Free Lessons in Gravity (Study Abroad #2) by Jessica Peterson Page B

good at the dirty talk. He was good at other things, too. He was good at all the things, actually. All the things a guy can do to a girl in bed.  
    I’m just beginning to fantasize about how fun it would be to turn this bet into a sort of strip-poker situation when Javier guides the Range Rover into the tiniest alley ever and pulls up the parking brake.
    “We’re here,” he says, pointing out the windshield.
    I duck my head to get a better look, sliding my sunglasses into my hair.
    Immediately to our right, a hulking brick and stone square of a building rises into the clear blue sky. I’ve never seen it before. It looks old—really old—its façade a disjointed collage of Romanesque and baroque and even renaissance styles. Its square windows, poked through stone walls three feet thick, dot the façade at uneven intervals. On the ground floor, several pairs of massive doors stand attention, the weathered wood dotted with iron bolts. It could be a castle, or a convent, or a small museum; tough to tell.
    I’m intrigued. You only see this kind of thing in the old world: hundreds of years of history writ right before your eyes. I’m already impatient to get a better look up close, to suss out details that tell stories from generations ago. A fading coat of arms, perhaps, or medieval fingerprints left in plaster. There’s brickwork and stonework and even some sculptural elements tucked into eaves, set on spires on the roof.
    Forget strip poker. This is way cooler. My inner architecture nerd is going apeshit.
    “El Monasterio de las Humildes Reales,” Javier says, the words rolling off his tongue.
    “The Monastery of the Humble Royals,” I say. “Am I translating it right?”
    “Sí.”
    “Doesn’t look too humble to me.”
    Javier scoffs. “It was built as a palace for the Spanish royals. Sometime around the Renaissance, I believe. When the king’s daughter decided she’d rather become a nun than marry her cousin, he gave her the palace as a gift to found her monastery. She built a church—just over there, in the southwest corner—that was famous for its lovely acoustics. Eventually, when the nuns ran out of money, someone had the bright idea to turn it into theater.”
    I stare at him, disbelievingly. “And that’s the theater you and your band practice in?”
    “Brilliant, isn’t it?” He leans toward me, taking off his sunglasses. “C’mon, I’ll show you around.”
    His eyes are even lovelier up close; the color is startlingly vibrant, like a light shone through a brown glass bottle. His eyelashes are thick and very dark, boyish.  
    Even though there’s a hint of playfulness in those eyes, I see something else there, something I hadn’t seen before.
    Kindness.
    I look away, my heart fluttering inside my chest. His person, his ridiculous shoulders and scruff and leather jacket—none of that has made my pulse race any faster today.
    But that look in his eyes—the softness—that did.  
    And I don’t know how I feel about that.
    Javier grabs a guitar case from “the boot”, as he calls it, and together we cross the street and walk alongside the monastery’s front façade. Now that we’re close, I can appreciate the building’s enormous scale. The whitewashed cornerstones are as long and wide as a person; the doors must be twelve, fifteen feet high, and so heavy it probably takes several people to open them.  
    “It’s not the prettiest building in Madrid,” Javier says, “but I’d like to think it’s one of the more interesting ones. It’s more of a local spot—like Rafa said, we don’t get many tourists coming to visit.”
    “I can only imagine what sort of shenanigans those humble royal nuns got up to at a place like this.” I crane my neck to get a better look at the series of three crosses that dot the roofline of the main entrance façade. “Do we know when it was first built?”
    “I’m not sure, actually,” Javier replies. “But there is someone who might be able