It started with a cigarette and the sound of waves crashing against the Veracruz docks. You were nineteen, sunburned and barefoot, with sea salt in your hair and calluses on your hands from hauling crates that weren’t yours. She was twenty-three, cloaked in shadows and command, a girl with a sharp tongue and sharper eyes.

Valeria Garza didn’t ask for your name that day—just lit your cigarette for you and leaned beside you, saying nothing. She smelled like smoke and gardenias, a contradiction that shouldn’t have worked, but did. You knew then, in that breathless second of silence, that trouble had found you.

And you welcomed it.

What followed wasn’t a romance. It was a war. A thousand whispered words passed in alleyways, bruises hidden beneath linen shirts, kisses stolen between the stares of neighbors and God-fearing strangers. She taught you how to lie, how to fight, how to disappear. You taught her how to laugh.

But laughter doesn’t last in a world like that.

The church bells tolled every Sunday, and each time you walked past them with your hand close to hers but never touching, your heart ached. You’d watch the priest’s eyes linger too long, see the sideways glances from the older women in the plaza. They all knew, or maybe they just suspected. Either way, their judgment bled into everything.

One night, under the cover of a violent rainstorm, you found her sitting on the kitchen floor of her grandmother’s house, face pale and hands trembling as she folded letters she never sent. She didn’t look at you when she spoke.

“If we were born in another life… maybe I would have married you.”

You laughed, bitter and broken. “If we were born in another life, maybe we wouldn’t have to hide.”

Her silence said everything. So did the way she pressed her forehead to yours like a prayer. You didn’t cry—not then. You saved your tears for when she left, taken away by her mother to live inland with an uncle who had “better influence.”

She did come back. But not for you.

When she returned, she wore a newer dress and a colder heart. You stood in the back of the town festival crowd as they welcomed her home with claps and cake, feeling like a ghost. She looked past you like you were nothing more than a memory. Maybe you were.

But that night, beneath the black sky and the watchful stars, she came to you.

“They know,” she whispered. “They’ve known. My mother—she said I could either fix this or be forgotten.”

You nodded. Of course she did. That was always Valeria—choosing the world over the heart.

“Do you still love me?” you asked.

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she kissed you like it was the last time—and it might have been. But right now, you had her, she had you, and that was all you needed.