Hey, loves! We’re back for another chapter of The Cece and Juan Vignettes. Do enjoy.
Do you need to catch up? Find that here:
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Chapter Three – Her
Juan POV
Five years old …
“Juan, come see this bug!”
Glancing over his shoulder to see one of his neighborhood friends bending over the sandbox at the park near his home, Juan didn’t move from his spot on the blanket. In the small patch of grass, he would rather be playing over there, but he was also just fine where he was. Mostly because—
“Do you wanna?”
Juan smiled at Cece. “Want to what?”
“Play. With your friend.”
He shrugged. “Nah, I’m okay.”
Cece didn’t look like she believed him, but she went back to flicking her finger against the screen of her tablet, playing some bubble bursting game that she liked. She wasn’t a dirt and bugs kind of girl. She wore pretty dresses, shoes that clicked when she walked, and he couldn’t remember a time when her hair wasn’t perfect all the time.
It was just who she was.
And yet, when he wanted to go to the park, she was quick to come along. She carried her tablet as they walked the four houses down in the suburb to get to the park, and he carried the blanket she always sat on. Juan might play a little while, but then he quickly found himself heading back to wherever she had decided to sit on the blanket.
He didn’t know why.
Never tried to convince her to play like he did.
This was okay, though.
Juan didn’t mind sitting with her. Even if he liked the sun, and she preferred to sit in the shade. Even if he wanted to see what that bug looked like—he bet it was cool—and Cece would rather stay right where she was on her blanket.
Yeah, because he liked being there.
With her.
“You shouldn’t ignore your friends,” Cece said.
Juan hummed under his breath, leaning over to pick a few green blades of grass from the ground. He braided them, a trick his ma, Stephanie, taught him one afternoon when they went for a walk together. “But you’re my friend, too, Cece.”
She looked up from her tablet. “I know.”
“So, I’ll stay with you.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Who’s going to play with you?”
Cece smiled a little. “Well …”
He didn’t need her to say the answer when he already knew it. Fact was, Cece could make a lot of friends, if she wanted to. Everyone liked her. She smiled, and the whole world smiled back. It was one of the things he liked the most about her. A constant ray of sunshine, she gave him every reason to be happy.
Not everyone was like that.
Another thing about her, though?
People quickly realized she wasn’t like them. Or rather, kids their age did. She didn’t want to dress like them or play the same way they did. At the large family dinners and parties they often had, she would be found sitting on her mother or father’s lap, listening to every word around her, instead of running through the house with the rest of the kids.
She didn’t find fun in the same things they found enjoyable, and she would much rather hang around with the adults who watched them than the kids closer to their age group. Which was fine for Juan, because whatever.
Some people found that weird.
He just didn’t care.
He liked Cece the way she was.
Juan was four when he first mentioned to his father that his other friends didn’t seem to like to play or hang out with Cece the same way he did. Oh, they liked her, sure … but they couldn’t or wouldn’t, sit with her for an hour just to do whatever she wanted. They only wanted her to do what they wanted. And when she wouldn’t, well, she was left on her own.
What his dad said?
Cece is special, Juan, and you just have to like her the way she is. She doesn’t care what the other kids think about her; she’s fine either way.
He learned something, then.
And from watching Cece, too.
She would be fine alone.
Sure she would.
He just didn’t want her to be.
Why should she be alone when she had him?
“I’m okay to play alone,” she said quieter.
Juan moved from the Indian-style position he had been sitting in to his back on the blanket. Like this, he could stare up at the sky and watch the fluffy white clouds pass by the blue landscape overhead. His second favorite pastime, next to being with Cece.
Because that was the thing.
He’d learned it shortly after meeting her.
As long as he was with Cece, whether they were following his father and her mother around, sitting in front of a television to watch the one cartoon she actually liked, or sitting on a blanket in the park instead of playing on all the equipment, none of it mattered. They didn’t need to talk, and they certainly didn’t need to play the same way all the other kids did.
Just being together was fun.
And he’d do this forever, he thought.
With her, he’d do it forever.
Because it was her.
Juan just didn’t know why.
Not yet.
*
“Do you think that’s carried over in your adult life, too?” I ask Juan at their kitchen table. All it takes is a turn of my head, and I can overlook the Hills and the great view it gives. Unsurprisingly, the two decided to make a life in Cali. Oh, they have a home in New York, too, and a penthouse in Toronto, when they feel like making a trip there. But their life? It was all in Cali, where they stayed together since the time they were married. “The just you and her thing, I mean?”
Juan smiles.
Shrugs, too.
“Yeah, it has.”
I nod. “And you still don’t mind a bit, do you?”
He turns his head just in time to watch Cece pass by the kitchen entryway, her white, flowy dress spinning around her legs with every step. With a book in her hands, she was more concerned with reading the latest book she’d picked up at her favorite Indie bookstore than the conversation going on in the kitchen.
Nothing unusual for her.
“Not at all,” Juan finally said, “it’s still better like this.”
Clearly.
It’s hard to miss.
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