The octopus arrived before the invitation.
Luis turned up unannounced, holding it by the head like he’d just won a weird seafood lottery. It dangled there, limp and purple, while he bellowed something about lunch, padrón peppers, and how no one in the village can cook anymore.
He wasn’t asking. He was summoning.
“¡Coméis conmigo!”
No question mark. No escape.
Patricia looked delighted. I considered faking a fever.
But we went. Of course we went.
Lunch at Luis’s
His garden looked like it had survived a storm and a barbecue simultaneously. A battered table under half a vine, a swarm of buzzing things hovering over an open grill, and Luis shouting at a pot.
No sign of the hearing aid. He had it. It just wasn’t in his ear. He keeps it in his shirt pocket. Says it “makes noises it shouldn’t.”
Fair enough.
The pulpo went in whole, and Luis started a story that may or may not have involved falling off a jetty, punching a cormorant, and catching two octopus with a single hand. I didn’t follow all of it. I just nodded when he laughed and hoped the wine would kill whatever bacteria were in the story—or the octopus.
His daughter poured the wine into mismatched tumblers. Patricia sniffed it like it was a fine Rioja. It wasn’t. It was red, possibly flammable, and served from a plastic Coke bottle.
Still, it had a kick. I’ll give him that.
The Kid with the Drone
Somewhere between the padrón peppers and the second glass, I noticed the teenager.
Luis’s grandson. Hoodie. Blank expression. Phone permanently in hand. Classic.
I made a stupid joke about the wine being jet fuel. He didn’t laugh. But five minutes later, he showed me a video—something he’d shot at sunrise with his drone, flying over the cliffs near the coast. It was… beautiful, actually. Bleak and wild and real. Soundtracked by the wind and a single seagull screaming like it owed someone money.
We talked a bit. He’s into filming, editing. He hates school. He called it “a car park with worksheets.” I liked him.
Then he said:
“You haven’t been to the lighthouse, have you?”
I said no.
He said he’d take us.
I said yes before I’d really processed it.
Back Home
We left around four. Patricia with a jar of something fig-based and unlabelled. Me with the vague sense I’d agreed to climb something steep. Bertie had eaten a pepper when no one was looking and spent most of the afternoon looking both haunted and betrayed.
Wordle that evening was a car crash.
Patricia guessed “teeth” on turn two.
I wrote “fuggy” just to see if she’d throw a cushion at me. She did.
But the day felt… real. No filter. Loud, strange, smoky.
Luis forgot our names twice.
The kid barely spoke above a mutter.
But something about it stitched us back into the fabric of this place. Frayed edges and all.
Next up: a drone trip, a half-collapsed clifftop chapel, and a woman with more keys than sense.
