"Stop. Stop, stop, stop. Do it again."
Aina was already laughing, her phone held out at arm's length, and Pedri, half-turned away from the camera, was laughing too, the kind of laugh that gets caught in your throat because you do not want to be laughing this much in public with a mask still mostly on your face.
"I'm not doing it again."
"You have to."
"Why."
"Because the first one was blurry and your eyes were closed."
"Aina."
"PEDRI."
He sighed and turned back to her, and she lifted the phone again, and he posed properly this time, hand up in a peace sign that she had insisted on, the cap pulled low and the mask up over his nose, and she snapped three in quick succession and turned the screen around to show him.
"There. See? Easy."
He looked at the photos. He looked human in them. He looked like a guy at a theme park with a friend, not like the eighteen-year-old prodigy half the country had a photo of from training that morning.
"They're not bad," he said.
"They're great."
"They're not bad."
"Pedri." She poked him in the arm with the corner of her phone. "Say they're great."
"They are not bad."
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he laughed, and she pretended to delete them in front of him, which made him reach for the phone in a panic, and she yanked it back and held it over her head as if her being barely an inch taller than him made any difference, and they were both laughing now, properly, the kind of laughing that draws looks from other people walking past, although the other people were also looking because the boy in the cap was, even masked, almost recognisable to anyone paying attention.
"Okay, okay," Pedri said, breathless. "Send them to me."
"Mm. I'll consider it."
"Aina."
"I'll consider it."
They drifted along the path between the rides, the noise of Red Force still going off somewhere behind them, and Pedri glanced over his shoulder for the third or fourth time.
Aina caught it. "They're fine. Olivia's not going to let him faceplant off the bench."
"I know."
"You keep looking."
"I know."
She rolled her eyes at him, the way she had rolled her eyes at every single one of his polite, careful, well-mannered glances for the last twenty minutes. Pedri Gonzalez, eighteen years old, world-famous, and apparently incapable of relaxing further than the radius in which his cousin sat.
"Pedri."
"Yeah."
"Just say it. Just say, let's go find Mateo and Olivia."
He looked at her, sheepish. "Should we maybe go find Mateo and Olivia?"
"Mm." She tilted her head, pretending to consider. "Yeah. Eventually."
"Aina—"
"Eventually."
She had turned, distracted, her eyes catching on something over his shoulder, and then her whole face changed.
"Oh."
Just that. One soft, surprised syllable.
He turned to look.
Tucked between two of the bigger rides, almost hidden behind a row of stalls, was a small, painted wooden booth, very old-looking, with a long flat counter and a row of bright cork targets along the back wall. Behind the targets, dangling from hooks at different heights, were dozens of small soft toys. A handwritten sign hung above it.
Tiro al Corcho.
"Oh, no way." Aina's voice had gone a little high. "No WAY."
"What?"
She did not answer him. She was already walking toward it, her steps quickening, and Pedri had to hurry to catch up.
When he reached her she was standing at the counter, looking at the row of targets, and there was a smile spreading across her face that he had not seen before. Not the wry one. Not the teasing one. The other one. The real one.
"Oh my God. They still have it."
"What is it?"
"Tiro al corcho." She turned to him, eyes wide. "Pedri. PEDRI. There was this little park near my abuela's old place when I was, like, five. And we used to come every summer, and they had one of these. With the little, with the cork pistols, and the targets, and, oh my God. I haven't seen one of these in—"
She stopped, and laughed, and pushed her hair back from her face.
"When I moved to the States, there was a time I got so homesick, I looked everywhere. Everywhere. I asked Olivia's mom and she had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to describe it. I tried to draw it. I went online and typed 'Spanish cork shooting game' and got, like, three results, none of them this. I gave up eventually. I just decided to deal with it another way."
She turned back to the booth.
"And it's just. It's just here. It's been here the whole time."
Pedri was looking at her. He could not help it. The cap was pulled low and the mask up, so she could not see most of his face, but she did not need to. She just needed to look at his eyes, and his eyes were on her, and they were not moving.
She did not see it. She was busy lighting up.
"Let's try it."
He blinked. "Wh— what?"
"Let's try it. Come on."
"Aina, we said we'd go find—"
She had already reached down, taken him by the wrist, and turned him toward the booth.
"They can wait."
"Aina—"
"Pedri."
She was already pulling him forward. He did not pull back as hard as he probably could have.
The man behind the counter looked up as they came, and his eyes did a quick involuntary thing when they landed on Pedri, registering, calculating, deciding, and then settling on professional warmth. There was a small Barça crest sticker on the corner of his till. He saw Pedri see it. He gave nothing away.
"Hola." He nodded at them, and then deliberately did not look at Pedri's face again. "Two?"
"Two, please," Aina said, beaming.
The man set down two small cork pistols, lined up a row of little orange balls on the counter, and explained the rules in fast easy Spanish, gesturing at the targets and at the toys hanging behind, his patter the same patter it had probably been for thirty years. Aina nodded along, her eyes hopping from his hands to the targets and back, and Pedri stood beside her and did not really hear any of it because Aina was bouncing on her toes.
"Okay," the man said. "Listos?"
"SO ready," Aina said.
Pedri picked his pistol up.
"Have you ever done this before?" Aina whispered.
"No."
"Good. I have."
"That's not fair."
"You have ALL the unfair advantages, Pedri. Let me have this."
She fired her first shot before he even had his pistol up, and the cork popped against the very edge of one of the targets and bounced off without knocking it over. She let out a noise of pure outrage.
"That was IN, you saw it, that was IN—"
"That was so not in."
"It KISSED it."
"It did not kiss it."
Pedri lifted his pistol and fired and missed the targets entirely, the cork sailing into the back of the booth and dropping behind a row of plush toys. The man behind the counter did not laugh, but his eyebrows did a small, quick thing.
Aina laughed so hard she had to put a hand on Pedri's arm to steady herself.
"You. Are. So. Bad."
"I know."
"You're so bad at this."
"Aina."
"It's a PORTABLE pistol, Pedri."
"I know, Aina."
She fired again, and this time she actually hit one, the little cork target dropping back with a satisfying click, and she gasped and grabbed his arm again and shook it.
"PEDRI."
"I saw."
"PEDRI I HIT ONE."
"I saw, I saw, calm down."
The man behind the counter unhooked one of the small plush toys, a tiny stuffed bear in a tiny stuffed bullfighter outfit, and held it out to her with a small bow. Aina took it like it was a real medal, two-handed, and pressed it to her chest.
"Oh my God."
She turned to Pedri and held it up to his face.
"Pedri. PEDRI. Look at him."
"I see him."
"His little hat."
"I see his hat, Aina."
"His little CAPE."
She was already half-spinning with it, hugging it to her, half-dancing in the small bit of space they had at the booth, and Pedri stood there with the cork pistol in his hand and an expression on his face that the man behind the counter, watching them, would later describe to his wife as the way a boy looks when he has very seriously realised something he was already in the process of realising, but had not yet admitted out loud to himself.
They wandered away from the booth a few minutes later, Aina's small bullfighter bear tucked into the crook of her arm, the laughter slowing into something easier.
They drifted to a low wall near the edge of the path and sat down on it, side by side, the noise of the park rising and falling around them.
"You actually missed every shot," she said.
"I missed one shot."
"You missed every shot, Pedri."
"I missed one shot."
"It is okay. We will not tell the press. It's a good thing you aren't the striker Ehn"
He laughed, and she nudged him with her shoulder, and they sat there for a moment looking out at the people walking past, none of them noticing the two teenagers on the wall.
"Thank you. For bringing me out here. I really needed this."
Pedri tilted his head. "Needed what?"
"So," Aina said, turning the bear over in her hands. "MIT."
"MIT?"
"That's where I'm going."
He looked at her. "You're going to MIT."
"I'm going to MIT or I'm going nowhere."
"That's a strong statement."
"It's a true one."
He waited.
"Aeronautical engineering," she said, after a moment, her voice lower. "That's what I want. That's what I've wanted. "
She glanced over at him.
"Don't laugh."
"I'm not laughing."
"You're laughing inside."
"I am not."
"You'd better not be."
She looked back down at the bear, smoothing one of his tiny lapels.
"My parents don't get it. My mum thinks I should stay in Spain. My dad thinks the States are. You know. The States. Half my family think I'm being dramatic. None of them know what aerospace, like, IS. They hear engineering and they think I want to fix cars. I have stopped trying to explain it."
She was quiet a second.
"But it's mine. The whole thing. That decision is mine, and I'm going. I don't know how yet. I don't know what it'll cost. I don't know if I'll have to defer a year or two more because of acting so i can save a little bit more money, the schedule, all of it. But I'm going."
She turned to look at him.
"Have you ever wanted something like that?"
He looked at her.
"Like, anything," she said. "Anything where you, where you just decide. And you do not care what it takes. And you know it the way you know your own name."
Pedri was quiet a moment. He turned the cork pistol they had let him keep over in his hands.
"Yeah." He nodded, slow. "Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."
He set the pistol down on the wall between them.
"Football," he said. "Obviously. But not just, like, playing football. Anyone can play football. I want to be one of the great ones. Like, the GREAT ones. I want kids in twenty years to know my name without me having to tell them. I want a stadium full of people to feel something when I touch the ball. I want, I want people to argue about me. In ten years. In fifty. Is Pedri better than this , or what you saying Pedri is obviously before so so player"
He laughed, a small embarrassed laugh.
"That sounds stupid."
"It does not sound stupid."
"It sounds so stupid."
"Pedri."
He looked at her.
"I have never said that to anyone." He blinked. "Outside of my family. I have never said that out loud."
Aina did not say anything for a moment. She just looked at him.
Then she nudged his shoulder again with hers, gentle, and looked back out at the park.
"Cool," she said.
He laughed.
They sat there a while longer. Eventually she stood, the bear under her arm, and stretched, and spun once with her arms out, and the spin carried her further than she meant it to and she lost her balance, and Pedri's hands came out and caught her by the elbows before she could think about it.
She looked up at him. He looked down at her.
His hands were still on her elbows.
He did not move.
She did not move.
The crowd flowed around them.
He looked at her like there was something he was trying to work out and could not quite get to.
She raised her eyebrows.
He did not move.
She raised them higher.
He did not move.
She rolled her eyes so hard it took her whole head with it.
"Really?"
He blinked. "What?"
"Really, Pedri?"
"Did, did I hurt you, did I grab too—"
"Oh, my GOD." She let out a noise that was half laugh and half exasperation. "Come HERE."
She reached up with one hand and hooked her finger under the bottom of his mask and pulled it down to just under his chin, and she put her other hand against the side of his jaw, and she kissed him.
For a second he just stood there, frozen, eyes open. Then, very slowly, his eyes closed, and his hands on her elbows slid down to her wrists, and he kissed her back.
She pulled away first.
She looked up at him, and she patted his cheek twice, lightly.
"Was that so hard."
"That, that, that was."
"That was?"
"That was, I, you, you—"
"Mhm."
He was looking at her like the lights had blown out somewhere behind his eyes.
She lifted the mask gently back up over his nose, smoothed it once with her thumb, and stepped back.
"Now." She tucked the bear more firmly under her arm. "Let's go find them."
She turned and started walking.
Pedri stood there a second longer, blinking after her.
Then he smiled. He smiled the way he had been trying not to smile for the last hour. And he picked up the cork pistol from the wall, and he followed her.