7. Beatriz Eighteen-Years-Old
Beatriz: Eighteen-Years-Old
Morning seeps in through the blinds, soft and yellow, and I’m warm under the sheets in that slow, floaty way that happens after a night that felt like magic.
I reach for him, but he's not there. A cold spot on the sheets where he laid a few hours before.
I blink, confused. The room looks the same—my posters, my sweatshirt on the carpet by the desk, the robe on the back of the door. The quiet of a house with no Papi or Drea in it.
My hand slides over the space where he should be again and catches on paper. A note, folded once with my name on the outside in his handwriting.
My stomach drops so fast I feel it in my feet.
I sit up too quickly. The ache hits—hips, thighs, a deep tenderness that makes me breathe through my mouth.
It’s not pain like regret. It’s proof of last night still on my skin.
I hold the note with careful fingers and tell myself it’s a joke or a dumb prank, and he’ll pop out and finish with a laugh. But then I open it.
I can’t do this anymore, Beatriz. I’m sorry. It’s better this way.
Everything goes quiet and loud at once—like my ears forgot how to work. I read it again because my brain refuses to accept plain English.
I can’t do this anymore, Beatriz. I’m sorry. It’s better this way.
"No,” I say, very calm, like I can rewrite the letters on this note. “No, that’s wrong. That’s not—”
My phone is on the nightstand, face down. I grab it, thumb shaking, and tap his name. It rings once. Twice. Straight to voicemail.
He always picks up for me.
I hang up. Call again. Same thing. I stare at the ceiling until the fan blades stop looking like swords.
He left a note.
God... he left a fucking note!
The words land in different places—heart, stomach, throat—each time like a new punch. I put the paper on my lap and it leaves a square of cold against my skin. It feels like proof and it feels like a lie, and both of those things scrape at each other inside me.
Last night flashes in pieces. The quiet of the hallway when I let him in.
The way we whispered even though no one was home.
The weight of his arms around me. The look in his eyes when he told me he loved me.
The way he held me after. How careful he was during and after.
How he tucked the blanket around me like I might get cold.
He kissed my forehead. He said, “I’ve got you.
” He said it like a promise he was proud to make.
I look at the note in my hand like it might rewrite itself if I stare hard enough.
It doesn’t, so I text.
Beatriz
Are you okay?
Delivered.
Beatriz
Is this a joke? Because if it is, it's an awful one.
Call me right now!
Alejandro?
Three dots don’t show up. Nothing does. The little “Delivered” sits there like it’s sealing my fate.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand too fast, note still in hand. My body remembers last night and protests. I sit, then stand again... slower. The room tilts once and settles.
I’m aware of everything—the way the necklace chain sticks to my collarbone, the faint scent of his cologne on my sheets, the crease his head left on my pillow. I take one step and my knee brushes the jeans he folded neatly on my chair. He always takes care of me like that.
I’m in an old t-shirt that smells like Suavitel fabric softener.
I slide my phone and the note into the pocket and pad down the hall to the bathroom.
The mirror shows a girl who looks like me but not me—eyes swollen from sleep, mouth soft, hair a mess.
I turn the faucet on and splash cold water on my face. It makes the skin around my eyes sting.
I could get in the shower and scrub until I don’t feel like me. But instead I lean on the sink and inhale once until my ribs ache. I expect tears. None come yet. It’s shock more than anything. Confusion, and maybe even stubbornness.
I go back to my room, grab the note and my phone again, and sit on the floor beside the bed with my back to the frame. I text once more.
Beatriz
Please. What does this mean?
Did someone say something to you?
Did I do something wrong?
I don’t understand.
There’s nothing to understand, a small voice argues. He wrote it plainly. He’s done. “Better this way.” Better for who?
I call again. Straight to voicemail.
I leave one. “Hey, it’s me. Obviously. I just—call me. Okay? I don’t know what’s going on. I’m trying not to freak out. Please just call me.” I hang up. I sound too calm. I hate it.
I try again. “Alejandro, I woke up and you were gone and there’s a note and I don’t—” My throat closes. “Please.” I end it before I cry at a machine.
Prom is in five days. Graduation is two weeks after that.
We have plans. We picked the restaurant for prom night because Andrea said she knows a guy who can get us a reservation without the two-hour wait.
We joked about how we’d sneak out after graduation pictures and jump in the ocean in our clothes.
We were going to drive to the Keys the weekend after and sit on the side of the road and eat gas station chips and talk about everything and nothing because we always do.
I reach for something that makes sense and come up empty.
The note clutched in my hand, crooked now. I smooth it flat and read it again like a person who can’t stop pressing a bruise. I feel stupid. Then angry that I feel stupid. Then angry that he did this in my house, on my pillow, like the place where I put my face was the right place for goodbye.
A tiny, mean thought whispers that maybe he regretted last night. I shut it down. I know what last night was. I know his face. I know the way he said my name. I know the way his hands shook when he touched my cheek after. That wasn’t regret. That was love. So why—
My door cracks open without a knock. Andrea always forgets to knock. She’s in a sweatshirt and shorts, hair in a messy bun, face clean and still somehow perfect. She stops when she sees me on the floor, then sees the note in my hand. Her eyes flick to my face again. She reads enough in me to move.
“Bee?” she says softly.
I hold up the paper like evidence I wish I didn’t have. “He left,” I say, and my voice finally wobbles. “He left a note.”
She’s across the room in two steps, down on the floor with me, warm and solid. “Oh, hermanita.” She says my little sister in such a tender way as she pulls me into her chest and holds on tight.
I don’t fight it. I fold into her and stare at the carpet while my brain tries to compute basic facts. Her hand moves up and down my back in a steady line.
“What does it say?” she asks, voice careful.
I pass it to her without letting go of her. As she reads, the line between her brows sharpens. “What does ‘better this way’ even mean?” Her voice cracks on “better,” outrage climbing fast. “Better for who? Better for him? Qué cobarde.” Coward. Is that what it is? Cowardice?
I shake my head against her shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Did you fight? Did something happen?”
“No. We—” I stop. I won’t talk about last night like that.
Not even to Andrea. Heat crawls up my throat and I swallow it back down.
“We were good. He was… he was sweet. He was normal. He said he loved me. He held me. And then—” I point at the note like it’s a person I can blame and not a paper cut that won’t stop bleeding.
Andrea exhales through her nose, angry and soft. “I’m so sorry.” She rocks me a little, like I’m smaller than I am. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I close my eyes, and for a second, I’m eight again, and Mami is alive and this is the kind of thing she would fix with a kiss and an embrace and a promise that everything is still possible. The thought hits too hard. My chest tightens.
Andrea’s grip tightens with it. “He doesn’t get to do this to you,” she says, voice low, protective. “He doesn’t get to disappear and leave you with words he didn’t even have the guts to say out loud.”
“He’s not like that,” I say automatically, and I hate that I defend him out of habit. I hate that I still want to protect him from her, from me, from what this is. “He’s not. I swear he’s not.” My mouth moves faster than my mind. “Maybe someone said something to him. Maybe he got scared. Maybe—”
“Even then,” she says, not unkind, “he can still talk to you like a person.”
I nod and it hurts. “I know.”
“Do you want me to call him?” she asks.
I shake my head fast. “No. Please don’t.”
She nods and tucks hair behind my ear like she’s been waiting years to be the one to do that. “Okay.”
I pull away enough to look at her. “Prom is Friday.”
“I know.”
“We were going together.”
“I know.”
“What am I supposed to do?” It comes out small and turns me inside out.
“We don’t have to decide that right this second,” she says.
“Right now, we breathe. We drink water. We put the note somewhere you can’t see it.
We wait an hour and see if he calls. If he doesn’t, we wait another hour.
And then if he doesn't man up, I'll go with you. And I promise to make you have fun despite him.”
I nod because this is something I can do.
Directions help. I stand because she stands, and the ache runs up my legs like it owns me for a second.
I breathe through it. She watches me carefully but doesn’t say anything.
I drink from the water bottle on my desk.
It tastes like dust and plastic and the worst morning of my life.
Andrea takes my phone from my hand and sets it on the dresser. “I’m going to make manzanilla,” she says. “Sit. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
She goes. I don’t sit. I pick up my phone and stare at his name. I open our messages and scroll. There they are, last night, at eleven-fifty-two:
Alejandro
Are you sure?
Beatriz
I’ve never been more sure of anything.
Alejandro
I love you.
Beatriz
I love you, too.
I press my lips together so hard. Is this really it?