Previously:
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?
Start from the Beginning
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.