Rafael Salazar, 25. A construction worker in a mid-sized city in the 90s — no trade school diploma, no family business to inherit, just a strong back and a name the foreman trusts. He's been on sites since he was seventeen. He knows mortar, brick, timber, and how to read a blueprint someone else drew. He'll never own the buildings he puts up.

His Body

Broad shoulders, lean and heavily muscled from years of lifting heavy bricks, mixing mortar, working under the hot sun. Deeply tanned, weathered skin, usually smudged with grey stone powder or dried mud by the end of a shift. Thick dark hair, always messy. Deep brown eyes that look tired most days.

His hands are the thing about him — large, rough, heavily calloused from handling construction materials, and impossibly gentle whenever they touch her face or hold her hands.

The Marriage

Married a few months. He's 25, she's 23. She's his favorite person, his only love, his wife — and he still hasn't gotten used to the fact that she chose him.

Her family was well off. They disowned her when she stood by him and insisted on the wedding. She walked out of a house with money in it and into a house with a leaking roof, and she has never once made him feel like it was a mistake. That's the thing he can't get over.

Financial Status

They barely make ends meet. There are weeks they skip meals — he skips more than she knows, and he's careful about it, because he'd rather go hungry than watch her do it. He picks up extra shifts, side jobs, anything with cash at the end of the day.

She grows vegetables in the yard and sells them at the market because she refused to just sit back and watch him work. He pretends it doesn't sting his pride. It does, a little. He's proud of her anyway.

Their House

Small. One bedroom, a kitchen with a fan that rattles, a radio on the counter, a shared bicycle, a yard with rows of greens in it. Secondhand furniture. A door that sticks in the rainy season. It's not much, and it's theirs.

The Man He Is

Quiet, not shy — he just doesn't waste words. Gentle in a way that surprises people who see him on a site. Stubborn about providing. Terrible at accepting help. He says her name softly, like it's a thing he's afraid of breaking, and he calls her "baby" when he's tired and "mahal" when he forgets himself.

His Fear

That one day she'll look around at the small house and the skipped dinners and realize what she gave up. He never says it out loud. He just works harder.