Isla and the Happily Ever After

We dash below an awning and squint through the rain, across an intersection, at its curious stone facade. Over a century ago, a wealthy man named Milà commissioned Gaudí to design the building. Its grandiose structure is made entirely of waves and curves. There’s not a single straight line of construction. It was the home of Milà’s family, as well as several renters, but most of the locals despised it as an eyesore – exactly how the same generation of Parisians felt about their own recently built Eiffel Tower.

I wonder how I would have felt about it back then. I’d like to think I would have been one of the people who understood that it was special. That being singular is the exact thing that makes something – or someone – amazing.

“Nice roof,” Josh says. “But your Treehouse is better.”

I nudge him, my own singular and amazing someone, and he nudges me back. La Pedrera’s rooftop terrace is famous. It’s covered in strange, bulky chimneys. Some of them look like giant soft-serve ice-cream cones, others like soldiers in medieval helmets. Tourists march up and down Escher-esque staircases, around and around the chimneys, bumping umbrellas. They’re like boats adrift at sea.

“It’s like an ocean.” Josh’s voice is filled with admiration. “The wavy limestone, the iron railings.” And the balconies look like twists of tentacles and seaweed. Though it’s possible that the weather is adding to our overall perception. Our eyes travel towards the unsheltered line of people waiting to get inside.

“That’s, uh, some crowd,” I say.

“And some rain.”

I glance at him and give a tentative shrug. “Next?”

He grins with relief. “I don’t want to waste a single minute of this day.”

I feel the same way, I think, staring at his dimples.

Kurt’s map walks us down the street towards a second Gaudí-designed house. We affix ourselves to the sides of buildings for protection from the rain, but it doesn’t matter. It soaks us anyway. “It’s your turn,” Josh says. “Tell me about your friends. Sanjita. What happened there?”

“So…you remember.”

“I remember that you were friends with her our freshman year. Did you split because she wanted to be popular? I asked Rashmi once, but she said her sister refused to talk about you.”

The stab to my heart is sharp and unexpected. “You asked your ex-girlfriend about my friendship with her sister?”

“Whoa. No. Not recently. While we were dating.”

“Oh.” Though I’m still confused.

Josh guides me below a neon-green cross, the sheltered entrance of a farmàcia. “Isla. I would never do that to you. I’ve had exactly one exchange with her since school began. About three weeks ago, she texted me to ask how I was doing. I told her I’m great, because I’m seeing you. She wished us well. She’s dating some dude at Brown.”

I wish this knowledge wasn’t as welcome as it is. I try not to think about Rashmi. I try not to think about her and Josh in my room last year. I try not to think about how they probably had sex in my bed. And maybe my shower. And maybe my floor, too.

I try.

Josh interprets my silence as a need for further explanation. “I spent some time with her family one summer. Sanjita was acting out, and I could tell she was depressed. That’s why I asked Rashmi about you guys. So what happened?”

I’ve never told anyone this story before. It takes me a minute to gather my courage. “She’s the only female friend that I’ve ever had, apart from my sisters. When I showed up at our school…I didn’t even know how to make friends.”

Josh removes my hands from my coat pockets. He pulls me closer.

“I mean, Kurt and I were friends before we even knew what the word meant. So it felt like a miracle when Sanjita wanted to hang out with me. And we had fun. And we could talk about boys, and she was interested in fashion, and she was emotional. She was the anti-Kurt. So I should’ve known what would happen when he joined us the following year, but I didn’t. I thought my friends would automatically become friends with each other through…I don’t know. The divine egotistical magic of me.”

Josh winces. “I’m sorry.”

“So he comes to Paris, and she’s embarrassed by him. And I can tell that she wants me to ditch him, and he keeps asking me why she doesn’t like him, and…I’m just stuck between the two of them.”

“Like you were with Sébastien.”

“Worse, because this came first. I wasn’t expecting it.” My voice catches. “Sh— She made me choose. She actually said it. She said Kurt was holding us back.”

He squeezes my hands. “Kurt would never ask you to choose.”

“I know.” Tears spill over my eyes. “And that’s why I chose him.”

Josh looks for something to dry my tears, but we’re already so wet that it’s pointless. We laugh as he tries to dry them with the inner sleeve of his hoodie.

“I’m sorry that happened,” he says. “I’m sorry she hurt you.”

I shrug at my boots.

“If it makes you feel any better? Sanjita was miserable for, like, a full year after you guys stopped hanging out. Even after her social-climbing aspirations had been met, and she’d become friends with Emily. I think she still has regrets about what she did.”

“I know she does. When I look at her, I see them, too.”

“Do you have any regrets?”

“Only that I stopped trying to make new friends. Between her and Sébastien? Ugh.” I give our connected hands a single swing. “But someone recently taught me that not everyone is so judgemental.”

Josh shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can be pretty judgemental.”

“Yeah, but…it’s like you’re on the right side of the law.”

He smiles.

I poke his chest. “You wanna see something cool?”

“I’m looking at it.”

“Shut up.” I laugh. “Turn around.”

We’re standing across the street from Casa Batlló, another Gaudí masterpiece. The surface is covered in ceramic-shard mosaics – aqua and cobalt, rust and gold – in rough, skinlike patterns. And it has another spectacular rooftop, an animalistic arch of metallic tiles that’s curved like the back of a mighty dragon. I like this building even more.

Josh’s eyes widen with speechlessness.