I was digging through old CDs the other day, smiling to myself about how much my musical taste has changed. I had every single No Doubt CD, plus a lot of nineties ska and grunge stuff hanging around. Amid the Green Day, Cranberries, and Nirvana, I found a CD that I was given when I was in England by a Spanish guitarist.

I met him while I was visiting the city of York. I was traveling with Frenchie and a few others, and found myself walking around the city alone. We’d already walked along several stretches of the wall and even splurged on a guided tour of the minster (really worth doing, actually) before Frenchie and I broke off from our other companions to tour the city on foot. After a fortifying meal of bread, cheese, salad, and ale at the Golden Fleece pub, we began milling around the back streets. Frenchie wanted to go look for a jacket with one of England’s rugby teams colors on it, so I continued on by myself.

I had a good map, and so I wasn’t too concerned about getting lost. The last coach to our hotel was leaving at 5:30, and that was just outside the city wall, so I twisted and turned down the city streets, looking for something interesting. Just as my feet were getting tired, I emerged in a square formed by beautiful white stone buildings. Music–a beautiful Spanish melody–was coming from somewhere. I ventured further into the center of the square, trying to locate the source of the sound, and my eyes landed on him.

He was tall and a little too lean, and sat hunched over his rosewood guitar with nimble fingers that flew up and down the neck of his instrument with shocking grace. He wore a little hat that just shielded his eyes from view. There was a bench not far from him, so I quietly went to sit down and fished some of the chocolate that I had bought at the market that morning out of my satchel. I sat there in heaven for about twenty minutes, eating the warm, rose-shaped chocolates filled with strawberry honey and listening to him romance his guitar. Eventually he paused to rest his hands and shake out his fingers. He looked up and saw me watching him, and his face relaxed into an easy smile.

I got up immediately and went to him. “Your music is beautiful.” “Thank you,” he replied. He caught my hand and turned it so that it was palm-up. “You’re a musician to, ah?” I nodded. “Classical piano?” he asked. I nodded again. “You can always tell from the slant of the fingers,” he said, brushing my fingertips with his. “People who play popular piano music have flat, wide fingers. Classical musicians play on the tips of their fingers; they have a very delicate slope, right at the end.”

I was blushing a little bit, standing there with a stranger caressing my fingers. He looked up into my eyes and smiled again, dropping my hand. “What is your name?” he asked. “Catie,” I replied. “Do you like Spanish music.” I nodded emphatically. “I wasn’t raised in Spain, so the music is my connection to home. I feel the music here,” he said, laying his hand over his heart. I placed my hand right over the top of my stomach, across my lower rib cage. “I feel it here.” He laughed and introduced himself. “You’re American, ah? How did you come to love my music?”

I explained how my dad would put on Spanish music every evening in the summers when I was little. He and Mum would dance around the living room, my dad doing a weird sort of faux-flamenco, while Mum glided back and forth, occasionally balancing a glass of wine in one hand. My brother and I would twist and shake, moving every-which-way in time to the music. He smiled as I self-consciously became aware that I was letting myself get carried away in my story.

After a moment of silence he reached into his guitar case and pulled out a disk. “Will you do me the honor of taking this with you?” he asked. He opened the case and began scribbling something on the inside of the paper cover. “I’d love to,” I replied enthusiastically. I shoved the disk into my bag without looking at what he wrote. “It was nice to meet you.” He just smiled and went back to his guitar.

I sat on the bench for a while longer until Frenchie ran up and plopped down beside me. “What have you been doing with yourself?” she asked, pulling her newly bought rugby jacket out of a plastic bag to display. “Making friends,” I said, nodding towards my guitarist. Frenchie got quiet and listened to him for a few minutes. “I’m going to go buy a CD from him,” she said, pointing to a little sign I hadn’t noticed that said, “CDs–£5.” “Do you want one?” “I … uh, I already got one.”

After a long coach ride to the hotel, Frenchie jumped into the shower and I sat down on the settee in our tiny room to look at what he had written. To my mild disappointment, it was just his phone number, and not an actual note. Though I was single, I had left my heart across the Atlantic, so I never called him.