One night in Granada: Part 2
Chatting to Anna, the girl from my hometown, I realised that, even though I really dislike Banbridge and don’t even think of it as my “home” (Belfast has always felt like home to me) it still holds a special place in my heart. It’s my old hunting ground, my field of play and a very large factor in how I turned out. This doesn’t make it a good place, just a place with memories and that’s important.
I introduced myself to the people she was hanging around with and found that most of them had only just met her too. Kevin, a long-haired guy in his 30s from Colorado, was propping up the bar. It turned out he was a professional Ski Racer, one of those maniacs that fly down mountainsides against other equally insane skiers. He’d injured himself on Sierra Nevada; a nearby mountain that gets a good covering of snow and is meant to be a great place to hang out and chill too, no pun intended. A few broken ribs and a broken wrist had meant that he’d been recuperating for about a month. By recuperating I mean propping up the bar in Hannigans. He was a really nice guy and we chatted a fair bit.
I was also introduced to Yannick, who I thought was the boyfriend of Anna by the rather passionate kissing but it turns out he only met her recently. He was a professional snowboarder! So, he and Kevin got along well, though Yannick really only had eyes for Anna and seemed to only want to chat to me when he wasn’t with her! Ahh, being Irish and a games designer; not a bad combo for talking to strangers! ;)
The other guy that I met, Ralph, was English and very interesting indeed, though not in the way he intended. Already quite drunk when I arrived, he was boasting of his sexual prowess (5 girl orgies, blah blah blah) and commenting on every woman in the place. Aside from that layer of sleaze and drunkenness though, he seemed like an alright guy but that was enough to put me off becoming too friendly with him. He, on the other hand, thought I was great because I was such a heavy drinker (I was taking it easy and he was pissed). He started off attempting to prove how much he liked me by asking if I was single. Yes. So he immediately buys a few drinks from the bar, asks how my Spanish is (lowsy) and drags me over to two pretty, local girls who were dancing very nearby!
I do not do this.
This is not me.
I can talk to anyone. Talking, I’ve never had a problem with. Even pretty girls, it’s not a problem at all. Trying to pull pretty girls? No clue. I’ve been told I could charm the birds from the trees if I wanted to but I wouldn’t know what to do with them once I got them. So two Spanish girls (Maribella and Susie)? Not a hope. They chatted pleasantly to Ralph briefly and then, when he started chatting up Susie, I started talking to Maribella.
Luckily she had quite good English!
She was a lovely girl and, the longer we talked, the more I realised that she really didn’t like Ralph at all. Neither did her friend. They both liked me though. Said I was very gentlemanly. Well, Maribella did. Susie didn’t know much English at all, though she managed to say “I really like…” and then grabbed some handfuls of my hair. When words don’t work, my hair seems to be a useful backup. I said bye to them and got another drink.
Ralph wasn’t so easily defeated.
Beaten in this battle he tried giving a rose to a very uninterested girl at the bar, who knocked him back with the female patented “cold stare”. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr! He looked a bit confused.
At midnight, Kevin's birthday arrived. Happy Birthday songs in at least three languages were raucously bellowed by everyone in the bar and shots followed for the people he was talking to, myself included. It's tradition to buy a drink for the person celebrating, so of course I had to buy him one back, leaving it in the tap for him to gather at his leisure. We swapped drinking stories, clinked glasses and smiled widely at all our new friends.
After a little while, I decided I wanted a seat. I started to move up to a raised seating area and Ralph followed; eager for company that wouldn’t just tell him to fuck off. I’m much to polite for that. Kevin waited at the bar, ordering another drink. When we got to the seats, Ralph immediately tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at 4 girls sitting nearby.
“Which one?” he said.
“Which one what?”
“Which one do you want?” he spat, stunned I didn’t instantly realise.
“Oh…..”
I looked at the women beside me. They weren’t Spanish but I couldn’t hear them speaking over the music so I wasn’t sure where they were from. They were all pretty, though one was sitting with her back to me so I couldn’t be sure about her. None of them really jumped out at me though. Besides, I’ve never really been asked so directly before. A man who says he didn’t weigh up the entire group immediately would be lying. It’s human nature. In fact, women are meant to do it even faster than guys, judging within around 10 seconds whether they have any sexual interest in a man before they even speak to him! Or so I’ve heard.
I explained my predicament to Ralph and he looked at me as if to say “And that means….which one?”. Giving in, I said, “Well, the girl with her back to me might be cute?”.
“No no no, from the ones you can see!”
*sigh*
“Ok, the one with the brown hair. Happy?”
He was.
He immediately went over and struck up conversation with her, pointing furtively in my direction. Horror briefly touched my forehead. What was he saying to her? Oh gods, is he telling her that I want to jump her or something?
She looked over, grinning.
I smiled weakly back and moved over to the nearest seat, the one beside the girl with her back to me, in an attempt to extricate myself from whatever mischief Ralph was initiating.
“Hi!” said the girl who’d previously had her back to me, as I sat down next to her.
Stop.
There was the tiniest pause in my head for a moment, as I looked round at her. Just a beat, just enough for me to see her and take it all in. She was smiling openly (honestly?) and this was making her already pretty face devastatingly cute. She was a short girl, I could tell that from behind, but she was beautiful and vibrant and in that brief instant had grabbed my heart through my eyes and pulled it into the front of my head so that all I could see was her. She was exactly what I would normally say I like in a girl if you asked me to define them by looks alone! Cute, straight brunette hair, beautiful eyes and a glowing smile. Looks don’t mean everything to me but this was what I would class as “my type” if I had one at all.
“Hi.” I said, smoothly, no time having passed.
Ralph blathered something in my direction and I palmed him away absentmindedly. “My name’s Del.” I said, calm like the surface of the sea, deep currents pulling me around inside, wondering whether she was as nice as she looked.
She was.
Her name was Amy and she was Russian. Studied in Germany, where her three friends were from, just moved to Granada for a while. An architect by trade, enjoying traveling, reading and movies. The first thing she said aside from her name had me liking her almost as much as her smile. She was warned my Ralph that I was a chatty little bugger and would talk her ears off, given the chance. She said she loved talking and loved people talking to her just as much. There was a moment of instant connection that I haven’t had in a long time. It was actually kinda scary for a brief moment. Was she just saying that to deflect Ralph, or did she actually want to talk to me?
She did.
We ignored everyone else in the room and chatted about everything. It’s all such a blur I can hardly remember anything but we clicked like magnets and found that everything we said we liked, the other person did too. It was like some soppy sitcom romance feature. It was giggles and feigned shock, grins and half-shy looks. Half an hour passed and her friends wanted to leave. They made a point of not inviting Ralph. She made a point of specifically inviting me.
“Bye Kevin! Bye Yannick! Bye Anna! Bye Ralph! Bye Chris! Bye everyone!”
“BYE DEL!!” said the bar.
and I was gone into the night, already in love.
To be continued…
I introduced myself to the people she was hanging around with and found that most of them had only just met her too. Kevin, a long-haired guy in his 30s from Colorado, was propping up the bar. It turned out he was a professional Ski Racer, one of those maniacs that fly down mountainsides against other equally insane skiers. He’d injured himself on Sierra Nevada; a nearby mountain that gets a good covering of snow and is meant to be a great place to hang out and chill too, no pun intended. A few broken ribs and a broken wrist had meant that he’d been recuperating for about a month. By recuperating I mean propping up the bar in Hannigans. He was a really nice guy and we chatted a fair bit.
I was also introduced to Yannick, who I thought was the boyfriend of Anna by the rather passionate kissing but it turns out he only met her recently. He was a professional snowboarder! So, he and Kevin got along well, though Yannick really only had eyes for Anna and seemed to only want to chat to me when he wasn’t with her! Ahh, being Irish and a games designer; not a bad combo for talking to strangers! ;)
The other guy that I met, Ralph, was English and very interesting indeed, though not in the way he intended. Already quite drunk when I arrived, he was boasting of his sexual prowess (5 girl orgies, blah blah blah) and commenting on every woman in the place. Aside from that layer of sleaze and drunkenness though, he seemed like an alright guy but that was enough to put me off becoming too friendly with him. He, on the other hand, thought I was great because I was such a heavy drinker (I was taking it easy and he was pissed). He started off attempting to prove how much he liked me by asking if I was single. Yes. So he immediately buys a few drinks from the bar, asks how my Spanish is (lowsy) and drags me over to two pretty, local girls who were dancing very nearby!
I do not do this.
This is not me.
I can talk to anyone. Talking, I’ve never had a problem with. Even pretty girls, it’s not a problem at all. Trying to pull pretty girls? No clue. I’ve been told I could charm the birds from the trees if I wanted to but I wouldn’t know what to do with them once I got them. So two Spanish girls (Maribella and Susie)? Not a hope. They chatted pleasantly to Ralph briefly and then, when he started chatting up Susie, I started talking to Maribella.
Luckily she had quite good English!
She was a lovely girl and, the longer we talked, the more I realised that she really didn’t like Ralph at all. Neither did her friend. They both liked me though. Said I was very gentlemanly. Well, Maribella did. Susie didn’t know much English at all, though she managed to say “I really like…” and then grabbed some handfuls of my hair. When words don’t work, my hair seems to be a useful backup. I said bye to them and got another drink.
Ralph wasn’t so easily defeated.
Beaten in this battle he tried giving a rose to a very uninterested girl at the bar, who knocked him back with the female patented “cold stare”. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr! He looked a bit confused.
At midnight, Kevin's birthday arrived. Happy Birthday songs in at least three languages were raucously bellowed by everyone in the bar and shots followed for the people he was talking to, myself included. It's tradition to buy a drink for the person celebrating, so of course I had to buy him one back, leaving it in the tap for him to gather at his leisure. We swapped drinking stories, clinked glasses and smiled widely at all our new friends.
After a little while, I decided I wanted a seat. I started to move up to a raised seating area and Ralph followed; eager for company that wouldn’t just tell him to fuck off. I’m much to polite for that. Kevin waited at the bar, ordering another drink. When we got to the seats, Ralph immediately tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at 4 girls sitting nearby.
“Which one?” he said.
“Which one what?”
“Which one do you want?” he spat, stunned I didn’t instantly realise.
“Oh…..”
I looked at the women beside me. They weren’t Spanish but I couldn’t hear them speaking over the music so I wasn’t sure where they were from. They were all pretty, though one was sitting with her back to me so I couldn’t be sure about her. None of them really jumped out at me though. Besides, I’ve never really been asked so directly before. A man who says he didn’t weigh up the entire group immediately would be lying. It’s human nature. In fact, women are meant to do it even faster than guys, judging within around 10 seconds whether they have any sexual interest in a man before they even speak to him! Or so I’ve heard.
I explained my predicament to Ralph and he looked at me as if to say “And that means….which one?”. Giving in, I said, “Well, the girl with her back to me might be cute?”.
“No no no, from the ones you can see!”
*sigh*
“Ok, the one with the brown hair. Happy?”
He was.
He immediately went over and struck up conversation with her, pointing furtively in my direction. Horror briefly touched my forehead. What was he saying to her? Oh gods, is he telling her that I want to jump her or something?
She looked over, grinning.
I smiled weakly back and moved over to the nearest seat, the one beside the girl with her back to me, in an attempt to extricate myself from whatever mischief Ralph was initiating.
“Hi!” said the girl who’d previously had her back to me, as I sat down next to her.
Stop.
There was the tiniest pause in my head for a moment, as I looked round at her. Just a beat, just enough for me to see her and take it all in. She was smiling openly (honestly?) and this was making her already pretty face devastatingly cute. She was a short girl, I could tell that from behind, but she was beautiful and vibrant and in that brief instant had grabbed my heart through my eyes and pulled it into the front of my head so that all I could see was her. She was exactly what I would normally say I like in a girl if you asked me to define them by looks alone! Cute, straight brunette hair, beautiful eyes and a glowing smile. Looks don’t mean everything to me but this was what I would class as “my type” if I had one at all.
“Hi.” I said, smoothly, no time having passed.
Ralph blathered something in my direction and I palmed him away absentmindedly. “My name’s Del.” I said, calm like the surface of the sea, deep currents pulling me around inside, wondering whether she was as nice as she looked.
She was.
Her name was Amy and she was Russian. Studied in Germany, where her three friends were from, just moved to Granada for a while. An architect by trade, enjoying traveling, reading and movies. The first thing she said aside from her name had me liking her almost as much as her smile. She was warned my Ralph that I was a chatty little bugger and would talk her ears off, given the chance. She said she loved talking and loved people talking to her just as much. There was a moment of instant connection that I haven’t had in a long time. It was actually kinda scary for a brief moment. Was she just saying that to deflect Ralph, or did she actually want to talk to me?
She did.
We ignored everyone else in the room and chatted about everything. It’s all such a blur I can hardly remember anything but we clicked like magnets and found that everything we said we liked, the other person did too. It was like some soppy sitcom romance feature. It was giggles and feigned shock, grins and half-shy looks. Half an hour passed and her friends wanted to leave. They made a point of not inviting Ralph. She made a point of specifically inviting me.
“Bye Kevin! Bye Yannick! Bye Anna! Bye Ralph! Bye Chris! Bye everyone!”
“BYE DEL!!” said the bar.
and I was gone into the night, already in love.
To be continued…