The walk back to the parking lot was downhill which should have made it easier and did not.
My stomach was cramping in waves and I was smiling through all of it because there were people around and I had spent enough of my life making sure nobody saw me struggling to stop now. The sweater tied around my waist was doing its job. Gael had tied it well, not too tight, not loose enough to slide, just secure, and he had done it so quickly and so quietly that I was still slightly in shock about the whole thing.
He was walking beside me at a pace that matched mine exactly.
I had not asked him to slow down. He just had.
"Stop thinking so loudly," he said.
I looked at him. "I'm not thinking loudly."
"You have a face right now."
"I always have a face. It's attached to my head."
He made a small sound that was almost a laugh. "You know what I mean."
I did know what he meant. I just did not want to confirm it because confirming it meant acknowledging that he could read me that easily and I was not ready to sit with what that meant about us.
The city was doing its golden hour thing below us as we came down the path, all warm light and long shadows, and under different circumstances I would have stopped to look at it properly. Right now I was focused on walking normally and not making any expression that communicated how uncomfortable I was.
"Thank you," I said again. "For earlier."
"You already said that."
"I know. I'm saying it again."
"Stop."
"Gael."
"Alma." He said my name the way he sometimes did, not sharp, just final, like a door closing gently. "It's fine."
I pressed my lips together and looked at the path ahead of us.
The others were somewhere behind us. I could hear Daniel's voice carrying over the hill, which meant he was telling another story that had escalated beyond the original facts. Anna's laughter followed it. Camilla said something I could not make out and Juan responded and then there was more laughter and I felt that particular warmth of knowing your people are having a good time somewhere nearby.
We reached the cars before the others did.
Gael unlocked his without ceremony and I got in the passenger seat and the air conditioning hit me immediately and I closed my eyes for one second in pure gratitude.
When I opened them he was already in the driver's seat.
"There's a mall about ten minutes from here," he said. Not a question.
"Okay," I said.
He started the car.
Neither of us said anything about why we were going to a mall. He did not explain it and I did not ask him to. He just typed something into the navigation and pulled out of the parking space and I looked out the window and watched Barcelona pass by in the evening light.
He sent a message one handed at a red light. I glanced at the screen without meaning to and saw that it was to the group chat. He had written that we were heading back early and that we would meet them later. Simple. No details. No explanation that would require anyone to ask questions.
My shoulders dropped about two inches.
"You didn't have to do that," I said.
"I know."
"They're going to ask questions later."
"Let them."
I turned to look at his profile. He was watching the road, one hand on the wheel, completely unbothered. Like driving his friend to a mall on a Tuesday evening was the most ordinary thing in the world and he had no intention of making it into anything else.
I turned back to the window.
"Gael."
"Alma."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Stop."
I stopped.
The mall was the kind of mid sized Barcelona mall that had everything you needed without being overwhelming. We parked on the second level and took the elevator up and when we got inside the cold air was aggressive enough that I actually shivered.
"I'll meet you in a few minutes," I said.
He nodded. "Take your time."
I found the pharmacy section quickly and handled everything I needed to handle with the focused efficiency of a person who has been embarrassed enough for one afternoon and is now simply in problem solving mode. I also found the small clothing section on the same floor and found a pair of black leggings and then thought about the sweater around my waist and decided leggings were not going to work and put them back.
I was standing in front of a rack of shorts trying to find my size when I heard my name.
I turned around.
Gael was standing three racks away holding a pair of oversized black shorts and an oversized white t-shirt. He looked at me. Then at the shorts in his hand. Then back at me.
"I didn't know your size," he said. "So I got the bigger option."
I stared at him.
He had a small pharmacy bag in his other hand. He held up the shorts and shirt slightly. "For after you change. So you're comfortable."
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
He set both items in my basket without further comment and turned to look at a display of water bottles nearby like he was considering buying one of those too.
"Gael," I said.
"Oversized runs large so it should be fine," he said to the water bottles.
"You bought me clothes."
"They're shorts and a t-shirt."
"You went to the clothing section and bought me clothes."
He picked up a water bottle, looked at the label, put it back. "You were going to be uncomfortable for the rest of the evening."
I did not have a response to that. I stood there holding my basket with his choices sitting on top of everything else and I felt something move in my chest that I was absolutely not going to examine right now in the middle of a mall clothing section.
"Go change," he said. "I'll find us somewhere to sit."
He said it the same way he said everything. Like it was simple. Like it was obvious. Like there was nothing remarkable about any of this.
I went to the changing rooms.
The shorts were perfect. Loose and comfortable and exactly what I needed. The t-shirt was big enough to wear as a dress on its own which meant it covered everything and I immediately felt like a person again rather than someone doing damage control in a yellow dress.
I rolled the yellow dress up carefully and put it in the pharmacy bag and then looked at myself in the mirror for a second.
The sweater was still tied around my waist out of habit and I started to take it off and then stopped.
I left it.
I found Gael at a small café on the same floor, sitting at a corner table with two drinks already on the surface and a small paper bag between them. He looked up when I approached and something in his expression settled when he saw me, like he had been waiting to confirm I was okay and now he could stop waiting.
"Better?" he said.
"So much better." I sat down and pulled the cup toward me. It was warm. I looked at it. "How did you know what to order."
"You've ordered the same thing every time we've been somewhere with coffee," he said. "Cinnamon on top. Extra."
I looked at the cup. There was a generous amount of cinnamon on the foam, more than the standard dusting, exactly the amount I always asked for specifically.
"I always have to ask them for extra," I said.
"I told them before I ordered."
I looked at him across the small table. He was opening the paper bag, which turned out to contain painkillers, a heat patch in packaging I recognized because I had used the same brand before, two squares of dark chocolate, and a small bottle of water.
He set them on the table in a neat line without any ceremony.
I picked up the heat patch and then put it down again because I was not going to cry in a mall café over a heat patch. That was not something I was going to do.
"The chocolate is for the cramps," he said. "Not just because."
"I know."
"Dark chocolate works better than milk chocolate for it."
"I know that too."
"Okay." He picked up his own drink. "Then we're on the same page."
I pressed my lips together hard and looked at the table for a second.
"Do you have sisters," I asked.
"No. Why."
"You just." I gestured vaguely at the lineup of items on the table. "You know things."
He was quiet for a moment. "My mother had difficult ones. I grew up paying attention."
That sentence sat between us quietly.
I thought about his mother at the dinner, warm and easy and the kind of woman who made you feel like you had known her longer than you had. I thought about a younger version of Gael, already paying attention, already learning how to make things easier for the people around him without being asked.
"She raised you well," I said.
"She'll be pleased to hear you think so."
"I'll tell her myself."
Something crossed his face briefly. "She would like that."
We sat with our drinks for a while without needing to fill the silence. My cramps were still present but manageable now and the café was cool and quiet and nobody here knew anything about my afternoon or my yellow dress or the hill at Bunkers del Carmel.
"Can I ask you something," I said.
"You keep asking me that before you ask things."
"It's polite."
"Just ask."
"Do you do this for everyone?" I picked up my cup. "The noticing. The remembering. All of it."
"No." He looked at me steadily. "I pay attention to people I care about."
"That's not an answer to what I asked. You're so vague."
"Yes it is an answer ."
I opened my mouth and then closed it again.
He took a drink of his coffee and looked toward the window where the last of the evening light was sitting on the top floor of the building across the street. His jaw was relaxed. His shoulders were relaxed. He was the most unhurried person I had ever been around and I could not decide if that made things easier or harder.
"Camilla takes oat milk," he said suddenly. "Juan takes his coffee black but he pretends he doesn't like sweet things and then eats everyone else's dessert. Daniel takes an espresso and a glass of water and never drinks the water. Diego doesn't drink coffee, he drinks green tea, and he's embarrassed about it for no reason." He paused. "Anna is still figuring out what she likes. She orders something different every time."
I stared at him.
He looked back at me. "You asked if I do it for everyone."
"You remember all of that."
"People tell you who they are constantly," he said. "You just have to be paying attention."
I sat with that.
Outside the café the mall was doing its early evening thing, families moving toward the food court, a group of teenagers taking up more space than necessary near the escalators, someone's small child making an announcement to the general public about wanting ice cream.
Normal life happening in all directions.
And I was sitting across from Gael in an oversized white t-shirt he had bought me and drinking coffee with extra cinnamon that he had remembered without being asked and I was realizing something that I had been circling for weeks without landing on directly.
Being around Gael felt different from being around everyone else.
Not louder or more exciting. Not the way Gabriel made a room feel when he walked into it, that immediate shift in energy that made everyone stand up a little straighter. Not like that at all.
It felt quieter. Steadier. Like turning a light on in a room you had been navigating in the dark and realizing you had been doing fine but this was better.
I did not say any of that out loud.
I ate one of the squares of chocolate instead and pushed the other one toward him and he took it without comment.
We stayed in the café for another twenty minutes and then made our way back to the others.
Camilla saw us first.
She was sitting on the wall near where the cars were parked and she looked at me and then at the bag in my hand and then at the oversized white t-shirt and the black shorts and her expression did the thing where everything she was thinking moved across her face in sequence like a slideshow.
She did not say a single word.
She hugged me instead, quickly, and then stepped back and started talking to Daniel about something completely unrelated and I looked at her with profound gratitude.
Juan asked if everything was fine.
"Fine," Gael said.
Juan nodded and asked nothing else.
Diego offered me a snack from his bag, which still seemed to contain provisions for a small expedition, and I took it and sat down beside Camilla and the evening settled back around us like it had not been interrupted.
Later, when the boys were loading things into the car and Anna was showing Camilla something on her phone, Camilla leaned close to me.
"Are you okay? Actually."
"Actually yes," I said.
She looked at me for a second. "He bought you clothes."
"They're just shorts and a t-shirt."
"Alma."
"Camilla."
She looked at me with the expression she uses when she thinks I am being deliberately slow about something. "Men do not go to the clothing section of a mall to buy their friends comfortable clothes. That is not a friend thing."
I looked at where Gael was standing near the car, talking to Juan about something, his hands in his pockets, completely relaxed.
"He was just being practical," I said.
Camilla was quiet for exactly long enough to make her point and then she went back to looking at Anna's phone.
Diego appeared from somewhere and sat down on the wall on my other side and stretched his legs out. "Two more months," he said to nobody in particular.
Juan looked over. "Don't remind me."
"Last semester on campus," Diego said, and there was something in his voice that was trying to be cheerful and landing somewhere more complicated. "After that we're just adults with degrees and problems."
"Speak for yourself," Juan said. "I have a plan."
"You don't have a plan. You have an idea and a spreadsheet."
"That's a plan."
Gael came and sat on the wall on the other side of Diego. "Last semester," he repeated. He said it quietly, like he was trying it out.
Daniel made a sound from where he was leaning against the car. "Easy for the seniors to talk about finishing. Some of us have two more years."
"One for me," Anna said. "Art school is two years after foundation."
"Still." Daniel looked at Gael. "You're going to miss it."
"I'm going to miss specific parts of it," Gael said.
"What parts," I asked.
He looked at me briefly. "Some things you don't know you'll miss until they change."
Camilla made a small sound beside me. I did not look at her.
The evening was full dark now and the streetlights were doing their work and Barcelona was sitting around us the way it always did, like it had been there forever and would keep being there long after all of us had sorted ourselves out and figured out what came next.
"I'm not ready for you all to graduate," I said.
It came out more honest than I intended.
Diego looked at me with genuine warmth. "We're not going anywhere. Just to different buildings."
"You say that now."
"I say it because it's true," he said.
Juan nodded. "Things change but people don't disappear. Not if they matter."
Camilla squeezed my hand briefly. Anna looked at Daniel and he looked back at her with that easy confidence of his that I think covered more than he ever let on.
Gael said nothing.
But he was looking at the city when I glanced at him, and there was something in the set of his shoulders that told me he was thinking about more than graduation.
We stayed like that for a while, all of us together on a wall above Barcelona, not quite ready to get in the cars and go back to the ordinary version of our lives.
The ordinary version was still waiting.
But for a few more minutes it could wait.