The Way the Sunlight Touched Her

Author's Note: This story is a work of fiction. The characters are fictitious and certainly not intended to represent any living person. All characters are eighteen or older.

Thank you for taking the time to read it. I hope you enjoy it!

*

I moved to Madrid in March of 2020. A hell of a timing.

I went for Marta, my girlfriend. We moved in together in an apartment in the Chueca neighborhood, a cozy attic in an old building, containing all the necessary charm of old European city living: Cracked Hapsburg wood moldings, dust caulked into the parquet crevices, and a draft that seeped in from every corner.

As a bonus, the plaza below was noisy and pleasant. It gathered people as it did sunlight - people that worshipped the sun with a ritual that included plenty of cerveza army green olives piled into ceramic bowls.

These sunworshippers lounged in the plaza, enjoying the sun with persistent joie de vivre that charmed me, and made me want to stay. That is, until the quarantine came and whisked it all away.

It came as a shock to me. The fleeting excitement of a new city, and a new urban life, suddenly replaced by an apocalyptic quiet.

But I put forth my very best effort to think nothing of it. Though I was left wanting the Spanish social life that I came here all excited for, and the olives in ceramic bowls, and cold cerveza in tiny glasses, and all the other things the city and Spain promised, I still had my girlfriend, Marta, and the hope that the shockingly draconian quarantine would end quickly, and we'd jump right back in where we left off, to enjoy a carefree life.

The quarantine lasted three long months. Eventually, the summer approached, the Spanish Government relaxed the restrictions. They didn't have a choice. Spaniards are serious about the sun. They needed plazas and terraces full of sunlight and they needed their green olives and cervezas for their late afternoon rituals. Otherwise, they would revolt. There's plenty of precedence for that.

Unfortunately for me, by the time the quarantine ended, my relationship had been shredded like a rowboat against the rocks. Freedom didn't come soon enough for me and Marta. Marta left for the south for her parent's place, taking all of her stuff and leaving me bloodied in the smoldering ruins of broken plates and uprooted houseplants.

I came here with the plan to teach English. I knew zero Spanish and had planned, in the times before the virus fucked us all up, to take an intensive Spanish course with an outfit in Madrid that would guarantee me some fluency in the language, and a teaching gig. For obvious reasons, that didn't pan out. Instead, I floundered in virtual classes. That and through learning angry Spanish in brief close-quartered bouts with my girlfriend, I was left severely lacking in practical language skills.

So, I was ready to head back to the states with my tail between my legs and discount Madrid as a failed experiment in Spanish romance.

At least that's what I thought. In reality, the experiment didn't end there. Not even close. Because the day I helped Marta move out of the apartment was the day I met Elodie.

I walked out to the curb with Marta and dropped her box on the pavement. As her cousin drove up in his car, I hugged her unromantically and said a quick goodbye. She kissed me on each cheek and left as politely as she was able to manage and disappeared from my life.

The portero had gone for a smoke and left the door locked, so I fished my keys out of my pocket to open it. A familiar girl, a neighbor, came running for the closing door. I recognized her from brief passing moments in the hallways. She was the attractive girl that smiled shyly when we passed each other in the stairwell. "Espera!" she cried out as she ran to the door, her arms full of groceries.

I put my foot in the door to keep it from closing. She came in and gave me one of her shy smiles. "Gracias!" She sung breathless as she slid through the cracked opened door.

I only knew her from before mostly because of her striking attractiveness. Her hair, punk silver, and her face sharp and her figure slender and small. She wore tightly fitted leggings, and tightly fitted sports top, accentuating her perfect ass and breasts.

"Fake," Marta once scoffed in a judgmental whisper whenever we passed her by. In solidarity I had always avoided interacting with her save for a quick, furtive smile.

Today, I held no such obligated pre-disposition. It was just me and her, climbing the stairs together because the elevator, once again, was stalled out at the basement. We both lived on the fifth floor. I opted for conversation as we climbed together.

"Hola," I said.

She smiled. Her eyes were beautiful. Almost silver in the shadows, like the color of her hair, but in the sunrays that came through every now and again, they gleamed with a liquid mocha brown. In whatever form they appeared, they always glanced at me with an endearing curious kindness.

In English, she replied, "so you are American?"

Her accent was not Spanish as far as I could tell. Like me, she wasn't a local.

"I am. California," I replied.

"Very nice."

She shuffled the grocery bags in her hands.

"Need help?" I asked

"No, it's quite ok."

"Well, it's not a problem for me. My hands are empty, and we still have four floors to go."

She shrugged and handed me a bag, then with her free hand, brushed her hair from her face. There was a nervousness there that suggested an excitement with talking to me.

"I'm Chris. What's your name?"

"Elodie," she replied.

"Nice to meet you, Elodie. Where are you from?"

"From Genova. Italia."

The way she said Genova , and the way she said Italia . There's just something about that accent: the softness of it that really melts a heart.

"I've never been to Genova," was all I could say before we reached our floor. She went to her door. I went with her to hand her the groceries. She said, "it was nice to meet you finally, Chris."

Then she disappeared. The door slowly closed, but her mocha eyes lingered there to watch me until they were gone.

The moment was brief, but every now and again, there's a moment like that, when a spark bridges a gap. With Elodie, I felt it. It was a puppy love sort of spark. A serendipitous spark (now that Marta was gone).

~~~

I met Elodie again a few days later. It was morning, and most of the Chueca neighborhood was still asleep. The people here were more of a late night, late morning crowd. So was I, when Marta was here. But with her gone, I decided I could be an early morning sort of person. I decided to get back into running. I used to love an early morning run. There's something about running in empty streets, before the cars clogged them, and you can hear only the echoes of dogs barking in bouts and a pale blue sheen hovered like a crisp fog in the air.

So did Elodie, it seemed.

I spotted her stretching her legs against a bench in the plaza when I bounded out of the door.

When she saw me, she took her headphones off and gave me a wave. I went over, hands in my pocket, huffing condensation like crystalline excitement from my lungs.

"I never see you out this early," she said as if she had been doing this every morning. Her shapely legs and her trim waist confirmed that she had been.

"I haven't gone out for a run since I've been to Madrid," I admitted.

"Well, good for you for starting again," she replied. "Now with the quarantine over, it is a good time to start. What route are you planning to take?"

I shrugged. "Just around I guess."

I hadn't actually thought it through. I knew the neighborhood enough. I knew the city center, and that the streets were easy to run and get lost in.

"Well, if you're up for a long one, I'm going to Buen Retiro. You can join."

"Ok," I said. "I've not actually been to Buen Retiro."

"You've never been to Retiro?"

"Hey, give me a break! I've only been here since the pandemic started. I barely know my way around this plaza."

"Ok, ok, I get it. Government-imposed. I forgive you! Vale, venga. Let's go then. I will show you the park!"

She put her headphones in and started a jog and motioned me to follow. So, I followed. She went fast and I fell in behind her, watching her silver ponytail bob, and her tight ass flex in her tight leggings. If I ever had even an inkling of doubt about my breakup with Marta, that was gone now.

Elodie led me away from Chueca. We ran down to the Fuentes de Cibeles, where the central thoroughfare, the Paseo de Castellana, converged with the old Gran Via that ran through the traditional center of Madrid. Then we ran up to the Puerta de Alcala, where wrought iron gates invited us into the park.

Large trees and statues and rows of flowers lined the long gravel paths that intersected at roundabouts with ornate fountains. It was still early enough that only those like us, early morning runners, were the only ones on the paths. We ran along the outside perimeter. I tried my very best to keep up, but after several kilometers and realizing that Elodie's well of stamina was limitless, I conceded defeat. I stopped and laid myself out on a grassy hill in the dappled shade of a tall maple, and Elodie came over and jogged in place beside me, barely breaking a sweat. She looked at her smart watch and exclaimed, "come on Chris, only five kilometers! We're not even half-way."

I shook my head at her in disbelief and breathed out, "it's no use, just leave me here to die."

She laughed and collapsed on the grass beside me, close enough for me to smell the waft of a faint pleasant fragrance from her skin.

"Well, it's too nice here to die, I think," she replied.

She was right. Birds chirped cheerily in the branches, and squirrels pranced about in the grass and dandelions around us. The sun had burned off the morning chill and the rays came through the trees causing her silver hair to shimmer.

"Sorry for being so out of shape, but thanks for letting me join you," I said.

"I forgive you. And also thank you for coming."

She nestled her head against her hand in the grass and watched me like a curious child. When I smiled at her, she smiled back.

"I've been meaning to ask you. That girl that you live with..."

"She's gone," I replied.

"Oh. Was she a... girlfriend?"

"Not anymore."

A small tell of a pleasing thought twitched at a corner of her lips, which she tried to hide.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.

"Don't be. That relationship unraveled as soon as we tried to make it a thing."

"What do you mean?"

"We never really lived together before, and we've only ever had been long distance. So, it was kind of a gamble, me coming here. Turns out, we kinda piss each other off. Not kinda. Like a lot, actually."

"I see. I think there are a lot of stories like that."

"And do you have a boyfriend?"

She shrugged, tongue in her cheek. "I don't have time for a boyfriend."

"I hear you," I replied.

I, of all people, having dealt with bullshit drama with no reprieve for three whole months, could understand.

"Lucky you didn't have to suffer through a relationship during the quarantine."

"Yes. Lucky. Or maybe unlucky. Some grow apart. But others grow closer. Maybe they find true love with who they are with. The beauty of the virus is it really makes you consider the people around you. I guess.

"That's a beautiful way to look at it. And your family?"

"What about them?"

"Do you go to see them often?"

"No. My parents are in Italy. My aunt is in Alicante. I've been here the whole time."

"Do you miss them?"

"My parents no. My aunt, yes. I miss her very much, and I hope to see her soon."

Through her tone of voice, I sensed a troubled depth to her soul. The mystery made me curious. It made me yearn to know more about her.

But Elodie was bored of conversation and was eager to get back to running. She hopped to her feet, smacked the loose grass and dirt from her thighs and said, "come on, Chris, let's go back. I'll race you!"

And she took off. I followed as best I could, but she beat me easily, taunting me all the way back home.

When we finished, I asked her if she'd like to come by for a drink later. She agreed. That evening, she came by, and I opened a bottle of cheap Rioja and we sat on my small balcony. The bars were opened for the summer, and we listened to the exuberance of the crowds in the terraces below us in the hot night. The balcony was a pleasant place to be. It was intimate, and we didn't miss the ambiance of a Madrid night. The little bit of normalcy lifted my mood. Elodie lifted my mood. She laughed a lot, and I loved her laugh. It was a laugh like she had just learned to do it.

We drank two full bottles, and shared music, and talked well into the night. It was three in the morning when she left, yawning, back to her apartment.

As much as I would've like to have gotten lucky tonight, it was better that I didn't. With some girls, the marinating tension of a slow seduction was just as good as a fiery night of passion. It was that way with Elodie. I enjoyed the slow seduction.

So, we continued our morning runs. They were unplanned, but there was an unspoken agreement between us that one would wait for the other.

~~~

About a week later, she invited me to her place for a drink, and I thought this was the moment I was going to score. I wasn't wrong, but I discovered then that there was more to her than meets the eye.

We sat on her couch as the sun hung between the jig-saw silhouettes of the chimneys and angled roofs of the buildings on the other side of the plaza. The sunlight came through her window like golden beams. Dust motes suspended in the air shimmered like tiny stars.

We finished the first bottle of wine quickly and opened another.

In an awkward, drunk pause between conversations that lingered there like our eyes lingered onto each other's faces, I moved in for the kiss. At first, she seemed to want it. Her eyes closed, and her mouth opened. But then she flinched, moved away and clenched her hands against the edge of the couch.

"I can't..."

I went for the wine instead and groaned in shame at the rejection as I sunk into the couch. "Sorry. I just thought --"

"No, it's not that." She interrupted.

In confusion, I raised my eyebrows.

She blushed. "I like you. But... I...," she paused, biting her lower lip. "There's something you should know about me. It might be a deal-breaker..."

I laughed. "Um, ok, what's up?"

She swallowed. "I'm transgender."

I laughed again.

She was pulling my leg, I thought. I've seen trannies before. Well. I've watched those RuPaul TV shows. I've walked through red-light districts and seen the girls in the blue lights. And, admittedly, I've seen enough online porn to know one when I see one. Elodie was none of those things.

"You're messing with me, right?" I asked nervously.

She smiled weakly and shook her head. My eyes shot down to her crotch. She closed her knees together and covered it with her hands and scowled at me.

"You mean, like you like identify as a man, or something?" I asked, still confused.

"No. I am a trans-woman."

The word 'woman' she annunciated defiantly, then she stood and walked over to the window, holding herself tall, but appearing ready to crumble.

If I weren't the perfect definition of an asshole, I might have thanked her for being honest, and apologize for gawking. But I was an asshole, so, without a word, I stood and walked out of her apartment. When I reached her door, I looked back at her. Her hands were clasped tightly together, twisting into each other anxiously. Her face smoldered with sadness as she stared out her window towards the burning glow of the Spanish sunset. The strands of her silver hair glimmered just like the dust motes that floated around her. Her blue summer dress, which I just then realized she wore only for the occasion of meeting me that afternoon, hung on her body like a serene waterfall. Shame overcame me. But not enough shame to keep me from leaving.

I privately justified my sudden departure, not from having anything against her as a trannie, but by the fact that she had deceived me. It was a lame excuse. Deep inside, I knew I left because I was shocked, and maybe even disgusted. The hard truth of it was, we had really hit it off. It was only by her confession that I changed my tune.

Lying in bed that night, the shock had simmered. With a clear head, I came the conclusion that I ought to tell her sorry for my dipshit reaction. But because I knew I had hurt her so much tonight, I thought it best to hold my apology for the next time I ran into her, which I thought would be early the next morning for our usual rendezvous. But she didn't show up.

She didn't show the next morning either. Or the next morning after. She avoided me purposefully. That was fair. But I couldn't avoid her, at least in my thoughts. With every passing day since I gave her the cold shoulders in her own apartment, the more I obsessed about her. If only she wasn't trans, I first lamented. But then my fixation turned into curiosity.

Is 'she' even the right pronoun?

Did she have a cock?

What if she didn't? Would I be cool with fucking her?

If I'm cool with fucking her, would I date her?

If I dated her, would I tell family and friends?

Or would I keep it a secret?

I looked up 'transgender' on the internet. I learned about 'pre-op' and 'post-op'. I learned about hormone therapy. I browsed through online forums and read stories of gender dysphoria -- bodies feeling like a prison or a costume. People asking if it was only a phase. Those wondering if their thoughts and feelings were immoral. Advice-seekers asking for the best way to come out to their family to not be abandoned -- you can hear the anguish spill out from the typed words.

It was a whole world I never knew existed. I mean, I knew it existed, just maybe not ever cared enough about because I never personally knew anyone that was trans. For most of my adult life, transgenderism had been some weird kink or transgressive subculture. Shemale prostitutes in Bangkok. Transvestite drag shows. Sensationalist media stories about this or that person who decided he was a woman or vice versa. Never had I met someone like Elodie. Someone who, ten out of ten times, I would say is a woman. Unequivocally. Even if I squinted.

The more I thought about her, the stronger my desire for her grew. I was embarrassed by it, but I couldn't shake her from my mind. When I closed my eyes, she was there. That angelic image of her: standing by the window with the sun shining on her sadness.

One night, after crushing a six pack of cheap beer, the dizzy buzz pushed me over the edge. I needed to say something to her. To tell her at least that I was sorry and that I wanted to go back to running together again and go back to those long night conversations again. My throat was tight, and butterflies swirled madly in my stomach. I went to her door, hesitated, then knocked.

I heard footsteps come to the door, then a long pause as if she strongly considered not answering. But then I heard the bolt turn. The door opened, and she stood there in tank top and sweatpants. Sweat matted her hair against her forehead. Her windows were opened to let through a cross-breeze, but it was, nevertheless, sweltering hot.

Cross-armed, leaning against the doorframe, she waited for me to say something.

Initially the words got stuck in my throat. They knew there was something profound about this particular moment, and that the coming out meant that they needed to be exactly the right words, so it was hard to coax them free. It was an odd sensation. I closed my eyes to loosen my lips and just tried to speak as sincerely as I could.