Page 156 of Rules of Association

I wouldn’t be surprised if I had creases on my face by the time I finally peeled myself off the couch in my dad’s office. I wouldn’t know for sure though, because I had yet to make even a single move for hours.

I was in a bit of a conundrum. Connor had become my safe haven ever since we became friends. I was free to be anything with him. Any side of myself; happy, sad, broody, emotional, scared, anything. Therefore, I went to him about everything. Even when all I needed was a little peace and quiet, I went to him. But something new I was trying to navigate was, where the hell I was supposed to go when the thoughts I was warring with were about him?

I assume if I wasn't hiding my friendship with him, I could go to my sisters or even Fergy. But since that ship had sailed, I was falling back into old habits and squirreling myself away in Apá’s office. The first place I’d learned to be still with my thoughts.

I had to have racked up at least three hours of face to couch time before I felt a large hand smooth itself over the back of my head.

“Aye, mija,” my father’s deep voice rumbled from beside me. “Es tan malo?”

“Si, Apá. Muy malo,” I answered without looking at him. “No te preocupes. Me quedaré aquí para siempre.”

He snickered. Then I heard the movement of him settling into his reading chair. “Tell me what’s wrong mija.”

“How do you know something’s wrong?” I asked, face still attached to the leather.

“Nothing else brings you to my office,” he said simply. “Vamos. Dime.”

Tell him? Could I just tell him?

Sighing, I slowly peeled myself up from the clutches of my leather solace and plopped onto my butt, facing my father for the first time in… For the first time since the last time I’d been in his office.

I’m not sure if it just seemed this way because I had been hiding from him all summer or because it was reality, but he looked older somehow. His once taut skin I remember in childhood was now slightly looser with age. Creases framed his eyes and mouth in the beginning signs of wrinkles, and as he sat he seemed to sink deeper into his favorite chair as if being on his feet was more of a challenge than usual.

He was still healthy; I knew that. He still walked almost every morning around the property and played soccer on the weekends with that band of old men he loved so much. He read often and played boring games with Ox like Chess and Dominos. He wasn’t old, and I knew that. But being away from him, even for a few months, was opening my eyes to the fact that time was still indeed passing, and I didn’t want it to pass by with me being mad at my father. I could wake up any moment and he could be gone. Did I really want the time I spent being butthurt to stretch too long and later turn into regret? No. I decided right then that I didn’t.

“Apá, am I missing something?”

“How do you mean?” he asked, looking at me with confusion in his eyes.

Shifting in my seat, I leaned forward to rest my arms on my knees. “Like… Is there something I’m not seeing? Because lately it just feels like I’m having two different conversations with everyone. Like I’m seeing one thing while everybody else is seeing another. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Hmm,” he said as he leaned back in his seat. With one of his big free hands, he pressed fingers over his mouth as he looked me over. In the same calm voice he always held, he said. “When you were little you used to get teased and questioned about your red hair all the time. Mostly from your cousins. They taught you the word peliroja! All the time they called you that, remember? Well, you—” Pausing, he laughed and began to shake his head. “You loved that you were so different. So much that you stopped answering to anything other than ‘La Reina Peliroja’. You made everyone call you the redheaded queen for at least a year. Those kids tried to tease you about what they thought was strange, but you saw things differently. And you didn’t stop until you made everyone else see it your way too.”

“Did I really do that?” I asked, not remembering this at all. Blowing out a breath I leaned back. “Sounds like you had your hands full with me.”

He scoffed in a sound that could only mean ‘you don't know the half of it’, but he continued. “You have always seen what you wanted to see, Celestia. A lot of the time it’s helped you. You are confident and you don't apologize for the way you view the world. But sometimes it hurts you just as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when you have a head as hard as yours, sometimes it’s difficult to get through to you when you’re wrong. Not impossible, but very, very difficult.” He tsked. “Once you get something in your head, it’s like performing a surgery to get it out.”

“Is this the nice way of telling me I don’t listen?”

He smiled, “You could say that.”

I smiled too. “If I’m hardheaded, you know I could only get it from one place, Apá.”

“Your mother?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Aye!” an all too familiar voice said from the doorway. “You take that back Ronny, or I will make you regret it.”

“Ah,” he cooed. A smile I don’t think I was supposed to witness crossing his face. Reaching an arm out, he beckoned my mom forward. She obeyed. “Lo siento, cariña. I did not mean it.”

Cariña.

I bit my lip at the little reminder of my own guy who called me sweet things.

“You did and you know it,” settling on the arm of his chair, Amá hit his shoulder. Then she moved her loving gaze to me, and it got no less adoring as she looked me over. “Now. What finally brings my daughter back here to see us?”

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