Lucas drifted in my direction. Leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world to stroll across the small studio. He stopped only when he was right in front of me.
“Rosie,” he said in a low, warning voice that made my stomach flop for some reason. “Take the bed.” He smiled, but it wasn’t lighthearted and fun. “Don’t make me fight you over this. Because I will.”
How? That part of me that had my stomach flip-flopping wanted to ask him. How would you fight me exactly?
But instead, I murmured, “Fine.” I decamped to the bed on the other side of the studio. I huffed as I threw the covers back and slipped in. “We’ll see who takes it tomorrow night.”
“We’ll see,” he added right before turning the lights off. “Roomie.”
I heard Lucas ruffle with his blankets, and I forced my eyelids shut so I wouldn’t search for his shape in the dark. So I wouldn’t make a big deal out of this. Lucas Martín, sleeping a few feet away from me. In his outrageous gray sweatpants.
“Rosie?” he called, in what couldn’t have been more than a minute later. “Are you still awake?”
My eyelids lifted. “Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
I laughed lightly. “It’s only been about… sixty-five seconds since we turned the lights off, so I’d be surprised if you were sound asleep.”
“I could be narcoleptic for all you know, smarty-pants.”
“Are you?”
“Nah,” he answered, and I had no choice but to smile at the ceiling. “Hey, Rosie?”
Turning onto my side, I stared in the direction of the couch. I could barely make him in the dark, but I still looked. “Yes, Lucas?”
“How many pages away from your dream are you?”
I thought about all the words I hadn’t written today. About how I’ll need to recalculate my daily goal again. Just like I had to do every day.
“Writers count in words and not pages.”
I heard a deep hmmm, before he countered, “So how many words away from your dream, then?”
Many. “Still a few.”
Only meeting a word count wasn’t the problem, wasn’t it? It was about so much more than just that. It was about writing. Inspiration. Or the lack of both things.
Neither of us said anything for a long time and then, when I was no longer sure whether he was asleep or not, I heard him say, “Buenas noches, Rosie.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lucas
New York. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps.
Anywhere I looked, there were either people rushing through the day, vehicles dashing through the streets, or buildings bustling with activity and…
Noise. So much noise.
It was different from every other American city I’d visited during the first half of my trip and a far cry from home.
Home. Spain.
But that had been the whole point, hadn’t it? A change of scenery.
I had willingly exchanged waking up to the waves crashing against the shore for skyscrapers and hot dog vendors. I had willingly left behind the freedom of taking the coastal road and driving whenever and wherever I pleased and committed to an itinerary of sorts. I had traded Taco and my people for crowds of faceless strangers.
And the only reason I had done any of that was because that peace, that freedom, that scenery I knew like the back of my hand, and the people who loved me—or the version of Lucas I had been—were no longer comforting. They loved someone who now felt like a stranger.
New York City was my last chance to escape. To postpone the inevitable. Of everyone finding out the real reason why I’d taken this trip. Of them wanting to fix it. To fix me. Because that was how the Martín family operated.
Just like Abuela said: “Ay, Lucas, no vas a arreglar nada tumbado ahí como un monigote.”
You won’t fix a single thing lying there like a stick man.
But there was nothing to fix. I sure as hell didn’t need fixing, either. That would mean that the possibility to restore what I’d lost existed. And it didn’t. I couldn’t get on a board anymore. I couldn’t do the one thing I knew how to do. Surf. The one thing I loved and was lucky enough to make a living doing. The one thing I had thrived doing. The water, the waves, feeling the roughness of the wax under my feet, the sand sticking to my skin. It had been my life. The adrenaline, the constant traveling. I had just reached peak performance, and even in my early thirties, I’d had a few more good years in me. Releasing a rough breath as I stood on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, I noticed I’d been staring into the swirling water of the East River for what had to be an unacceptably long time.