I am thirty-two and I live in a walk-up in Poble Sec that smells like whatever the neighbors are frying. I go to the beach on weekdays because the weekend version of Barceloneta is a different city, louder, less mine. Today the water was the flat bright blue that makes tourists take the same photograph, and I stayed past the crowded stretch, past the wooden walk, toward the quieter sand near the breakwater where the city thins out and the rocks begin.

He was already there. Twenty-eight. On his back, one arm over his eyes, a small bag used as a pillow, salt drying in a white line at his hairline. Dark skin, Australian in the shoulders. I noticed the mouth first, then the long line of him, the way his swim shorts sat low. I sat two towels away like a man with manners…