Chapter 4: Suddenly, not Empty
Beneath the Weight of Water | 1980s Mexican American Women’s Fiction
Previously:
Lucia called Matteo after Bruno’s violence made hiding impossible. When she broke in Matteo’s arms, restraint stopped feeling simple. By the time the waves filled the silence between them, he understood what he had been trying not to name: this was love, and action would follow.
New to the Serial? Start Here | Need the previous chapter? Chapter 3: Resurrection
Matteo
Seek happiness in sorrow.
~Fyodor Dostoevsky
As Matteo cradled Lucia in his arms, he found it unbelievable that he hadn’t seen he had fallen for her. The warmth of her breath on his neck pulled the past into sharp focus.
He should have seen it in the way he noticed little things about her: the way her curls fell forward as she read, head tilted slightly, a nail between her lips. Whenever she looked up and caught him watching her, something in him faltered. Her dark brown eyes, unblinking, cut through him as if she saw what he’d been trained to conceal.
It was nothing, he told himself, a play of light and timing. But these moments stayed with him. The way she seemed both fragile and unbreakable, a paradox that haunted him. By the end of their freshman year, he enjoyed sitting with her in a corner of the library surrounded by dusty books. He pushed aside the pull of her because he had a girlfriend, one his family claimed to love. A single rule carried him through every hard choice: stay in control or watch his family take the reins again.
A long summer stretched before him. He left for Mallorca at the end of May. Surfing, traveling, even among friends, he couldn’t stop thinking of Lucia sitting at the library, dust motes dancing in the light hitting her face. The growing ache of missing her threaded through everything he did.
Only now did he understand why he had written so many letters from the other side of the world. He began writing to her at the school bookstore because he didn’t even have her home address. His letters were restless, full of parties, cliffs, and distant waves. He told himself the letters were harmless, just summer chatter, but he knew it was more.
In Bali, in Jeffreys Bay, wherever he went, the rhythm was the same: he surfed, networked with his grandparents’ friends, partied, and wrote to her. No distraction worked. Not the travel. Not even the attention from the girls that he never had to ask for. They just made him miss her. He caught himself asking at the front desk for mail more often than he wanted to admit, irritation sharpening into need.
Then, after Côte d’Azur, he reeled at the stack of letters waiting for him in Mallorca. Without thinking, he had written the villa as his return address. Laughing at himself, he opened the letters. She didn’t write about her life; she asked questions about the places he’d been and the books he read. Her restraint made him wonder what she was holding back. The way she sometimes flinched as she sat down, the shadows marking her skin, returned to him now.
The letters stayed with him, but so did his family obligations. Mamà gran, his grandmother, leaned forward. “Your girlfriend is an interesting young woman.”
Matteo shrugged, hating the formal dining room when it was just the three of them, but his grandparents insisted. Padrí, his grandfather, had Matteo seated to his right, positioned like heir apparent, as if the title belonged to him rather than his mother.
“Is it customary for a young woman like her to read so many books?”
His blue eyes narrowed, cold and cutting. She wasn’t speaking of Carol, Mamà gran had read Lucia’s correspondence. The breach hit him with unwelcome clarity. For a moment, control slipped, and he crumpled the napkin in his hands.
“Curious.” Her tone was cool and dismissive. “How does one move from Crime and Punishment to Princess Daisy in scarcely a week?”
“She just does.” His voice a blade drawn clean, he added, “Simple as that.” Her judgement of Lucia was also a judgement of him, and it felt like a hand closing around his throat.
Padrí’s eyebrow lifted, a quiet but unmistakable warning. Everyone noticed the bitter tone of his voice, even if they all pretended that years of being treated like a child hadn’t shaped it.
Matteo checked himself. He smiled. It was a polite, forced thing. For the sake of family peace, he had spent the day pretending to love the Balearic and Mediterranean Seas, following the script they kept writing for him.
“Lucia is not my girlfriend.” Saying it out loud sharpened the bitterness of wanting her. He missed the Pacific. But he missed Lucia most. Fuck. For all he knew, she was dating someone in the barrio. He would find out.
“If you can’t manage a little girl, how will you handle a woman?” Padrí’s expectation, complete mastery, absolute control, pressed down on him.
Matteo’s jaw tightened, the only sign of tension as he pulled himself back under control. “I’ve never been interested in little girls.”
Padrí’s smile thinned. He’d lived under his grandfather’s expectations all of his life, even the smallest action a lesson that control was the only acceptable form of manhood. Matteo knew he’d pay for his sidestep, but his thoughts kept returning to Lucia.
Thank you for reading Beneath the Weight of Water. Paid subscriptions are optional support for future chapters, illustrations, and the long work of keeping the story alive.
What do you do when everything in your life says no, but your feelings won’t let go?
Previous Chapter
Chapter 5: A Silent War
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
~Ian Maclaren
Campus cruelty drives Lucia into the library, where Matteo finds her and offers a warmth that frightens her because she wants to trust it.
Previous Chapter
Start from the Beginning
Author’s note
A friendship Matteo thought he had kept at the edge of his life turns on him. He thinks naming the truth gives him control. It only proves how long the truth has been moving without him.
He looks back and sees the evidence: the letters, the restlessness, the way Lucia stayed with him even when distance should have made forgetting easy.
That matters because Matteo comes from a family where love often arrives with expectation, privacy is negotiable, and manhood means mastery.
His feelings for Lucia do not fit that script. He does not want to manage her, possess her, or turn her pain into proof that he matters.
But wanting her compels him to ask a question that was already answered for him: what kind of man does he want to be?
If Matteo’s feelings for Lucia have you wondering what he’ll risk next, subscribe for new chapters as they arrive.
Copyright © 2026 Angelica Thorne
For permission requests, contact angelicathorne@icloud.com.
They just made him miss her that one line does so much heavy lifting; it's the whole chapter in five words.
Matteo’s quiet rebellion against his family’s suffocating control while falling hard for Lucia felt so familiar.
I remember being trapped under strict parental expectations in high school, constantly fighting to keep some sense of autonomy. Like him, I also carried deep feelings for my high school sweetheart amid all that pressure.
The letters, the distance, the ache of wanting someone who represented freedom from family expectations — it brought back memories of choosing love and independence over the safe, scripted path laid out for me.
Powerful reminder that sometimes the heart demands we break old patterns, even when the consequences loom.