Page 55
Following the scent, I join my dad, dressed in his oversize sweats now, browning butter on the stove, a bunch of ingredients spread all over the counter. Beside them is a brown paper bag, a circle of grease leaking through its side.
Rellenos.
“I told you not to get any,” I scold, walking over and opening the bag. They’re not as warm, but the soft, seasoned potato, along with the perfectly cooked ground beef, still makes me want to cry with joy when I taste it.
Dad turns from the stove. “I knew you would eat them.”
“Wow, you’re a fortune teller.” I move to read the joke written out by the magnets on the fridge. What’s the easiest building to lift? A lighthouse. “Amazing.”
“If I were a fortune teller,” Dad says, turning off the stove, “I would have seen a lot of things coming.”
His tone is friendly, and it always is, but there’s a lingering sound of a lecture saturating it. It’s hard to hear at first because I’m not used to the sound. I’m a model daughter; I’ve never been in big trouble. So I’m not sure what I would have done to earn this.
“Like what?” I ask, straight to the point. It’s better to just get it over with. Maybe he figured out I canceled his light bill payment last month and paid it myself instead. It’s his own fault for having the same password for literally everything. My name, my birthday, and my parents’ anniversary.
“Your phone kept ringing,” he says, pointing to it where I left it on the counter. “I thought it could be important, so I took a look.”
I frown, grabbing for my phone. “And you’re in lecture mode because?” When I unlock my phone, I see multiple notifications from Beedle calling me Fernando. The pieces of the puzzle start to form. “Oh.”
His dark green eyes narrow on me. “Want to explain yourself?”
“Thank you so much for the opportunity, and my answer is no.” When I try to run past him, he grabs me by the collar and pulls me back.
“Violet Miorlanis Lopez,” he says as stern as his soft voice can possibly get. “What have you been doing?”
The full government name being used lets me know just how much I won’t be able to talk myself out of this. Dad can be a little naïve, but he’s not dumb, and he’s not going to let something so obvious go. “Can we talk about this later? Isn’t your boxing match starting soon?”
“Miorlanis,” he says, “I know what Beedle is.”
“Oh my God, you do?” I slap his arm. “Have you used it? When? Now? Let me see your profile.”
“Will you focus?” he says. Too frustrated to concentrate only on me, he pours the brown butter over a bowl of brown sugar and egg. A mistake he’s making from his confusion with me, since he always lets anything melted from the stove cool off before adding it to the rest of his ingredients. “Why are people talking to you like you’re me?” he says like the sentence is hurting his head.
“If I tell you, you’ll be upset, and wouldn’t you like to live happily?”
“Enough. Talk.”
I frown at the authority in his voice. It’s not supposed to be a tone possible with him. “Okay, fine, I may have made you a dating profile.”
“Por qué?”
“Because you’re not going to do it yourself. Because you still wear your wedding ring all the time. Because I’m scared when I leave for university, you’ll be stuck here all alone. Because I’m scared that you’re scared to move on from Mom. Because. Because. Because. Can I go now?” I say my piece with as much bravado as I can muster, but Dad has never even gotten close to sounding this way with me and I’m nervous.
It throws me; it doesn’t even sound like him. Mom was always the strict one, the enforcer, the one who didn’t let things slide. Dad never had to be this way, so I didn’t even know he could be.
He’s supposed to be easygoing guy, the one with endless, evergreen forgiveness.
“Violet, this is unacceptable. You’re lying to these people and pretending to be me. Delete the profile. Now.”
I sigh, trying to ignore the tightness in my throat. “Does this mean you have your own profile?” It would ease so much of my worry.
“Boundaries, that’s what you need,” he says, tapping the phone in my hand. “Delete it.”
“Fine,” I snap, holding it up for this stranger of a parent to see. “Are we done here?”
“Listen to me.” He grabs the back of my shirt again when I try to leave. “You’re a good girl, so I let a lot of things slide. But this is too far. I’m an adult and you’re a child. Understand?”
It’s really the first time my dad has ever really been mad at me. Mom was always the punisher when it came to whatever rare grounding needed to happen. And Dad would be the one to sneak into my room with ice cream or tell me to hurry down the hall so we could take a ride to the bookstore.
