Bea Vélez

Bea Vélez’s return to ordinary routines and architectural work unfolds alongside an unsettled emotional life. She moves from sleeplessness and frustration toward steadier days, approaches Diego with deliberate professional distance, and designs a treehouse around a child’s changing needs. Yet when Diego kisses her, the force of the moment makes clear that her renewed composure has not made her indifferent to intimacy.

Daily Life and the Beach

Bea cannot establish a running routine, whether in the morning, at midday, or in the evening, and concludes that running may not suit her. Instead, she disciplines herself to take long morning walks. As her sleep improves, she wakes earlier and walks along the beach while the May sun is rising. The cold is sharp enough that she dresses warmly; she removes her shoes and steps into the water only as far as her ankles. Its freezing touch makes her feel alive, even as she stops short of going farther.

Gollum often accompanies her. Bea notices the dog’s remarkable vitality as he crosses the sand on three legs, apparently untroubled by the effort of moving without a fourth. During one windy walk she sees Diego emerge from rough water, struggling against the waves until he reaches shore. She approaches him, and Gollum comes too; when Diego tries to pet the dog, Gollum retreats. Bea is pleased that Diego does not get the greeting he sought, though she recognizes that Gollum tends to avoid people until he trusts them. The episode places her attraction and guardedness within a physical landscape of cold water, wind, effort, and cautious approach.

Returning to Architecture

After her mother asks whether she has spoken to Ingrid about being hired, Bea gives in to the need to confront the opportunity. Plagued by nightmares, she reasons that resisting defeat can hurt more than accepting it. At Ingrid’s studio, Ingrid is cool toward her, seeming to have exhausted the warmth of their earlier meeting. Bea says she may accept the offer, but only after they have met the client and spoken with him.

Diego is waiting outside the house when Bea arrives with Ingrid. His impassive face gives her no way to tell whether he is pleased to see her. Rather than ask personal questions or offer a smile, she asks where he wants the treehouse built. She explicitly adopts a cold, professional manner: Diego is buying her work, nothing more. The boundary is a deliberate response to their personal history, though her later wish to impress him shows how difficult it is to keep that history outside the work.

The Treehouse and Emotional Change

When Bea presents the finished design in three dimensions, Ingrid has already approved the plans after proposing two changes that improved them. Bea explains that she has designed a place suited first to a four-year-old and later to an adolescent. The lowest level is a play area with climbing ropes and nets, a small trampoline near the trunk, rope stairs, and a swing. Above it is a bed overlooking the garden; a window that opens fully turns the room into a terrace. The highest level is a private space for the older girl, where she could bring one or two friends. Bea imagines the child growing toward a part of the treehouse that is initially off limits, while noting that Diego himself could use that space in the meantime.

Safety is part of the design rather than an afterthought. Bea specifies padded rubber flooring like that in children’s playgrounds, including around part of the tree’s base, so that the girl could play there alone without risk of injury from a fall. Her ambition to impress Diego is personal as well as professional: she hopes the quality of the design will make him forget the embarrassment of a note she had written. Víctor remains present in her thoughts, but no longer with the overwhelming pain of the preceding weeks; the project and its presentation register a real, if incomplete, easing of that hurt.

Later, after Diego pulls the car onto the shoulder and switches off the engine, he kisses Bea. She experiences the long, warm kiss as a release from a deprivation she compares to a castaway’s thirst. In her perception, it eclipses the kisses of the previous two years and restores a feeling of being alive. When Diego draws away, she is so absorbed that she briefly cannot place herself or her surroundings. The moment does not erase the professional boundary she had tried to establish or the lingering presence of Víctor, but it reveals how strongly Diego’s touch unsettles her attempt to keep feeling at a distance.