So it goes [Breakable Heaven #1]

14. Well, there is a wall here...

"Sushi is the best food invention after pizza!" I state, grabbing yet another salmon nigiri between my chopsticks and drowning it in soy sauce.

Rory laughs. "You should move to Italy, then."

"Italy?" my right eyebrow arches. "Shouldn't I move to Japan, since I love sushi so much?"

"Nah," she shakes her head. "Italy has a huge sushi all-you-can-eat culture, and if you moved there you would get the best pizza in the world, too. Besides, you already struggle with your Spanish, how would you manage to learn Japanese? At least Italian is quite similar to Spanish."

"Hey!" I protest. "I most certainly do not struggle with Spanish! I come from Southern Cali, this language is part of our culture almost as much as English is. It's just that the one we learn is different from the Spanish that is spoken here!"

I avoid telling her that one of my many foster mothers was Latina and that she and her husband used to speak Spanish when they didn't want me to hear what they were saying, because my Spanish is, indeed, not that great.

"Do you miss it? California, I mean."

"Sometimes," I shrug. At this point, I really can't tell if what I'm missing is my hometown, the life I left behind, or just Lilian. It's probably a combination of all those factors, though. "I really miss the ocean."

"Did you live close to it?"

"Pretty much. I've moved around a lot, but my last apartment was in Culver City, which is not far from Venice or Marina del Rey. But I've always spent a lot of time in close proximity to the sea, and I kinda miss it now. What about you? Do you miss Cambridge?"

Rory's father is a professor at Cambridge University, he moved his family there from Italy when Rory was ten. She lived there until about five years ago, when she decided to take up a teaching job in Spain, the country where her father is from.

"Not really. I obviously miss my life there, and my family, but not the place, no. I've always been quite a Mediterranean person, so British weather doesn't do it for me. You know how much I love sunbathing."

To be perfectly honest, I don't see Rory having a great time in England, since she's basically a cat who loves soaking up the sunshine whenever she can. Andalusia looks like a much better fit for her.

"You should go live in SoCal, then," I suggest.

"Oh, I've thought about it. I went there on holiday when I was twenty-one and I thought it was the perfect place to live. Actually, I got one of my tattoos when I was there, at a place on Sunset Boulevard - Purple Panther, if I remember correctly."

"Shut up!" I squeal. "It's where I got my first tattoo, too! What a coincidence!"

We go on talking about California and tattoos for a while, then, when we're almost done with our dinner, the conversation lands on the guy Rory dumped over the summer.

"I don't even know why I started going out with such an idiot in the first place. We had nothing in common, and he never really gave a shit about really getting to know me. The last time we went out together he asked me if I had graduated from university, which is something that I had told him at least five times while we were dating. And he was racist and so close-minded: he complained about immigrants, saying they just go to other countries to steal jobs from the local people and that war is just an excuse they use to flee their shitty countries. Oh and he called me childish, immature, and said that I have a stick up my arse, that I don't know how to have fun, that I am way too strict, judgmental, and bossy. Which, you know, isn't totally wrong, I admit that... I always say I was probably a dictator in my previous life and I have kept the authoritative part of my personality. But I don't know, the way he said it was just... mean. It's like he could have strong opinions but I couldn't. And don't get me started about the sex... he had no clue what he was doing with me and obviously didn't accept any direction from me. Every time I tried to suggest to him what to do to make me feel better, he immediately got turned off, saying I needed to stop trying to boss him around."