I kick off my shoes by the door and undo the hair tie from my half-hearted bun, my curls falling limp over my shoulders. There’s noise coming from the living room—music, maybe, or just a few too many voices talking over each other. Camila must still have people over. I vaguely remember her mentioning something about her graduate school friends stopping by afterhappy hour, but I didn’t think they’d still be here. Not that it’s unusual. She entertains more than I do, which isn’t saying much.
“Hola,” I call softly, not expecting anyone to hear me.
My roommate appears at the end of the hallway, barefoot, holding an almost empty glass of wine. Her dark hair is in a messy braid, and she’s wearing one of those matching lounge sets that makes her look impossibly chic even though she’s clearly been drinking for hours. She smiles when she sees me—not cold, just a little too bright to be completely genuine. “Come meet everyone.”
She’s also from Argentina, and we ended up as roommates after she graduated with an MBA at Duke and moved to the city for her job in finance. My cousin’s husband is somehow related to her, and they connected us a little over two years ago once she knew she was moving here. It happened that my lease was up at the time, and I wanted a little more space and a building with an elevator, so I decided to live with a roommate.
It’s been a drastic change in my life—starting with the fact that it somehow feels like I’m regressing. When I lived in Buenos Aires, I didn’t have a roommate, so it just makes me feel like despite having landed the job of my dreams and living in an amazing city, I’m not quite there yet.
I hesitate. “It’s late, and I haven’t had dinner yet.”
“We have food. And they’re nice,” she insists with a grin, leaning against the wall like she has all the time in the world. Which, to be fair, she does. She was laid off a few weeks ago and has been struggling with finding a job. She mentioned something about having a sixty-day grace period before her visa expires or else she’ll have to go back to Argentina. “Dale.”
Before I can make an excuse, someone in the living room calls out in Spanish, the words tumbling with the kind of ease that makes my chest ache.Qué boluda,followed by laughter that sounds like home.
“And then theseñoratells me she’s never been south of San Clemente, and I sayah bueno, now everything makes sense.” Laughter erupts. Not the polite, overly loud kind people give when they don’t actually find something funny.
Curiosity wins. I step into the living room, barefoot, smoothing my curls down with one hand. The lights are low, and the playlist is somecumbia villeraremix I barely recognize. Two women are cross-legged on the floor, one half-asleep on the couch.
“Someone said something about San Clemente?”
“Why?” one of the women responds. She has dark long hair down to her waist and a breezy sundress that is draped over her legs. She looks at me with inquisitive eyes, almost like I’m intruding in on her life.
“I’m from Tres Fuegos, just up the mountain.”
“No fucking way!” she screams, and she shoots up from her perch on the floor in complete surprise.
“What did you just say?” the blonde woman says. Her hand is resting on a small baby bump, but she’s looking up at me like I just told her I’m the queen of England. “Tres Fuegos?”
“Yes.” I laugh, slightly skeptical. “It’s in Córdoba.”
“My ex-boyfriend is from there. Santiago Williams.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I say, and suddenly, I’m invested. This has never happened to me in the three plus years since I moved here. Occasionally people have asked me if I know someone or other, but it’s a big enough country that the chances are minimal.
“Que chiquito es el mundo.”
“Wait a minute,” Camila says, looking from one friend to the other, blue eyes wide. “How is this even possible?”
“I don’t even know because you have to zoom in real close to even see my town on the map.”
“Oh, by the way, everyone, this is Manuela.” Camila gestures loosely and shakes her head, like she can’t quite wrap her thoughts around what is happening. I move to sit on the floor in between the girl who mentioned San Clemente and my roommate.
“This is Sol, and Clara with the baby on the way, and the one asleep on the couch is Mica. She’s also in finance and had a terrible week.” I smile, and Sol sits next to me.
“I can’t believe it,” she mutters to herself, taking out her phone and quickly texting someone. “How come we’ve never met? I mean, we would have crossed paths eventually. With all that nothing to do in the summers and all.”
I laugh again because I’m still shocked. “I don’t know. Do you know the Williams siblings? I’m the same age as the youngest.”
“Ah, that must be it. I’m much older,” Sol says, tucking her legs back in a way that makes her look so effortless. She has tiny tattoos all along her arms, almost in random spots on her skin. There’s a set of stars, some sort of bird, and a lot of different flowers sprinkled throughout.
Camila is nodding along with the conversation and smiling, almost like this is giving her an enormous amount of joy. There’s something deeply comforting about the shorthand of shared geography, and I can’t believe there’s so much overlap in our lives, and this whole time it was just a matter of listening a little bit closer to what Camila and her friends were talking about.
“Anyway,” Sol continues, like this little diversion is just a normal thing that happens to them and not potentially something life-altering to me. “Finally, the lady gave me the empanadas and let me go, but that made me, like, forty-five minutes late to my wedding. It was clear my marriage was doomed from the start.”
Clara snort-laughs and chokes on her water, and Camila moves slightly to tap her on the back as she coughs. “We’recelebrating Sol’s divorce,” she whispers in my ear, and I nod as if I understand any of it.
“I miss empanadas,” Sol says, with a smile on her face and a shine in her eyes.
