Marco was the only person in your life who had ever made the struggle look worthwhile.
When he was little, you used to watch him sleep on the narrow bed you shared in the one-room apartment above the mechanic’s shop and wonder whether love was supposed to feel so much like fear. Fear of not having enough. Fear of getting sick. Fear of not being able to protect what mattered most. Fear that one accident, one bad week, one unpaid bill could snatch away the child you had built your whole life around.
But fear never stopped you.
Not when you carried produce crates that felt heavier than your own bones. Not when rain soaked through your sweater in winter and your fingers went stiff with cold while you made change. Not when customers haggled over pennies like the pennies did not matter, though pennies had once stood between you and dinner. You kept going because Marco was bright, and softness like his should never have had to answer to hunger.
