“Well, look who’s here — the heroine of the poor,” Fernanda said in front of everyone. “Did the homeless guy already propose to you, or did he just leave you a tip in coins?”
Mariana, another saleswoman, covered her mouth to laugh. The manager pretended not to hear. Lucía was organizing inventory boxes behind the counter and chose to stay silent.
But Fernanda didn’t want silence. She wanted humiliation.
“Clean my display case too,” she ordered. “Yesterday you got dirty digging through trash, so I guess you’re good at it.”
Lucía swallowed hard. She wanted to answer back, but she needed the job. It paid for a small room in Santa María la Ribera, her overdue tuition, and the medicine for Doña Elvira, the neighbor who had raised her like a daughter after her mother died.
So she cleaned.
That night, as she left work, she saw Mateo leaning against a modest car. This time he wore a blue shirt and his hair looked less messy.
“Lucía.”
She looked surprised.
“How do you know my name?”
Mateo pointed at her nametag.
“It’s hard to miss.”
For the first time all day, Lucía laughed.
“Right. I forgot to take it off.”
He pulled out a small bag.
“I wanted to buy a watch for someone special, but not in a place like that. Do you know somewhere good where people won’t judge me for asking prices?”
Lucía hesitated, but eventually guided him to a more modest watch shop near Reforma Avenue. As they walked, they talked about simple things: tacos, traffic, the absurd weather in the city. Mateo seemed awkward, but attentive. That made her lower her guard.
Inside the shop, he picked out a small stainless-steel watch.
“For your girlfriend?” she asked jokingly.
“For a twelve-year-old boy,” Mateo replied. “He lives in a children’s home. It’s his birthday.”
Lucía stopped smiling.
“You help there?”
“Sometimes.”
He said nothing more. But his eyes changed. Lucía recognized that kind of silence. It was the silence of people who had lost too much.
That night, Mateo texted her.
“Did Fernanda bother you again?”
Lucía looked at the message from her tiny room while eating instant soup.
“I’m okay. Don’t worry. People talk because they can. I work because I have to.”
Mateo clenched his phone in anger. In his private office, he opened the security footage from the store. He watched Fernanda ignoring customers, mocking Lucía, leaving extra work for her, hiding commissions, and speaking badly about her with the manager.
He saved the videos.
“They think they own my company,” he muttered. “They forgot who signs the contracts.”
On Sunday, Lucía went to a children’s home in Coyoacán carrying notebooks and crayons for the kids. As she entered the courtyard, she froze.
Mateo was sitting on a bench talking to a messy-haired boy. On the child’s wrist shone the watch they had bought together.
“Mateo?”
He stood up, genuinely surprised.
“Lucía… I didn’t know you came here.”
She sat beside him.
“I grew up coming to this place. When my mother got sick, the nuns helped us with food.”
Mateo lowered his eyes.
“I grew up here.”
Lucía stared at him without blinking.
“My parents died when I was ten,” he said. “Then my grandfather raised me, but he died too. This home was all I had.”
Something inside Lucía softened.
“My father didn’t die,” she whispered. “I wish he had. He gambled, drank, and punched walls until my mother cried in silence. When I started university, I had to quit to work. My mother died owing hospital bills. Since then, I learned that nobody comes to save you.”
Mateo wanted to hold her hand, but he didn’t dare.
Lucía quickly wiped away a tear, almost angry at herself for letting it fall.
“But that’s all in the past. We’re still here, right?”
Then she ran off to help the little girls make paper flowers.
Mateo watched her with a tightness in his chest. It was no longer curiosity. It was no longer guilt.
He was in love.
But he also understood something terrible: the more he loved her, the more unforgivable his lie became.
And the next day he decided to reveal the truth, never imagining that the truth could destroy everything…
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