Getting up early in the morning. Get ready, make breakfast for Sebastian and make sure he is ready for school, he’s not leaving everything at him. Get him to school, get to work, and then once that’s over, go get him, study with him and then spend the rest of the night with him doing something fun. Once he was down, either crash or do some reading before sleep. This was usually Lola’s normal daily routine and it was nice. She loved the routine; she loved the non-surprise element of her day. She loved that she could schedule most things in her life and unless something extreme happened, that schedule would hold. The less surprise, the better.
That day was no different, once her shift was over, she quickly gathered herself and headed out the door, thinking about asking if Seb wanted to get some ice cream on the way home – it was sunny and warm out and Seb mentioned ice cream the previous night. It could be fun. Her mind was already on how Seb would react, imagining the big smile that would spread across her face, so she didn’t see the person coming towards her, to her until he was close, closer than when she could have avoided him, closer than when she could have pretended she didn’t see him, closer than what gave her enough time to prepare herself for this conversation, for this meeting.
Miguel. Sebastian’s dad. Her high school love. Apparently out of jail now.
She was not ready for this.
She stopped dead in her track, not doing anything just staring at him. He changed, yet he didn’t, which was weird. His features hardened, Lola could see the toll the time spent behind bars took on him, yet still, he had the same eyes, the same features, the same expression on his face that she came to know better than she knew her own. The face she once loved, those eyes she could look into for hours without an end and never feel like she got enough. She knew he would be getting out soon. She didn’t count the days, mark the day on his calendar, but she roughly knew that it’s been ten years, his sentence had to be up sometime soon. But still, she didn’t think they would run into each other like this. “When did you get out?” she asked not being able to think of anything else. (She didn’t want to ask why he was there, she didn’t think she would have liked any possible answer. She didn’t want him to say that he was here to see her, but suddenly looking at him she didn’t want him to tell her he was not here to see her either. She was most certainly not prepared for that latter emotion hitting her, and she barely dared to admit it to herself.)
