“This one’s going to get blisters.”
“He already has,” you said.
Alejandro showed his hands.
He did.
Martín laughed and hired him for a trial week.
That first week nearly broke him.
He came home sore, dusty, sunburned, and quiet. The man who used to sign documents in conference rooms now carried boxes up staircases and apologized to customers when deliveries ran late. You watched him discover that exhaustion has a smell, that cheap work shoes hurt, that respect from working people is not inherited.
On Friday, Martín paid him in cash.
Alejandro stared at the bills.
Not because it was much.
Because it was earned.
He brought the money to your mother and placed it on the table.
“For groceries,” he said.
Your mother looked at the bills, then at him.
“You don’t pay for dignity with one week of work.”
“I know,” he said. “But I’d like to start.”
She did not smile.
But she took the money.
That was the first blessing.
Weeks passed.
You returned to school after Sofia, one of your classmates who worked part-time in administration, helped you file a complaint about the unexplained hold. Abril kept her job because her manager, after receiving too many “anonymous concerns,” got suspicious and decided nobody told him how to manage his staff. Your mother negotiated with the landlord like a woman who had raised daughters on little money and less mercy.
Beatriz’s first attack failed.
So she tried shame.
Photos appeared online.
Alejandro leaving your house in work clothes. You walking beside him with grocery bags. Your mother’s street. The cracked paint near your door. The caption came from an anonymous account, but everyone knew the hand behind it.
“From heir to errand boy. Love is expensive.”
The comments were worse.
Some called you a climber.
Some called him pathetic.
Some said you had trapped him.
Others said rich boys always came crawling back once poverty stopped being romantic.
You deleted the app.
Alejandro did not.
He read every comment that night in silence.
Then he placed the phone on the table and said, “They’re right about one thing.”
Your heart stopped.
He looked at you.
“Love is expensive. I just didn’t know the price was becoming honest.”
You cried then.
Not because everything was okay.
Because he was still there.
The first time he almost left happened two months later.
It was raining hard, the kind of Mexico City rain that turns streets into rivers and patience into shouting. Alejandro had lost a delivery account because a truck broke down. Martín yelled. A customer insulted him. He came home soaked, humiliated, and shaking with a rage he was too proud to show.
You were studying at the table.
He walked in, dropped his bag, and said nothing.
“Are you okay?” you asked.
He laughed.
It was ugly.
“No, Carmen. I am not okay. I am twenty-nine years old, sleeping on a couch, carrying boxes for men who think I’m a joke, while my mother probably drinks wine in the house I grew up in.”
You closed your textbook.
His eyes were bright and furious.
“And yes, I know. I chose this. I chose you. That means I’m not allowed to say it’s hard, right?”
You stood.
“No. It means you don’t get to punish me for it.”
The words stopped him.
His face changed immediately.
Shame hit him fast.
You continued, voice trembling.
