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Chapter 7 - Never Know
Cece POV
14 years old ...
"So, what is even going on with that?"
"Yeah, spill the shit."
Cece sighed, tipping her cup of punch up for a drink and trying to ignore two of her cousins who had seemed to pick up on the fact that she was neither in the mood to talk, nor standing right beside Juan during her family's dinner party like she usually would. And since the Marcellos were known for being nosy motherfuckers, they decided they couldn't just pretend like they hadn't noticed anything.
No.
They had to drive her crazy.
"Well?" Tiffany asked.
Cece passed her cousin a look. "I thought your ma and dad weren't coming in from Toronto this weekend?"
Tiff tossed a blonde curl over her shoulder, shrugging. "Things changed."
"And stop deflecting," Lucky--although his name was Luciano, they'd always just called him by his nickname--added. "What, is Juan being an asshole? Is that it?"
"No."
"Tiffany!"
"Shit," her cousin muttered between Cece and Lucky. She pointed a finger at Cece even as she stepped away from their small group to head for her mother across the room. "I will be back to get all the details. You can't get all red-faced about a guy and then say nothing is going on."
"Nothing is," Cece muttered.
And that was half the problem.
Or so she figured.
Well, that and it was really hard to explain this thing she and Juan had. This weird place the two of them seemed to find themselves together. Friends, but a little bit closer. Affectionate, but never like that. Together, but not a them.
None of it made sense.
And they wanted Cece to explain?
Right.
Alone with Lucky in the corner of the living room, Cece tried to focus on the movement happening around her. With her mother's family, and even the other guests who had been invited to the dinner party. Being it was summer, and her ma had some meetings that would be happening between New York and Maine, Juan came down with his father for a couple of weeks which was why they were there, too.
Not in the room at the moment, though.
One good thing.
"You good?" Lucky asked beside her.
She passed him a look, taking in his features that seemed older than his teenaged years for whatever reason. He reminded her a lot of his father, John, but with the compassion of his mother, Siena. Of course, Lucky enjoyed chaos and tended to find himself in trouble more often than not, but he was one of Cece's cousins that she enjoyed spending time with because he was cool with her just being herself.
"Hey," he prodded when she didn't answer right away.
Cece sighed. "I don't know, Lucky."
It took her cousin a second, and then two.
Finally, he nodded, sucking air through his teeth before saying, "Oh, so it's kinda like that, then?"
"What?"
"You and him--Juan, you know? Nothing is ... but it also isn't, yeah?"
Cece shrugged. "I guess."
Her mom said things like you've only just turned fourteen. And her dad made it clear you're not going out with Juan until you're sixteen. Her grandmother, Catrina, liked to tell her not to pine over boys; you've got better ways to spend your time. And her other nana, Emma, just smiled and promised everything will work itself out, you're too young to try to understand all this right now.
Was that really it, though?
Or was it something else?
"It's just me," Cece said, "because Juan doesn't say one way or the other. So it's all in my own head. I'm making nothing into something."
"Doesn't mean it feels good, though."
"Yeah."
"Want me to beat his ass?" Lucky asked. "I'll do it."
Cece pressed her lips together to hide a smile she knew was entirely inappropriate. Besides, Lucky had a terrible habit of taking things like smiles to be signs of encouragement for his bad behavior, or so his father liked to tell everyone whenever her uncle John got to the ends of his rope with his oldest son.
"Well, if you beat him up," Cece said, "then he really won't want to be around me."
Probably.
Lucky made a noise under his breath. "Not so sure that's a bad thing."
She laughed, and then smacked her cousin in the stomach with the back of his hand. "Stop it."
He sighed, shrugging one leather-covered shoulder. "Listen, you got lots of time to work this shit out, Cece. And my dad likes to say that as long as something isn't hurting anybody else, and it works for you, then why do you need to change it? Sometimes, he makes good points."
"Maybe."
Lucky smirked. "Besides, you never know ... if anything makes sense, it's that nothing ever stays the same, Cece. It can't."
Right.
So, when would things start to change?
Or would they?
*
"Hey."
Cece glanced up from the spot on the porch she'd been lost staring at for the last ... well, she didn't even know how long she'd been staring at it. Too long, clearly. Behind her, Juan smiled in that way that she used to think felt like happiness. Now, it made her stomach do flipflops and drove her kind of crazy.
In a way, that made her mad.
They'd been great before this. Not that they were bad now, because they weren't. They were still just Cece and Juan, except now it was Cece with a crush on Juan, and that made everything entirely different.
"Why did things have to change?" she asked.
Juan blinked, clearly confused. And then all at once, a clarity took over his eyes that said he knew exactly what she meant.
He should.
After all, she'd finally spilled her guts.
Told him the truth.
And all he'd told her yesterday when she did that was me, too.
Nothing else.
He took a seat beside her on the back steps, folding his arms over his bent knees while he looked out over the rear property. The two of them stayed quiet for longer than she cared to admit before he broke the silence first.
"It's not fair ... to you, I mean," he said, peeking over at her over the line of his forearm. "To be here, and for me to be there. That's a long way, and it's going to be like that for a long time. What, you never wanna go anywhere or do anything with somebody?"
Was he saying what she thought he was?
"But--"
"And when we're like this, I like it," he said. "Just me and you, you know? I like that because I don't have to feel like you're not getting to do whatever you want. Nothing really changed, Cece, it just turned into something that had to be different."
"I don't wanna do whatever."
"Not right now, maybe."
"Juan--"
His hand dropped from his knee and found hers on the smooth wood of the porch. Without a word, their fingers tangled tightly together, and before long, Cece found her head resting on his shoulder.
Everything was right, then.
Perfect, even.
"See," he murmured, "just me and you."
Yeah.
Just him and her.
*
It's still just him and her, I think, as I watch him flip the pages for her book while the manicurist does her nails. And I would bet they like that just fine.
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