The alarm comes blasting through my ears, making me groan. I stretch out my arm and feel the numbness, and slide off the alarm on my phone reminding me that I need to get up. My eyes flutter open and I immediately see the marks on my arm. That must have been a good sleep.

I stand up and head straight over to the window, and notice that Mikel's window is closed. He must be still sleeping. I shrug and make the bed, and head to the restroom to splash my face with some water and brush my teeth. Then I head downstairs to find tita and Luisa talking in Spanish. It looks like little Pablo is still sleeping. They greet me as they see me. I greet them back. In a more tiring way and with little interest because the bed is still calling me.

But we have to do what we have to do, and that includes waking up in the morning and not afternoon.

Simultaneously we all look up at the ceiling as we hear little footsteps, indicating that little Pablo is now wide awake. Luisa immediately stands up from her seat and heads upstairs to pick him up.

Once seated, little Pablo's black hair is sticking up everywhere as if someone put a strong gel on it and styled it like that, his eyes are still droopy, and his lips are in a pout. He rubs his eyes and stares at a distance before looking at me with his cute brown eyes.

"¿Qué te gusta, Pablo?" I ask him in a very steady and slow Spanish, which makes both Luisa and tita stare at me. "What?"

"Hablas español, Andresito..." Tita says, and although I have loaded a bit in a few seconds, I perfectly understand what she said. "Tengo confianza que vas a tener un trabajo pronto."

Well, I'm not that advanced. I raise a brow.

"Me gustan los huevos," little Pablo says in a baby voice.

"I said you'll have a job soon," tita says as she pinches little Pablo's cheek. "¿Tienes hambre? Voy a cocinar. Espera, Pablito."

I nod my head in understand and tap the tip of Pablo's nose. He blinks and stares at me for a while before turning over his shoulder to watch his mom cook. I see tita cracking an egg. Does huevos mean eggs? I take note of that mentally.

A few moments later, Pablo is served the fried eggs and a small scoop of rice. Tita asks me that he has cooked for me as well, and I thank her. Luisa and tita head to the living room, leaving me and Pablo alone, and well, we both eat peacefully. Occasionally, he would glance at me as if he's curious. For a 5-year-old kid, he seems pretty quiet.

"¿Cuántos años tienes?" he says to me. Both of my eyebrows raise.

"Pablito, I don't understand what you're saying." I tell him.

He chews another egg and shoves it into his tiny mouth. "No te entiendo. Mi mama me dijo que tengas que quedarme aquí. ¿De dónde eres?"

"Pablo, I don't speak Spanish. Yet." I rummage my head of the proper verb to use. I'm pretty sure I've read it somewhere. Hablar. Ah, that's it. And now, the conjugation. Jesus. I really need to learn these conjugations. Finally. "No hablo español."

"Pero lo estás hablando ahora." Little Pablo cuts the egg in half, stabbing the yolk until it bleeds out. The action reminds me of Alex and I smile, ruffling his hair that even makes it more chaotic. He lets out a small giggle before shoving another mouthful of egg in his mouth. "¿Lo quieres?"

I shake my head, feeling proud of myself that I understand another Spanish word. He continues eating until the plate is clean, and then he licks it, which then reminds me of Alex when he was a kid, as he used to lick his plate before going outside to play with his friends.

"You remind me of Alex when he was a kid,"

Pablo blinks his brown eyes at me, and then he pouts, which makes me laugh. I grab his empty plate along with mine and wash it immediately, including the pan that was used to cook the eggs. The whole time he's watching him, and I point down the floor to ask if he wants to get down. Little Pablo can actually do it by himself since he's old enough, but he gets treated like a baby prince here, so why would I treat him differently? I grab him by the pits and place him down, then he runs towards the kitchen where he begins talking to Luisa in Spanish while his mother watches.

It's tita's off day today, so she gets to spend time with Pablo. They are planning to go to the mall and spend a few, and I'm actually offered to come with them. But I politely decline and tell my tita that I would explore Tarifa today so I can be familiar with the location, and she totally agrees. I've only been to a few locations here. In fact, you can count them with one hand. The supermarket, the beach, the bus station. That's it. Oh, yeah, the Café Azúl owned by pretty Isabella.

They start to prepare, including Luisa. And while they are showering, I take the time to clean up the living room.

Pablo is wearing a blue checkered polo shirt–and he looks really cute in it– and white shorts, pairing it with a white converse. He shows me something on his mom's phone–a video of Power Rangers attacking some big creature, and they are calling for their robots to combine.

"Mira, mira," Pablo mumbles as he flicks his eyes from me to the screen.

I watch him watch the show, and he remains silent, his full attention now on the combined robots having a fistfight with the big monster. I turn on the TV and flick through several channels–and all of them are speaking in Spanish–until I reach Boing, a Spanish cartoon channel similar to Cartoon Network, which is still in Spanish. Pablo, upon seeing what's on the television, puts down the phone and his eyes are now glued to the cartoon in the big screen. Ben 10 is playing on the television.

Pablo stands up and gets in the center, mimicking the main character, Ben, as he presses the watch on his wrist and he turns into Ghost Freak. He stops moving around and continues to watch.

If I were to take care of this kid my whole life, I'd do it without any hesitation. Pablo is just so cute that you can't resist not watching him. Unfortunately, he's going to grow up and he's going to experience all the hardship and obstacle life has to offer, and he's going to feel like he's alone in the world, and he's going to turn to drugs as his coping mechanism, and his life will be destroyed as the world looks down on him.

Okay, that's a wild imagination. I'm pretty sure he's just going to face the first part as he grows up, and his mother is a Filipina. With the powerful tsinelas, he's bound to obey his mother's commands.

A few moments later, tita and Luisa both come down at the same time. Luisa is holding tita's first, and Pablo runs after his mom.

"Andres, we're just going out." Tita says as Pablo runs towards the door, too excited to head out. "If you're going out, make sure everything is turned off, okay?"

"Vamos, vamoooooos."

"Espera, Pablito." Luisa grabs Pablo's hand and they head out together. "Mikel might pass by. If you're still here by then, he'll give us a pie. If you want to eat, go ahead, but make sure to leave us. Their pie is to die for. I'm not kidding."

"Claro,"

"You're learning," Tita says. She pinches my cheek as if I'm a child. "You just look like your papa when he was young. Keep up your Spanish learning, and you'll be speaking it in no time."

"Gracias,"

"Muy bien,"

And then they head off.

I wish I know more about them being young. My dad used to talk about tita and how she got that scholarship in La Salle, and how proud he was when she started learning Spanish to build a future here in Spain. Unfortunately, being the adopted kid of his parents, a lot of our relatives tended to ignore her. And when she started working here and getting more money than what she was earning in the Philippines, well, they clung to her like a leech. But tita cannot be swayed with words. She was just talking to her parents, my dad and my mom, and they had good memories together.

The weather gets increasingly hot as the day progresses, and the more I stay on the couch, the less I want to head out. Sweat clinging to my skin and clothes is the most uncomfortable feeling ever, and I experienced that a lot when I was back home. Even at night when it was supposed to be cold. And it sucks having to wake up full of sweat, shirt drenched, and everything feels like it's on fire.

So I stay throughout the morning until afternoon like a normal, jobless person who doesn't have much option to do anything else rather than to watch television, which is dubbed in Spanish, and I solely rely on their actions to get a context of what the show is about. But it's fucking hard.

By the afternoon, around 2, Mikel drops by.

Mikel shouts by the gate. I walk towards the door and lean on the doorway, and when he sees me, a grin makes its way to his lips. In his hand a pie.

He leans his other hand on the gate, supporting himself, and his grin turns into a genuine smile. Today, he's wearing a dark blue basketball top, etched on it is STARBURY with a star logo below, in a large print. The shirt is a bit big on him, and it exposes the side of his chest and a bit of his stomach. Well, if your eyes happen to be a bit... intense. Not that my eyes are intense. They are pretty much not.

His cheeks are kind of pinkish, and maybe because the weather is quite hot today, and he's bathing under the sun right now, but it looks good on him. The long arms, the black shorts, a bit short, and his legs are a bit hairy.

Realizing that I'm ogling him, I slap myself and he looks concerned.

"¿Qué te pasó?" he asks, his green eyes now meeting mine. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing..." I tell him and walk towards him to open the gate. "How do you say that in Spanish?"

"Nada," he gives me another smile that has me getting confused. In the moment. Just in the moment. "Cómo se dice. If you want to say something but you don't know the, uh, translation. You can, um, ah... ask ¿Cómo se dice...? and then the word."

"Understood,"

"Entendido,"

"Entendido,"

"Ah, here's the pie. It's my grandma's famous recipe." Mikel hands me the pie and our hands brush, and there are little sparks. Kind of like what you get when there's an electrical imbalance in your body, and you end up getting basically electrocuted when you touch someone.

Static electricity. Yeah, that's probably it. He must have felt it, too, because he pulls back a bit faster, and then he laughs.

"Where's Aimee?" he asks me.

"Oh, she went to the mall with Pablo and Luisa. They are probably going to watch something in the cinema. Whatever's showing."

"Why didn't you come with them?"

"Nah," I brush it off, waving my hand in the air as if I'm swatting a fly. "I didn't want to. I wanted to explore Tarifa, but I guess I got so lazy that I just spent my morning watching random stuff on the television without understanding anything."

"Do you want to watch together?"

"Oh well, yeah, sure, pick something on Netflix or anything."

He chuckles. "I was thinking more of watching what's going on with the city, but I guess it's more comfortable here. Watch the television then."

Mikel gets in and enters the house, and I follow him suit. For some reason, I become aware of the fact that I haven't even washed myself yet. I haven't showered. The last shower I had was yesterday, and I probably smell of bedsheets and pillows and sleep. But good thing I brushed my teeth, and my deo states that the freshness can last up to 48 hours. That should be true, right?

Right. I have nothing to worry about. But for the sake of cleanliness and hygiene, I smell my pits and... nothing. Good God. Why haven't I thought of showering earlier?

He grabs the remote and switch to Prime Video. His eyes squint as he searches for right series or movies. He's seated at the far end of the sofa, and I'm sitting at the opposite far end, and there's a huge space in the middle, and everything seems so awkward. At least for me. My eyes are trained on the television, but I can see what he's doing from the corner of my eyes. And he's still... busy looking for the right movie until he lets out a sigh and settles on shuffle button.

And then Grey's Anatomy plays on the television.

And for some reason, and it seems that God wants to embarrass me further, and I slightly condemn my tita for watching this show, it suddenly plays the two male doctors kissing in an ambulance while it's storming outside. English audio on, Spanish subtitles on. And there's a lot of panting, a bit of metal creaking, and the loud storm in the background. And I'm so fucking embarrassed.

"That was interesting..." Mikel says, and I slowly look at him. "Aimee watches a lot of doctor stuff. I remember one time she told me she wanted to be a real doctor."

Grey's Anatomy is still playing in the background. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I think she wanted to be a dentist."

"I never knew that,"

We continue watching, and thank God, the making out session is now done and all the doctors are now trying to save the lives of other people in the hospital. After sharing a hot, and probably intense, make-out session in an ambulance while there was a storm. Good plot.

"There's a lot of things I don't understand here," Mikel blinks.

I laugh, shaking my head. "I don't as well, but I have an idea why." He turns to look at me. "We've started watching Grey's Anatomy, at... Season 15, episode 8. And we don't know the doctor terms. Even I'm having issue remembering what EKG is. What's EKG again?"

"No tengo ni idea," Mikel states, laughing. "I don't have any idea."

"You know what? I think your idea of watching the city sounds better."

He grins. "Okay,"

"Okay," he stands up. "Please sit down." He sits down. "I haven't showered yet. Give me 15 minutes, please? ¿Por favor? ¿Por favor?"

"Claro, claro." Mikel chuckles and shakes his head.

I run upstairs and get on the shower with so much haste that I nearly trip. The last thing I want is to go outside with a huge bruise on my face. Better be careful.

After almost 20 minutes, I'm already downstairs with my hair still a bit wet, but Mikel doesn't care.

"I put the pie in the fridge," I nod my head.

"Where should we go?"

"Just around the city, and we're walking." Mikel responds, wiggling his brow.

I make sure to lock everything in the house, and before I close the door, I check the spare key that tita gave to me yesterday in my purse. Then I shut the door once I confirm that it's in my purse. Because I forget a lot of things, so I need to double check almost everything.

As I lock the gate, a car pulls up in front of us.

"Andres!"

"Jorge. What are you doing here?" I ask him, surprised that he has come by.

"I was just going to ask if you wanted to go around the city." Jorge says.

My eyes lock with Mikel, who seems a bit confused, and then they lock eyes. Jorge looks up Mikel from head to toe, and I'm not sure if that's appropriate or not because I haven't been long enough in Spain to know all of their culture, so it might be... appropriate. I totally have no idea. No tengo ni idea. As what Mikel said half an hour ago.

"Actually... I'm going around the city with Mikel. Mikel... this is Jorge."

"Hola," Mikel says nonchalantly, as if he's uninterested.

"Hola," Jorge gives the same nonchalance. Again, I don't know if it's just the culture... or if they're having a mini... telepathy fight, but they seem to be staring intensely at each other. Am I missing something? "Okay, we can go around the city. The three of us. Hop in."

"Okay..." I laugh rather awkwardly.

Without any questions, I climb in the passenger seat (as Jorge already opens the door for me by stretching his body and reaching for the handle and opening it) and Mikel climbs in the back seat.

"Vamonos," Mikel says and I agree.

Mikel and I lock gaze, and we both smile at each other.

"Vamonooooooooos," Jorge says childishly. And then off we go.