The hot water ran out halfway through my shower, which is the normal point, not a surprise. There’s a moment where you still pretend it might come back if you stand very still. It never does. I finished like a man being punished.
Mum was already on the phone in the kitchen, half Spanish, half English, arguing with someone about something that sounded important and probably wasn’t. Dad was reading the back of a cereal box like it contained secrets. The flat was doing its usual thing where every sound feels too loud and every silence feels like it’s about to be filled by someone else’s problem.
Then the upstairs neighbour started again.
It’s not even loud, really. It’s just… deliberate. Chairs being moved when nobody is sitting on them. A door that gets closed three times. Footsteps that pause directly above your bedroom and then continue, as if they’re checking something. I don’t know if he’s doing it on purpose or if this is just how he exists.
Mum covered the phone and said, “Can you go and ask him nicely to stop moving furniture at eight in the morning?”
I said, “He’s probably not moving furniture.”
She said, “Then what is he doing?”
I didn’t have an answer that would help.
Dad said, without looking up, “Leave it. He’s probably lonely.”
Dad thinks everyone is lonely. It’s his explanation for everything.
I put my bag on and left before the neighbour could start another phase.
Outside, Valencia was already busy in that way where everyone else seems to have agreed on a plan. I walked past the same bakery, the same man who always hoses the same bit of pavement, the same dog that never looks at me. At the café, they nodded and didn’t ask anything, which is the best kind of greeting.
I didn’t even order straight away. I just sat.
There’s a table near the window where you can see the street but nobody can see your screen. Today my screen stayed dark. I moved the sugar packets into a line. Then into a square. Then back into a line. The owner glanced over once, decided I wasn’t a problem, and went back to polishing cups that were already clean.
Don Emilio came in ten minutes later. He always does, like he’s following a schedule only he can see.
“You’re not playing,” he said, as if accusing me of something.
“I’m resting,” I said.
He sat anyway. He always sits anyway.
“Resting is good,” he said. “But only if you know what you’re resting from.”
I said, “The shower.”
He laughed in a way that suggested he had lost bigger battles.
We talked about nothing. About the price of coffee. About how the street used to be quieter. About how everyone says that and is always wrong. He told me the upstairs neighbour in his building once spent three years repairing the same chair.
“Did he ever finish?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But he knew the chair very well.”
After he left, I stayed a bit longer. I didn’t feel better. I just felt… flatter. More even. Like when you press a piece of paper with your hand and it stops curling.
On the way home, the neighbour was quiet. Which is sometimes worse, because then you’re waiting.
Mum was out. Dad was working in the small room that pretends to be an office. The flat felt bigger with fewer people in it, and also emptier, which is a different thing.
I didn’t set up the board.
I made a sandwich. I sat on the edge of my bed. I listened. Nothing happened.
Later, when I did finally move a few pieces around, it wasn’t a game. It was just putting things in places where they didn’t argue with each other.
Some days you don’t need a plan. You just need a room that stays quiet and water that stays hot and a café that lets you sit without asking why.
We don’t always get those things.
So we improvise.