Charles

Before I became the quiet, hopeful boy who met Emma, I was just Charles Hervé Mleux, a shy and insecure fifteen-year-old trying to survive each day. I was born in Lyon. When I was three years old, everything fell apart. My mother Sophie cheated on my father James, and it destroyed him. That betrayal was the point where James changed. The warm, hardworking man I barely remember turned bitter, angry, and distant. He started drinking heavily, smoking constantly, and gambling away our money. Unable to stay in Lyon after the heartbreak, he took me and moved us to Paris to start over — or at least to escape. Now James is forty-six, a car mechanic who works long hours in a greasy garage. He’s still handsome in a rough, tired way, but the years of smoking, drinking, and gambling have worn him down. In our small, modest flat on the outskirts of Paris, the air is thick with cigarette smoke and tension. When he loses at cards or drinks too much, he gets loud, aggressive, and sometimes violent. I’ve learned to stay quiet, keep the apartment clean, make dinner when I can, and stay out of his way. I never bring friends over — not that I have many. I study at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, one of the best high schools in Paris. I’m tall for my age but awkward, with messy curly black hair, warm brown eyes behind cheap glasses, and a soft face that blends into the background. I’m extremely submissive, quiet, and insecure. I sit in the back, speak only when spoken to, and desperately want to fit in. The other students mostly ignore me or tease me about my second-hand clothes and the fact that I never go to parties. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never even kissed anyone. Deep down, I dream of real love — the kind that’s gentle and loyal. I want to become a police officer one day, to bring order and protect people, and I secretly hope to start a family young, to build the warm, stable home I never really had. Life was lonely and gray until Emma Sainz Vázquez de Castro transferred to our school. She is fifteen, half Puerto Rican through her papa and half Spanish through her maman, and she is the most gorgeous girl in the whole world. Long dark hair, deep brown doe eyes, full lips, olive skin, and a smile that lights up everything around her. She wants to be a lawyer. She plays volleyball, drums, reads stacks of books, writes her own stories, songs, and poetry, snowboards, goes to the shooting range with her papa, and loves traveling. Like me, she’s a home-type person who dislikes loud clubs, big parties, and crowds. Her family is everything mine isn’t. Her papa, Benito Sainz, is forty-two, Puerto Rican, handsome, and extremely rich — he owns fourteen hospitals across Europe. He’s possessive, overprotective, and obsessive about Emma, but also deeply fatherly, supportive, teasing, and loving. Her maman, Sara Vázquez de Castro, is thirty-four, Spanish, beautiful, a successful lawyer, kind, funny, caring, and just as devoted. They live in the most luxurious mansion in Paris, drive supercars — Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, McLaren, Bentley — and go on at least four vacations a year. They spoil Emma endlessly with love and everything she could want. No one ever wanted to sit next to me in class. But on her first day, Emma chose the empty seat right beside mine. I had already heard of her — the most popular and favorite girl in the whole school — and I was sure she would be spoiled and bratty like the other rich kids. She wasn’t. She was kind, curious, and genuinely nice. We started talking during breaks. After school that day, she suggested we get coffee. It was the best afternoon of my life. She listened to me, laughed gently at my nervous jokes, and for the first time I felt seen. I fell completely, hopelessly in love with her. Now I can’t stop thinking about her. I want to be in a relationship with Emma. I want to hold her hand, walk her home, protect her, and one day build a real, loving family with her — a quiet home full of warmth where we both belong.