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BRIELLE didn't feel so good.
As she walked down the path to the Madrigal home, hands in her dress pockets and head bowed low, her gaze fixed on the floor, her usual cheerful mood was replaced by a feeling of nausea and something else that she couldn't quite define.
Brielle had that often. And it was always caused by the same thing.
Not because of the fact that she only ate one proper meal a day (she didn't mean to, she just always forgot to eat). No, because after getting home and trying to fight her mess of her hair into an merly acceptable hairstyle for Antonio Madrigal's ceremony, she went to the kitchen to say goodbye to her parents just to see them screaming at each other...
...again.
She should have been used to it by now, but she wasn't. It had been like this for years, but every time she listened to their screams, them breaking things to take away the anger they had for each other, it hurt like the first time all over again.
Brielle liked to refer to her parents' relationship as a house of cards. At the beginning it started strong ‒ here and there it seemed to make a wrong move and collapse, but it didn't. It was almost done ‒ almost perfect, but then it crumpled on the final step. And so it went over and over again. Desperate attempts to rebuild it, to finish, to make it perfect, but it kept tripping and crashing.
It would always crumble and crumble, but never stop trying to fix what went wrong.
And that was exhausting.
Brielle found it exhausting and just wanted it to end. It would be better if it just stopped, but her parents were the kind of people who were stubborn and believed they were doing the right thing by trying.
The right thing for their daughter.
But they weren't.
It was exhausting.
It was a house of cards, threatening to get carried away by the window ‒ to shatter.
The night breeze tickled on Brielle's skin gently as she stopped in front of Casita and her eyes immediately landed on a certain boy. That uncomfortable feeling was instantly gone ‒ only leaving behind a small sting in her heart ‒ and she couldn't stop the smile from forming on her face.
That sparkling feeling when she looked at him was alaways there, but she never paid any attention to it, nor did she pay any attention to the several times Camilo stared at her with that special look in his eyes ‒ which she in fact did notice.
