Option 3 - It had been a curious week

It had been a curious week. Jack left the airport with a funny feeling inside his stomach. He was tired, he had not slept much the previous night.

When his best friend Thomas told him about his intentions of studying in Barcelona for a year, Jack had only seen an opportunity to travel cheaply and have a house to stay. Looking back, he realized how childish that had been.

He had missed Thomas a little bit. He was his own company watching the Sunday night football. Thomas was the one Jack would drag to the cinema to watch movies no one else would want to see. And though it would not be manly to admiti, Jack needed that reassuring presence by his side every now and then to keep his mind clear.

But Thomas had not been there. For 3 months, the brown-eyed, pot-smoking geek had not been there and Jack had survived fairly well. That was, of course, until she came. She, with her flashy green eyes and her less than subtle clothes. Thomas would have liked her. Maybe they would have fought over her for a while, eventually remembering the "bros before hoes" commandment.

However, in the absence of Thomas, Jack had had Ana all to himself. Which basically meant that he had time to be with her in the Spanish classes where they had met, and a whole lot more time to fall in love with her. And he did fall in love. And after two months of seduction games and of "playing hard to get" moves, Jack pushed her against a wall and kissed her. With that bold gesture, began an undeclared relationship of doubts and insecurities, but with as much passion as one can take.

That series of events had been on his mind when he had been travelling from London to Barcelona. It had brought a light smile to his face. On the contrary, recallling that he had not seen Ana for a week because she was in Paris visiting her father and the he would be away when she returned, had darkened his expression.

The existence of Ana made his stay at Barcelona feel bittersweet. It had been great seeing Thomas again and the city was quite nice, with its candy stores and the loud Spanish people everywhere. But no matter how hard he tried, Jack just could not bring himself to not desire the day of his flight back to England. Somehow, the discos and the mildly attractive girls were not good enough anymore, they did not matter. That had felt weird. A week in Barcelona and all he saw was Ana all over the place? A curious week indeed.

Leaving all that behind, he was finally in London again. He took the bus home, left his luggage by the door and got in his car, only stopping at the University.

He walked slowly into the building, searching carefully for Ana. She did not know he was coming. It did not take long for him to find her in her high-heeled shoe self. She had the power to make herself look more... many things she was not. And as he noticed she had spotted him, he took his sunglasses off, put them in his pocket and grinned like he had not grinned for a week.

"Hey, Sweet Pea."

Ana put her arms around his neck and kissed his lips hard, then resting her head on his should, her mouth against his ear.

"I missed you."

Jack held her tighter and instinctively knew that was how it felt to have something, someone, to return to.

Maria João Pereira