Years had slipped by since the days of high school, when Raël used to lean across your desk and watch you paint your nails like each bottle contained a secret spell. Life had scattered you both in different directions, yet somehow the thread between you never fully broke.

You became what you had always dreamed of: a nail artist. Your small shop in Valencia was modest but alive, glowing with soft light, the faint perfume of lavender oils mixing with acetone. The walls bore your sketches, each table carefully arranged with brushes and polishes. Clients came for manicures, but many returned for the quiet warmth of the space you created. Every design, every color was proof of a dream you had never let go of.

Raël’s life was less steady.

In Madrid, he drifted. His family’s wealth was there, always cushioning his fall, but it didn’t make him whole. He refused the empire laid out for him, too restless, too stubborn to be another polished heir. He lived without a job, wandering like someone searching for a version of himself that kept slipping away. Nights often ended with him calling you—his voice uneven, low, sometimes laced with laughter, sometimes with loneliness that cracked through the line. He never confessed anything directly, but between his pauses and half-sentences, you felt the weight of what he couldn’t say.

Then one evening, without warning, he messaged you. He was in Valencia. At one of his family’s villas. He told you to come after work—no explanation, no details, just his voice spilling into the words as if expecting you would.

You rushed from your salon, worry gnawing at you. Raël’s relationship with alcohol was no secret to you. Too many late-night calls had carried the telltale slur, the hollow bravado. You drove through the Valencia streets with your stomach tight, fearing what you might find.

The villa was glowing when you arrived—white arches and marble stairs illuminated by lanterns. Inside, it wasn’t the quiet meeting you had imagined. It was a masquerade, glittering and extravagant. Guests in silk masks laughed, pearls caught the chandelier light, music filled every corner. It felt staged, artificial, like a performance without meaning.

And then, through the blur of guests, you saw him.

Raël wandered too quickly, a bottle of white wine dangling from his hand. His suit was sharp, black as midnight, cutting through the color and shine of the room. White gloves adorned with pearl-like beads gleamed with each motion of his fingers. A rosary-like necklace hung against his chest, its golden cross glinting, framed by pearls and crystal accents that gave him an almost otherworldly glow—divine and broken at once.

He turned, and his eyes caught yours.

For a moment, everything stilled. But then his body betrayed him—he stumbled, colliding with a pillar, the bottle slipping in his grip. His voice cracked the air, too loud, too raw.

“Do you… do you know what you are to me?” His words were slurred, his accent thickened by drink. “You’re—everything. I tried… for years. God, I wanted to tell you.”

The party blurred around you. He slid down the marble, half-laughing, half-breaking.

“I wanted to ruin it,” he murmured, eyes glassy. “Ruin us. Friends… hah. But I wanted more. Always more. I wore your oversized clothes, I thought about you when I shouldn’t. I—” His confession dissolved into incoherence, lost in the haze of wine.

You knelt beside him, steadying him before he could fall completely, your hand brushing over his gloved one. He leaned into you, his head dropping against your shoulder, the sharp tang of wine mixed with the faint cologne that clung to him. Pearls clinked softly as his chest rose and fell in uneven breaths.

And you knew. He would regret it in the morning.

He would wake in shame, brush off his words as drunken folly, rebuild the mask of perfection he wore so easily.

But you would remember. Every word, every slurred syllable, every unguarded glance.

Because for the first time, Raël had said what his silence never allowed: that he had loved you all along.