Lo’s grin returned, bright and mischievous, like she couldn’t help herself. “Where are we on the packing situation, bebê?”
“I’m almost done,” I responded, even though my stomach had gone tight and my hands suddenly felt clumsy. “Just… the last things.”
“The last things are always the hardest,” Lo murmured.
She didn’t add anything else. She didn’t make it bigger. She didn’t try to fix it. She simply stepped into the room like she belonged there—because she did—and began folding clothes with brisk efficiency that somehow still felt like affection.
My father watched her for a moment, then returned to labeling boxes as if the three of us could build a bridge out of cardboard and tape.
The rain kept falling.
Time moved in small actions.
Tape ripped. Clothes folded. Zippers closed. Papers stacked. A mug of chai cooled until it was too bitter to drink, and still I kept lifting it to my lips as if I could swallow bravery.
At some point, my father paused beside my backpack, fingers hovering near the zipper. He didn’t touch it. He just looked at it the way he looked at my face when I was sick as a child.
“You’re ready,” he sighed. Not a question. A conclusion.
I nodded, because if I spoke, something inside might fracture.
Lo snapped her suitcase shut with an authoritative click. “We are ready,” she declared. “She is ready. The world is not.”
My father huffed a quiet breath—almost a laugh, almost disbelief—and stepped toward me.
Rafael Ribeiro didn’t do sentimental speeches. He didn’t linger in emotion longer than it was useful. He moved forward. He expected the same from me.
But when his hand lifted and settled against my cheek, the gentleness of it stilled everything. Warm. Steady. Certain. He studied me the way he did contracts, negotiations—like he was committing every detail to memory before letting it go.
“This will be hard,” he stated plainly. No softening. No dramatics. “You will feel out of place. You will question yourself.”
My throat tightened.
His thumb brushed once along my cheekbone—small, precise, like everything he did. “And then,” he continued, voice even, accent threading through the words without dulling their edge, “you will adjust. You will learn. You will outwork everyone in that room.”
He wasn’t comforting me.
He was reminding me who I was.
“You don’t wait for space,” he added. “You take it. You understand?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Good.” His gaze held mine another second, sharp and unwavering. “You are not going there to survive, filha. You are going there to build something. For yourself.”
The words didn’t wrap around me.
They anchored.
Behind us, Lo shifted, giving us the space without interrupting it—another thing she understood without needing to be told.
My father’s hand dropped, but the warmth of it lingered, phantom and steady.
“Call me when you land,” he muttered, already stepping back. “Send the address to the dorm at MidU when you have it.”
“I will.”
A beat. Then, quieter—“I’m proud of you.”