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It was a day like any other. Julieta had woken up early in the morning before the sun had risen, and had begun her daily routine of making food for the entire Encanto, no matter who was in need of it that day. It was her duty as a Madrigal, and even though the workload was a bit much, she truly enjoyed her time in the kitchen.
After having made three batches of arepas, she hears a familiar knock on the door, and Agustín is let in by the Casita. He never used the doorbell this early, knowing that the rest of the family was still in a peaceful slumber. Most of the Encanto was, but thankfully for Julieta, her boyfriend of a year and a half was almost as much of an early bird as her. Each day he would wake up in his own home (if he hadn’t secretly stayed the night in her room, that is. Then he would need to get up before sunrise to exit through the window before anyone could notice), and then swiftly make his way to the Madrigal household as the sun was still rising.
Agustín was a wonderful man, always keeping Julieta company in the mornings as she juggled between making breakfast for the family, and enough batches of food for the rest of the town. And she must admit, she loved the company.
It was always nice to have someone to talk to, instead of having to spend the morning in total silence, with only the sound of the kitchen and the frying of food keeping her company.
This morning Julieta had asked Agustín to hand her one of her knives so that she could cut up some meat. He somehow ended up cutting the palm of his hand when he almost dropped the knife to the floor, doing his best to catch it in the air.
“Ay Agustín,” she told him as she took one of the already finished arepas and shoved it into his mouth, and then got one of her washcloths to dry of the tiny drops of blood from the floor as she told him to rinse of his healed, but still bloody hand in the sink.
“Sorry, mi amor,” he told her sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck in light embarrassment.
“It’s fine. But I’m considering putting a lock on the drawers with the knives in, now.”
“I’m not a toddler!”
Julieta rolled her eyes.
“Well, your track record for injuries is worse than that of a toddler.”
Agustín lets out a sigh.
“You’re absolutely right.”
She laughs at his words and presses a soft kiss onto his lips, enjoying their quiet moment together before turning back to the stove.
“You know I love you.”
The chuckle that follows from Agustín makes her feel whole. There’s a joyous warmth in her that makes her feel like she’s truly alive. She cherished every moment when he kept her company.
They chat for a long time as Agustín carefully watches her make the food, giving her encouragement with every sentence. Soon she has several baskets filled to the brink with arepas, enough to last the entire day. And she also managed to finish the breakfast right on time as she heard the sound of her mother’s door open, meaning people were finally awake.
They set the table together, and after a few minutes everything is ready. Alma is of course the first at the table, greeting Agustín, whose presence had become a familiar routine in the early mornings. Bruno follows a few minutes later, and Alma immediately sends him back up the stairs to wake up Pepa who has once again overslept. He emerges from her room a few seconds after the sound of thunder can be heard, with smoke coming out of his hair.
“She struck me!”
Julieta heals her brother, and after a few minutes her sister also joins the breakfast. She sits by Agustín’s side the entire time, the two of them happily joking with one another as she lets her head gently rest against his shoulder between bites.
Once the breakfast is over, Julieta and Agustín grab the baskets and head down into the town square together, making their way towards Julieta’s stand. The sun is now high up in the air, and she can hear the commotion start up at the beginning of a new day. People have now woken up and have had their breakfasts, and would soon head off to their respective works or chores. Some which would lead to injuries needing to be healed by her. Just a normal day in the Encanto.
The couple neatly organizes everything by her stand, and then they wait as they happily chat with each other.
At this early in the morning there’s almost never a line for her food. Just the occasional early bird who had managed to sprain an ankle during the night, or someone with early morning cramps who needed an arepa to temporarily ease the pain. The stand was usually the most busy right after lunch, with the line sometimes stretching a far bit. So right now, it could be described as the calm before the storm.
Time passes, and she only needs to heal about one person every ten minutes. An easy morning, which Julieta appreciates as she giggles at one of Agustín’s jokes before pressing a chaste kiss onto his lips, aware that they were currently in the public eye. When she’s with Agustín, she can handle all the mundane waiting, because he makes the time speed up whenever she’s around him.
Soon, it’s time for lunch, and Julieta finds herself and Agustín munching on some of the stand arepas to temporarily quell their hunger. Once the post lunch rush of people needing to be healed was over, they’d temporarily close to stand and return to the Casita to have their own lunch (her mamá was in charge of cooking lunch today since she was busy at her stand, thankfully. Then dinner would be Julieta’s responsibility at the end of the day, since neither Pepa or Bruno could cook to save their lives).
There is a lunch rush, people coming to complain about aches, sprained joints, some nasty cuts and the like. She heals the people like she has done since the age of five, everything becoming routine at this point.
Her hand gets stained with some blood on accident as she heals a man with a very nasty gash on his head, and Agustín tells her he’ll hold down the fort while she disappears to clean it up. She leaves him and walks the short three minute walk to the nearest water pump and quickly washes herself clean. As much as she liked her job as a healer, she did not like having the blood of strangers dry onto her skin.
Once she’s finally satisfied she walks back, and as she rounds the last corner she’s relieved to see the line being gone. Almost anyway, with one person left. And in an instant, the relief is replaced by anger as she sees who’s currently talking to her boyfriend with a very happy smile on her face. Valeria Morena, the florist’s daughter and prettiest girl in the entire village, by a long shot with her flowing black hair and her chocolate brown eyes that were beautiful beyond imagination. She also had the perfect body beyond imagination, something that could never compare to Julieta’s slightly stocky frame and her wider than average hips. She was the definition of beauty, and at this very moment she was smiling, happily chatting away with Agustín, who she was standing way too close to for Julieta’s liking, and it made her face heat up with a feeling she couldn’t explain.
Julieta would never admit to being the jealous type, and no one expected her to be either way. After all, she was Señorita perfect Julieta, the absolute town favorite out of all of her siblings. She had a reputation for being calm and collected, virtuous and pure, and grown beyond her years. To the townsfolk in the Encanto, she probably never had a bad day in her life, and her experiencing jealousy would be out of the question for someone with such well controlled emotions and mature judgment .
What the townsfolk seemed to forget was that Julieta was still a young woman, not even the age of twenty one yet. Jealousy was expected , and she, like so many young women her age, experienced it, even if she herself wouldn’t want to admit it out loud. But at this moment she felt it like a burning fire. Valeria was out of this world, truly beautiful beyond belief and Julieta knew she could get exactly whatever man she wanted with her blinding looks and her many talents, because of course that girl seemed to be good at absolutely anything.
Seeing such a wildfire of a woman near her boyfriend made Julieta feel threatened beyond belief, terrified even. If Valeria managed to catch her under a flustered binding spell like this, just imagine what she would do to men , Agustín specifically. Her cheeks kept reddening and the fear kept growing, as her mind kept screaming at her to interfere before it was too late and Agustín was stolen from her.
No, she was not going to let Agustín slip out of her fingers like this.
Julieta takes a deep breath, ignoring the internal screaming of her mind as she walks closer. She almost curses, Valeria becoming ten times as intimidating when she’s up close, and at first she has to look away as she hates the fact that her face is heating up and becoming red as her heart sped up. She grabs Agustín without hesitation and gives him a warm, extremely tight embrace as he was in the middle of a sentence.
“Hola, mi amor,” she says as loudly as she can as she pulls him down by the collar and gives him a big kiss on the lips in the middle of the town square, way too passionate and way too long to be deemed socially acceptable in the open. If people noticed, they would start talking, but at this point she didn’t care. She needed to get her point across, and when she finally let go, she immediately starts a conversation. “Did you heal the last of the line?”
Agustín nods, still dazed after the kiss.
“Yes, Valeria was the last one. We’re done for now,” he replies, and Julieta nods back. She glances over at Valeria, making sure to keep her composure and to not look into those shiny eyes, but she sees the shock on the other girl’s face.
“Good. Let’s head back to Casita, mamá’s making ajiaco.”
Before Agustín has time to reply, Julieta drags him away from the stand and away from Valeria. Julieta gives her one last angry glance before she turns around and makes sure to tighten her grip against Agustín’s hand, to make sure that he’s actually there with her. He was there, he hadn’t ran off with that stupid pretty girl.
After a minute of walking in silence where Julieta kept speeding up the pace, until it almost bordered on running, Agustín spoke.
“Julieta, are you okay?”
She groans.
“Of course , I’m okay. I just saw you being very close to the most pretty girl in town the moment I came back from washing my hands.”
Her answer seems to confuse him.
“You mean Valeria? She just told me she really appreciates my mamá for all the flowers she orders from her father,” he begins, and then seems to put two and two together. “Wait… did you think she was
flirting
with me?”
“She was practically all over you!”
“Really? I didn’t notice. And you know that I would turn her down the moment I realized that she was flirting.”
“Would you? Would anyone turn down perfect Valeria with the perfect gorgeous hair and those pretty eyes and that cute smile and that perfect body? She’s ten times as pretty as me, any guy would want to get closer to her.”
As she utters the words, Agustín stops right in his tracks and makes sure to look her in the eyes.
“Julieta, I love you and no one else. I’ve never loved Valeria, and I never will. I will never love anyone that isn’t you, because you’re my whole world. You’re the most perfect woman in the entire world, with your gorgeous hair and your wonderful eyes and your pretty smile and your beautiful body. You’re the only person I’ll ever have my eyes on, I don’t care about Valeria or any other woman like that. You’re the one that matters to me, and I would never leave you for someone else.”
Hearing his words comforts her, she knows he’s speaking the truth. He’s Agustín after all, and she knew he would never do anything to hurt her, but the doubts were still there deep inside of her.
“I know, I know. I know you love me, but I still have these stupid irrational feelings and I hate it. I’m just jealous when I see you so close to someone so pretty, and a part of me is afraid I won’t be enough anymore. She just made me feel insecure.”
Agustín takes Julieta’s hands in his own and reaches towards them, kissing her knuckles before continuing to speak.
“You will always be more than enough. I promise you that. You’re the love of my life, corazón. You, Julieta Madrigal, no one else.”
She leans forward and kisses him, happy and satisfied with his answer. She’s a little embarrassed over her previous actions when her emotions took over.
“Sorry for causing a scene over there. That was pretty stupid, I just rushed away with you.”
“Well, I think you were pretty cute. Confusing, but cute.”
“Maybe, but it’s still not okay for me to act that way and just rush in there and forbid you to talk to other girls just because I feel threatened. That’s stupid and not healthy, you’re allowed to talk to whoever you want and I need to trust you. Like you said, you were just talking to her about flowers your mamá bought, and I overreacted. I know you love me and wouldn’t go behind my back, and I’ll try to work on my temper.”
Agustín places a soft kiss onto her forehead, and then gives her another embrace. She swears she’s about to melt, and never wants to let go of him.
“Everything is fine, corazón. I know jealousy can make people do things they normally wouldn’t do, clouding judgment, and I know no one is immune,” he says before he lets out a laugh. “You should have seen me whenever you talked to some boys before we got together, I was terrified that you would be stolen away from me, and we weren’t even together back then.”
Julieta chuckles.
“Really?”
“Absolutely. I’m happy that you’re willing to talk about this though, because I don’t want you to feel like you need to hide something from me. If you feel jealous, that’s okay, and I’m more than happy to talk to you about it. Okay? It’s better to let all emotions out in the open instead of hiding them.”
She nods.
“Thank you for being so… understanding I guess? I thought you’d be mad.”
“You know I could never be mad at you. It was just some miscommunication and you getting the signals wrong, it happens to all of us. But I’ll say it again, I love you and only you, and I’ll make sure to prove it to you every day for the rest of our lives.”
Julieta feels warm as she hears the words, whole. There’s also an eager spark inside of her, a mix of innocence and the complete opposite, her love for Agustín having many sides to it, together combined into the most beautiful thing she’s ever felt.
“You know, there’s a way you could show me,” she begins, lowering her voice slightly as she’s pressing a kiss onto his neck. “I’ll leave the window open tonight and tell Pepa to cover for me, if you catch my drift.”
He answers without hesitation.
“I’ll be there.”