The wanting made every solution feel like proof.

Alex walked out of the house with a Coke in his hand, greeting uncles, cousins, and neighbors as they arrived. He shook hands with the men, kissed the older women on the cheek, and kept moving as he directed another family toward the food.

Mariachi music rattled the windows while children chased one another between folding chairs. The yard smelled of charcoal, carne asada, and the tamales the women had spent half the day making. Every conversation competed with three others.

His gaze kept moving through the yard.

Read more

After surrendering to the kiss she had spent weeks avoiding, Lucia tried to contain what followed by insisting there would be no strings. Matteo agreed and drew her closer, leaving her inside an intimacy she wanted but still believed she had no right to claim.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 18: Bent and Broken

Lucia

You are at once the tranquility and the turmoil of my heart.

~Franz Kafka

Rumors of their relationship spread faster than Lucia could fit them into any pattern she understood. As accounting class started, a guy who had never made room for her waved her toward the “smart group.” She instinctively looked behind her. “Lucia,” he waved harder. “We saved you a seat.”

“Thanks.” She frowned before she could hide behind indifference.

In Historiography and Methods later that week, Lucia walked toward the door with a pile of books in her hands. The girl who had called her an affirmative action admit held the door open before Lucia could reach for the handle. “Girl, you need two backpacks.”

“I’ve got it,” Lucia mumbled, fighting the urge to recoil when the girl took the top books from the stack.

“Here, let me help you.” Before Lucia could object, she set the books on her usual desk.

“Join us for coffee,” one of the girls in the group suggested at the end of class.

The pattern dropped in Lucia’s stomach like a cold stone. First an irritant, now a liability if dismissed. She had become access to a coveted social commodity. “I’m meeting someone.”

“Oh, Matteo Johnson?” Their eyes darted to one another.

She didn’t want to give them anything. Still, Matteo’s name had become protection in a language they understood. “Yes. Sorry. Gotta go.”

She bolted. Relief came later, when she told Matteo the story and he assured her they would lose interest with time. It was surprisingly easy to believe him.

Soon, however, she stopped bracing quite so hard between classes. Sometime around the third day, her shoulders relaxed. By the end of the week, her jaw unclenched. The relief should have felt good. Instead, she kept waiting for whatever had made her life easier to take itself back.

In the last class of the week, she took her usual seat at the front. It was the only room where friendship had found her. Well, it was more like people took in a stray, waited out her fear, found out they liked her, then decided she could stay.

Sure enough, Sheri pulled her to the side. Her voice dropped to a whisper, eyes wide with excitement. “Is it true? Are you and Matteo Johnson really a thing?”

Lucia watched her practically bounce in place. How could anyone be that giddy all the time? “Who told you?”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Sheri rolled her eyes. “He’s the guy every girl wants, and he follows you around like a puppy.”

“He does not,” she replied, offended on his behalf.

“Does too.” Sheri grinned and leaned closer, lowering her voice another notch. “Come on, let’s sit together so you can tell me what he looks like naked.”

“I don’t know what he looks like naked!” The idea made Lucia blush, heat spreading to her toes.

“But you’ve seen him in swim trunks, right?” Sheri winked and nudged her as they sat next to each other.

“Hot,” she admitted, and the memory of his wet body entangled with hers rushed in before she could stop it. “He looks hot.”

“Must be serious. He’s been hanging around you since last year, hasn’t he?”

“What? No.” The denial came too quickly to sound convincing even to her. Did Matteo really understand how the label had changed the story? The first string had fastened itself to her.

As Matteo and Lucia walked to the SUV for her next driving lesson, she asked, “Do you know a girl named Sheri?”

He tilted his head ever so slightly, as if her name almost registered. “No one comes to mind.”

“Sheri knows about us.” She leaned against his car. “Well. Everyone does.”

“So, high school.” He rolled his eyes, uninterested, then leaned closer with a soft shrug. “I missed you.”

In the last couple of weeks, he had gone back to his warmer, cockier self, no longer moving around her as if one careless gesture might shatter something. Now she couldn’t stop looking at his dimples. She forced her voice into something steady. “This changes everything.”

“Only if you want it to.” Without breaking eye contact, he pulled off his sunglasses, tossing them carelessly onto the driver’s seat.

“What if you meet someone?” she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice. Her thoughts stopped before they reached what that would do to her newfound peace.

“I have.” He leaned in, close enough that his breath grazed her neck, sending a shiver down her spine.

Somehow, because he hadn’t kissed her again, hadn’t given her what she’d refused to admit she wanted, she wanted him more. What the fuck was wrong with her? The word shocked her more than the question. She slid into the driver’s seat.

“Today, you’re going to drive to Torrey Pines Beach,” he told her with a confidence that she didn’t share.

At least when she was driving, she didn’t have to think about what she wanted from him or what it meant. She could just listen to him talk about Dostoevsky while his Castilian lisp became more pronounced as he relaxed.

“Great job,” he said when she eased the car into the parking spot before Tower 5, but the space between them remained. “Now back to campus.”

She adjusted her hands on the wheel as he started talking about the paradox of being a good person in The Idiot. She felt like the only idiot in the car.

As she parked on campus and turned off the ignition, he exhaled slowly. “I hate Sunday.”

“Huh?” Her question came out thin. His voice had dropped into something softer, threaded with something rougher that pulled her closer.

“And classes. Your shift at the bookstore. Anything that keeps you away from me.” He let the words hang between them.

Would he finally ask for another kiss? She held her breath, wanting to say something, anything that might make him lean closer.

Instead, he opened his door with maddening calm. “It’s getting late. We should get going before Mrs. Linda worries.”

Lucia had spread her cost-volume-profit analysis project across the dining room table. She avoided Abuela’s glare by focusing on the intricacies of the analysis. “You’re going to hurt your eyes. Girls don’t need to work so hard. Find a good man. Marry. Have kids.”

“You look different,” Doña Cuca remarked, her gaze sweeping over Lucia for evidence. “Eva, what are you feeding this girl?”

Lucia tuned them out and shifted her eyes back to her numbers. The extra accounting courses came at no additional cost. By the end of the academic year, she’d be a bookkeeper, qualified for work that did not depend on how many hours the bookstore could spare.

“New clothes? You look nice.” Doña Cuca’s eyes lingered, searching for clues, no doubt to report to the rest of the barrio.

Lucia nodded absently. It had been two years since she had purchased anything new, which meant Doña Cuca was looking at her too closely.

“She sounds different too.” Abuela narrowed her eyes the way she did when she smelled spoiled milk. “Mmhmm.”

Time to pay attention. Abuela didn’t sound happy. “Sorry, Doña Cuca. No new clothes.”

Doña Cuca’s voice brightened. “It must be because someone walked you home.”

“Did Alex finally break up with that girl?” Abuela’s eyes turned on Lucia with sharp expectation that made her squirm.

“I think he needs a little encouragement, knowing the right girl is waiting for him.” Doña Cuca turned to look at Lucia with the satisfied expression of someone finding something of quality in the bargain bin.

“I really need to finish this project,” she said, looking away. Her mind split itself three ways. She had to finish her accounting, keep her guard up around the women, and shove away the memory of Matteo’s lips before it showed somewhere they knew how to read.

Author’s note

Rumors about Lucia and Matteo change the social traffic around her. A classmate who questioned her place now carries her books. Another invites her for coffee. By then, the pattern has become clear. Her connection to Matteo has made her socially useful.

Sociologists call this status by association. Standing beside someone with higher status can change how a group evaluates you, even when none of that standing belongs to you. Research on interracial relationships finds a related effect in discrimination and negative social treatment, where the identity of a partner can alter how others behave toward the person beside them. [1][2] The language is academic. The transaction is not.

Years ago, my cousin and I rode electric bikes through Celebration, Florida, with our children and my white husband. My children are white-presenting. My cousin, her children, and I are read as minorities. Yet, courtesy arrived so consistently that it disappeared into the background. As a new immigrant, she read it as local friendliness because privilege prefers to pass as atmosphere.

After my family left the area, she continued biking there with her children. My husband’s presence had apparently placed her closer to whiteness in strangers’ calculations. Once he disappeared from the scene, so did much of the courtesy. The change stayed with her.

Sources

1. Overton, Jon. “When Does Status Transfer between People? A Crowdsourced Experiment on the Scope of Status by Association.” Social Psychology Quarterly 84, no. 4 (2021): 309–330.

2. Irby-Shasanmi, Amy, and Christy L. Erving. “Do Discrimination and Negative Interactions with Family Explain the Relationship between Interracial Relationship Status and Mental Disorder?” Socius 8 (2022).

Would you trust those suddenly friendly classmates, or would you count your books before leaving?

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Lucia’s latest beating forced Carol to face how long she had looked away. Lucia survived, but the way she looked at Carol made one thing impossible to ignore: something between them had changed.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 4: Neither Pure nor Simple

Carol

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development.

To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life.

~Oscar Wilde

Maybe I was simply stupid. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop fixating on Lucia’s new friend. Matteo.

I disliked the name immediately. It was way too Mexican and common, the sort of name shouted across crowded markets by women carrying plastic bags and irritation. Hardly the name of anyone important, much less someone worth rearranging Lucia’s life for. Not that I had done anything worth rearranging it for, either. But that was different.

Until this school year, Lucia left for school at the same time every morning. She came home after school, ate dinner, and studied at the kitchen table. Now she left earlier and returned later. Whenever Penelope or I tried to hang out with her, she buried herself in homework or claimed she was tired. The girl we called the Energizer Bunny had suddenly developed the constitution of a dying Victorian waif.

Andrea had become equally difficult to pin down. Our plans changed without warning. Telephone conversations ended before they had properly begun. He was busy or tired and usually expected somewhere else.

Suddenly, everyone had somewhere else to be.

Lucia’s secrecy and Andrea’s distance stole focus from the only future I could still control. Real estate.

I wouldn’t have to remain at home or marry some man simply to escape. Money would let me control my future. No woman should leave that in the hands of love.

That fall afternoon, I showed the Gonzales family a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in University Heights. The exterior needed paint. Someone had carpeted both bathrooms. A brass chandelier hung over the dining room like a diseased crown. The bones were good, and the Gonzales family could afford it.

“Imagine the dining table here,” I said, standing beneath the chandelier. “You would still have room for a china cabinet along that wall.”

Mrs. Gonzales looked toward the kitchen. “The children could eat breakfast in there?”

“Absolutely. There’s space for a smaller table beside the window.”

Their youngest son ran through the doorway, followed by his sister. Laughter bounced through the empty rooms as they chose their bedrooms. The sound should have pleased me. It filled the house with the future they wanted. You sold people the dream they already carried in their heads.

My thoughts circled back to her. Every little change kept catching like a burr under my skin.

People guarded important information. Lucia’s truth would slip somewhere, eventually, when she forgot to protect it.

Mr. Gonzales asked something about the roof.

“Five years old,” I answered.

His expression changed. “The furnace,” he corrected. “I asked about the furnace.”

“Of course.” My smile arrived before the embarrassment could. “The furnace is five years old. The roof was replaced eight years ago.”

Before I could redirect him, the listing agent swept through the front door without knocking. She wore a navy suit pinned with a gold brooch and the tense smile of a woman who considered friendliness a charitable donation.

“Oh,” she said when she saw us. “I didn’t realize you were already here.”

“Our appointment began fifteen minutes ago.”

She looked past me at Mr. Gonzales. Then she raised her voice and drew out each word. “Did she explain the financing requirements?”

Racists thought volume could transform contempt into customer service.

I had heard that tone before, aimed straight at my father. His blond hair, white skin, and emerald-green eyes had done nothing for him. He dressed like a day laborer and spoke with a thick accent. That was all she saw.

Whenever my father asked a question, the woman rolled her eyes. She answered slowly, polishing each word with irritation, as though he were hard of hearing instead of Mexican.

The commission my father’s realtor earned stunned me more than her insults. Rude didn’t begin to cover it.

People could debate racism all they liked. I was practical. Racist agents created openings, and San Diego County had plenty of them. Most refused to learn basic Spanish. Understanding the culture required more effort than they intended to make.

I spoke the language. Better yet, I could change accents like jewelry.

“Mrs. Gonzales and I have already discussed the loan,” I told the listing agent. “They qualify.”

A brief smile touched Mrs. Gonzales’s mouth.

The other woman glanced at her clipboard. “The seller is hoping for a conventional buyer.”

There it was. Women like her hid racism beneath respectable words. Conventional would do.

I smiled. “Fortunately, the seller is hoping to sell the house. My clients are prepared to make an offer.”

Silence settled between us. The listing agent studied me more carefully. She had mistaken the blond hair and tailored suit for softness. Many people did.

Stupid woman.

With my looks, I had learned to become whatever the moment required. To families like theirs, I was la güerita, the blond girl who respected the community and knew how to listen.

Building their trust wasn’t difficult. They carried my father’s hard work and the quiet dignity of people used to being underestimated. Their trust stirred a pride beneath my ambition, as though every house I sold vindicated him.

The listing agent opened her mouth again.

“Why don’t you give us a few minutes?” I asked.

Her smile tightened. “Of course.”

Once the front door closed behind her, Mrs. Gonzales exhaled. In Spanish, she said, “She thinks we can’t afford it.”

“She thinks too highly of herself,” I answered in the same language. “That is a more expensive problem.”

Mr. Gonzales laughed.

The tension broke exactly as intended.

Unethical? No. That was business. When the world left an opening, you stepped through it. Pride had fed no one.

Not that I worried about feeding myself. I didn’t even own a table. Soon enough, I would have one. Imported mahogany, naturally.

While the family examined the backyard, I called the office from the telephone mounted beside the kitchen pantry. The receptionist answered on the second ring.

“Any messages?”

“Two. Andrea called.”

My fingers tightened around the cord. “What did he say?”

“He can’t make dinner tonight. Something came up.”

Again.

The ache beneath my ribs returned, quick and humiliating. Andrea had been away for months. Now that he was home, he behaved as though spending time with me required congressional approval.

“And the second message?”

The receptionist hesitated. “Penelope called. She said to tell you Lucia went to the library.”

Papers rustled near the receiver. “Then she said, and I’m quoting, ‘Same old boring shit, so Ellie can stop asking everyone.’”

Heat climbed into my face. “Was that all?”

“She also said not to drive over there.”

I hung up before the receptionist could hear my answer.

The kitchen blurred at the edges, probably because of the poor lighting and hideous wallpaper. Andrea had canceled dinner. Lucia was in her favorite place with a collection of musty old books.

Neither fact should have concerned me. Andrea would apologize once he remembered his manners. Lucia could drown in her boring history books. Friendship did not mean ownership. I understood that better than most people.

Laughter burst through the open patio door. The Gonzales children raced inside. Their older daughter stopped beside me.

“Lucia, why don’t you look at the back bedroom?” I said, the wrong name already out.

The girl stared at me. “My name is Alicia.”

“Of course it is.” I smiled with all the confidence a lie required. “Lucia was the name of another client’s daughter. Forgive me.”

Alicia glanced toward her parents. Mr. Gonzales did not smile this time.

I had called his daughter by the wrong name again. Perhaps I had underestimated the damage.

“We should probably think about this house,” he said.

The sentence struck harder than it should have. I had spent hours building their future inside those walls, and one careless name had cracked the foundation.

Even then, I pictured Lucia sitting beside a young man. Given the library, he was probably Asian, with dark eyes and a voice trained not to disturb anyone. The image arrived without permission.

Focus.

“I understand,” I said. “Buying a home deserves thought.”

Mrs. Gonzales touched her husband’s hand. “The payment would still be less than the other house?”

“Yes.”

I let embarrassment color my voice. Blushing on command helped. “The asking price exceeds what the house’s condition supports. Whatever her agent suggests, the seller knows that. Last month, a house two streets away sold for less, and it had a renovated kitchen. I recommend offering below asking. We request help with closing costs. They may refuse. If they do, we walk away.”

I opened my folder on the kitchen counter and placed the comparable sales in front of them. Mr. Gonzales examined the page.

Numbers never cared about names.

“Do you think they’ll accept?” he asked. His glance moved quickly to his wife, who loved the house.

“Nine weeks on the market gives us leverage.” Confidence returned to my voice, smooth and expensive. “They’ll negotiate.”

Mrs. Gonzales looked through the doorway toward the dining room. Her youngest son stood beneath the brass chandelier, spinning in circles. She placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“The children like it.”

“Children rarely lie about houses,” I said with a smile. Adults, on the other hand, lied constantly. Usually to themselves.

Andrea’s family had opened the doors of the University City real estate office for me. Wealthy people performed favors like that without a second thought, sparing girls like me from clawing our way inside.

I was the one who worked my ass off once I crossed the threshold. When the agents tried to use my “special skills” in the Hispanic community without compensation, Andrea pointed out that no one respected free labor. I negotiated a percentage of their commission for every favor or sale.

I created a business plan and learned how to market myself. Work claimed my weekends and most evenings, a brutal sacrifice considering the social calendar I preferred to maintain.

The other agents knew I worked harder than they did. They respected me for it, even when they didn’t particularly like me.

Respect was better.

I was closing my own deals now. Surprisingly, I didn’t merely enjoy it. I loved it.

Earning real money gave me power. Every commission bought another inch of distance from anyone who thought they could decide my future.

The first locked door would be the two-bedroom Craftsman cottage in Hillcrest I had been watching. A retired Navy officer owned it and wanted several thousand dollars above market value. Most people fixated on the price or complained about the musty collection of mementos cluttering the rooms. I saw the location.

One bedroom would be mine. The second could serve as an office at first. Later, perhaps, it might belong to someone who needed a quiet place to study. Someone who worked too hard, slept too little, and deserved a door she could close.

I didn’t examine that thought too closely. Some blueprints worked better without an audience.

After the cottage came rental properties. Passive income, baby. Then I would open my own real estate office.

Not Elena Carolina Herrera Agency. Please. People with serious money did not hand it to a woman whose name sounded like it came printed on a county assistance form.

Carol Ellis Properties sounded polished and trustworthy, expensive without trying too hard.

Easy peasy, right?

Mr. Gonzales and I scheduled an appointment to write the offer the following morning. I would have to miss class. That didn’t bother me. Cs still earned degrees, and the degree was all I wanted.

The rest I intended to buy for myself.

I could admit I had hit a few bumps on the road. Fixing my current “little” mistakes would cost me several hours, several apologies, and what pride I had left. I still wanted Andrea. More importantly, I needed the sale.

Outside, sunlight struck the windshield hard enough to make me squint. The office lay in one direction. Home waited in the other.

La Jolla University library sat nowhere near either one. The steering wheel had apparently made the decision without consulting me. I would deal with its insubordination later.

Efficiency, I decided.

Lucia had already consumed more of my attention than she deserved. One conversation would allow me to dismiss her properly. A woman could call a lie whatever she pleased, provided she delivered it with enough confidence.

Author’s note

Discrimination becomes easier to excuse when everybody still gets what they came for.

An immigrant can find work or buy a house and still leave the encounter carrying something he never agreed to purchase. The other person gets what matters to the transaction, whether that means labor, business, or money. Because nobody refused service outright, everyone can pretend the system worked. The humiliation remains conveniently off the receipt.

An accent can make someone question competence they would otherwise assume. It can also provoke impatience with questions a native speaker could ask without consequence. A foreign name or appearance may trigger assumptions before anyone knows where the person was born, how long he has lived here, or whether he is a citizen.

Discrimination does not require coherent logic. Someone who resents immigrants may still hire one when the work needs doing. A business owner can depend on customers whose accents irritate him, then complain about immigrants over dinner. Economic self-interest has never required ideological consistency. Bigotry becomes remarkably adaptable when money enters the room.

The person receiving that contempt has to manage it while completing whatever brought him there. Challenging the treatment may jeopardize something he needs, so disrespect becomes another cost he has to calculate.

An immigrant may depend on the job or need the professional sitting across from him to finish the work. Walking away means starting over and hoping the next person hides the contempt better. A complaint can also make him look difficult in a culture already prepared to interpret his frustration as evidence that he does not belong. Silence can resemble submission when someone else never has to pay for the alternative.

That is the discrimination I wanted underneath Chapter 5. Carol’s father participates fully in the transaction, enough for his realtor to profit from him. His money earns her commission without earning him the ordinary respect she would extend to someone she considered her equal.

She can treat him as though he barely belongs and still take the check.

Apparently his money speaks excellent English.

Sources

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “National Origin Discrimination.”

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “EEOC Disappointed in Supreme Court Decision Not to Hear Speak-English-Only Work Rule Case.”

U.S. Government Accountability Office. Employer Sanctions and the Question of Discrimination. 1990.

What did you think when Carol turned the car toward the library?

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Lucia let Matteo guide her into the waves, trusting his promise that they could leave whenever she wanted. When he kissed her, she answered him, then kissed him again. The moment left her wanting more than she could safely name. Now she has to face what changed between them, certain he will regret choosing a girl from the barrio.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 17: Undone

Lucia

I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.

~Charles Dickens

Matteo was looking at her again. Lucia dropped her eyes and chewed her thumb. Anything to keep the weight of his attention from becoming a need.

Now, as they left the library, his hand drifted close enough to touch hers. She considered pulling it back. Then his damn dimples appeared, and something in her chest loosened. So her fingers knitted into his instead. She looked away as the twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her. All that remained was to wait for the moment to turn into something she understood.

He never asked for another kiss or pushed his body against her the way other boys had. His eyes remained soft and asked nothing of her. She searched for a reason but found none. That was the part that unsettled her most.

A few weeks later, as they walked to his car holding hands, a group of classmates crossed in front of them. Their conversation faltered, eyes flicking at their interlaced fingers. Heat rushed to her face as her heartbeat fell out of rhythm. She wanted to run from the sudden widening of their eyes.

Of course, no one thought she was good enough for him. The worst part was that she agreed. The belief moved through her body before she could stop it, and her legs nearly gave way.

His arm settled around her, giving her something solid to lean into without holding her there. He greeted the classmates easily, his voice unchanged. She could not understand how their scrutiny seemed to slide off him.

Lucia leaned into the steadiness she had no intention of needing. Her eyes searched his, waiting for the smallest sign that she had taken too much.

His expression had changed, his eyes narrowing while his mouth curved into something polished and unfamiliar. He pulled her closer, brushing past their stares as he guided her to his car.

When they reached it, she didn’t climb into the driver’s seat. Instead, she surrendered the keys and walked to the passenger’s side, her throat tight. “Can you take me home?”

She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, counting each breath until she could swallow the knot in her throat. Her lower lip caught between her teeth. She knew how to hide humiliation so well that sometimes she believed her own lies. “I’m tired.”

Matteo

Over the past weeks, Lucia had reached for the keys with a quiet confidence that carried more weight than the action itself. Driving had become something structural for her, a small, deliberate claim over the direction of her life. Now something had given way. He felt the shift along his spine and recalibrated his balance.

She closed the passenger door with a soft, contained sound, and folded into the seat. Her posture drew inward, shoulders hunched in that self-protective way that made his chest ache.

He started the car, knowing she wasn’t tired. But tired functioned. It closed doors, redirected inquiry, and returned structure to her inner world. He had learned the shape of her defenses over the past year.

The engine’s low hum moved through the steering column into his hands, and he let the rhythm anchor him. His breath aligned with it. He had no interest in becoming another thing she had to survive.

Instead of taking the entrance to Interstate 5, he remained on the Pacific Coast Highway. The two-lane drive through the beach towns and coastal bluffs had become her favorite.

She opened her eyes, but no objection followed his decision. Lucia sat beside him in fragments. He kept his eyes on the road and read what she could not say in the small betrayals of her body. Her shoulders curved deeper into themselves as she leaned against the window. A curl escaped her braid, as it always did, but she didn’t move to fix it.

Their classmates’ expressions returned with uncomfortable precision, assessing, reassigning. He could still feel the moment they had decided she didn’t belong beside him.

He could still see the impact register in her body, her expression going still as her breath shortened. Identify, correct, restore. The family directive pressed hard inside his chest, reminding him to read the room and contain the reaction. He held himself still and breathed until the need to fix the situation passed.

That kind of social judgment had a shape he should have recognized before it reached her. His mistake mattered, but he didn’t have time to examine it. Self-recrimination had to wait until they were back on solid ground.

From the corner of his eye, he caught her watching the sun set the sky on fire. Her chest rose and fell into a steadier rhythm.

He adjusted his grip on the wheel, knuckles whitening as he took the turn that brought the ocean into view. The air in the car shifted, and the road opened to the coastline, a long, unbroken line stretching beside them before the cliffs rose gradually to meet it.

Matteo had waited until her breathing settled. The water taught him when to yield. Dance taught him when to move. His family taught him when not to. Timing was part of the rhythm his body trusted. Too early, and he landed badly. Too late, and he ended up on his ass.

He turned off toward the parking lot near Tower 5. Their spot. The tires settled into the asphalt before the car came to a stop. He let the engine idle for a moment, giving her time to object, then turned it off.

The sound of the waves replaced the hum, steady, a reminder of his promise. She was not alone in this. The space between them held, fragile and deliberate, until she chose what to do with it. He settled into it, refusing to turn silence into pressure.

She met his eyes, and he knew she was going to try to break his heart.

Lucia

“I don’t think this ‘no strings’ attached thing works,” Lucia said evenly, pulling her face into the neutral expression that made her feel protected from the world.

“I agree.” His voice was steady, his expression unperturbed.

She blinked. Her emotions lagged her logic, which rushed forward protectively. “We don’t belong together. Everyone knows it.”

“No one gets to define what we get to be.”

What? Her mind hit a wall. Hard. She blinked, then blinked again, trying to recalibrate, but her emotions were now nipping at her heels.

“I want to tell everyone we’re dating.” His voice held firm at first, then softened around the Castilian lisp that always made her thoughts slip. “What it means is left up to us.”

“I… What?” She couldn’t breathe. The air felt heavy, her chest too tight, heat rising to her face. Tears pressed against her eyes, but she refused to let them spill.

She opened the door and stepped out of the car. The ocean enveloped her, clearing her head.

No one would look at her “that way” again. Not if she was his girlfriend. They wouldn’t dare. She let that sink in.

He had to know he was handing her a kind of safety people like her did not get for free. In her experience, generosity came with expectations.

He never demanded anything from her. And her? What did she really want from him, affection, protection, or him? Sometimes she wanted the girl she became in his eyes more than she understood wanting him.

She couldn’t even remember when he stopped being someone others fawned over and became someone she found damn good-looking. Wanting him at all was stupid. Falling in love with him was a freefall that would cost her everything. She couldn’t take from him when fear warned her to give nothing back.

Lucia was about to wrap her arms around herself, skin pebbled, when the weight of his sweater settled over her, still warm from his body. Her breath snagged high in her chest as she waited for the moment to turn into something else. Pressure, a claim, anger, something she would be forced to manage. None came.

He leaned against the car, weight dropped on one hip. His hands in his pockets. No tension marked his face, as if they had all the time in the world.

“I can’t be your girlfriend.” She shook her head, annoyed with herself, with him, with the situation. All she wanted was to go to the library and curl under a desk until closing time. “We already talked about this.”

“We did,” he agreed.

The faint scent of sandalwood from his sweater mingled with salt from the ocean as the fabric rested lightly against her skin, soft without friction. Slowly, without realizing it, she moved closer to him. The sleeves fell past her hands, protecting her more than she had any right to expect.

“Telling people you are my girlfriend is not the same thing as being my girlfriend. We decide what it means.”

“Oh.” The tension in her chest eased in a quiet rush. He had just given her a loophole she could live with. Her head throbbed. Holding her reactions down while she tried to sort through it all was tiring.

People were exhausting. Everywhere. Except for Matteo. With him, it was easy. She leaned against him, and his arms went around her. “No strings attached?”

“We decide what it means.” His lisp grazed her ear, soft enough to undo her.

“Okay,” the word slipped out before she could pull it back. She wasn’t sure why she had agreed, only that if she thought about it, she would find reasons to say no.

Author’s note

Driving gives Lucia a form of control she rarely gets elsewhere. Behind the wheel, she chooses the route and decides when to stop. At home, other people usually make those choices for her. Each lesson lets her practice making decisions without permission. One look from her classmates shakes that new confidence.

Their expressions confirm what Lucia already fears. She doesn’t belong beside Matteo. Shame moves faster when it finds a suspicion she already carries. The classmates never threaten her or say a word. They barely need to.

By the time Lucia reaches the car, their rejection has entered her body. Her throat tightens. Her legs weaken. She no longer trusts herself to drive without exposing what happened. So she hands Matteo the keys and takes the passenger seat before anyone sees her falter. Minutes earlier, she controlled the car. Now Matteo does.

Was Matteo’s girlfriend loophole brilliant, ridiculous, or exactly the kind of nonsense two people in denial would invent?

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Once Abuela ranks her family’s wounds, her sympathy becomes a ruling on who has suffered more and who can take more pain.

Writing about generational abuse created both a structural and an emotional challenge. Lucia’s Mexican American family couldn’t appear uniformly abusive, and her barrio couldn’t become an ethnic explanation for violence. At the same time, adding enough loving relatives and generous neighbors to offset the abuse would reduce the family to a moral balance sheet.

The same community that guards its own can also guard the silence around an abuser. Abuela can love Lucia while demanding that she absorb Bruno’s rage. Johnny can try to protect his sister and still fail to understand what she needs from him.

My problem was not deciding how many good people could offset Bruno. It was writing protection as part of the machinery that kept him dangerous.

Ranking Wounds

Writing Abuela required me to account for something I’d taken years to understand about my paternal family. They tried to protect me from my father’s violence by pacifying him and diverting his attention. It confused me because I felt they were protecting him too.

When I was older, my grandmother explained that, as a teenager, my father had survived an attempt on his life that left him buried in a mine for hours. His family couldn’t help but remember that traumatized young man and the drastic change in his personality afterward. His alcohol problem and abuse therefore had an established explanation and his family’s longstanding sympathy. My bruises entered a comparison I could never win.

That recognition gave me a way to write Abuela’s reasoning. Bruno’s wound has a history his mother understands.

Once Abuela ranks her family’s wounds, her sympathy becomes a ruling on who has suffered more and who can take more pain. Abuela calls Bruno a good man while Lucia endures his violence. She pressures her granddaughter to give up school and work to help him endure his wound. Each demand follows a logic Abuela can defend, with Lucia supplying whatever that defense requires. By keeping the excuse next to the consequence, I made it clear that Abuela recognizes Lucia’s pain but still gives Bruno’s suffering priority. Lucia, apparently, can afford another installment.

The Grumpy Writer Essays

The Discipline of Limited Knowledge

As the writer, I understand the complexity of the hidden family history and the connections Lucia can’t yet make. That knowledge guides how I write her grandmother, but it can’t enter Lucia’s narration before she’s learned it.

The distinction matters at the sentence level. Abuela wails as her son beats Lucia. Her grandmother’s pain can be sincere even as she demands that Lucia endure. Both responses belong in the scene.

Abuela’s conduct has to carry what the narration can’t disclose. Readers have to base their judgment on the evidence available to them. I can’t treat it as a misunderstanding simply because I know more.

To explain Abuela’s history, I’d have to ask Lucia to step aside while I make sure everyone appreciates how complicated her grandmother is. The restraint belongs to me. Lucia can’t become prematurely wise so I can feel satisfied that I’ve written a complex grandmother.

Explanation Cannot Become Acquittal

Bruno’s troubled relationship with his stepfather is part of his wound and informs how I write his resentment. The danger lies in making that connection so tidy that his childhood appears to dictate his adult behavior. A convincing cause can quietly become an excuse if I remove every choice between the injury and the violence. I need to begin with the boy’s wound, but the man is the one currently deciding whose body will answer for his childhood.

In the opening scene, he demands money from Abuela: “You owe me because you married that bastard.” The dialogue lets his history enter through his entitlement. He considers his mother’s marriage a debt she still owes him, with no apparent limit on collections.

Lucia stands nearby, anticipating what his anger will cost her. Keeping the scene in her viewpoint means his grievance reaches readers alongside the fear he creates. His explanation can’t take possession of the narrative simply because he delivers it loudly.

Culture Is Context, Not Cause

Stopping the novel to announce that abuse isn’t specific to this community would turn a scene into a public relations appointment.Writing this barrio requires attention to what its residents mean by family loyalty and who can claim authority. When Abuela tells Lucia she doesn’t understand what life is like for men, gender becomes an argument for endurance. Mexican American culture doesn’t justify the demand, but Abuela’s words reveal how she interprets that culture.

The neighborhood gives me the opportunity to further explore the concept. Mrs. Linda and Mr. Jamar, the Black couple nearby, use their standing to offer Lucia a safe walk home. Doña Cuca welcomes her with affection but also helps enforce expectations about the kind of man she should marry. Those scenes let belonging offer comfort while retaining conditions Lucia has to navigate.

The familiar question “Why didn’t she just leave?” already travels comfortably across cultural boundaries. My task is to write what makes leaving difficult. Removing those particulars would leave Lucia with fewer believable reasons to hesitate and then invite readers to blame her for ambivalence.

Write the Arc Through Access

Lucia’s growth has to become visible in whom she calls, what she keeps private, and what she begins to refuse. She can love someone and still limit their access to her. Writing that change means allowing her to retreat, reconsider, and try again without treating every backward step as the cancellation of her progress.

Whether she ultimately sets boundaries or chooses to leave, neither is easy to accomplish or survive. As abuse survivors, we can heal and control our own lives, and yet some of us negotiate presence even as the scars remain.

Writing Lucia requires that same respect for her journey and what survives a repair.

When has a character’s tragic backstory made you think the author was making excuses?

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Andrea returned to Carol with gifts chosen well enough to keep their relationship looking intact. Carol knew attentiveness was not love, but she played along because the performance still served her. What she had not admitted was who the performance was protecting her from.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 3: My Crime

Carol

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

~Oscar Wilde

Penelope skidded to a stop in front of me. Her arms tightened around her body as if she were protecting herself from the echoes of the wails we had all ignored. “Did he hit her again?”

“Beat her black and blue.” I couldn’t forget the brittle expression on Lucia’s face. Under her stare, every excuse I had made for myself turned hollow.

“My mom was in the atrium when she heard the screams.” Penelope’s voice cracked. “She didn’t tell me until it was over.”

I looked toward the spot where Lucia had stood, remembering the way her wounded eyes met mine. Those wails had been part of our neighborhood for six or seven years. “You didn’t see her face. Like I had been in that room when it happened.”

Penelope hugged me. “But she can’t blame us for what her family does. It’s just not fair.”

Such a stupid thing to say. Fairness was a fairy tale people told themselves so tragedy would seem temporary. Life was indifferent. Otherwise, Lucia’s parents would not have died in that crash when she was three, or her grandfather nine years later. It wouldn’t have left her in the hands of her grandmother, who was all bitterness and retribution, or an uncle who smiled whenever someone was in pain.

Still, logic did not make me innocent. I could have been a better friend. The thought did not accuse me loudly. It only stayed.

I hated myself for it. When I thought of it, which wasn’t often. And only on Lucia’s behalf, naturally, not because guilt suited me.

“Why don’t you come over and hang out?” Of course Penelope offered a distraction. I could always count on her to make me feel better. “She won’t be mad forever.”

I bit my tongue. Really? That was all she offered? Positivity did not change the truth. It only taught people where to apply lipstick.

“Great idea.” I wasn’t ready to see my mother or my boyfriend. I drew a breath, polished my voice, and made it light. “Andrea hasn’t been himself since he got back.”

“Oh, he adores you.” She looped her arm through mine as we crossed the street. “He’s probably still recovering. You know how he gets after he flies.”

For the next few days, I tried to believe Penelope, but something in Andrea was shifting out of my reach. He no longer invited me to the beach bungalow. Lately, we met only at his parents’ house or somewhere public. So his offer to pick me up from school and take me to lunch didn’t surprise me.

But when I opened the door of his Porsche 911 Carrera, he didn’t look excited to see me. He shifted behind the wheel as though he had spent all day waiting and had grown tired of me before I arrived.

“Hi.” I focused on the click of the seatbelt. Too loud, but it was easier than letting my thoughts go where they wanted.

“Hi.” He leaned over for an air kiss. Manners, not love. “You look lovely.”

I heard it in his voice then. Andrea was tired and had already decided not to fight. His eyes settled on me. Really settled. He wouldn’t make excuses for me anymore. Or worse, he had finally finished making excuses for himself.

I had miscalculated. Visiting him in the hospital would have been the intelligent choice. Stupid mistakes were not like me, especially with Andrea, but I had already made this one. I had left him alone long enough to think.

“We need to talk.”

My stomach flipped. Fuck. It was worse than I thought. Still, I didn’t blink. “No,” I breathed. “Not today.”

“Carol…”

I unbuckled my seatbelt. My hand moved toward his waistband. Thought was dangerous, and desire easier to manage. Before he could stop me, I slid low enough to make refusal feel cruel. He wasn’t capable of humiliating me by pushing me away. Too damn polite and decent, which made decency useful.

A sharp, shallow breath escaped him as I slid into position, my heels scraping against the leather. No panic, just calculation. My perfume folded between us like silk, soft enough to pretend this was still seduction. His hand turned into a fist; guilt made a noble effort. His body did not.

My mouth moved without my heart. Time, borrowed one breath at a time.

When I finished, I climbed back into my seat. No one was around. Thank God. I smoothed my skirt. Clicked the seatbelt into place. By the time I turned toward him, I had become innocent again. With a sweet smile, I asked, “Where are you taking me for lunch?”

Those pale blue eyes studied me. I didn’t see love there, only defeat. Now he couldn’t say it. I had moved the conversation somewhere he was too decent to follow.

That, I decided, was enough for now.

San Diego never really changed with the seasons, but the light did. That afternoon, everything looked distant and crisp. The windshield reflected the low gold of early fall. Sunlight stretched thin, like it was trying too hard. Just like me.

I had delayed Andrea.

Lucia wouldn’t be as easy.

A few days later, I found Lucia on her porch with Penelope. She looked almost normal, covering most of her bruises with jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Makeup hid the mark on her face. She had never done that before.

There was so much I wanted to say about the other night. Anything might have crossed the distance between us, or made it worse. So I said nothing. Unless Lucia brought it up, I would not be the one to make her.

The longer she remained silent, the heavier the guilt sat on my chest. Lucia would never have done that to me.

She hadn’t.

The worst moment of my life returned in a rush. My lower abdomen had been a tangled mess of pain. I was crying, not only from fear or agony, but from the relief of not being alone. Because she hadn’t left.

Lucia held my hand through the worst of it.

And me?

Not only had I failed to help her, but I had barely looked at her. Heat spread up my neck and across my face. I flicked my wrist, and the light caught my new tennis bracelet. Shame looked better in diamonds.

“Wow! Who gave you that?” Penelope squealed.

“That’s nice,” Lucia said, flat and uninterested. She didn’t bother looking at my hand.

“Andrea got it for me in Monaco.” I liked the idea of him walking through one of those exclusive boutiques, choosing something worthy of me. In reality, I had not bothered to ask, and if he had told me, I had not listened. Not that he was all that talkative since his return.

“Real diamonds,” I added, because apparently my audience needed cue cards.

“You shouldn’t have taken something that expensive.” Lucia’s eyes drifted across the street toward Penelope’s house.

“Why?” My heart spiked. Did she think I didn’t deserve expensive things because no one gave them to her? Or worse, did she think they bought me?

Penelope tilted her head. “Because you aren’t in love with him.”

“Not you, too.” I snapped. “He did give me a promise ring.” Real enough on my finger. False everywhere else.

Maybe Andrea was wrong for me. He had been such a good cover. So much fun, too, until usefulness started feeling like loss. Even before his summer trip, he had started pulling away. No more romantic weekends, just a gift here or there.

I had simply ignored it. My life was full of so much else: family, school, friends in Hillcrest, the real estate office. Still, I regretted not being more proactive. Under his cover, I was safe. Everyone knew what box to put me in. It had been pure idiocy not to sit with him at the hospital, but really, he had a lot of nerve thinking my time should revolve around him.

“What’s a promise ring?” Lucia asked, as if I were making it up.

In the barrio, a promise meant his parents had asked your family for your hand, not handed you jewelry promising better jewelry later.

“A promise that forever is coming.”

Penelope rolled her eyes. “More like a pause between ‘someday’ and ‘not yet.’ That’s why Mexican guys give you an engagement ring, so you know they mean it.”

“You spend too much time in the barrio.” Good grief. She sounded like someone’s abuela.

Before Penelope could keep talking, I turned toward Lucia. “Why are you wearing your hair in a braid?”

“Matteo’s sister taught me how to do them yesterday.”

My breath caught. A hot, churning sensation burned through my chest. Since when did Lucia have a Matteo? The pang left before I could call it anything respectable. “You look like an india.”

“I like it.” Lucia kept her voice even, as if I hadn’t just insulted her. “You’re only angry because I think you should return the bracelet and the ring.”

I huffed and followed her gaze toward the front yard. “What the hell are you looking at?”

“She loves the magnolia tree.” Penelope’s tone had changed. Calling Lucia an india had been a shitty thing to do. My comment sat on the porch with us, ugly and impossible to retrieve.

Seriously, though. That stupid tree again? It wasn’t even blooming.

Lucia stood first, taking herself out of the conversation without raising her voice. “What’s a good brand of makeup that isn’t too expensive?”

“Since when do you care about makeup?” There it was again, that slight constriction in my chest, making my breath stutter.

Other girls might want that kind of attention. But not her. She was too bright. Too Mexican, and I hated that anyone outside us might notice her. Their kind loved girls like Lucia only until love required courage.

She didn’t answer. Penelope offered the name of some brand instead.

Shifting with discomfort, Lucia said she needed to help her grandmother with dinner. We all knew Doña Eva didn’t care. At least Lucia hadn’t called me on my shit. Perhaps that was worse. Like my cruelty had not even earned a fight. No, that was idiotic.

Between my looks and my father’s money, I was the catch of the barrio. Lucia had to know it. Didn’t she?

As soon as Lucia went inside, Penelope turned on me. “What is wrong with you? How many times have we talked about her and makeup?”

“Do you know anything about this asshole?” I shot back.

“Who?”

“The guy she was talking about.”

“Matteo?” Penelope paused, as if the name had only half-stuck. “She’s mentioned him once or twice. Something about the library.”

“Have they started spending time together outside of school?”

“I don’t think so.” Penelope shrugged. “If you weren’t being such a bitch, you could ask her yourself.”

“I just don’t want her to get hurt.” Doubt sharpened my voice. Suspicion sat beneath it, dressed poorly as concern.

“You’re doing a bang-up job of that. You’re worse than a jealous boyfriend.”

“Don’t be stupid.” I bit off the words too quickly. Too much force made denial look like confession. “I’m not jealous.”

The eighties did not reward honesty from girls like me. San Diego was a conservative stronghold, and the so-called gay plague had too many hypocrites foaming at the mouth. If you were smart, you kept quiet. You lied as though your life depended on it. Because it did.

“You’ve always been possessive.” Penelope flipped through the magazine in her hands without looking at it. “Any guy she lets near her has to be doing something right. Lucia doesn’t trust easily.”

“A saint,” I muttered. I knew exactly one Matteo connected to that campus, but he was so far out of Lucia’s league that I laughed. He would never notice her.

My feelings were making me stupid, and I refused to dignify them with a name. Or worse, with honesty.

Author’s note

When Lucia says Matteo’s sister taught her to braid her hair, Carol answers, “You look like an india.” Everyone on the porch understands she has insulted Lucia.

In Mexico, indio, or india in the feminine, can refer to Indigenous people of the Americas. By the early twentieth century, its meaning could carry judgments that went well beyond ancestry. Nieves Rodríguez Valle documents Mexican usage associating the word with ignorance, undesirable behavior, and low social standing.

Mexico has long incorporated an Indigenous past into its national identity. Yet living Indigenous people and Indigenous-coded traits have remained vulnerable to contempt. Appearance, education, class, language, and assimilation could all affect where someone was placed socially.

Those attitudes did not stop at the border. Oscar Zeta Acosta, the Chicano writer who grew up in California’s Central Valley, described his mother disparagingly calling his Indigenous-descended father indio. When Acosta and his siblings misbehaved, she accused them of “behaving like an indian.”

Sometimes prejudice survives migration because nobody needs to translate it.

Carol, Penelope, and Lucia understand the insult through a Mexican American vocabulary shaped by Mexico, migration, class, assimilation, and the hierarchies people can carry with them.

That is what Carol reaches for when she calls Lucia an india. She sees the braid, feels threatened by the mention of Matteo, and chooses a word capable of making Lucia’s confidence waver. Instead, Lucia keeps the braid.

Sources

Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española. “indio, india.” Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, 2nd ed. Accessed August 11, 2026.

Rodríguez Valle, Nieves. “Paremias étnicas en el refranero mexicano.” Acta Poética 26, nos. 1–2 (2005): 465–483.

Aguirre, Abby. “What ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ Owes to Oscar Acosta.” The New Yorker, July 13, 2021.

Tumbaga, Ariel Zatarain. “Indios y burros: Rethinking ‘la India María’ as Ethnographic Cinema.” Latin American Research Review 55, no. 4 (2020): 759–772.

Carol managed to stop the breakup conversation, but was it victory, or just strategic procrastination?

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Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

Matteo

“I admire your commitment to making this unpleasant.”

By the time Matteo escaped Bond Street, he had acquired Cartier diamond knot earrings and the three-interlocking-band bracelet. Carol would like the jewelry. He had remembered her wrist measurement from the Christmas before, although the saleswoman seemed impressed enough by that fact to make him regret admitting it.

Read more

Play in the surf pushed Lucia past her limit, and Matteo stopped the moment she asked. His restraint let her stay close without losing control. Now she has to face the desire that frightens her more than the water.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 16: Clear Waters

Lucia

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved;

loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

~Victor Hugo

“Where’ve you been? Abuela is mad you missed Doña Cuca’s party, but I told her you probably had to work at the bookstore.” Johnny sat on her bed, too close for her to ignore. The rich smell of cumin in Abuela’s cooking drifted into the room. Lucia kept her eyes on the same line in her book, afraid that one glance would give her away. The kiss was a mistake. Kisses. “Haven’t I told you a thousand times to lock the deadbolt?”

Johnny was right about the deadbolt. The smell of stale beer and sawdust dragged Bruno into the room before he was even there, but by then, she would be trapped.

His brow furrowed with irritation. It was that look that said, you love making life harder than it needs to be. “You won’t be sitting alone at parties. I asked Penelope to hang out with you. She promised she would.”

Lucia stiffened at the promise. There it was again. Everyone arranging her life without asking. But she only turned the page. “Someone always expects me to sing. Then they pick apart the way I look until I feel like crying.”

“You have a beautiful voice,” he said, placing a comforting hand over hers as if that settled it. Johnny should have known her voice was a gift only other people enjoyed. “Tell me you didn’t spend all day with your nose in that book.”

Even with the Virgin of Guadalupe staring down from the top shelf, she blushed. The memory of Matteo’s soft lips on her neck, his hand on her back, sent sparks through her spine. Abuela’s voice rose from the kitchen, muffled but near, and the heat turned slippery in her hands.

“No, I went to the beach. With friends.” Not entirely a lie. No need to add that to her confession. If Abuela found out about the beach, she would tell her uncle.

“I’m glad. I worry about you just doing the school and work thing.” He always flinched at Abuela’s safe places: home, school, and work. “You need to have a life.”

“Don’t worry about me.” The lie held, and that made the guilt feel worse. She inhaled deeply. Even Johnny’s concern came with supervision attached.

He gave her his cheeky grin as if he were about to deliver good news. “Penelope is looking forward to spending more time with you.”

“That’s nice,” she said. Not if I can help it. I’m done with her and Ellie.

Monday felt impossibly far. And yet, still too close to take back Saturday at the beach.

Every blink brought the moment back. She felt his lips, smelled Matteo’s breath, and remembered the way his arms wrapped around her. One kiss. Then another. And another.

Every rule she followed said to pull back. Yet her body had already stopped listening. Jesus Christ. There was nothing she could do but wait for his regret. He had no business dating a girl from the barrio.

He caught up with her in the library carrying a turkey sandwich and coffee, as if Saturday had not rearranged the air between them. Her stomach dropped and her muscles coiled. He smiled, the dimples showing through, and she nearly stopped breathing. Shame did nothing to stop her missing the way her body had folded into his, as if she belonged there.

“Are you still working on the research paper?” He took a sip of his coffee and began unloading his books.

“Yes,” she mumbled. They got to work, but their usual silence now pressed against her.

Her brain wouldn’t shut down. She tracked the sequence of every movement, from the easy lift of his mouth to the way he handed her the coffee before he unwrapped the sandwiches. The way he sat a little closer than usual, but not close enough to make her uncomfortable. That should have been a relief, but it only made her uneasy.

She kept circling the possibility that she had missed something, a change in tone or a shift in behavior other people would have understood immediately. Something that signaled withdrawal, pity, or the polite pretense people called good manners when they wanted to take something back. When she failed to find anything, her mind struggled to reach for the right mask.

But as they stood up, he took her hand in his. Her fingers settled into his, carrying the ghost of tide and grit. The ground she had steadied herself on that morning was already gone.

Stupid. So stupid. She knew better. Somehow she had to put a stop to this. She wasn’t a girl in a storybook. There would be no fairy tale ending for her.

“I was thinking about what you said.” He interrupted her thoughts. “I’d like to teach you how to drive.”

“Really?” She tasted freedom before she could stop herself from wanting it. Without thinking, she leaned in, brushing her lips against his cheek. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Anything to see you happy.” His soft, wistful smile left no room for doubt. He meant it.

Guilt pressed at the edges of her mind. She didn’t deserve his kindness. Never would.

“No strings attached,” he added, as if he understood how easily guilt opened beneath her.

Her first driving lesson was worse than she’d feared. She waited for sharp corrections, yelling, degradation, the type of words that left bruises behind even without fists. Instead, his laughter filled the car, disarming yet confusing. When he finally called it a day, her relief drowned everything else.

Once she shifted into park, the space between them dissolved into silence. For the first time, it felt charged. Her entire body reacted, nerves sparking and breath catching.

“May I undo your braid?” His voice brushed her cheek, sweet as strawberry sugar. She wanted to fall into it.

“What happened to taming my crazy curls?” She tried to tease, but the edge in her voice gave her away.

“I love your crazy curls.” He slid closer, brushing her chin with his fingers, tilting her face toward his. “Your face. Your eyes.”

Her breath hitched. One of his hands hovered near her hair, close enough for her to feel the heat of it, but still not touching. No one had told her that it would feel like motion already set and accelerating.

She moved away, her chest tight, breath shallow. Her hand shot to the door handle, but the rest of her body refused to move. She remained beside him like she had in the waves at Torrey Pines Beach, caught between fear and the desire to change.

Men’s pretty words could turn a woman into a bitch in heat. Abuela’s words struck hard enough to make her flinch, and for one breath, Matteo’s tenderness and Abuela’s warning tangled together. Lucia’s fingers twitched, useless. Was she really just another dumb bitch?

“I like to watch you think,” he said softly, breath controlled.

She turned to look at him and saw no expectation, but he wasn’t the one who worried her. It was the way her eyes focused on the little freckles above his upper lip. He wasn’t the problem. She was.

“It reminds me of a duck gliding across a placid lake, feet furiously paddling beneath the water. Your mind’s running a mile a minute.”

She bit her thumb hard, but the metallic tang didn’t dull his presence. He filled the hollow in her. She wanted his arms, the tenderness in his voice, but she couldn’t mistake the hollow her family had carved into her for permission to fall. Could she really go back to that loneliness when he was next to her, making it easier to breathe?

His jaw tightened when her eyes remained locked on his. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not.” Her words slipped out before she could stop them. “I’m too comfortable.”

The tension in his face softened, and with it, something in her chest loosened. A vulnerable smile tugged at his mouth. He bit his lip. It was rare to see him unsure. Unable to bear the uncertainty in his face, she reached for his hand. Their fingers laced together as if it were nothing new. He lifted her bleeding thumb and kissed it.

She had absorbed his subtle gestures, habits, and the way he carried himself. By then, she knew him. Not from touch, but from friendship.

“Then don’t fight it.” His voice, soft and pleading, reached a place in her chest she thought she had sealed shut.

She turned her back to him and whispered, “Undo my braid.”

One by one, he loosened the loops and gently combed his fingers through thick waves of her hair, brushing the curve of her neck.

“No strings attached,” she muttered, already leaning against his chest, as if by saying it she would believe it.

His breath grazed her neck, his lips brushed her skin. “None at all.”

She closed her eyes and, like Scarlett O’Hara, decided to think about it tomorrow. He drew her closer, their breaths settling into a shared rhythm.

Author’s note

Scarlett O’Hara’s Highly Questionable Coping Strategy

When I was young, my mother made me watch Gone with the Wind every time it appeared on television. Scarlett O’Hara would announce that she’d think about some catastrophe tomorrow, and my autistic brain would stall. The catastrophe had already arrived. Why was she scheduling concern like a dental cleaning? Take care of it now. Then you can get back to the war and that highly ambitious curtain situation.

I didn’t understand until much later that a problem can be urgent while the solution remains unavailable. Now I routinely annoy people by saying, “That’s a problem for later me.” Apparently, maturity meant becoming the woman who once irritated me. Life has a mean little sense of humor.

I wanted Lucia to reach for that same postponement because she spends much of her life in situations where other people hold the power. In the car, she can choose whether to remain beside Matteo. She can’t settle what wanting him will cost. His future choices remain his, while her family waits at home with enough judgment to power the neighborhood. Her brain keeps searching for certainty because it has never met an unanswered question it didn’t want to cross-examine.

So Lucia borrows Scarlett’s strategy and leaves the reckoning to tomorrow. It gives her enough room to remain inside one good moment.

Tomorrow, naturally, is already clearing its schedule.

Would you have let Matteo undo the braid, or would you have been halfway out of that car?

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Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

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Carol had the boyfriend, the image, and the future people expected. Andrea’s summer away made the performance harder to hold.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 2: Unsaid

Content note: This chapter contains domestic violence and verbal abuse.

Carol

Yet each man kills the thing he loves…

~Oscar Wilde

Something shattered next door and jolted me upright. Both of my parents froze.

Lucia lived next door, but to them, she might as well have lived in another country. Her screams crossed the wall without permission. They entered our living room, climbed over the furniture, and settled among us like an accusation.

Six years of listening should have taught me how to ignore them. Another cry tore through the plaster. Ignoring it became actual labor. The sound cut straight into the pit of my stomach.

Across the room, my parents exchanged a tired glance. Resignation looked so much like wisdom when cowards wore it long enough. My father kept his attention on his Reader’s Digest.

My mother’s knitting needles kept clacking. “Elenita, we cannot get involved.”

It was the first of the month. Doña Eva had received her retirement check, which meant Bruno had crawled out of whatever cave he drank in to collect his tribute. Money for liquor, card games, and whatever else he had not earned but still knew how to demand.

Bruno understood the barrio better than anyone. He knew where every boundary ended and every excuse began. No one interfered with another family’s business. No one called the police. Everyone listened through the walls, lowered their voices, and thanked God the violence belonged to someone else.

A fresh wail ripped through the room. I shot to my feet.

Before I reached the door, my mother caught my elbow. Her grip was rough enough to bruise, which felt almost insulting considering what was happening next door. “Elena Carolina Herrera, stop.”

Yanking free, I pushed past her.

“José!”

My father understood the command before she finished his name. Strong and quick, he reached the door first and planted himself in front of it. “Mija, this is a family matter.”

“How can it be a family matter when the entire street can hear her screaming?” My arms flew wide. The gesture was dramatic, fine, but the truth deserved presentation. My parents became the audience. “What does he have to do before someone stops him?”

“We do not have to approve.” My father’s voice remained gentle. That made it worse. “But her uncle has the right to discipline her as he sees fit.”

Lucia did nothing wrong. Doña Eva had shaped her into a grateful orphan who studied, worked, attended Mass, and apologized for occupying space. Whenever obedience failed, the old woman dragged out her dead daughter’s memory and wrapped it around her grandchildren’s throats. Johnny occasionally slipped the leash. Lucia carried hers like a cross.

Parents like mine dreamed of daughters like her. Devout and silent, the perfect Mexican girl, trained to accept suffering as proof of character.

Meanwhile, they had me.

Another scream broke through. My mother raised the volume on the television even as tears gathered along her lower lashes. Her knitting needles continued their stubborn little rhythm.

Click. Loop. Pull.

My father lowered his magazine. One hand tightened around the arm of his chair, and for a moment, I saw the man he wanted to be. A man who didn’t need his wife’s permission to be a protector.

Then he looked at my mother, and as expected, he remained seated.

Trapped, I told myself. He was trapped, too. The lie almost comforted me.

Silence fell without warning. Through the window, Bruno staggered toward the truck waiting crooked at the curb. The engine coughed twice before catching. He tore I stood, sat, then stood again.

Calling the police would do nothing unless someone pressed charges. Doña Eva would never permit it. Lucia would be told to forgive him, pray harder, cover the bruises, and remember everything her grandmother had sacrificed for her grandchildren.

By next week, the marks would turn from purple to blue. Green would come after that. Finally, the yellow-brown shade that made damaged flesh look rotten.

There was nothing I could do about it.

At twenty-one, I was old enough to drink and vote, but adulthood meant very little in the barrio. A woman remained a daughter until she became a wife. Marriage was the only respectable escape. Another cage, perhaps, but some cages came with large houses, private bedrooms, and bars that knew how to shine.

Across the room, my mother pretended not to notice me watching her. Perhaps she felt my judgment anyway. I wanted it to mark her with two words: coward and hypocrite.

Better her than me.

The thought arrived so quickly I almost missed it.

I had tried to reach the door. That mattered. Surely intention separated me from everyone else in the room. Courage still counted when someone stronger stood in the way. I was not responsible for my father’s body, my mother’s grip, Doña Eva’s silence, Bruno’s fists, or the entire barrio’s devotion to looking away.

Lucia’s bruises would fade. They would return. Next time, I promised myself, I would do something. Promises were beautiful that way. They required nothing until later.

I was wrong. When it came to this girl, I was always wrong.

Everyone pretended a quinceañera was the moment a Mexican girl could begin dating. Not that I had ever followed that stupid rule.

A ridiculous Cinderella gown swallowed me whole. White, of course, traditional and immaculate, which only made the punishment more insulting. Buried beneath layers of tulle and fake magic, I struggled to move all night.

Lucia wore the court’s mermaid dress in Mexican pink, and my eyes followed every line the dress refused to hide. The fitted skirt hugged her hips and thighs before the double hem opened around her narrow frame. A halter neckline widened her delicate shoulders, while the razorback left the long line of her spine bare.

The dress required no cleavage. Good thing, because she didn’t have any. The color warmed her olive skin until she seemed lit from within. Lucia was stunning.

As if that weren’t enough, a parade of boys asked her to dance. I told myself I simply couldn’t tolerate them choosing her over me. It was my day. Yet she moved from one boy to another as though she had forgotten I existed.

Only when Lucia was ready to leave did she remember whose party it was. She rushed over and told me I looked like a beautiful princess. No one was more beautiful. I was a storybook dream.

My heart did a backflip. Just like that, I forgot I had been angry.

By the next morning, she was back in her ill-fitting hand-me-downs, hiding everything worth seeing. You would think I’d have gotten over it. I couldn’t. Lucia had become interesting.

I caught myself leaning closer whenever she lit up over some revolution or tragic queen, even though I hated history. Asking her to read her dull novels aloud. Laughing too hard at the ridiculous things she found funny. Each time she looked at me like that, nervous energy overwhelmed me.

Nothing made sense. I did what I always did back then and turned to my mother.

I wasn’t stupid enough to say it outright. Just a hint. Girls seemed smarter, sweeter, and prettier. Easier to talk to.

She waved the whole thing away and assured me it was normal to find girls more interesting at my age. Fifteen-year-old boys were boring. They matured slowly. She solved the problem by telling me to date eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds.

A typical Mexican mother’s response. No talk of finding yourself. Just find an older man.

The news kept showing gringas marching and burning their bras, but in our barrio, that meant crazy White girls with money to waste. No one I knew burned hers. Bras were expensive. That wasn’t freedom. To us, it was stupidity.

Gringos simply didn’t know how to parent.

We heard even less about gay people. The television argued about homosexuals, priests muttered about them, and adults lowered their voices, but in our world, gay meant men. Men like Lalo, the best seamstress on the Southside of San Diego. Girls? No. Not in our telenovelas or the barrio.

College gave me what the barrio never could. Freedom.

It did not take long to realize my mother had been wrong. Boys became guys, but they never became more interesting. Girls were always more. More beautiful. More complicated. More of everything.

The first real secret had pink gloss and sparkling fingernails pressed into my thighs. I gasped as though she had stolen the air from my lungs.

So, I stopped pretending and gave in to girls who made boys feel decorative. After the third girl, I stopped going to confession. I would not repent, so there was no point in asking for forgiveness.

At home, those types of girls never entered the conversation. Still, my mother began watching me more closely. The unspoken question sharpened every time she looked at me.

Naturally, I gave her an answer she could tolerate. I became agreeable. Flirted with the right guys and dated the boys my mother could survive.

It helped that Lucia was still in high school when I began attending Collwood State University. No one there knew her, and I rarely saw her when I came home.

As the old saying goes, never dip your pen in company ink. Apparently, that included girls next door who hummed over real-estate law.

The realtor’s exam refused to respect my ambition, so I finally admitted I needed help. Lucia had always offered to help me with anything school-related, so I finally turned to her.

She said yes.

Her fingers moved across the page as she made that little hum of hers. The sound came whenever she worked through a difficult section, soft and distracted and somehow capable of getting beneath my skin.

Of course I regretted asking. By then, she was already too close.

Too often, I became lost in her gestures. The shape of her hands. The funny way she pronounced the “ch” and “v” sounds in certain words. That was when the old problem found its way back in.

Perhaps there was something in my voice or in the way I looked at her. Something gave me away.

Doña Eva, her grandmother, began insisting we leave Lucia’s bedroom door open when I was there. Later, she decided we should work at the dining-room table. Her eyes followed me before shifting toward Lucia, who remained blissfully oblivious.

My mother noticed, too. I saw it in the way she looked at me whenever I mentioned Lucia. Heard the silent objection beneath her words, “you are spending too much time together.”

I had to protect myself. There was nothing else I could do. So I became the sharpest thing in the room.

Teased her mercilessly, told her she dressed like a scarecrow, called her Crater Face, anything ugly enough to make distance look accidental.

She needed to step away before I reached for her. Before I pulled her against me. Kissed her. Told her the truth.

Instead, I dated Andrea.

I got my Cartier watch, my Hermès silk scarf, and all the couture makeup I could wear. But no ring.

When I stepped onto the porch, Lucia was rushing from her grandmother’s house. She wore a peach floral babydoll dress, too sheer, too light, too frayed.

The cool breeze caught the fabric and, just like that, revealed every welt. Old bruises. New ones already forming.

There was one on her face.

Shit.

Lucia looked at me, and I forgot how to breathe. It wasn’t the flip in my stomach that frightened me. It was the drop. Her eyes held what her mouth refused to give me. You didn’t help. You let it happen again.

I opened my mouth. Her fists clenched at her sides, telling me to shut up. She didn’t want explanations.

Lucia didn’t care about what I had tried to do. All she wanted was the one thing I had failed to give her.

Guilt slid down my throat with the bitter burn of cheap wine. My world was tilting, as though gravity had forgotten me, and somehow she was the cause.

The girl who wasn’t anyone’s choice.

Lucia was far too smart, possessed the wrong kind of stubbornness, and wasn’t pretty enough to get away with either.

Her face? Interesting. Large, dark-brown eyes that gave away feelings, secrets, and every thought better kept hidden. High cheekbones framed a mouth that formed a perfect heart when closed, but that she rarely used to smile. A waste, honestly. Also a mercy.

She did nothing with her frizzy curls, letting them fall freely to her waist. Her olive skin looked sickly, and the dark circles beneath her eyes did not help. They made concern too obvious, and I hated obvious things. Worse, she was too thin. All angles, until her hips ruined even that argument.

The hand-me-downs she wore clung or sagged in all the wrong places. Summer was the only season when I didn’t see holes in her sneakers, and that was because she wore sandals.

Yes, the girl was a tragedy with bad shoes. Case closed.

And yet, one glance from her was enough to wreck me. Maybe that was why we called it a crush. It crushed every sensible thought right out of you.

My gaze dropped to the straps of my Italian sandals, desperate to escape her eyes. She had never looked at me that way before.

Like I wasn’t the prize.

Author’s Note

In 1985, corporal punishment of children remained widely accepted in the United States. A lot of people believed that children sometimes needed a “good, hard spanking” as discipline. Americans had made physical punishment ordinary enough that nobody needed Mexican culture to explain its presence.

The distinction matters because ethnicity cannot explain Bruno’s violence when the bruises are hard to defend. Once violence enters under the label of discipline, people can argue about methods while avoiding the harder question of what the child is actually enduring. Discipline sounds responsible. It suggests correction carried out for a child’s benefit.

Bruno began hitting Lucia when she was young, giving the adults around her an explanation they already understood. Years passed, and the explanation stayed put. Bruno kept hitting her. By then, the supposed connection between punishment and correction had become impossible to defend without considerable imagination.

A neighbor who called Bruno strict could condemn his methods and still leave the matter inside the family. Someone who described his temper could dislike him without accepting responsibility for Lucia. Calling what he did abuse would force a different calculation, because adults who recognized the danger would also have to account for their own silence.

Adults often imagine that complicity requires malice because it feels easier to identify. Ordinary fear can accomplish the same damage with far less drama. People worry about overstepping, insulting an elder, provoking a violent man, or becoming responsible for whatever happens next. The child keeps paying for that caution while everyone else debates jurisdiction.

Lucia reached nineteen with the evidence written across her body.

Words such as correction, strictness, and family problems can keep serious harm inside familiar categories long after those categories have failed.

Sources

General Social Survey, NORC at the University of Chicago. “Favor Spanking to Discipline Child.” GSS Data Explorer: Spanking Trend

Buriel, Raymond, Rosa Mercado, James Rodriguez, and John M. Chavez. “Mexican-American Disciplinary Practices and Attitudes Toward Child Maltreatment: A Comparison of Foreign- and Native-Born Mothers.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 13, no. 1 (1991): 78–94. SAGE Journals article

Calzada, Esther J., et al. “Incorporating the Cultural Value of Respeto Into a Framework of Latino Parenting.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 16, no. 1 (2010): 77–86. PubMed record and Free full text at PubMed Central

Which bothered you more: Carol’s family looking away, or Carol convincing herself that trying was enough?

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All parts of Beneath the Weight of Water and the first part of Inherited Shame are free for everyone.

Paid subscribers receive early chapter access, bonus scenes, and The Grumpy Writer.

Work arrives by email. No ads. No noise.

Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

Matteo told Lucia about the ballet school that offered him a place and the future he had already surrendered. When she asked what would happen if she wanted to leave the water, he promised they would get out. Later, he read the tension in her body and stopped. His restraint left Lucia alone with a desire she could no longer dismiss.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 15: Between the Breakers

Matteo

You must not lose faith in humanity.

Humanity is an ocean;

if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

~Mahatma Gandhi

The water moved around them in steady, rising swells, but inside Matteo, certainty settled into place. He was waiting for the kind of permission she might never feel safe enough to give him. She would be afraid of misreading the choreography, of stepping forward and being humiliated for wanting at all.

Her weight settled lightly against him. He felt the trust in it, fragile, and did not move. When a swell rose higher than the last, her grip tightened, the fine tremor along her ribs giving her away.

Practice had taught him to suspend midair, to hold rotation until the precise moment gravity demanded return. It was discipline. Performance. This had no rehearsal.

The realization landed heavy in his chest and redrew the line of his restraint. He would ask, not take.

His ribs tightened with the breath he used to take before a jump, before the floor gave him back to the air. His body committed first. Trusting the landing came later.

“My turn.” He aimed for playfulness, but the words snagged in his throat. The charming, effortless smile came, but it barely held. “May I kiss you?”

The question lay bare between them, and nothing would ever be simple again. He watched the shift in her face as closely as he would have watched a partner before a lift. Her body answered first, one hard strike against him, then another, faster. Surprise widened her eyes. Calculation followed, quick and searching.

“You have a girlfriend.” He recognized the retreat. Her fear had a place to go. Yet she remained where she was, breath uneven, fingers still at his shoulder.

“We are officially over.” His voice held only fact. He had never been attached to a version of his life that included Carol.

He held still and waited.

Lucia

Calculation snapped back into place. She couldn’t afford to fall in love with him. He belonged to a universe of casual privilege and luxury, where doors opened before he had to knock. Her world ran off hand-me-downs, bus schedules, and scholarships that could vanish over one failed test. One wrong move and the whole careful structure would collapse.

Then she noticed his gaze on her lips.

“But you knew that,” he answered without defensiveness.

“And now you’re interested in me?” Her frown deepened, but her eyes drifted to the little freckles just above his lips. “I can’t be your rebound.”

“Carol and I were never what people wanted us to be.” His smile faded as he searched her face. “I’ve spent a year learning how to see you.”

She had to keep herself contained, even as she realized her legs were around his waist. “But you stayed with her…”

“I did.” He sighed, something old and tired in the sound of his voice. “My parents wanted me to stay with her. They don’t particularly care whom I marry, as long as my life stays on their schedule.”

“I get what you mean about family pressure,” she admitted. “I do things I don’t want to do every day. But us? That’s not realistic.”

Abuela would never accept her dating a White boy. She would point to her telenovelas as cautionary tales. Rich boy. Poor girl. Heartbreak. White boy. Loss of virginity. No marriage.

“You’re going to make me work for that kiss, hm?” He threw his head back, his laughter rolling out with the surf.

She wanted to lean into it. Instead, she folded her arms tightly. “I just don’t understand.”

“Ever meet someone who makes you feel more alive just by being around them?” he asked, his voice low.

Carol, from what little he had shared, sounded beautiful, all brightness and ease, as if the world had never taught her to flinch. Lucia couldn’t tell whether Carol’s intensity had fooled him, or whether his parents had convinced him infatuation matured into love.

“That’s how I felt around her,” he continued evenly. “Vitality is not enough. The rest didn’t hold me.”

Lucia tried to keep her voice casual. “I don’t make you feel alive.”

“Sweet Mother of God,” he sighed as he drew her closer and spun her in the water.

Her legs splashed against him, and her laughter came out like rain striking dry earth. The ease she always felt with him slipped through before she could defend against it. “You don’t have to try to spare my feelings.”

His smile held, but his gaze turned wistful, as if nothing she said could land wrong.

“When I first met you, I thought you were pretty,” he told her, brushing his nose against her damp braid. She didn’t pull back. “I wondered why you did nothing with these wild curls.”

His voice lowered, velvet pulled thin. “But the way you looked at me made me feel stupid and awkward. I had to earn your respect before I could even learn your name. You challenged me from the beginning. And you only get more interesting. I want something more with you.”

Her breath caught as her pulse flickered in her throat. “In a way that includes kissing?”

“Yes, I want to kiss you.” No hesitation or apology in his voice. Her body hummed against his. He didn’t push.

“When I was in high school,” she said, her tone caught somewhere between humor and confession. “My first boyfriend grabbed me and shoved his tongue in.” Her mouth twisted in disgust. “It felt like someone had shoved a wet dishrag in my mouth.”

“No dishrags in sight.” Matteo gave her a quick wink.

Everything she trusted should have pulled her back. She stayed anyway. “You know how people say there are plenty of fish in the sea? Abuela says you can’t choose who you catch, but you can choose where you fish. I can’t be your girlfriend.”

“Why is that?” He watched her, allowing the words to settle between them.

She wanted distance before he reached anything softer. “I’m Mexican, Catholic. I’m not going to have sex with you.”

“That’s an odd way to tell me sex is off the table.” He gave her a crooked, playful smile, and his dimples broke through.

“Why are you laughing?” she challenged, frustration weaving through her voice. “I’m not the kind of girl who surfs, parties, and fits neatly into your life. My family is a mess. I can’t drive, and I’m struggling just to keep my scholarship and job. I don’t even know when I can sneak off again.”

“You’ve done a great job of managing my expectations,” he whispered. “May I have that kiss?”

“I’m not joking.” Her eyes met his.

“I know. And yes, I want to kiss you. Hold your hand. No pressure.” His voice stayed quiet and direct.

She wanted to keep her world small until graduation. After that, maybe she could choose differently. But his questions had already unsettled the ground beneath them. Maybe if she crossed the line quickly, they could put things back where they belonged. She inhaled sharply. And then she leaned in, quick and decisive. Her lips pressed to his without warning.

He just stared at her, mouth slightly parted, as if she had knocked sense out of him. Something in his face opened, then steadied, as if cautious of the space she had crossed. That look on his face left her defenseless.

In a husky tone edged with something almost playful, he murmured, “My turn.”

He watched her carefully, loosening his hold, as if he were waiting for her retreat. Fear tightened her throat, turning her breath shallow, yet she leaned forward a fraction. Her eyes fixed on his mouth, and she nodded, barely perceptible.

He tilted her face slowly, brushed his lips against hers with measured restraint. Nothing in him pressed for more. The rhythm belonged to her as much as to him. She felt the exact moment when her resistance softened. The tension that lived perpetually in her shoulders eased in his arms. Her mouth answered him cautiously at first, a little clumsy, then with growing certainty.

When she paused, he drew back only enough to see her face. Their breaths tangled together in warm, uneven currents. The moment faltered, charged but still held.

“May I kiss you again?” he asked, his voice steady and unguarded.

“Yes,” she whispered, eyes avoiding his, cheeks crimson.

He drew her closer, letting his mouth trace the curve of her jaw with unhurried intent. Her fingers tightened in his hair, her body arched toward him, and her breath grew uneven when he lingered just beneath her ear. Touch unsettled her, and other people’s fluids disgusted her. When he grazed that sensitive spot on her neck, she gasped anyway.

When his lips returned to hers, the kiss deepened. She still felt clumsy, but no longer tentative. Every date her grandmother forced her into felt like a transaction, a husband for a green card, and desire had never been part of it. This was different. It mattered.

His pulse thundered against her, but he kept her steady, grounding her. She let go as much as she knew how. It was not surrender, but more than she had ever allowed.

She trembled in his arms, and she knew it was not the chill of the cold water, her skin already humming with what might have been happiness. His next kiss was slower, deeper, carried by the rhythm of the waves as the setting sun colored the water orange and red, reminding her of the old song, Cielo Rojo.

Then the guilt found an opening. She had to keep this from Johnny and Abuela, then confess to her priest. He would ask if she repented. She would have to try.

Author’s note

Romantic scenes often linger on the man controlling himself until his restraint becomes the emotional event. The woman’s response then confirms that his performance worked. The arrangement flatters him and simplifies her. I’ve lived long enough to recognize that trick. Authors grant the man moral credit, then file the woman’s interior life under unnecessary paperwork. Bullshit acquires respectable margins that way.

After Matteo asks Lucia, “May I kiss you?” I shifted the narrative authority to the person carrying the greater risk.

Once the narration enters Lucia’s mind, she still doubts the neat finality of his breakup. His wealth makes his attention harder to trust, while her family has trained her to expect punishment whenever desire becomes visible. Her nervous system has never met a good thing it couldn’t refer to a hostile committee. She also needs him to understand that kissing doesn’t place sex on the table.

She already has her legs around his waist, and she stays close enough to feel his pulse. Wanting him does nothing to stop her from inventorying the damage. Her calculation shows a mind working under pressure, and the romance can’t honestly proceed by treating that pressure as another obstacle for him to overcome.

He can create room for an answer, but he can’t know what occupying that room costs her. The chapter has already shown how much he sees. Staying inside his mind would tempt the narration to translate her body for him, as though close attention could produce certainty. Emotional intelligence still becomes guesswork when it crosses into someone else’s nervous system.

The handoff becomes more complicated when she kisses him first. Her initiation could pass for simple certainty. Her perspective reveals another motive. She hopes a quick crossing might allow them to restore the old boundary afterward. The kiss carries an escape plan. Because the reader knows that, her action doesn’t authorize everything that follows.

He asks again.

The second question prevents the first kiss from settling the terms of the scene. She must choose again after her surprise has passed and after her body has supplied information she didn’t possess before. Their intimacy develops in increments. Mutual desire raises the cost. She now wants something badly enough to endanger the rules that kept her functional.

Point of view often gets discussed as access: who knows what and who sees what. Here, it distributes moral weight. The switch denies him ownership of her yes. More importantly, she no longer functions as evidence that he is a good man. His restraint remains meaningful, though it can’t occupy the center after he asks the question. At that boundary, the narrative follows the risk.

By the time she whispers yes to the second kiss, her family still governs the future she can imagine, and her body remembers consequences her mind didn’t choose. The point-of-view handoff lets her decide without pretending choice has dissolved the surrounding conditions.

For her, even a wanted kiss gives fear a new place to live.

How long do you give Lucia before that careful little plan of hers falls apart?

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Start from the Beginning

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All parts of Beneath the Weight of Water and the first part of Inherited Shame are free for everyone.

Paid subscribers receive early chapter access, bonus scenes, and The Grumpy Writer.

Work arrives by email. No ads. No noise.

Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

For one percent of my writing life, the flowerpots downstairs acquire jurisdiction over my day.

Scrivener and Word are open on my computer while both dogs sleep nearby. My daughters are away at college, where they routinely survive without hourly maternal oversight. None of this prevents me from checking on everyone before I read the first sentence.

Read more

Andrea spent the summer in Spain while Carol waited for the relationship, access, and future his name promised. His return ended in a hospital stay instead of the reunion she expected. Now she intends to put the story back in order.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 1: Work of Fiction

Andrea

Much unhappiness has come into the world

because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

~Fyodor Dostoevsky

Andrea kissed the inside of her thigh. The heat of her skin didn’t reach him. He remembered where to linger, how much pressure it took to make her gasp. Sex with her had once been kinetic, intoxicating, a bright blur that made thought feel unnecessary. Now, he simply waited for it.

Her thighs tightened around his head. She said nothing. Her hips rolled upward, demanding more. She curled her fingers into his hair. He followed her rhythm without meeting it. She came. Loud. Breathy. Triumphant. She pushed her hips toward him in that final, familiar arch.

Even then, she moaned his middle name. Andrea. Not his first name, the one he actually preferred. The name stayed with him for a second. Then he hoped she would fall back onto the divan, satisfied. He could give her the gifts first, one last finished gesture, before anything uglier had to be named.

No such luck. Her hand moved with purpose, traced his stomach, slipped beneath the loose waistband of his linen pants. His body answered without asking him. He was hard. Of course he was. His health was unreliable, not absent.

He looked down at her flushed skin, her heavy-lidded eyes, her shallow breath. Her body was open to him, willing, impossible to mistake. He moved with what she offered him, steady and unsentimental. Nothing in him reached back. Just the pressure, steady and direct.

She gasped. He could no longer retreat within the motion. Whatever had once been theirs was gone now. Andrea closed his eyes, and let his body find its rhythm. Nothing in the motion belonged to him. Desire had become a borrowed function.

His body remained focused, need severed from longing. Carol clung to his shoulders, moaned his name, and tried to reassert her pace. When he came, the strength of the shudder surprised him, because the release changed nothing.

He pulled out. Rolled onto his back. She curled up to him. But his body had forgotten how to want her. He closed his eyes, not because he was tired, but to disappear. The ceiling fan spun above them.

Carol traced a slow circle over his chest. “You said you brought me presents.”

Andrea opened his eyes. Peace was over. The ceiling fan continued its dull rotation, stirring warm air that smelled of chlorine, sweat, and the jasmine climbing outside the pool house. His pulse had settled, though his body still felt separate from him. Heavy in some places and hollow in others.

“Yes.”

“How many?” The question came too quickly for him to pretend she did not care.

He shifted out from beneath her. The movement sent a small current of dizziness through him, gone before it could settle. He sat at the edge of the divan and reached for his trousers. “Several.”

She pushed herself up onto one elbow. Her beautiful green eyes glimmered, so vibrant and alive. He had spent so long trying to borrow some of that brightness.

“Several?” Her voice brightened.

He stepped into the loose linen pants and tied them at his waist. Behind him, the sheet whispered as she sat up.

“You made it sound like there was one,” she pouted in that way he had once found so adorable.

He suppressed a sigh. “I said I had presents.”

“You said it like someone announcing bad news.”

Andrea glanced at her. “Would you prefer bad news?”

“Not before the presents.” She smiled, pleased with the answer she had made for him.

Two large shopping bags stood inside the teak cabinet. Andrea had placed them there himself that afternoon. He had checked the tissue paper, the ribbons, each receipt folded into its envelope. He had removed the prices because she liked to ask but hated being told.

Carol smiled widely at the bags when he lifted them. Her mouth opened. “Oh, my God.”

He carried everything to the low table. Burgundy leather boxes, cream paper with gold lettering, and an orange box tied with brown ribbon. Beneath them waited the pale gray Dior box, larger than the others. He had seen the same display spread across the bed in Mallorca while packing, arranged like proof of something already finished.

Carol drew the sheet around herself and slipped from the divan. “You were hiding all of that?”

“I wasn’t hiding it.”

“You absolutely were,” she teased before she knelt beside the table. Her earlier disappointment disappeared so completely that Andrea understood how quickly he had learned to ignore it.

“Which one first?”

“It does not matter.”

“It matters to me.”

He had not meant to sound rude, so he lowered himself into the chair across from her. His legs felt heavier than they should have. Perhaps he had stayed in the sun too long; the flight, the hospital, the medication. There was always an explanation available if he wanted one.

Carol reached for the smallest Cartier box, then paused. “No. You choose.”

Andrea looked at the packages. “The Hermès.”

She drew the orange box toward her. “I knew it.”

“You knew what?”

“That you love me.” Her smile was sweet as she looked at him from beneath her lashes.

Andrea rested one ankle over the other. “You will love your gifts.”

Carol loosened the ribbon without cutting it. She never destroyed expensive packaging. Even empty boxes held status when displayed correctly.

The lid came free. White tissue covered the scarf beneath it. Her hands slowed. Andrea remembered the first hint. They had been leaving a restaurant in Del Mar when a woman passed them wearing silk knotted over her hair. Carol had watched her cross the pavement and said the blue was almost right, though the pattern was too busy.

Two weeks later, she had stopped before an Hermès window and mentioned that true red made cheap silk look cruel. After that came a magazine left open on his kitchen table. He had understood.

Carol folded back the tissue and lifted the scarf. The silk opened in her hands, ivory at the center with a border of deep blue and restrained strokes of red. Not too bright, detailed without becoming crowded.

For several seconds, she said nothing. Then she looked at him. “You remembered.”

He nodded, his smile soft, feeling like the same nail struck by every want she had.

“The blue. And the red isn’t vulgar.” She stood and crossed to the mirror beside the cabinet. The sheet loosened at her shoulder as she draped the scarf around her neck. She adjusted it once, then again, bringing the blue closer to her face. “This is the perfect one.”

“Yes.”

He could tell she was not merely pleased, but vindicated. Some offense had been corrected without his knowing the charge. Her reflection smiled at him as if she were back in control.

She returned to the table and bent to kiss him. Her lips touched his briefly, careful not to smudge her lipstick. “See, you do love me.”

Andrea looked toward the open doors. Beyond the patio, the pool held the last light of evening. Gold moved across the water in narrow pieces. He could hear voices from the main house. One of his sisters laughed, a door closed, and silverware was set somewhere far beyond them.

Carol sat on the rug and reached for Cartier. “This one now?”

“If you like.”

“I do like.” She lifted the burgundy lid. Inside rested a gold bracelet, narrow and clean, with three interlocking bands. Carol stared at it before touching it.

Andrea had bought it in Madrid after she mentioned, more than once, that a woman should not have to choose between yellow, white, and rose gold. The remark had sounded casual. Most of her instructions did.

“Andrea.” She lifted the bracelet from the velvet and turned it beneath the light. “You found it.”

His shoulders tightened at the name. “Yes.”

“They didn’t have my size in San Diego.” She slipped it over her wrist. The bands settled against one another with a soft metallic sound.

“I was not in San Diego.”

“It fits.” Her eyes widened. “You know my wrist measurement?”

“You asked me to fasten enough bracelets.”

Carol laughed and held her arm out, admiring the gold against her skin. “No man remembers things like that.”

Andrea watched the three bands shift as she moved. He had remembered the size because precision prevented inconvenience. A bracelet too large would disappoint her. One too small would become an accusation against her body. It had seemed easier to be exact.

Carol leaned toward him. “Say something.”

“It suits you.”

“That’s all?”

“What would you like me to say?” He watched her study him for a moment, then she smiled again, as if choosing not to notice the question.

“That you imagined it on me.”

The words required little of him. He was tired enough to give her the shape of what she wanted. “I imagined it on you.”

Her expression softened. The distance inside him widened. Carol kissed his cheek this time and reached for the second Cartier box.

“There’s more?”

“Yes.”

The second Cartier box held small gold knots set with diamonds. She had hinted at them months ago, casually enough to deny it. These did not try too hard. She pressed one to each ear and turned her head.

“Perfect.”

Andrea looked at them. “They are.”

She rose again to inspect herself in the mirror. The scarf framed her shoulders. Gold rested at her wrist. Diamonds caught the light when she moved. He knew each piece belonged exactly where she had imagined it. Carol looked more alive with every addition.

Andrea felt himself retreat with each success.

The gifts had seemed thoughtful in Europe. He had visited the shops, spoken with clerks himself, and compared shades under natural light. When the correct size was unavailable, he arranged for it to be brought from another city. Nothing in the process had required longing. Only memory and money.

Carol returned to the table. “The Dior.”

“Open the other one first.”

Her eyes moved to a long cream box. “What is that?”

She pulled the box toward her and lifted the lid. A pair of sunglasses rested inside, dark tortoiseshell with softened square frames. Carol made a sound halfway between a laugh and a gasp.

“No.”

The smell of his mother’s paella reached the pool house. He was tired and hungry.

“Andrea.”

He allowed a faint smile. “They suit you.”

Carol placed the glasses on top of her head, then touched the Dior box. “This one is big.”

He said nothing.

Her smile spread. She pulled the ribbon loose and lifted the lid. Layers of tissue filled the box. Carol moved through them carefully at first, then faster when she glimpsed the leather beneath.

The handbag was structured and cream-colored, with dark red trim and a small gold clasp. The shape was elegant without looking delicate. Large enough to be useful, small enough to require restraint. Carol lifted it with both hands.

She had rolled her eyes at a woman holding the bag and said, “Cream, not white.”

Carol ran her hands over the leather. Her eyes shone as she looked at him. “You got the cream. With the red trim.”

“Yes.”

She held the bag against her body and crossed to the mirror again. She laughed, a bright, breathless sound.

Every package had brought her closer to the version of the evening she expected from him. The reunion, the sex, the proof of devotion laid out in silk and leather. Andrea could almost see the script fixed behind her eyes.

In that story, a summer apart had not changed them. The gifts explained everything. His silence had been illness, and his distance had been his grandfather’s demands.

She turned toward him. “You missed me.”

Andrea looked at the open boxes surrounding her. Tissue paper covered the rug. Ribbons curled along the table. The room had taken on the faint smells of new leather, perfume, and warmed silk. “I thought of you.”

Carol’s smile faltered only slightly. “That’s what I said.”

She crossed the room and settled onto his lap, the Dior bag still looped over one arm. Her weight pressed against the soreness in his thighs. He placed a hand at her waist to steady her.

“You were probably miserable without me.”

“I was very busy.”

“You know what I mean.” Her fingers touched his hair. The shorter length still seemed to confuse her. She arranged the front, trying to restore something that was no longer there. “These prove it.”

Andrea’s gaze moved toward the gifts.

“Prove what?”

“That you know me.” Carol said it with such certainty that he felt an unexpected ache beneath his breastbone. He did know her.

He knew her wrist measurement and that she preferred gold. The difference between cream and white, and which red she considered elegant and which one offended her. Diamonds small enough to suggest restraint and expensive enough to defeat it. The shape of sunglasses she believed softened her face. The knowledge sat before them in perfect boxes.

None of it brought him closer to her.

Carol kissed him, slower this time. Her mouth was warm and familiar, the pressure practiced. When she pulled away, satisfaction had settled over her face. “You got everything right.”

“Yes.” The word barely carried.

Carol rested her forehead against his. “You always do.”

A quiet recognition moved through him. Perhaps that had been the problem. He had learned her preferences so thoroughly that every small disappointment arrived already managed. She called it love because the results pleased her.

Andrea had called it love because that was the name his parents had given the performance. He moved his hand from her waist. Fatigue had settled into his bones, threaded with hunger and dizziness. He would regret entering the house, where his mother would suffocate him with attention, but he needed to be done. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.”

“Oh, let me get dressed,” she said, jumping off to pull her clothes on.

The gifts had worked. Otherwise, she would have given him the “not again” look.

Author’s note

Dostoevsky wrote that much unhappiness has entered the world through bewilderment and things left unsaid. I chose that line because this chapter examines the damage silence causes before anyone recognizes it for what it is. Confusion gathers around what neither person will name.

The mind dislikes a vacancy and fills it with whatever evidence happens to be available. A remembered preference suggests devotion. Good manners discourage scrutiny, mostly because scrutiny has a nasty habit of ruining dinner.

Competence gives Andrea somewhere respectable to hide. His behavior causes no obvious alarm, so he can postpone examining why his feelings have gone quiet. Everyone sees a considerate man performing the role expected of him. The emotional paperwork remains immaculate.

Carol draws the conclusion she needs from that performance. His memory proves she matters. Each gift confirms the future she already believes they share. Her interpretation contains enough truth to withstand casual inspection, which makes it harder to challenge.

By the chapter’s end, Andrea has given Carol something beautiful and emotionally useless. Courtesy protects the arrangement until honesty requires more courage than either person can manage at that moment.

The story between them keeps growing, fed by everything Andrea cannot bring himself to say.

Which is colder: Andrea giving her everything she wanted, or Carol acting as though the gifts proved he still loved her?

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Matteo

His body still obeyed.

The studio kept the afternoon heat after the sun had moved west. It pressed through the high windows in a pale San Diego glare, flattened the mirrors, and drew the smell of rosin from the boards. Beyond the wall, a bus sighed at the curb. Tires whispered over hot pavement. Near the piano, the cassette player waited with its plastic lid open, stopped between one use and the next.

Matteo stood in fifth.

Read more

• Chapter 1: Work of Fiction

  Carol expects Andrea’s return to restore the future she scripted. When he no longer responds on cue, how far will she go to force him back into place?

• Chapter 2: Unsaid

  Andrea returns to Carol with perfectly chosen gifts, and she pretends his attentiveness is love. How long can they both keep performing a relationship he has already left?

• Chapter 3: My Crime

  Carol has spent years insisting she was different from everyone who looked away from Lucia’s abuse. As buried desire, old cruelty, and fresh bruises expose the cost of her silence, how long can she keep calling herself innocent?

• Chapter 4: Neither Pure nor Simple

  Carol has spent years insisting she was different from everyone who looked away from Lucia’s abuse. As buried desire, old cruelty, and fresh bruises expose the cost of her silence, how long can she keep calling herself innocent?

• Chapter 5: The Lies We Told

  As Andrea pulls away and Lucia grows secretive about Matteo, Carol buries herself in real estate, but when obsession threatens a sale, the future she can control starts looking less secure.

• Chapter 6: Worn Out

  October 31, 2026

• Chapter 7: Losing It

  November 7, 2026

• Chapter 8: Ugly Cry

  November 21, 2026

• Chapter 9: Dare Not

  December 5, 2026

• Chapter 10: Astray, by Design

  December 19, 2026

  ---

If Carol keeps you fascinated, furious, or both, subscribe and let the next chapter find you by email.

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Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

That terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything.

~Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920)

Lucia, Ellie, and Penelope come of age in the same 1980s San Diego barrio. Each must carve her own path through family, class, race, and the rules imposed on young women.

Follow their Stories below.

Lucia’s Story

Ellie’s Story

Penelope’s Story

Coming 2027

Subscribe now

All parts of Beneath the Weight of Water and the first part of Inherited Shame are free for everyone.

Paid subscribers receive early chapter access, bonus scenes, and The Grumpy Writer.

Work arrives by email. No ads. No noise.

Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

Carol

A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

~Oscar Wilde

There is nothing sweeter than excitement properly staged: slow at first, then tightening, then impossible to contain. It started with La Jolla Cliffs’ ocean breeze, the kind of air that knew exactly who it was meant to touch. Cool, curated, ever-so-exclusive. I stepped onto the patio just as George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” slid around me.

Andrea was finally home. It had been three long months. I adjusted my gold bracelet, heavy for its size, the way only expensive guilt felt, and reminded myself what was at stake.

Something in me had shifted over the summer. Fine. I missed him. There. A truth offered briefly. Everyone should appreciate it before it expires. Good thing no one was there to hear it.

My summer had suffered without him. Music swelled, couples moved, girls laughed too loudly near men they wanted to impress, and I remained tragically grounded. Not because no one asked me to dance, but with Andrea I felt weightless.

More importantly, his family name opened every locked door in the room. Andrea’s name was a skeleton key. Mine only became one when attached to his. Without him, invitations had been sparse.

That was the part people liked to pretend didn’t matter. Position required strategy. Love, if we were being honest, required a good jeweler.

Naturally, he would make the summer’s inconvenience up to me. His family had raised him to know an apology required form. The champagne flute waiting on the balustrade was the beginning. I took a small sip, chilled, perfect, and apologetic. The rest would follow. Men like Andrea understood that champagne was only the opening gesture. The real apology came after the glass.

I had asked for nothing. Asking cheapened the mood. Some women begged for attention. I preferred to create an environment where generosity could discover itself.

Besides, he knew disappointment looked terrible on me. That alone gave him direction. Nothing that needed explaining.

I almost quickened my step because, yes, I needed him to look at me as if I was the most beautiful woman in the world. Not because it was true, though it was, but because he was mine. He would remember his place in the scene. Some men only needed to be shown the script once.

The real gift? A ring, the one that mattered. I could never be the one to suggest it. His parents were doing all the work. The promise ring they had insisted I wear was not the point. That ring was for them. My summer didn’t require one.

More annoyingly, his body chose the hospital before it chose me. I mean, who gets sick after a long flight? Apparently, Andrea’s body considered altitude a personal attack. Honestly? I wasn’t about to rearrange my entire week to sit in a hospital, no matter how upscale his room. Even sick boys needed to return to the story properly. Romantic dramas had rules. I didn’t do behind-the-scenes.

Then again, it took little for him to fall apart. The semester before Spain, he’d relapsed and gone back on medication. The side effects were corrosive and constant, but they only enhanced his ethereal look.

We had agreed to meet at his parents’ mansion, the type of house that made restraint look like bad breeding. The place had rooms no one needed and still made need look embarrassing. God had probably stopped counting. Even the grounds seemed designed to punish modesty.

And yet, he preferred his little bungalow in La Jolla Shores. I had to agree with his parents. He was being ridiculous. The estate was better because it understood what he kept pretending not to need. When we got married, we’d move back to the family home. It was what his parents wanted. Conveniently, what they wanted and what I wanted looked identical.

Andrea had once said he’d never move back home. Too bad. I’d already returned him to that bedroom and arranged the curtains around his surrender. His poor health gave me the perfect excuse to call control concern.

The loss of muscle, the fading tan, and the quiet drain of strength should’ve dulled his beauty. But somehow, it didn’t. Quite the opposite.

Illness had only revealed his luminous alabaster skin. He was my Botticelli angel, golden hair, high cheekbones, and those melancholic blue eyes. Delicate, divine, with beauty wearing him like a mask.

After a summer in Spain and a week in the hospital, he was finally standing beneath a gold-hushed sky of early evening, cloaked in an ivory tunic I decided was Middle Eastern. The fabric hung loose, catching the light as it painted him out of shadow.

When my presence touched him, he looked up. What the fuck? The scene I’d so carefully crafted stuttered. A half-second too long. This was not my Botticelli angel. This was some shorter-haired boy the sun had gotten to first.

I had to revise my script. Fast.

I ran to him, expecting him to sweep me up like the last shot of An Officer and a Gentleman. Grand. Cinematic. Andrea caught me, but he didn’t whirl me around. He had forgotten his part.

His face held the detached stillness of an old portrait. Lips parted in thought, eyes distant. No spin. No lift. Nothing moving the way it should.

Maybe he still wasn’t feeling well. He’d left the hospital only two days before. When I pressed my lips to his, he let me in but didn’t kiss me back. He shifted, pulling away just a little. Not tired. Distant. Like part of him hadn’t returned from Spain.

“Hi.” His voice was soft, hesitant. A beat too late, as if he’d had to find me first. Then he adjusted. “Carol.”

I decided it was tenderness and kissed him. He didn’t say I missed you. Not even the flicker of a smile. I leaned in a little more, feeding him the cue. But the soundtrack didn’t kick in. Just silence.

What the hell? I looked amazing. Hair blown out to perfection. The dress? Cinched at the waist, breasts framed, not flaunted. But maybe effortless wasn’t what he needed today. “I missed you so much.”

“I have presents for you.” Not like him to jump right into the gifts. He was skipping steps, and Andrea never skipped steps.

He built moments like rooms and waited for me to step inside. He knew how to make a reveal feel earned.

He set me down gently, eyes averted, as if I had entered a scene already moving without me.

“I couldn’t wait to see you.” Hospitals always had the wrong lighting. So not enough to make me overlook the setting. He couldn’t possibly be upset about that. I mean, what could I do? Sit there while illness ruined the shape of him.

Now I was being punished for making the wrong choice. Not every man offered what Andrea had. He was leverage. Access. An investment in my future. I still had time to rewrite the scene.

“Not yet.” I pulled him toward the pool house. His mother had made it clear: his bedroom was off-limits. But we had managed just fine in the pool house before. “I’ve missed you too much to wait.”

His hand didn’t move. And for a second, neither did he. The scene had slipped. That’s when the star enters. Takes control.

I caught my reflection in the window. Natural cinnamon-blonde hair, curled into cascades. Emerald eyes, lined just enough to dazzle. Skin porcelain, glowing, unblemished. That used to be enough to bring him to his knees. Now he looked puzzled.

His fingers moved over me by habit, not hunger, as if he were replaying a scene he didn’t want to relive. I pressed my mouth to his neck, but he didn’t lean in. When he finally closed his eyes, he kept them shut longer than the moment needed. Like he was putting something away before he could look at me again. I took it as surrender.

Sex with Andrea was easy because it never felt like dominance. He had always been generous. Eager to please. He used to go down on me and take his time. Enjoyed the feel, the taste, as if his wanting only became useful once it served me. But his mouth was the only one ever fed. Like a gentleman, he never asked for mine in return. He also waited, patiently, for me to allow his body inside mine. And I felt safe. Adored. Powerful.

This time he didn’t give me that wicked little smile that told me just how much he wanted me. I pretended not to notice and smiled for us both. A missed beat, nothing more.

I could fix that. Silence only stayed silent when no one knew where to press.

Author’s note

Mean girls have excellent public relations.

Experts and storytellers often describe them as wounded people whose insecurity curdled into cruelty. Faced with the right consequences, they will supposedly become decent. This explanation comforts everyone except the people they hurt. It converts cruelty into a symptom, then leaves someone else holding the bill.

I wanted to write one of those women without softening her for public consumption. Carol has almost nothing in common with me, yet her nerve impresses me. She works hard to secure her position, reads social power quickly, and refuses to beg for access.

What she does with those qualities is another matter.

Carol uses cruelty when it serves her. At other times, another person’s pain barely registers. She also hurts people simply because she can, which may be the most honest reason of all. Her beauty buys patience, while charm postpones judgment.

She rarely needs to threaten anyone directly. People tolerate her behavior because exclusion from her orbit feels worse than watching her wound someone else. Fear handles most of the labor. Let’s be honest: people prefer comfortable cowardice.

We are also told that consequences will humble her and love will uncover the frightened child beneath the expensive confidence. Then one sincere apology will supposedly place the universe back in order.

That fantasy belongs to the people still trying to cover for her.

The reality for some mean girls is that healing holds no appeal. A few understand themselves quite well. They may resent consequences without regretting the choices that caused them. Forgiveness offers little value to someone who has never granted the injured person moral authority.

Self-knowledge does not guarantee compassion. Sometimes it gives cruelty better aim. A character can recognize the exit and keep driving. Not every story is about change.

Oscar Wilde wrote, “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” Carol has a future, and she intends to shape it herself. She may live rent-free in the minds of people she touches. They will replay what she said, what she took, and the moment they realized she understood the damage perfectly.

By then, she will already have moved on.

Be honest: did Carol win you over, or did she make you want to hide the good silver?

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Paid subscribers receive early chapter access, bonus scenes, and The Grumpy Writer.

Work arrives by email. No ads. No noise.

Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

Previously: Lucia accepted Matteo’s invitation to the beach, stepping outside the routine that made her life manageable. As the distance between them narrowed, she saw the grief beneath his easy confidence and asked about the part of himself he kept hidden. Matteo began to tell her about the future his body could no longer reach.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 14: Beneath Stillness

Lucia

We cannot fight against the wind and weather.

~Christina Rossetti

Lucia walked to the shoreline and sat down. When Matteo sat beside her, the slightest movement from him unsettled something under her skin. Her gaze kept drifting back, getting caught in the gold the sun pulled from his hair. Her body leaned toward him while her thoughts scrambled to escape.

Jesus. I need to get away from him. Panic flickered behind her ribs. Sunday would give her separation. Maybe enough to quiet whatever her body decided without her.

He was drawing circles on the wet sand, as though it were the most interesting thing he’d ever created. When he caught her looking at him, he nudged her shoulder. Grinning, she scooped up water and splashed him.

“Oh, that’s how you want to be?” he teased, flicking water at her in response.

She sprang to her feet and ran along the shoreline, her heavy braid bouncing behind her. Each time he got close, she slipped away, laughing as the surf curled around their legs.

When he finally caught her by the waist, his hands settled there lightly, waiting. The water rose to their calves, and she stood still. For one breath, the panic went quiet.

“In?” he asked, taking her hand. “Only if you want to.”

“No.” Her pulse beat hard against the hollow of her throat. One step forward, or back to the blanket. Back to watching from the edge. Still, her voice shaking, she added, “I want to go back.”

“Okay.” His smile didn’t falter as he turned toward their things. “We can go back.”

Her body locked, braced for the pull. She stared at her hand. No pain. Unbruised. Only the space to choose. Her lip quivered as she looked at him.

“Hey.” His hand tightened once, then loosened. “Talk to me.”

“I… I’m so scared.” The world blurred around her. She wasn’t sure she meant the ocean.

“We can stop here.”

She wanted to believe him. But trust was a dangerous indulgence. “I can’t move.”

“Take a breath. With me.” His Castilian lisp, the gentle brush of words against his teeth, gave her something to hold.

“But… I want to.” She breathed with him once, then took a step forward. It was terrifying. She took it anyway.

Matteo led her slowly into the water, pausing after each step until she was ready to take another. She was shaking by the time the water reached her knees, but his smile steadied her next step.

Another wave knocked against her knees. Her legs faltered under the force of the water. She couldn’t think beyond the push and pull of the surf. Her stomach clenched hot and hard. Before she could take another step, an enormous wave rushed toward them.

As a wall of water closed in, a scream ripped out of her. Cold spray hit her face. There was no time to think. Only the rush of water coming for her.

Matteo’s hands caught her at the waist. Her feet left the sand as he lifted her above the breaking wave. One moment the cold water dragged at her lower body, indifferent and merciless; the next, the wave broke beneath her.

His arms remained firm around her waist. When the wave passed, he lowered her. He pushed his hair back, easy in a way her body could not understand. The catalog in her brain lay scattered. The card reminding her that he was a surfer was nowhere to be found.

Her breath splintered. She could feel every place he had touched her. The water receded, but relief did not follow. Shame and the sharp instinct to wrench herself free did not care that he had saved her.

She dug her fingers into his back anyway. His arms tightened around her, and her body only understood the steady certainty of his hold. “You’re safe, baby.”

“Oh my God! Where did that come from?” she shrieked, scanning the water for another surge. Afraid of what she might find in his eyes, she kept her gaze on the water.

He did not let her go. “The surf settles a little further in.”

Further in? Was he serious? “I can’t swim.”

“We won’t go any deeper than my waistline.”

She hesitated. “I’m shorter than you.”

“I swear it.” He kissed his Catherine de Palma medal.

His vow settled somewhere within her that ordinary reassurance could not reach. She relented and whispered, “Okay.”

Still, she yipped as the waterline rose, clinging to his body like a barnacle.

“Don’t forget to breathe.” His arm was firm around her waist.

“How much more?” Each wave made the next step harder. Why am I putting myself through this? She still would not look at him, even as she tightened her grip.

“No further,” he said.

Past the breaker zone, the water became gentle, almost soothing. Her breathing eased. Wait. Did he call her baby? Again?

“Would you ever want to sit on the surfboard? Right about here.”

A jolt of panic made her breath hitch, and she lost her train of thought. “Now?”

“No.” His smile remained soft. “Maybe next time, or the time after that.”

Her pulse still racing, she nodded, fear agreeing before reason arrived. The wave still pulled at the inside of her skull.

He shifted the conversation to the nature reserve above the bluffs, describing short walks and harder hikes that unveiled something special about the landscape. As he spoke about Razor Point Trail, she pictured herself next to him: cold air, sandstone cliffs, and native flora.

“I want to ask you something.” He tilted his head, deliberate and measured. “You can refuse.”

“Umm… I guess so, but me first.” Every defense she had stepped forward. “Why didn’t you take the spot at the ballet school?”

A shadow crossed his face and was gone before she could name it. Not anger. Something knotted and hidden. She opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t have to answer. But it was too late.

“I have an autoimmune condition.” His tone was even. Almost formal. “The schedule requires certainty.” His breath rasped through his chest. “They said it would be irresponsible. To take a place I couldn’t keep.”

The bitterness threaded through his words and stayed there. She swallowed hard. Her voice faltered, but once again the question had left her mouth before she could pull it back. “Who convinced you to let it go?”

Matteo looked away. When he turned back, his eyes had narrowed into something cold. He moved slowly, showing her the coastline. Bluffs. Sky. Ocean. “You would’ve taken it?”

“Someone else might deserve my scholarship more than me.” She almost stopped. Silence was always easier. The pull did not win. “But I got my scholarship through effort, luck, destiny, or whatever else brought it to me. It’s mine. If I don’t graduate because I get sick or die, at least I tried to take what I wanted.”

He said nothing. But his gaze fixed on her face. His restraint pulled at her. No sharp edge turned against her. She let one guarded part of herself settle by a fraction, but the space his words left still pressed. The waves rose and fell around them, indifferent, for now.

Author’s note

I had a difficult time writing this chapter because Matteo’s loss does not require an obvious villain. When he explains why he gave up his place at ballet school, he says, “They said it would be irresponsible. To take a place I couldn’t keep.”

“Irresponsible” is a useful word when a family wants a child to surrender a future without admitting they took it from him. The word carries the authority of adult judgment while passing as concern. That is how it gets past the guards. Once Matteo accepts it, he begins reciting his family’s verdict as self-knowledge.

His autoimmune condition creates genuine uncertainty. Ballet school would demand a schedule his body might not sustain. His family treats that uncertainty as disqualification, then positions a healthier dancer as the rightful claimant. Matteo learns to view accepting an opportunity he earned as taking something from someone with a more dependable body. His illness becomes evidence against his desire.

Lucia recognizes this logic in a more brutal form. Abuela pressures her to leave school and work full-time. Bruno beats her and insists that school will not change who she is. Education could loosen their control over her, but Lucia attends anyway, even though defiance makes her home more dangerous. She has already learned how easily family authority can borrow the language of duty.

Lucia has confronted her family’s control. Matteo still describes their decision as though he reached it himself. She recognizes a surrender he cannot yet name because his family gave it the manners of love.

That is why Lucia answers him with her scholarship. She has wondered whether someone else deserves the opportunity more, but she refuses to surrender it in advance. “It’s mine. If I don’t graduate because I get sick or die, at least I tried to take what I wanted.”

Her answer makes room for illness, failure, and death. None of those possibilities gives someone else the right to stop her before her body does.

Whether the bars are made of gold or iron, a cage is still a cage. The harder question is how long it takes to recognize one when the people holding the key have taught you to defend it.

What helps you trust someone more, reassurance, patience, or seeing them respect your decision without taking it personally?

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Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

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After Ellie’s questions left her raw, Lucia kept her promise to meet Matteo at the beach. His easy care quieted some of her fear, and she allowed herself to move closer. Then a brief dance exposed the grief beneath his charm. Instead of looking away, Lucia asked what had upset him.

New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 13: Uncharted Waters

Matteo

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

~Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It used to be a simple movement.” Matteo shrugged, then looked away before the admission could become more than a casual comment. One foot angled outward on the blanket before he noticed, his body speaking a language he no longer trusted. His fingers flexed against his thigh in a rhythm that belonged in a studio, not a confessional. The double tour en l’air once lived cleanly in his body: lift, rotation, effortless landing.

“I earned a place in a prestigious ballet school in New York.” It was all he could offer her, the ruined outline. His eyes dropped to the food in his hands.

Beside him, Lucia shifted closer but froze before the comfort could become touch. The ocean breeze cooled his skin while his silence filled with what he hadn’t told her. His jaw tightened, trapping the words in place. From the corner of his eye, he caught her reaching for his hand, then curling into the blanket instead. The loss of her unfinished gesture landed with surprising sharpness.

He lay back on the blanket, and after a moment, she settled beside him. Close enough for the distance to become its own kind of ache. He fixed his eyes on the sky, but in the stillness, his body answered without permission.

Calf tightening, arch pointing, ankle rotating toward movements that no longer led anywhere. Then his weight shifted, following the old command. His center of gravity tracked toward a push-off that had nowhere to go. He caught the movement and stopped it: both feet flat, hands open, breath released in a controlled count.

Everything he hadn’t said remained in the space between them, waiting. Her voice broke the silence, but he didn’t turn toward her.

I started early, took my dog,

And visited the sea;

The mermaids in the basement

Came out to look at me.

And frigates in the upper floor

Extended hempen hands,

Presuming me to be a mouse

Aground, upon the sands.

He shifted once beside her, then stilled again.

But no man moved me till the tide

Went past my simple shoe,

And past my apron and my belt,

And past my bodice too,

He drew a slow breath through his nose and held it until his ribs tightened. The rhythm of her voice rose and fell with the surf behind her.

And made as he would eat me up

As wholly as a dew

Upon a dandelion’s sleeve —

And then I started too.

And he — he followed close behind;

I felt his silver heel

Upon my ankle, — then my shoes

Would overflow with pearl.

His eyes stayed fixed on the sky; his hands shook. The poem found the seam he couldn’t seal. She leaned in. That was all she gave him. It was enough.

His hand moved before he could think better of it, tentative by the time his fingers brushed hers. She didn’t pull her hand away. His hand remained beside hers, near enough to feel the warmth she allowed.

She squeezed his hand, brief and deliberate. Her voice tilted, playful. “So, do you have a dog?”

He rolled onto his side and leaned over her, careful to leave her room to move away. Her pupils dilated, her breath went shallow, and he could not tell whether she wanted him closer or needed him to stop.

“Yes, her name is Bella.” He smiled through the pull of her, but his voice roughened on the words. Her fingers brushed his hair, tucking it behind his ear. His breath caught.

He did not cross the distance between them. Their heat did it for him. His Adam’s apple shifted with a hard swallow. He needed space before wanting made him reckless. “It’s hot. Let’s get in the water.”

Her gaze snapped to the surf. The color drained from her face. “I don’t do waves.”

“I will keep you safe,” he said, as if his certainty could hold back the ocean.

“What if I want to get out?” Her shoulders tightened, breath came quick.

“We get out.” The conviction in his voice unsettled him. His family trusted his discipline. The right to choose was something they would never consider.

“You won’t drag me in?” With his gaze holding hers, she bit the rest of her thumbnail.

“I will never do anything you don’t want me to do.” The promise settled heavy on his chest.

“First, sunscreen.” His voice hoarse as he knelt beside her and slipped a careful hand under her elbow.

“I don’t burn.” She shrugged, like it didn’t matter.

He looked at her. “You will burn this time of day. And it would be difficult to explain to Abuela if you look like a lobster.”

That earned him a dry, reluctant smile. “Right. She doesn’t like seafood.”

Her smile eased the air between them, but her dark, guarded eyes tracked his movements. Steadiness was all he trusted himself to offer.

He reached over her shoulder, guiding her braid forward and letting it fall onto her chest. His fingers, slick with sunscreen, met the soft curve of her upper back. He did not linger.

She didn’t move, didn’t speak. But the flicker of tension in her muscles, the shift in her breath, marked the edge of retreat. Stillness was not permission.

The scent of her, faint coffee and sun-warmed skin, threaded into his breath. He kept his heat in his chest and out of his hands. Every pass of his fingers across her spine held the quiet demand: be careful.

The distance between them tightened. She had not pulled away, and her choice unraveled him. He sat back, giving her space to rub sunscreen on her arms and legs.

She said nothing, but her chest rose and fell in shallow pulls. He pretended not to notice as he rubbed sunscreen on his body. The silence stretched, punctuated only by the rhythm of the waves and the cries of gulls.

He dabbed a bit of sunscreen on her nose and smiled. She surprised him by asking, “Do you want me to do your back?”

“Thanks,” he said, already too aware of what he had agreed to.

Her first touch was hesitant. The longer her fingers remained on his skin, the more certain they became. Her hesitation had burned off. Only care remained.

When her palms met his shoulders, heat spread beneath his skin in an aching ripple. Her fingers moved slowly, tracing his muscles. When she reached his lower back, his skin pebbled.

Sweet Mother of God. Her fingers circled his freckles, grazed over his spine, paused slightly at the curve, lingered in a way that sent a shudder through the muscles he’d trained himself to control. He bit his lip, silencing the sounds building in his throat.

Instinct tugged through him, urging him to turn and reach for her. But he wouldn’t. His discipline held.

She stood up first. Her breath had become sharp and uneven. She turned, eyes bright with fear, as if the line between them had shifted under her feet.

Author’s note

Lucia asks an ordinary question: “What if I want to get out?” Matteo answers, “We get out.” He doesn’t demand a reason or try to decide whether her fear is reasonable. One sentence governs the scene: “Stillness was not permission.”

In the 1980s, young women inherited a sexual script built to defeat itself. We learned that preventing sex was our responsibility: “Just say no.” While we were cast as gatekeepers, we had no authority. No one taught us how to negotiate desire or withdraw consent after giving it.

The culture also taught young men to treat refusal as modesty, uncertainty, or an opening bid. Saying no invited persuasion instead of acceptance. Even when a boundary could protect a body, it put the relationship at risk. I lost a boyfriend because I said no. He stopped, and the relationship ended. I was hardly the only young woman who learned the price of refusal.

Matteo leaves Lucia room to move away, then treats the change in her breathing as information rather than an obstacle. She never has to translate fear into a performance he will accept. His own desire remains his responsibility. By promising to leave whenever she asks, he makes it clear he will accept her choice.

His promise, “I will keep you safe,” still carries a flaw. Matteo believes discipline can guarantee an outcome, although his own body has already taught him otherwise. Safety cannot rest on his certainty. It depends on whether Lucia can change her mind without having to overcome him.

How can we shift our understanding of consent from simply asking, “Did they say no?” to ensuring, “Are they genuinely enthusiastic and comfortable?”

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All parts of Beneath the Weight of Water and the first part of Inherited Shame are free for everyone.

Paid subscribers receive early chapter access, bonus scenes, and The Grumpy Writer.

Work arrives by email. No ads. No noise.

Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

• Chapter 14: Beneath Stillness

  At the beach, Matteo reveals the ballet future he lost. When Lucia answers with hesitant trust, desire tests the discipline he relies on to keep her safe.

• Chapter 15: Between the Breakers

  Lucia follows Matteo into the surf, where surrendering control tests her fragile trust. When he reveals why he gave up ballet, she challenges the future he allowed others to decide.

• Chapter 16: Clear Waters

  When Matteo asks permission to kiss her, Lucia must decide whether desire is worth crossing the lines drawn by class, family, and faith.

• Chapter 17: Undone

  After kissing Matteo, Lucia braces for his regret, but a driving lesson deepens their intimacy and tests whether she can accept tenderness without surrendering control.

• Chapter 18: Bent and Broken

  When their classmates shame Lucia for holding Matteo’s hand, his offer to name their relationship forces her closer to the desire she has kept safely undefined.

• Chapter 19: Strings

  October 24, 2026

• Chapter 20: Closing the Door

  November 7, 2026

• Chapter 21: Rupture

  November 21, 2026

• Chapter 22: Not Enough

  December 5, 2026

• Chapter 23: Anxious Concern

  December 19, 2026

• Chapter 24: Lucia’s Fumble

  January 2, 2027

• Chapter 25: The Bad Daughter

  January 16, 2027

• Chapter 26: What Alteration Finds

  January 30, 2027

Subscribe to receive new chapters by email every other Saturday.

Subscribe

All parts of Beneath the Weight of Water and the first part of Inherited Shame are free for everyone.

Paid subscribers receive early chapter access, bonus scenes, and The Grumpy Writer.

Work arrives by email. No ads. No noise.

Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.

The blanket separates them, but not enough.

Lucia does not end the friendship out loud.

She releases a slow breath and nods. Penelope needs an answer she can carry back to Ellie, so Lucia gives her one. “No hard feelings.” Then Lucia asks what else Penelope wants from her.

That question changes the scene.

Lucia has already offered the expected line. The phrase smooths the surface of the conversation. Her voice gives Penelope something usable, something that sounds close enough to peace for the room to keep moving.

Her body refuses to follow that quickly.

She adjusts her backpack and works the jitters through her fingers until the shaking stops. The action matters because her mouth reaches calm before the rest of her can. A strap, a zipper, the weight against her shoulder. Small things help her stay inside herself while Penelope presses for more.

Penelope wants Lucia’s return.

She talks about Ellie’s pain, Ellie’s breakup, Ellie’s regret. Penelope stacks the explanation carefully, as if enough context can soften what happened. Each reason lands where Lucia has carried too much already.

Lucia knows this pattern. Someone hurts her, then someone else arrives to translate the harm into a misunderstanding. Another person’s pain enters the room with papers in hand, ready to make its case. A boundary starts looking cruel when enough people stare at it.

Penelope arrives as peacemaker, already carrying a verdict. Ellie gets the long explanation. For Lucia, there is only one request hidden under the sympathy: be reasonable. Her pain has to make room again.

That demand has shaped her for years.

Lucia learned to feel guilt before anger could settle. Family trained her to prove goodness through endurance. She could forgive, absorb, and return because those actions made everyone else more comfortable. After a while, surrender can start wearing a saint’s face.

Thank you for reading Beneath the Weight of Water.

How do you create edges when a moment asks too much of you?

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This essay lives beside the world of Beneath the Weight of Water.

Subscribe to receive new chapters by email every other Saturday.

Subscribe now

All parts of Beneath the Weight of Water and the first part of Inherited Shame are free for everyone.

Paid subscribers receive early chapter access, bonus scenes, and The Grumpy Writer.

Work arrives by email. No ads. No noise.

Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne

For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.