Milo assumed she was asking why he told her, not why Will had been coming around. “I think you young people need to stop being so secretive. Life’s too short to be sneaky.”
Lizzie was trying to process it; He’d been coming in every evening, when the warehouse was still quiet, bringing the coffee and checking on her from the shadows. Milo had seen it all but never said a word until now.
Lizzie wasn’t sure what this meant. Did he still care for her? Did she want him to? She didn’t dare get her hopes up that maybe things could go back to how they were. But for the first time in a while, she felt the weight of her embarrassment didn’t feel quite so oppressive.
Milo wasn’t wrong about the secrecy. She assumed that Milo must’ve told him that she knew, but even so, he never said anything. Never sent her a message, or an email, or even left any sign that he’d been thinking of her, other than the small cup of coffee that she found on her desk every evening.
Word of thecoladadeliveries began to spread, and the college boys started taking bets on how long beforeEl Fantasma Executiveactually showed his face. Someone pulled the security footage: every evening around 5:34 p.m. on the dot, the same dark hoodie slipped through the side door, left something, and vanished. They turned the clip into a GIF. Caption: “CEO simping hours.”
Lizzie pretended to hate it. She made out like he didn’t trust her and felt she needed a babysitter. But secretly, she lasted exactly two nights before she started drafting notes and emails to Will. None ever saw the light of day. They lived in her draft folder, Lizzie incapable of pressing send, or folded up in her pocket to be thrown away later.
Friday was the final night of inventory. The auditors had come and gone—report glowing, savings verified to the penny. Carlota texted a string of crying-laughing emojis and “El Tenso is going to choke on his own pride when the board sees this.”
Lizzie opened her locker to hang up her vest one last time.
Inside sat a brand-new boombox wrapped in a red bow. On top, a cassette labeled in Will’s sharp handwriting:
Warehouse Nights — WP
She waited until the last forklift shut off, until Jose, Karl, Dino, and Max clocked out with sleepy fist-bumps. Then she plugged it in, pressed play, and turned the volume low enough that only she could hear.
Danza Kuduro played first — the warehouse suddenly felt alive, like the pallets were dancing too. She smiled despite herself, remembering her first week at the DC. She skipped to the next song, La Vida Es Un Carnaval — she belted out the chorus as she did weeks ago.
She went to the next, another dance number, Suavemente. She remembered dancing to it on the rooftop with Carlota in her pirate regalia.
And then — Bésame Mucho. Slow. Tormenting. In Spanish. The lyrics wrapped around her like arms she’d never let hold her. She stood frozen between the pallets, safety goggles fogging for reasons that had nothing to do with temperature, and let the song play all the way to the end.
When the last note died, she ejected the tape, slipped it into her pocket next to the note she had drafted earlier but wouldn’t give him.
“Coward,” she breathed, the accusation aimed only at the woman in the safety goggles who still couldn’t hit send.
Then she clocked out, walked past Milo’s booth without a word, and didn’t look back.
Because tomorrow the night shift was over.
Tomorrow she’d have to work in daylight.
Chapter 11-Pa’ la Mesa
Lizzie woke up on Saturday feeling as if she had just crossed her personal Rubicon. Having the accomplishment of surviving the night shift weeks, the Thanksgiving holiday week lying before her felt like a breath of fresh air. She mainly had work-from-home projects to finish—that and getting her sleep back on track.
Monday morning, she was having her coffee with emails from Pemberley’s overseas offices, working to implement improvements at their sites as well.
Her phone rang. Ignacio.
“¡Jefa!” he said by way of greeting. “I need your help. Did you see that email for the Thanksgiving charity event?”
Lizzie scanned her inbox. “ThePa’ la Mesathing?”
“Yeah, it’s an annual thing they do every year. They have a kids area, and they feed like three hundred people, and you know, just give back to the community.”
“Okay, sounds nice…” Lizzie said, wondering where she fit in here.
“So do you have any plans Wednesday evening?”
“I mean, just working. But do you really need more people to hand out plates?”
“You hand out plates?! No! You’re the queen of efficiency! I need help working through the crowd! Every year, my team works on it, and it always takes forever. The lines are long, thefood gets cold, it’s just… I can’t even feel good about doing it because it’s such a nightmare.”
