Excerpt from Barcelona Dreaming by Rupert Thomson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Once he had finished his tea, which he drank without saying a word—this silence also felt normal, learned—I asked how he was feeling. He nodded, but didn't speak. I told him it was late. I had to work in the morning, and I needed sleep. Rising from the table, he thanked me for the tea. I walked him out of my apartment and through the small lobby. On the street I gave him a twenty-euro note, which was all I had on me. For a taxi, I said. He took the money and stared at it. I asked if it was enough. Still looking at the money, he nodded again. I pointed along the street to the main road at the end. He could find a taxi on Avinguda Foix, I told him. They came down from the Ronda all the time.

"Vous pouvez me montrer," he said.

He seemed insistent, and also commanding, and though I was tired it felt easier to do as he asked. We walked to the main road without talking. The narrow streets were deserted, with metal blinds lowered on most of the small businesses and shops. We saw no one.

As we approached Avinguda Foix, a taxi drifted towards us with its green light on. Relieved, I stuck out a hand. The taxi drew up next to me, and the young man opened the door and climbed in. When the driver saw I had stayed on the pavement, he glanced at the young man in his rearview mirror, though his words were directed at me.

"Has he got money?" I said he had.

The young man looked at me through the half-open window. "Merci."

The taxi pulled away. Its taillights glowed briefly, then dimmed, as it dropped down the hill towards Diagonal. Now the road was quiet again, I felt guilty for having turned him away. Couldn't I have offered him my sofa for the night? I walked back to my apartment, wondering if I had failed some kind of test.

The next morning, before opening my shop, I arranged to have coffee with my best friend, Montse. Montse was editor-in-chief at a small literary publishing house, and her husband, Jaume, taught at the university and wrote articles for El País and Letras Libres. I had met Montse in the nineties, at the gates of the international school Mar attended. One of Montse's daughters was in the same class. When I arrived at the café, she was sitting at a table under the trees in her Jackie O sunglasses and a green linen jacket. Her long brown hair was pinned up. I ordered a café con leche, then told her what had happened a few hours earlier.

"Fucking hell, darling," she said. "You invited a total stranger into your apartment in the middle of the night?"

I was unable to keep from smiling. You could always rely on Montse for an extravagant reaction.

"I can't believe you did that," she went on. "You wouldn't have done it?"

"Are you kidding?"

"He was in trouble. He needed help." Something made me want to go further, to widen the gap between us. "Actually, I think I could have done more."

"You did plenty." Montse shook a cigarette out of the packet on the table, lit it, and blew the smoke sideways, into the square. "What kind of trouble?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask." I decided not to mention the wet patch on the back of the young man's jeans. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I felt he wouldn't want the information shared.

"Was he good-looking?" "Montse," I said, laughing. "Well? Was he?"

"He was half my age."

"You didn't answer the question."

I looked past her, at the facade of the town hall. Green shutters clattered open on the third floor of the building next door, and an elderly woman stood in the open window, her face raised to the sun.

"If you want to know the truth," I said, "I've never seen anyone quite so beautiful."

Lowering my eyes, I stared at the bright silver surface of the table, not because I was surprised or embarrassed by what I had just told Montse, but because it was the first time I'd put what I had felt into words. When I saw the young man leaning against the Range Rover, I had been struck by his physical grace—the slenderness of his forearm, the curve of his back under his shirt—and when he lifted his head and looked at me the breath had caught in my throat.

Excerpted from Barcelona Dreaming by Rupert Thomson. Copyright © 2021 by Rupert Thomson. Excerpted by permission of Other Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.