I am convinced that Camilla was put on this earth specifically to make my life complicated.
It started at breakfast.
She came into the kitchen wearing her planning face, which is different from her normal face in the way that a fire alarm is different from a smoke detector. Both are warning you. One is louder about it.
"We are going to Bunkers del Carmel today," she announced, setting her coffee down on the counter like a gavel.
I looked up from my phone. "Since when."
"Since right now. I decided."
"You just woke up."
"I do my best thinking in the first five minutes." She was already typing on her phone. "I'm telling everyone. Gael is coming. Daniel is coming. Juan is coming. Diego is coming."
"Diego?" I blinked. "Since when does Diego come to things."
"Since I invited him." She looked at me with that expression she uses when she wants me to stop asking questions. "Wear something cute. It's going to be hot."
That was how it started.
By two in the afternoon we were all gathered outside our building in the sun and I was already regretting the yellow dress I had chosen because Camilla told me to wear something cute and now I was standing on the pavement wondering if the heat was genuinely forty four degrees or if someone had moved us to the surface of the sun overnight.
"It is so hot," I said to nobody in particular.
"You look great though," Camilla said immediately.
"I'm melting."
"Beautifully."
Diego arrived first after us, wearing sunglasses and carrying a bag that seemed too organized for a casual outing. I narrowed my eyes at it but said nothing. Juan appeared two minutes later and kissed Camilla on the cheek and then looked at Diego's bag with the same suspicion I had.
Daniel came last, which was typical, and he had Anna with him, which was not what I expected but was also a very welcome surprise because Anna had sent me three voice notes since the night at our apartment and I already liked her more than most people I had known for years.
"You're late," Camilla told Daniel.
"I'm here aren't I," he said.
Then Gael stepped out of the car he had parked across the street and I noticed Camilla do something with her face very quickly, like she was suppressing a smile that had no business being that large.
I did not think about that for very long.
We took two cars up to the Bunkers. I ended up in Gael's car with Daniel and Anna, which meant I spent most of the drive listening to Daniel explain to Anna the entire history of Barcelona using facts I was approximately forty percent sure he was making up.
"That's not true," I said from the back seat.
"It absolutely is," Daniel said.
"Gael, is that true?"
Gael glanced at me briefly in the rearview mirror. "Not even slightly."
Daniel made an offended sound. Anna laughed. I caught Gael's eyes in the mirror for just a second before he looked back at the road and I turned to look out the window instead.
The drive was not long but the road up to the Bunkers was the kind of narrow winding thing that made you glad you were not the one driving. Gael navigated it without any visible stress, one hand on the wheel, occasionally pointing out something to Anna when Daniel was not mid-sentence, which was rare.
When we parked and climbed the rest of the way on foot, the view hit me the way it always does even though I had been here before.
Barcelona spread out below us like someone had tipped the whole city onto a map and left it there. The sea sat at the edge of everything, flat and blue and enormous. The heat pressed down from above and rose from the ground at the same time.
"Okay," I said. "Worth it."
"Obviously," Camilla said, already spreading out the blanket she had pulled from Diego's suspiciously organized bag.
We settled into the kind of comfortable group arrangement that happens when everyone knows each other well enough to not need assigned seats. Diego had brought water and snacks, which raised his reputation in my estimation significantly. Camilla had music playing quietly from her phone. Juan sat behind her and she leaned back against him without discussion, like that was just where she belonged.
For a while it was easy and loud and good.
Daniel was telling a story about something that happened at work that kept escalating every time someone reacted to it. Anna was listening with her chin in her hand and the expression of someone who could not decide whether to believe him or not. Diego had stretched out on the blanket with his cap over his face like a man who came to Bunkers del Carmel exclusively to nap.
I was laughing at something Daniel said when I noticed Camilla and Juan having a very quiet conversation behind me.
This would not have been unusual except that they were both looking in a very specific direction while having it.
I turned to see what they were looking at.
Gael was sitting a little apart from the group, not excluded, just slightly to the side the way he sometimes positioned himself, and he was looking out at the city with the kind of quiet that did not feel lonely. More like he was just comfortable existing without needing to perform it.
"What are you two whispering about," I said.
Camilla blinked. "Nothing."
"You were looking at Gael."
"I was looking at the view."
"The view is the other direction."
Juan coughed. Camilla picked up her water bottle and took a long drink.
I looked at them for another second and then decided to let it go.
About twenty minutes later Diego sat up from his nap and announced that he wanted to walk around the perimeter and look at the old bunker structure more closely.
"I'll come," Juan said immediately.
Camilla stood up. "Me too."
I looked at her. "You hate walking when it's this hot."
"Exercise is important," she said.
"You said that walking uphill in the heat was something that should only be done if someone was chasing you."
"I've grown as a person." She held out her hand for Juan and they started walking. Diego followed. Then Daniel looked at Anna and said something quiet and she nodded and they both got up too, Anna waving at me as they wandered in a slightly different direction.
Within ninety seconds I was sitting on the blanket alone.
I looked around.
Then I looked at Gael, who had not moved.
He looked at me.
"Did they just," I started.
"Yes," he said.
"That was not subtle."
"No."
I exhaled and looked out at the city because I did not know where else to look. The sun was starting to move lower in the sky and the light was doing something nice to the rooftops below, turning everything a color that did not have a proper name.
After a moment Gael stood up from where he was sitting and came to sit on the blanket instead, closer to me but not uncomfortably so. He stretched his legs out in front of him and looked at the same view I was looking at.
Neither of us said anything for a little while.
This was the thing I had been trying to work out for weeks now. The silence with Gael was never something I needed to fill. It just sat there between us like it belonged. Like it was not waiting for anything.
"You've been here before," he said. It was not a question.
"Once. With my cousin, years ago. It was raining that time so we didn't stay long."
He nodded. "You mentioned it. In passing, a while back."
I turned to look at him. "I did?"
"You said you wanted to come back when it was clear."
I genuinely did not remember saying that. I did not remember it at all. And the fact that he did, that he had kept it somewhere and brought it out now like something he had been saving, made me feel something I did not immediately have a name for.
"You remembered that," I said.
He shrugged once. "You said it."
Like that was reason enough.
I turned back to the view.
The heat was pressing down seriously now and I could feel the sun on my shoulders and my arms. I shifted slightly and pushed my hair back from my face.
Without saying anything Gael reached into the side pocket of Diego's bag, which was apparently still sitting near us, and produced a hair tie. He held it out toward me.
I stared at it.
"How did you know that was in there," I said.
"I didn't. But Diego packs like someone who has considered every possible emergency."
I laughed and took it from him, pulling my hair up off my neck. The immediate relief was significant.
"Thank you."
"The sun hits that side harder in the afternoon," he said, nodding toward the angle of the light. "You should move slightly this way."
He shifted on the blanket and I moved with him, a few inches to the left, and he was right because the difference was immediate and I did not know how he had noticed that either.
I opened my mouth to ask him how he pays attention to things like that and then closed it again because I did not know how to phrase the question without it sounding like more than I meant.
Or maybe I was not sure how much I meant.
Below us the city was doing what Barcelona always does in the late afternoon, which is look like it was designed specifically to be looked at from a height. The Gothic quarter sat dark and close together in one direction. The sea was still doing its flat blue thing in the other.
"Can I ask you something," I said.
"Yes."
"Do you actually like coming to places like this or do you just come because other people want to."
He was quiet for a second, considering it properly rather than answering quickly.
"Both can be true," he said.
"That's not an answer."
"I like being somewhere I can see everything without having to be in the middle of it."
I thought about that. "That's very you."
He glanced at me sideways. "What does that mean."
"It means you always find the edge of the room." I pulled my knees up to my chest. "At the dinner. At our apartment. Even now, you were sitting slightly apart from everyone."
"You noticed that."
"I notice things too," I said. "I'm just quieter about it."
Something shifted in his expression. Not dramatically, just a small adjustment, like I had said something that landed somewhere he did not expect.
We sat with that for a moment.
The sun was lower now. The whole sky was starting to move toward orange at the edges and the city below was going golden in that way that made everything look like it was made of something warmer than concrete.
"My mother used to bring me to places like this," I said. I was not sure why I said it. "Before everything got complicated. We would find high places and just sit there. She said it made problems look the right size."
Gael did not say anything immediately.
He did not tell me that was beautiful or offer me some response designed to fill the space. He just sat with what I had said like it deserved the room.
"Does it work," he said eventually.
I looked out at the city. At the small grid of streets and the tiny cars and the sea beyond all of it.
"Sometimes," I said. "Today it does."
Then my stomach cramped.
Not gently. Not as a warning. As a full announcement.
I pressed my hand to my stomach quietly and hoped it was just the heat or the sitting position or something I had eaten earlier. Then it came again, sharper, and I knew immediately what it was and I also wanted to dissolve into the ground.
Not now.
Not here.
I shifted slightly and tried to read my own body the way you do when you are desperately hoping you are wrong about something. I was not wrong. I was absolutely not wrong.
I started calculating options very quickly. My bag was behind me. The blanket was under me. My dress was yellow. My dress was yellow and short and we were sitting in a group of people including multiple men and the sun was at an angle that was leaving nothing to the imagination and this was possibly the worst timing in the entire history of timing.
I stayed very still.
Gael was looking at the view.
Maybe I could stay sitting for the rest of my life. That was a reasonable plan. I would simply live here on this blanket at Bunkers del Carmel indefinitely.
Then he turned to look at me.
I have no idea what my face was doing but whatever it was, he read it in approximately two seconds.
His eyes moved quickly, just a glance downward and then away, so fast and so discreet that if I had not been watching his face I would have missed it entirely. Then he looked back at the view like nothing had happened.
He reached for the sweater he had tied around his own bag strap.
He did not make a production of it. He did not look at me with an expression that communicated anything. He just leaned slightly toward me and held it out.
"It gets cold when the sun drops," he said.
His voice was completely normal. Like he was simply a person who had noticed a change in weather.
I took the sweater.
He took it back for just a second and stood up, stepping around behind me on the blanket, and he tied it around my waist himself. Neatly. Without fuss. And then he held out his hand to help me up.
I stood.
He kept hold of my hand and started walking toward where the others had gone, not quickly, just steadily, and I walked beside him with my heart doing something complicated and my stomach cramping and my face doing its best to hold together.
"Gael," I said quietly.
"Yes."
I did not know what I was going to say. Thank you was not enough for what he had just done. He had seen something embarrassing and private and had made it disappear without making me feel like it had happened.
"Nothing," I said. "Just. Thank you."
He squeezed my hand once briefly and then kept walking.
"Stop thanking me," he said.
"Why."
He glanced at me sideways.
"Because you'd do the same for me."
I looked at him for a second.
I thought about what he had just said and I thought about the hair tie and the sun angle and the thing he remembered that I said years ago and the way he always finds the edge of the room and the sweater tied around my waist and his hand still holding mine because he had not let go yet and I had not asked him to.
And I said the thing I was thinking without deciding to say it.
"I think you might be the best person I know."
He did not respond.
I did not look at his face because I was watching where I was walking on the uneven ground. But I felt his hand tighten around mine.