YOUR BOYFRIEND SAID HIS MOTHER THOUGHT HE COULD “DO BETTER”… SO YOU MOVED OUT WHILE HE WAS AT WORK, AND BY THE TIME HE REALIZED WHAT HE’D LOST, HIS WHOLE LIFE WAS ALREADY FALLING APART

By one o’clock, your phone starts vibrating.

First Emilio. Then Emilio again. Then three messages in a row. Where are you? Why are your things gone? Vale, what is this? You stare at the screen while Sofía butters toast with the concentration of a woman trying not to commit assault preemptively.

“Do not answer him yet,” she says.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Good. Let him experience confusion. Men like him treat confusion like a human rights violation.”