He Came Back Alive ,But I Buried Everything We HadChapter 1
My sophomore year, my boyfriend threw himself in front of me during a mudslide. The current swept him away. They never found a body.
I cried until I collapsed and ended up hospitalized. The diagnosis was severe depression.
His elderly mother lived alone out in the countryside with no one to look after her, so I dropped out of school and took care of her for three full years.
My classmates all said I was a fool, that I'd thrown away my youth for a dead man.
But I could never forget the look in his eyes the moment he pushed me out of the way. Desperate. And so full of love.
The fourth year, I moved back to the city where we'd first met. I was trying to start over.
That day I'd picked up a delivery gig, dropping off prenatal supplements to a penthouse duplex.
The door was slightly ajar. I was about to knock when a voice drifted out from the inner room. A man's voice. So familiar it shook something loose in my bones.
"Babe, take your supplements later, okay? Don't be upset."
My head snapped up. Through the crack in the door, I saw his face.
…
"Os… Oswald Delgado?"
The door swung all the way open.
He stood in the warm glow of the entryway, dressed in loose loungewear.
I was wearing the blue vest from the delivery app, mud splattered up the legs of my pants from riding a scooter through puddles.
"You spilled the medicine."
He didn't say my name. His voice was flat. Distant.
"If you can't afford to replace the carpet, fine. Just clean it up."
"You don't recognize me?"
I could hear my own voice shaking.
"I'm Denise. Denise Henson."
He didn't even lift his eyes.
"Don't know you."
Behind him, the sound of slippers padding across hardwood. A woman emerged from the inner room, belly round and heavy with pregnancy.
She slipped her arm through Oswald's, casual and possessive.
"Oswald, why haven't you brought my supplements in yet?"
Her gaze drifted past his shoulder and landed on me, standing in the doorway like something the rain dragged in.
"Who's this?"
"The delivery girl. She spilled the medicine."
"Oh."
The woman drew the word out, her eyes sliding over me from head to toe. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.
"Well, make her clean it up then. She got my carpet dirty. There's a rag by the washing machine on the balcony."
She was ordering me around. Like hired help.