Dawn { a javier peña fanfiction }

Chapter Four - Cinnamon Girl

"There's things I wanna talk about, but better not to keep.
But if you hold me without hurting me, you'll be the first who ever did."

____________________________

Spring 1993

Javier leaned back on his sofa— provided to him by the US Government and all its taxpayers— reaching over to fiddle out a cigarette from the pack lying on the coffee table, already concerningly low even though he'd bought them just that morning. He lit it, sucking in a long drag, letting the smoke out in a single stream that curled and licked through the stagnant air of his apartment. He didn't pick up his phone and dial his father's number until the cigarette was halfway to the filter.

"Hijo," his father's gruff voice buzzed against his ear, "how's it going?"

Javier turned the cigarette around and around between his fingers, staring at it like it held some kind of divine meaning. "Everything's fine."

Everything was in fact, not fine, Los Pepes had become a much larger thorn in his side ever since the CIA got involved, and despite a large majority of Colombia turning on Escobar after his latest bombing, everyone still seemed tight-lipped regarding his whereabouts.

Javier was starting to worry that he was going to be completely gray before his fortieth birthday.

"Heard about the bombing in Bogotá." His father said, rather than coming straight out and telling his son that he knew he was lying.

Javier exhaled sharply, lifting the cigarette to his lips, and nearly sucking it down to the filter.

"You know I wish you'd stop smokin' those things, killin' your lungs."

Sometimes he thought his father had— somehow— planted a camera in his apartment.

"More likely I'll die in crossfire than from these fucking things." Javier muttered, mostly jesting, as he stubbed the butt of his cigarette out in the ashtray on the coffee table.

"Not somethin' to joke about, hijo, gonna attract malo energy, spirits."

Javier let out a snort, "You're starting to sound like mama."

"Good, your mother was smart."

It was quiet for a minute; Javier swore he could almost hear the crickets chirping away on his father's line. He let the sound of them, real or imagined, dull his nerves a bit as he leaned over to dig his wallet out of his back pocket, pulling out the little polaroid inside.

"How is she?" He finally asked, the one thing he'd actually wanted to talk about since picking up the phone. He didn't have to clarify, didn't even have to say her name, that name that rang through his head constantly but was getting harder and harder to utter aloud without feeling some deep cavern of guilt, of cramping, agonizing bereftness crack open in his chest.

Chucho let out a slow exhale, "She's good, from what I can tell. She started teaching at the elementary school, third grade, I think."

Javier ran his thumb over the picture that rested on his thigh, her beaming face making that cavern inside of him ache and throb. "Already? She's not even twenty-four yet."

"Already," Chucho confirmed, he could almost see the slow nod of his father's head, "always been as smart as a whip, that one."

That was true, he shouldn't have been surprised that she was working so soon after her graduation, this was the same girl who had started taking college courses while she was still in high school. The same girl who regularly— despite the fact that she was ten years younger than him— made him look like an idiot.