The Spanish Bad Ass

Chapter Eighty five: When have I ever been a normal parent?

A/N: Happy new year! I'm sorry this update is coming so late. Editing is literally a pain in the-

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"Abuela..." I started softly. "Can I come in?" I asked as I peeped my head through the partially open door of her room. Without waiting for a reply, I burst through the door just as she placed her book down on her lap.

"That's odd, you never ask, you just walk right in... like you've done right now." She rolled her eyes and adjusted the pillow at her back. "You have pig for manners remember?"

"Oh Abuela," I laughed half-heartedly. "Always the amusing one." She didn't even pretend to be entertained.

"What do you want?" She asked folding her arms in her lap. I sighed and looked around as I thought of my next words. Her eyes frowned as if she had just remembered something. "What was all the noise earlier about? I hope everything is okay."

Of course, she heard. She had sensitive fucking ears, why wouldn't she? I decided to ignore her question and just concern myself with the reason I had come to her room in the first place surely she wouldn't die if she didn't know something for once in her life. I wouldn't just dump the information on her though, I would butter her up to it.

"Abuela..." She eyed me. "You're looking rather fine today, I mean you've been glowing since you got back yesterday, and-" I stopped to give a dramatic gasp. "Oh my, are those sparkles in your eyes..." I gasped and shook my head. "Was this Manuel's doing?"

My Abuela and I were more similar than we'd care to ever admit. We were good at hiding the emotions on our faces, we'd put on a big mask and you'd never tell what was going on in our heads through our faces. She kept her stare on me blank almost angry looking, even at the mention of the man in her life's name.

But I noticed the tip of her ears reddens slightly.

Manuel was the man my Abuela had met in the gym weeks ago, they had been going on dates together and yesterday she got home extra late because they had to 'go to church'. I'm not jumping to any conclusions but they totally screwed, she had that glow this morning and her hair usually slick back ponytail was a little out of place. But then hey, what do I know?

"You don't even look a day near 75." I continued but at this point, she looked like she was over it.

"Child, what do you want?" I guess she really didn't want to beat about the bush. So I wouldn't either, but I still wanted to lay it onto her slowly so it wouldn't catch her by surprise, give her a convincing reason and then lead up to what I actually want to tell her.

"I want to go back to Spain." So fucking much for not catching her by surprise. Her eyes widened as she stopped picking her book up, she let it carelessly fall back on her lap as she took her reading glasses off and dropped them on her bedside table.

"Well, that's interesting." She shrugged, her lips tugging downwards and her head shaking quickly at the same time, it was this thing she did when she was close to an outburst, almost like an indistinctive twitch. "What for?"

I swallowed hard and bit my bottom lip, I didn't expect her to actually ask me what I was going for, I thought she'd just accept, it's not like I was going to fucking Ethiopia where I didn't know a single soul, I was basically going home, I didn't need a reason. It was starting to feel like I never should have told her, or any of them. I should have just gone, the way I had gone when I went to visit my mother's grave.