C8 If I saw you, I don't remember

Everyone stared at Alejandra: she had long, light brown hair; she was made up and looked very good, there was something about her that made her look very beautiful. She was next to Keidys and the two walked ignoring the people around them. Tomás was together with Josef and Mateo, their impression was noticeable when they saw Marcela so physically changed.

"Is that Alejandra?" asked Tomas, stunned.

"I didn't recognize her when she got home either," Mateo said, quite smiling.

-This beautiful! —Tomas yelled and raised his hands to his mouth— I have to talk to her, I must congratulate her on that change. He hurried off toward the girls. All the men complimented them and asked Alejandra for her cell phone number, but she just ignored them: well, that was the advice given by Keidys, who was a great expert in that field.

"Could it be that she became a model?" Joseph asked.

"I don't know," said Mateo, "but I hope it won't change much now that her best friend is the most popular girl in school."

“Don't you like the change that Alejandra is taking?” Joseph asked.

“No, not at all, and worse if it's Keidys who is advising her”.

"Why do you suddenly dislike Keidys?" Before you loved her to death.

“She is not who she seems to be, she is always feeling better than the others and she is so superficial, just look at what she did to my cousin to be her friend, as she supposedly always must be surrounded by people who know how to dress well and understand Fashion. Otherwise, it does not determine them”.

“I think you're misunderstanding things, Mateo, Keidys isn't like that, that shows when you're just getting to know her, afterward she's just a girl like any other”. Josef disliked that they spoke ill of Keidys, he couldn't stand it, even though Mateo was his friend, he shouldn't refer to her that way, much less if he said he felt something for Keidys, it was something very contradictory.

"That was what I also believed, but later I realized that it is not so," said Mateo, quite sure of his words.

Josef let out a breath.

On the other hand, there was Tomás, who slipped through the crowd of people who also wanted to get closer to the girls.

“Alexandra!” He yelled and perched in front of her “how are you? Hey, what a change you've made, unbelievable." He displayed a big smile.

"Could you get out of the way?" Keidys asked with a dry and smug tone. Tomás erased his smile and moved away, Alejandra didn't decide either and behaved in the same way.

“What's the matter? asked Tomás as he watched the girls enter the school”.

This is how the first hour passed, everything very normal, the students and teachers approached Alejandra and told her how beautiful she was, the young woman thanked them for the praise with her usual natural attitude; I spoke with Josef and Mateo like every day. But the problem lay in Tomás, he acted as if he didn't exist and he felt very humiliated with the way he behaved with him.

During the break, Alejandra invited Keidys to eat with her and her group, Mateo, Tomás and Josef. At first Keidys flatly refused, but later he accepted and after a while they were all eating at a table under a large tree, they always sat there.

"Are you going to keep ignoring me?" Tomas asked Alejandra.

"Why are you acting like that with him?" Mateo asked Alejandra.

"I think it's none of your business what Alejandra does or doesn't do, if she doesn't want to tell it, it's because it's intimate for her," Keidys explained.

"Did I ask you something?" Mateo looked extremely upset when he addressed Keidys.

“What is your problem with me? I don't even know you and you hate me so much, are you an antifan?”

"Please, Keidys, don't argue," Alejandra asked, knowing that Keidys' words would offend Mateo more.

“No. This is the last straw, I don't know him, but every time he sees me, it seems that the day hurts him, who do you take me for?” Keidys was already tired of so many implausible discussions.

"Yes, you ruin my day." You are conceited and superficial who believes that the world revolves around you, I don't know what you think, every time you speak it is to offend someone and I simply can't stand that.

"And what if you can't stand me? You're nothing to me, so stop wasting your time getting noticed,” Keidys snapped angrily. You don't like me bothering others, but can you do it with me? You contradict everything that comes out of your mouth.

"Mateo, stop treating her like that," Josef asked.

"Mateo, it's true, enough," Tomás asked when he noticed that Josef was starting to get angry. It wasn't good for him to do it, there would be a big fight there.

“Anyway, she's an apparition here, that friendship she has with my cousin is so absurd” she looked at Keidys “weren't you the one who treated her badly yesterday? What a hypocrite you are”.

Keidys's eyes watered when he heard Mateo's words.

"Before, Mateo admired you," Josef explained, "he said he was in love with you, but then he looked at you and saw your way of being that disappointed him greatly and now he thinks you're a girl who discriminates against people and that you're extremely superficial”.

Everyone was silent and Keidys's mouth was slightly open, Mateo swallowed dryly and then got up from his post and left.

"Joseph!" Alejandra shouted, embarrassed by her cousin's situation, “why did you do that?”

“Keidys was asking why Mateo hated her so much. Stop the drama and let things clear up once and for all. Besides, he was very jerk with her, who do you think would treat a woman like that?” Josef explained, his cheeks hot as he held back the urge to hit Mateo. He spoke very little, but when he did, it was to solve problems regardless of the consequences or when he couldn't contain his anger.

Keidys was watching Josef: he had defended her. Their eyes met for a moment, and then Josef got up from his chair and left. Tomás, who did not understand at all what was happening with his best friend, went after him to ask for an explanation.

"Josef, hey…" she reached for him, "what the hell is wrong with you?" He started to walk beside her. Josef could tell he was very angry.

"Mateo is a first class idiot, how is he capable of treating a woman like that? He just needed to hit her," Josef blurted out and then took a deep breath.

“What's the matter? You're not like that” Tomas got scared, he hadn't seen his friend in that state for a long time. The last time she saw him like that was when they went into a fistfight and ended up with swollen faces.

“He has his problems with Keidys, let them fix them themselves; don't get involved in that kind of thing, besides, you never do it, why do you suddenly defend someone who tries to make your life miserable?”

"She's not trying to make my life miserable," Josef replied.

"What the fuck are you saying? You think I haven't seen the looks he's sending you? And sometimes he gives the impression that he's making fun of you,” said Tomás. He stopped and Josef turned to see him “are you in love with Keidys?”

.

.

Mateo was observing the panorama from the fourth floor of the school, the wind was blowing slowly and he remembered over and over again what Josef had said. He didn't like at all that he let go of his secret without caring how he was going to feel; It seemed very bad of him, now he had made a complete fool of himself in front of Keidys. He imagined the ego of that girl in those moments and everything inside him turned.

Although the young woman was not at all proud of her behavior with Mateo, she had treated him badly and therefore the young man's aggressive way towards her. It was to be expected of a person who has felt all her feelings towards someone vanish, she had problems with Tomás and Josef, but Mateo was never in her plans.

“Keidys…” said Alejandra, quite embarrassed by what happened a moment ago.

"It's nothing, your cousin is right, I'm like that, it's logical that he hates me," Keidys blurted out, trying to calm down, his feelings were mixed up at that moment and he wanted to cry.

“But he went too far, excuse him, it's the first time I've seen him act like that” Alejandra noticed that Keidys's gaze was lost in thought, the poor thing was having a very bad time.

But the story of Mateo and Keidys had begun many years ago, when they were just five-year-old children. The problem was that Keidys didn't remember anything and Mateo did.

It all started one morning when Keidys first arrived at school, he had sat next to Mateo and he lent him his favorite color so he could draw.

"You can keep it," Mateo told him with a smile.

"Thank you very much." The little girl had an excited look that the boy loved.

Keidys had been born chubby and Mateo liked that. They were always together in the first two years of high school. Mateo told her that they would be boyfriends when they grew up. Apparently, that never forgot.

But one day Josef came to school and was very popular among students and teachers, he moved to a few houses from where Mateo lived and they were together almost all day. This is how Keidys met Josef and fell in love with him, little by little she separated from Mateo and was always behind Josef.

The years began to pass and the day came when Keidys proposed to Josef, Mateo was there, watching everything. He was greatly saddened by the way in which she was treated, but he was not able to defend her, he was afraid that they would also make fun of him.

"You are beautiful" he wrote little pieces of paper to her and left them in the girl's locker. He liked to see her in the distance when she read them, it made her weight of conscience calm down a bit.

-You're going to go? Where to? he asked Keidys the last day they could talk.

"I'm going to become a model, I hope you'll be my number one fan," she said.

"Sure, but when you come back, you must become my girlfriend and marry me." Mateo showed his right little finger and Keidys shook his with the boy's.

"It's a promise," Keidys blurted out with great enthusiasm.

And that's how the years went by, Mateo was always aware of Keidys' career, very proud to see that the girl kept her word to be a great model. But she, between the problems and her professional career, forgot her promise, she did not remember Mateo's face and those memories of those days. Apparently that was what annoyed Mateo the most, the fact that he was waiting for someone who had stopped caring for many years.

"Is everything Josef said true?" Keidys asked Alejandra.

—It's true, Mateo was a big fan of yours, he even had some posters of you stuck in his room, he said he was your number one fan. He once told me that he had known you since you were little, that… what he felt for you was not just because you were a model or because of your fame. I never understood it, but Josef I think knows that story better, he can tell you if you want.

"My number one fan?" Keidys asked, a cloudy memory of something similar in his mind.

“Now I remember!” Alejandra released "he has a photo with you saved in his wallet”.

“Mine?”

“When they were little. You should tell him to show it to you, Alejandra advised, and make peace with him. He is your number one fan after all”.

“But I'm ashamed, I treated him badly...”

Class hours passed, an evaluation was done and Keidys was planning to make Josef lose that note. When the class was over and everyone had already left the room, Keidys sneaked over to the exams that were resting on the teacher's desk and looked for Josef's, deleted some operations and filled it in with irrelevant numbers. But at that moment she remembered that Josef defended her. That made her even more angry. Did she want to earn his forgiveness that way?

He arranged everything as it was before so that no one would suspect that the exams had been tampered with and left the room. It felt so good to make Josef's life miserable. But she didn't count on someone waiting for her outside: it was Mateo.

"Did you mess up Josef's test?" he asked.