Aria
“Uhhhh, could you please tell me why you packed all your things?”
The panicked voice of my best friend came through the speakers of my car and made me grimace involuntarily. I was glad that my hands were already firmly on the steering wheel, because at the moment I felt anything but capable of multitasking.
I was on the highway heading toward Mataró, still about forty five minutes away, and was desperately trying to concentrate on not getting into an accident. A task that normally caused me no trouble at all, but today demanded far more attention, because my nerves were already stretched to the limit. The rain drummed relentlessly against the windshield, as if it wanted to remind me once again that today might not be the best day for spontaneous life decisions.
A brief glance at the dashboard told me that it was exactly three p.m. The sky hung heavy and gray over the road, densely clouded, the light muted and cool. Everything felt a little too quiet, a little too tense, as if the world were holding its breath.
“Natalia,” I said, unable to suppress a soft chuckle, “I’ve been driving for five hours already. And you’re only noticing this now?”
I raised an eyebrow, even though she obviously could not see it, and focused back on the traffic while my fingers tightened their grip on the steering wheel.
“I do not find this funny at all, Aria!” she snapped. “I was at work. And then I come home and see that you packed your things. All of your things. Where the hell are you?”
Her voice sounded sharper now, more irritated, that very specific tone she always had when she was trying to keep control. I pictured her standing in her apartment, in the middle of the chaos, arms crossed, her gaze darting back and forth between the empty shelves and the open drawers.
I took a deep breath, let my eyes briefly wander over the wet road ahead of me, and cleared my throat.
“Well,” I began slowly, almost carefully, “if I were to tell you purely hypothetically, really just purely hypothetically, that I packed my things and am currently somewhere near Mataró… how badly would you freak out?”
My foot shifted slightly on the accelerator while my fingers tapped nervously against the steering wheel. I chewed on my lower lip and knew exactly that I was steering this conversation into a direction I would not be able to get out of so easily.
For a moment, nothing came from the speakers. Then I heard Natalia’s deep, drawn out groan, that one sound that unmistakably told me she was counting to ten in her head right now. Maybe even to twenty. Just in case.
I pulled my lips into a crooked smile while my gaze rested on the road ahead of me and the windshield wipers performed their monotonous duty.
Oh yes. This was definitely going to escalate.
“Aria, I sincerely hope, purely hypothetically, that this is a damn joke!”
Natalia’s voice practically exploded out of my car speakers and made me flinch. I bit down quickly on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud, because the way she emphasized the word hypothetically alone told me that she was already mentally very close to canceling our friendship.
“If you had just waited a few weeks, we could have gone to Mataró together!” she continued, not giving me even the slightest chance to reply. “But no, of course you couldn’t wait. No, Aria once again chooses spontaneous self destruction! I would love nothing more right now than to get into my car, drive after you, and personally drag you out of that vehicle just to haul you back to San Sebastián!”
I pulled a slight face, more out of habit than genuine remorse, and shrugged, even though she could not see it. My fingers clenched tighter around the steering wheel as I tried to look serious and suppress the amusement rising inside me at the same time. A combination I had never been particularly good at.
“Uhhhhhh,” I drawled and deliberately let a small, far too long pause stretch out. “Well… I’m almost there already. And well… you can come after me soon, sweetheart,” I added in a syrupy sweet tone, sincerely hoping that this exact choice of voice would either calm her down or make her completely explode. Either option would have been entertaining.
I cast a quick glance at the road ahead of me and sighed softly. Far too many cars were inching forward in sluggish traffic, as if everyone had spontaneously decided to be out on the road on this exact day, at this exact time, right here. My fingers drummed impatiently against the steering wheel while my gaze wandered back and forth between the rearview mirror, the traffic, and the gray sky.
Great.
Not only was I currently driving my best friend to the brink of madness with a rash decision, but as if that were not enough, the traffic had also decided to get on my nerves. The cars crept forward painfully slowly, and every single red brake light felt like a personal provocation, while my patience dwindled a little more with every passing minute.
“What exactly is your plan? You only found the photo yesterday and…” Natalia said, but her voice trailed off mid sentence, as if she herself had realized that there was no simple answer to that question.
I was silent for a moment, exhaled slowly, and had the distinct feeling that this day had decided to give absolutely everything it had in terms of chaos and emotional overload.
Shortly after, a road sign entered my field of vision that read Mataró, with the indication underneath of how many kilometers were still left. A nervous excitement stirred inside me, and my heart began to beat a little too fast as I kept shifting my gaze between the sign and the road.
My thoughts inevitably drifted back to yesterday, to the moment when Natalia and I had been clearing out my mother’s apartment. Every box we filled had felt like it was swallowing a piece of the past, and it was right there that I had found this photograph that had once again thrown my already shaken life off balance.
My mother had died three weeks ago, and even now I could hardly believe that this fact was real. Whether I had grieved was not in question, because I had cried endlessly and hidden away in Natalia’s apartment, as if I could shelter myself there from a world that simply kept going without my mother.
For me, everything had collapsed, because I had loved my mother more than anything, and suddenly she had been taken from me without any warning. As if that had not been enough, I had then found this photo of her standing beside a strange man whose face was completely unfamiliar to me.
The picture had to be about twenty four years old, and at first I had barely reacted to it, as if my mind had refused to grasp its significance. But then I had begun to study this man more and more closely, until he had pushed everything else out of my thoughts.
My entire life, my mother had never told me who my father was, and every time I had asked her about it, she had cried. There had been so much pain in her eyes that I had never been able to bring myself to keep asking, even though the uncertainty had accompanied me all my life.
And then I had seen this picture, and in a single instant, everything I had painstakingly kept in balance had started to sway again.
“I’m going to look for this man, Natalia. I need to know if I still have family and…”
My voice grew quieter, more fragile, and the sentence faded away before I could finish it. I stared at the road ahead of me, as if the gray asphalt might supply the words I was missing. My fingers tensed around the steering wheel while I briefly pressed my lips together to steady myself.
“I found a photo studio in Mataró online,” I finally continued, trying to sound more determined than I felt inside. “I’ll ask there about a job first, and then I’ll look for this man, Natalia.”
This time my voice was firmer, clearer, as if I had planted the determination inside myself while speaking. It was not a perfect plan, but it was a plan, and right now that felt like everything I needed.
Natalia was silent for a moment before she replied, and when she did, her voice sounded soft and sad at the same time. “I can’t tell you what is right or wrong, Aria. But I would have liked to be by your side to support you while you search for your father.”
A warm ache spread through my chest, and I had to swallow before I could answer. “You have supported me and helped me like no one else in the past three weeks, Natalia,” I said quietly. “Enjoy the weeks off without me,” I added, forcing myself into a small smile, even though she could not see it.
“You are my best friend!” she blurted out immediately, without a second of hesitation. “Of course I’m here for you, and I’ll come after you soon.” A moment later, her voice grew quieter, almost murmured. “I really don’t like that you left without me.”
I snorted softly and felt a gentle smile creep onto my lips despite everything. Even in the middle of chaos, in the middle of all that pain, it was comforting to know that at least one constant in my life did not simply dissolve.
“You are the best, Natalia. Never forget that,” I said and let my gaze briefly sweep over the road as another sign finally appeared, telling me that I would soon be in Mataró. “But now enjoy your evening,” I added, with a slight undertone of exhaustion and affection at the same time.
“Yeah yeah! Of course I’m the best,” she replied promptly, without hesitating for even a second. “And yesss, I’m going to bed now. I’m soooo tired, sweetheart.” Her voice suddenly turned more serious, even though she tried to play it down. “Please take care of yourself and write to me regularly. And if anything happens to you, I will find whoever did it and kill them… byeeeeeee!”
Then the line went dead.
I chuckled softly, shook my head, and could not suppress a broader smile. Natalia was without a doubt the craziest woman in the world. And I loved her exactly for that.
I turned on the blinker, followed the calm voice of my navigation system, and noticed how the surroundings slowly began to change. According to the display, I should arrive in about fifteen minutes, and indeed the streets were growing emptier. The cars around me became fewer, the traffic more relaxed, almost as if the world around me were shifting down a gear.
I still could not see much of Mataró, but the mere fact that I was so close now made my excitement rise again. My stomach tightened slightly while my gaze attentively followed every new turnoff.
Then it started to rain again. The first drops splattered against the windshield, followed by more and more, until the wipers once again took up their monotonous back and forth.
“Great,” I muttered and groaned in annoyance. “I hate rain.”
And yet I had the strange feeling that this rain was not just weather, but a kind of silent companion on the final stretch into a city that held far more for me than I suspected.
