The sandy footpaths winding through Guadalupe Valley are deserted in the morning cloudbursts. Above us baja oaks are blotting out the pearly sky. Only a few raindrops leak through the pin-leafed canopy and drip onto our ponchos. We follow the trail through clumps of poison sumac and around an old rockslide. Puddles have formed in flat depressions in the rock. Then the trail begins to climb again, rising past treetrunks that tilt toward the valley floor, pulled by gravity and erosion. Somewhere in the mountains ahead a coyote is howling.

Nick turns into a statue with one arm raised. “Look!” he hisses.

Overhead is a tall rectangle of dark feathers perched on a dead tree limb. Huge yellow eyes blink at us. Slowly, then faster.

“A great horned owl,” I whisper, and peel back my poncho’s hood so I can watch it flicker across the treetops and out of sight. “That was so cool! I’ve only seen them in zoos, never in the wild before. How’d you manage to spot it, anyway?”

Nick starts walking again. “Beats me. I just looked up and there it was.”

“Did you feel it watching you? Like, the weight of its gaze?”

“Nah. Well, maybe. On a subconscious level.”

I trail after him, stepping in his bootprints. “My grandfather hated owls, even the ones at the zoo. He grew up in Iran believing owls were ghosts that had taken animal form. Emissaries from the spirit world.” Just saying it brings all the old stories flooding back, memorized while Nasrin and I sat at the foot of his rocking chair. “According to Grandfather, owls usually appear to warn people of bad tidings. Especially their own death. That way people have time to get their affairs in order and prepare to join the spirit world.”

“Hopefully we’ll be an exception to that superstition.” Nick glances over his shoulder, measuring something. Maybe me. “What about the rest of your family? What do they believe?”

“Same thing as us,” I smile. “An owl is just an owl.”

We fall into comfortable silence again. Above us the oak canopy is thinning out. We tug our poncho hoods back into place. The plastic sluices with drizzle as we follow the trail into a thicket of bush poppies. My nostrils tickle in the wet wind as I keep trying to smell any blooms. But their fragrance is mostly nascent, just branches dotted with flower buds, with only a few even half-open to enjoy.

I peel open a flower bud and sniff the cloying aroma, then offer it to Nick. Instead of taking it from me, he grabs my wrist, steadying the destroyed bud in front of his face. Then he closes his eyes and relaxes into a deep inhalation, “Mmmmm…” I pang with the need to do something naughty to him.

Soon the trail widens and flattens into grassy barrenness, an eroded saddle between two runty hilltops. Atop the ridgeline we pause to enjoy the view. Behind us the valley widens into a verdant panorama of arroyos filled with oak and pine, and vineyards that produce almost all of Mexico’s wine, and low squalls pebbling the Pacific. Ahead is another valley and more ridgelines, each one taller than the one before, receding like teethy steps into the rainy distance.

“Living in Tijuana, I forget the world can be like this, you know?” I say, my voice almost lost in the wind. “We have to drive a long ways before we stop seeing the city. I wish this view was closer.”

“You grew up in East LA dreaming of getting away from it all. I grew up in bumfuck nowhere Iowa dreaming of anyplace with stoplights, the more the better.” Nick’s expression is mostly hidden by the dripping hood of his poncho. “Behold the best microclimate in Mexico for grape growing. The perfect combination of soil, elevation, temperature, and seasonality. Only the Mediterranean itself can rival the Valle de Guadalupe.”

“You got that from a guidebook.” I’m catching onto his tricks.

Another trick of his — deflection. “Are you cold?”

“Nah, I’m fine. I can still do the winery tour.” But when he reaches over to hold my hand, it feels like an ice cube compared to his. “My hands are a little cold, that’s all.”

Nick’s warm grasp drops to my thigh. Where the poncho ends my jeans are rain-plastered, and beneath them I’m shivering. “We can do the winery tour another time. Let’s go home and take a hot shower, alright?”

“Can’t we just dry off in the truck? Then we could still — ”

He interrupts me by stepping on my Nike. Gently, but still.

“Hey!” I exclaim, trying to pull my foot away.

“See?” Nick says, pointing down in accusation. “Your shoes are waterlogged too.”

Sure enough, my Nike gushes out of the eyelets when he leans into me. “But I have my flip-flops back in the truck. I can just change into those…”

He’s already returning to the trail, his plastic-draped shoulders moving with determined energy. “Come on! This just wasn’t the right day to come out here!”

His irritation washes over me like another cloudburst, and I sag into a miserable paralysis. Way to go, Nooshin. You just ruined the whole day because you’re not tough like him. Impervious to the elements. Iron-willed. Because that’s what Nick wants. A girl who’s rugged and reliable, like some piece of farm machinery that never fails.

From the thicket of bush poppies he yells “Nooshin!” The word is rapidly descending into the valley.

Chasing after his bootprints in the wet sand, I remind myself that any number of things could be bothering him. The way Hercules forced him to screw over Frankie at the U.S.-Mexico Border Symposium. Our arguments about whether I should spend a couple hundred dollars on a quickie divorce from Saman, or save up for a real divorce with alimony and everything. Those frustrating dives into the Korea Textile maquiladora archive that leave him muttering about the difference between “dog bites man” and “man bites dog” dissertations. Maybe, just maybe, I’m not the ruin of his day — or only the smallest part of it.