“Nothing, papito,” he said. “Papa’s just frustrated.”
“What’s fust-rated mean?” Normally, Felipe’s irritation would have marginally increased at having to be Nico’s personal dictionary, but he was thankful for his company today. It was two Saturdays after the premier of End Code, which also made it a full 15 days since he’d last seen or spoken with Juno.
He’d been standing by the bar at the after-party with his producer discussing a possible future collaboration with Hibiscus Films, when his phone vibrated and he reflexively checked it. Thinking it was Jakub messaging about Nico, Felipe was surprised to see the text was from Juno.
Horrified upon reading it, he immediately looked over to their booth to see she was gone. He then checked with Evan and his friend who each said they hadn’t seen her leave.
“Did she… did she say anything was wrong?” Evan had asked, clearing his throat. Felipe was too distraught to notice the younger man shoot his buddy a slightly worried glance.
“No,” Felipe had replied. “Thanks, though. Excuse me.”
He rushed outside to the sidewalk to call Juno but it kept going straight to voicemail. After two messages, her inbox told him it was full so he began texting her. Thinking back, Felipe estimated he might have sent her 50 texts in the last two weeks, just to ask what he had done to make her upset with him. No response.
Maybe it was the press coverage? Felipe pondered, noting that the local papers and entertainment shows in the days following the premier endlessly speculated whether he and Juno were dating.
End Code was already a blockbuster, and he was sure it was partly owing to the questions around his personal life. Could the surreal nature of his job be why Juno left him so unceremoniously? No, he thought. She ran out that same night, not after the gossip rags came out the next day.
And it wasn’t as if he had anyone else whose brain he could pick for answers. It was fitting that out of all the words Nico wanted him to define just then, ‘frustrated’ was the one.
“It means when you’re trying to do something and a bunch of things get in your way,” Felipe offered as he mopped up the counter and wrung out the rag in the sink. “Then you make silly mistakes and start getting mad at yourself.”
“I did that in kindergarten yesterday,” Nico said as he slowly mixed his cereal, making sure every last crumb had been submerged in milk. Felipe sat down with his coffee across from his son, raising his eyebrow at the boy. Nico, engrossed in his cereal, didn’t notice but kept talking.
“I was making a Lego robot with Issa, but then I pulled out the foot to make a new foot and the whole thing fell down,” he said. “I forgot to make the robot lie down first. Issa was mad at me.”
“You too, huh?” Felipe smiled, debating whether he should tell his son to get used to having women be angry with him.
“Yeah,” Nico replied before shoveling a half-teaspoon of sugary crunchiness into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, then went on. “I tried to fix it but Issa was still mad. Then I tried to say I’m sorry but she was still mad then too. Then I think I got fust-rated with her.”
“Did you manage to fix things with Issa before you came home from school yesterday?” Felipe asked as he sipped his coffee, genuinely wondering whether his son could offer him an angle to approach Juno that he hadn’t yet thought of.
“Yes, I did,” Nico said, clearly proud of himself. “She wasn’t playing with me inside. So when we did outdoor playtime I went to her at the toy kitchen and I said she has to tell me why she’s mad, or else it isn’t fair. She was playing house. And she couldn’t just run away from her house so she had to tell me.”
Felipe’s brain ignited with the idea his brilliant little boy had unwittingly given him, dumbstruck that he’d had Juno’s address all this time and hadn’t thought to use it. He looked at the clock, calculating how long it would be before he could drop Nico off at his classmate’s birthday party he was slated to attend that afternoon.
“That’s amazing, papito,” he praised his son. “But why was Issa so mad in the first place when you tried to fix your Lego robot?”
“Oh! She said she was sorry to me, Papa,” Nico said, excited at remembering the best part of the story. “She wasn’t even that mad at me. She was also fust-rated because she was hungry when I broke the Lego robot. Then she had a snack at outdoor play.”
“So she was upset at something that didn’t even have much to do with you,” Felipe said more to himself than to his little boy. “That’s something I hadn’t thought of before, Nico. Thank you for helping Papa today.” He got up to wash his coffee mug.
“Is Juno mad at you, Papa?” Nico asked in a little voice. Felipe spun around in surprise. “Is that why she stopped coming over? Can you make her come back?” Unfortunately, all the answers to Nico’s triple-barreled question were the same.
“I… I don’t know,” Felipe responded honestly. “But maybe I’ll be able to ask her today. Like you said, she can’t just leave her house so she has to tell me why she’s mad.”
Juno
“Stop buzzing!” Juno shouted at her phone Saturday afternoon, feeling somewhat silly when she knew she could have just put it on silent. She’d been sitting in front of her laptop at the kitchen table for an hour, pondering six different ways the plot could go with her latest short story.
It was one of those afternoons when she kept re-reading the previous day’s work without being able to process a damn word. Exasperated with herself, she checked the text only to see it was from Carter.
Come out to the balcony.
He was the last person she wanted to see, yet also the only person she wanted to see. Hating herself for doing so, she found her legs carrying her toward the screen door, then peering down toward the front of her building.
There he stood in near-perfection, wearing a bomber jacket and black jeans as he slammed the door of the beat-up, red pick-up truck he’d just parked in the front lot. Juno was so entranced at the sight of him after 15 long days that she didn’t notice him counting the floors up to where she stood.
She was at a loss as to why Carter Amos was so deeply under her skin after just a few weeks of knowing him, when it’d been much easier to break up with her ex-husband after 4 years of marriage.
Being on the sixth floor of her building, she was too far up to shout anything down to him without the entire neighbourhood hearing. So all she did was pull her cardigan closed when she felt a gale of cool October wind rush at her, and lean forward against the railing as she took him in. When she averted her gaze for a moment and then looked back, he was gone.
What the…? Juno looked around the front parking lot, then wondered if he’d left, but his truck was still there. Stumped, she shut the sliding glass door and went back to her laptop. She’d hardly sat down when there was a loud knock at the door.
“Juno, I know this is your unit,” Carter’s muffled voice called through the door. “Your neighbour pointed it out in exchange for an autograph.”