breath and couldn’t. Like something inside her was breaking loose and taking her with it.
Kira was a virgin back then. She’d spent the fall playing around with a cute senior named Jared. He was gentle, never pushed her. She was just realizing he might be gay. She didn’t care. One strange part of not eating: though she got more male attention than before, she was less interested. And her friends who’d had sex said things like I’m glad it’s over, It didn’t hurt that much, It was fine fun actually. Though Leigh—the soccer goalie, who had more experience than the others—had refused to say much, just, Oh, you’ll see, her eyes stunned and quiet. Kira hadn’t understood why. Now she did.
Because what she heard in that hallway was not fine fun actually but something she hadn’t known existed, a pleasure she had thought was a fantasy that YouPorn proffered to horny boys.
She stood frozen, feet locked to the hallway carpet. Suddenly her mother groaned, a long low sound. Kira couldn’t imagine what could make Becks make that noise. Couldn’t imagine, though she knew. Whatever her father was doing or saying she couldn’t hear, a minor blessing.
She sidled back to her bedroom, shut the door firmly.
Though now that she knew what was happening she couldn’t help but hear. It went on another fourteen minutes, she clocked it. And who knew how long before? She was almost proud of them; they were both over forty.
By the time she fell asleep, she knew she’d never think about sex the same way again. Not now that she knew what it could be. She dumped Jared that afternoon. Maybe she wasn’t ready to lose her virginity, but she was done hanging out with a guy who was more interested in his fellow baseball players than her. She started eating again too—she remembered a couple months later seeing her parents grin as she insisted her father fire up the grill on a cold February night and barbeque a steak.
In fact, Kira saw now what she never had before. That night had marked the beginning of the end of her anorexic episode. You couldn’t have the pleasures of the flesh if you were a skeleton.
Great talk, Kira.
Kira Unsworth, nineteen, five foot nine inches tall, majoring in who-knows-what at Tufts University. Volunteer at Boston Children’s, and not in a half-assed way: She never missed a week. She made the kids forget themselves for a little while. Secret reader of romance novels, the old Harlequin ones. Bit of a smart-ass.
She wasn’t perfect. She’d spent a month flirting with a pretty lesbian in her Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies class just to see how it felt. When the girl finally tried to kiss her, Kira had said, Oh, no, I’m straight, like the girl couldn’t possibly have thought otherwise. She’d dumped her last boyfriend by text. He’d deserved it.
She was okay, really. Not the worst.
Ten fifty-nine.
Right on time Jacques showed up.
With a girl.
2
Rebecca and Brian and Tony found the wide stone apartment building just where they’d left it on Carrer de València. Twelve twenty-three a.m.
No Kira.
No shock, either. Rebecca had expected Kira would want to prove her independence by running late. She’d be back soon enough. Or maybe she’d text, Promise 1.
Rebecca didn’t love the idea of a nineteen-year-old girl out alone in a foreign city. But Barcelona was safe—safer than Boston—and Kira had insisted she wanted a few hours to herself. She was cool-headed for her age, trustworthy. She had survived her first year at Tufts without much damage, one cheating boyfriend and one stolen jacket notwithstanding. She was the one her friends texted when they found themselves stumbling out of the party with the quarterback and his two best friends: find me plz they say its cool idk…
Rebecca couldn’t imagine being the mother of a quote-unquote difficult teenager. The easy ones were difficult enough.
Still, she was faintly disappointed Kira wasn’t waiting. She’d imagined maybe they’d go for a drink, leave Bri and Tony at the apartment. She should have said so before dinner. But she’d worried Kira might give her a half-pitying Mom, you’re way too old for these places look.
The foolish pride of the fortysomething woman.
* * *
She walked hand in hand with Brian up the sweeping marble staircase to their second-floor apartment. “A Grand Apartment,” the listing had promised: a living room with twelve-foot ceilings, a crystal chandelier, a Juliet balcony, and yes, a grand piano. Four hundred sixty euros a night. But they