PART 2
“Look who’s back — the heroine of the poor,” Fernanda said in front of everyone. “Did the homeless man propose to you, or did he just leave you a tip in coins?”
Mariana, another saleswoman, covered her mouth to hold back a laugh. The manager pretended not to notice. Lucía was arranging inventory boxes behind the counter and chose not to respond.
But Fernanda did not want silence. She wanted humiliation.
“Clean my display case while you’re at it,” she ordered. “You spent yesterday crawling around in the street, so clearly you’re good at that kind of thing.”
Lucía swallowed. She wanted to answer back, but she needed this job. It covered her room in the Santa María la Ribera neighborhood, her overdue tuition fees, and the medication for Doña Elvira, a neighbor who had raised her like a daughter after her mother died.
So she cleaned.
When she left that evening, she found Mateo leaning against a simple car outside. This time he was wearing a blue shirt and his hair was less unruly.
— Lucía.
She stopped, surprised.
— How do you know my name?
Mateo pointed to her name badge.
— It’s hard to miss.
Lucía laughed for the first time all day.
— Right. I forgot to take it off.
He held out a small bag.
— I wanted to buy a watch for someone special, but not in a store like that. Do you know anywhere decent where they won’t make you feel strange for asking about the price?
Lucía hesitated, but ended up leading him to a more modest watch shop near Reforma. As they walked, they talked about easy things: tacos, traffic, the city’s unpredictable weather. Mateo seemed a little clumsy, but genuinely attentive. That made her let her guard down.
In the shop, he selected a small steel watch.
“For a girlfriend?” she asked lightly.
“For a twelve-year-old boy,” Mateo replied. “He lives in a children’s home. It’s his birthday.”
Lucía stopped smiling.
— Do you help there?
— Sometimes.
She said nothing more. But something in her eyes shifted. Lucía recognized that kind of silence — the silence of people who have lost too much.
That night, Mateo sent her a message.
“Did Fernanda bother you again?”
Lucía read it from her small room, sitting beside a bowl of instant soup.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry. People talk because they can. I work because I have to.”
Mateo gripped his phone, anger rising. In his private office, he pulled up the branch’s security camera footage. He watched Fernanda ignore customers, mock Lucía, pile extra tasks on her, hide a commission, and speak badly of her to the manager.
He saved the recordings.
“They think they own my company,” he said quietly. “They forgot who signs the contracts.”
On Sunday, Lucía went to a children’s home in Coyoacán with notebooks and crayons for the children. When she stepped into the courtyard, she stopped.
Mateo was sitting on a bench, talking to a boy with messy hair. The watch they had chosen together shone on the child’s wrist.
— Mateo?
He stood, genuinely surprised.
— Lucía… I didn’t know you came here.
She sat down beside him.
— I grew up coming to this place. When my mother got sick, the nuns helped us with food.
Mateo looked down.
— I grew up here.
Lucía stared at him.
“My parents died when I was ten,” he said. “My grandfather took care of me after that, but he died too. This house was everything I had.”
Something in Lucía softened.
“My father didn’t die,” she said quietly. “I used to wish he had. He gambled, drank, and hit the walls so my mother would cry in silence. When I started college, I had to leave to work. My mother died in debt to the hospital. That’s when I understood that no one comes to save you.”
Mateo wanted to take her hand. He didn’t dare.
Lucía wiped a tear quickly, as if irritated that she had let it escape.
— But that’s all in the past. We’re still here, right?
Then she ran off with the girls to show them how to make paper flowers.
Mateo watched her, his chest tight. It was no longer curiosity. It was no longer guilt.
He was in love.
But he also understood something terrible: the more he felt for her, the more unforgivable his deception had become.
And the following day, he decided to reveal the truth — without imagining it might destroy everything.
