheeseburger here with cheddar and bacon.”
    He groaned and let his knees sag, catching himself on the bar with both hands, an exaggeration of weakness to make her giggle. “You’re an evil