Chapter 3: A Quarrel Between Two Worlds
429 Words
Carly didn’t sleep that night.
She sat on her bed, staring at the door Jose had walked out of, replaying his calm voice in her head.
“Just… stay alive. For tonight.”
Who says that to a stranger?
By morning, she convinced herself it was nothing. Just a delivery guy doing his job. Just pity.
Yet when the doorbell rang at exactly 4:15 p.m., her heart jumped.
She opened the door and froze.
It was him.
Jose stood there in simple jeans and a plain shirt, holding another delivery box. Calm. Polite. Annoyingly composed.
“You again?” she scoffed. “Don’t you have other rich girls to rescue?”
He frowned slightly. “You ordered lunch.”
She blinked. Then remembered tapping her phone absentmindedly earlier.
“Oh,” she muttered. “Right.”
She turned to walk away, leaving the door wide open.
Jose hesitated, then followed.
“You look better,” he said.
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion,” she snapped.
He stopped walking. “You’re right. Sorry.”
That irritated her even more.
“Why do you talk like that?” she asked. “So gentle. So calm. Are you pretending or is this some strategy?”
Jose placed the food on the table neatly. “Not everything is a strategy.”
She laughed sharply. “Easy for you to say. You probably don’t know what real problems are.”
He looked at her then. Really looked.
“You live in a house bigger than my entire street,” he said quietly. “But last night, you looked emptier than I’ve ever felt.”
Her chest tightened.
“Don’t act like you understand me,” she fired back. “You’re just a delivery guy. You come, you drop things, you leave.”
Silence.
Jose straightened up. “You’re right. That’s my place.”
He picked up his bag.
“But don’t mistake calm for ignorance,” he added softly. “Some of us learned to survive without money.”
That hit her harder than she expected.
“Wait—” she started, then stopped herself. Pride rose quickly. “Whatever. Do your job and go.”
Jose paused at the door.
“I hope you don’t regret pushing people away,” he said. “Some of us don’t come back twice.”
The door closed behind him.
Carly stood still.
Her heart raced—not with anger this time, but fear.
Because deep down, she knew it.
She had just pushed away the one person who saw her…
and didn’t run.
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