She was bouncing beside me, her excitement for the day ahead of us palpable. Grinning big she turned her head up to me, “One hundred percent.”
“Oh yeah?” I raised an eyebrow and tried to resist the strong urge to kiss her. Those kinds of urges are what had gotten me into this mess in the first place. “How’s that?”
Her grin turned wicked and she leaned in closer, “Because I rigged it, duh. Now let’s go, we’re about to start the first game.”
My stomach kicked with hopeful excitement at the sight of that smile. She was being normal. Looking at me, talking to me, smiling at me. Things she hadn’t been or done in a little while. Ever since the day at the gym.
As regrets go, disappointing Ceci might be one of my biggest. As stupidity went, asking her to get mad at me was definitely the stupidest I’d ever been. I wanted to take back both. Take back the sulking I’d done after the bathroom incident and the senseless words I’d thrown around after I knew I’d hurt her.
And Ididknow I was hurting her.
I knew even before I heard the croak in her voice that day. The sad way she had been looking at me for weeks leading up to the whole thing was a big enough hint. But I’d been tired of being the only one who knew how to pick up on hints, so I’d let her hurt. And then I took it too far on a day she really needed me. Fucking up so badly and wanting to take it back so vehemently that I just made it worse.
I wasn't stupid. Ceci was a hothead and I wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows myself. Sometimes we clashed, like the day at my parents’ house. Like other times before. We were human, and we spent a lot of time together. But we always found a way to make it back safely.
Something else had been happening lately, something about the messy way we couldn’t seem to fully deny this thing between us anymore. It was making the little things bigger, the messy things messier. The heart things heartier. Every day that Ceci burrowed her little stinger deeper into my heart, she got closer to it and her venom became less like poison and more like a chemical I was addicted to down to a chemistry.
The point was, we had disagreed before. We argued, we wanted to wring each other’s neck, but we had never been mad at each other like this. It was different from a little argument here or there. I could tell almost as soon as she told me to go get her cat it would be different, but the days and even weeks to follow solidified it.
Ignored phone calls, unread text messages, avoiding meetups and the chest aching pain of her one-word replies made sure I got the message loud and clear. She didn't want to talk to me. Not even when I showed up at her jobs with lunch, showed up at her apartment with peace offerings, or showed up at her classes to try to make it up to her.
“Teach me,” I’d begged her every single day for a week straight. Showing up at the gym when she did. Catching her before her lessons with Jenny or after her sessions in the main room.
Each time she answered in the same clipped fashion. “I’m not an instructor here, Connor.”
“You’ve been teaching every night,” I’d argue.
She’d just shake her head. “To help Jenny out while she tries to find a new permanent babysitter, that’s it.”
Seeing an opportunity there I would try to connect with her, asking, “You like it though, right?”
“Yeah,” she shrugged.
“So then teach me. Show me what you show everyone else.”
“It’s the same self-defense class we’ve been taking, Connor. You already know what’s going to happen.”
“It’s not the same if it’s taught by you,” I tried.
And that’s when she would glare or cross her arms or shake me off like I’m some pesky annoying thing. “One on ones aren’t an option anymore…foryou.”
Yep. She really knew how to kick a guy where it hurt. And she was stubborn as hell too. She could keep kicking and kicking, the cycle continuing and making it the longest she’d ever been upset with me. Making me desperate.
Which is also why we were in the middle of the Seaside Beach Park getting ready to play something called “Three Ball” with the whole Fernandez squad and my siblings, sans Clint. It was a public park near the market district that pressed up against the Seaside beaches but rolled in lush green grasses for miles in both directions.
From the looks of things, everyone was getting tired of the arctic shock of Ceci’s silent treatment. So her family had extended the olive branch of her favorite childhood game to try and break the ice. My beloved sister had unknowingly extended that branch to me (and my brothers) and I’d all but tripped over myself to take her up on the offer.
I had no idea what to expect from this. Knowing this family it could be anything. Clay had said it best when we’d arrived at the park to see all the Fernandez siblings in attendance preparing for what you would think was the damn Olympics. They had a mini score board and everything.
“So they’re that kind of family, huh?” Clay asked, sarcasm and disdain dripping from every word.
I knew what he meant, but I asked anyway. “What kind?”
“Fucking insane,” he’d grumbled. I didn’t even mask my snicker.
He was right. Especially if the look I noticed on my little redhead’s face had anything to do with it. She was sitting on the ground in front of my sister getting her hair braided. All the girls had the same hairstyle of two French braids that ran the length of their head and came down into pigtails at the back of their necks. Ceci’s hair looked like a shining, blazing beacon in the sun of the beautiful day. And the way she was bouncing as she looked from one sibling to the next, laughing and poking fun wherever and however she wanted was both heartwarming and slightly anxiety inducing.
It had been a long time since she was this uninhibited self. Probably since her birthday. I was glad she was feeling like herself again, but “herself” was still undeniably a little shit. And I could tell by the glint in her eye she had something planned.
