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It’s almost noon and Ferran has glitter in his eyebrows. He doesn’t notice until Pedri looks up from the couch and frowns.
“You’ve got something-” Pedri waves a finger vaguely toward his face. “Here. Sparkles. You look like a budget Strawberry Shortcake character.”
Ferran blinks, rubs his cheek, and stares at the pink shimmer on his fingertips. “Damn it.”
“She got you again?” Pedri asks, clearly enjoying this.
“I think she’s started using glue.” Ferran grabs the edge of his hoodie and wipes at his temple. “She was doing my ‘makeup’ before breakfast. I was just sitting there.”
“She’s got you in a chokehold, mi vida.”
Ferran shrugs like it’s a compliment. “You try saying no when she’s looking at you with marker on her nose and calling you ‘the most beautiful papí’.”
Pedri snorts into his coffee. “You’re so gone.”
From the other room: a loud crash.
Pedri doesn’t even look up. “Yours.”
Ferran’s already standing.
He finds Alora crouched beside the laundry basket, peering inside like she’s waiting for something.
“¿Todo bien?” Ferran asks carefully, crouching down to her level.
She nods solemnly. “He’s napping.”
Ferran peers into the basket. “Who is?”
“The carrot.”
Sure enough, a half-peeled carrot is nestled in the corner of the laundry pile, carefully wrapped in one of Pedri’s socks.
“I gave him a blanket,” she adds, proud.
Ferran pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sweetheart, we can’t keep putting vegetables to bed.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is how ants happen.”
Alora gasps. “Ants like carrots?”
“They throw whole parties for carrots.”
She considers this. “Then we have to make the carrot a party hat.”
Pedri walks in five minutes later, holding a bowl of cereal and blinking like he already regrets it. “Why are you cutting a birthday hat out of construction paper?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Ferran mutters.
Pedri looks down into the laundry basket. “Is that a carrot?”
“Don’t ask questions.”
Alora’s three and completely ungovernable. Ferran wouldn’t change a thing.
She makes him hold both her hands while crossing the hallway. Demands he tie her shoes and narrate her “football game” like a commentator. Calls him “Coach Papí” when they play football in the garden, but refuses to let him win unless he cries a little bit first.
She’s smart, quick with her mouth, and already asking existential questions like, “What is wind?” and “Where do grown-ups go when they’re mad?”
Ferran answers with lies half the time. Sometimes, she believes him. Sometimes, she looks at him like she knows better.
“She’s literally you,” Pedri says often, usually while Alora runs circles around them in a tutu and Ferran’s Barça warmup jacket from 2021.
“Nah,” Ferran replies. “She’s a better version - because there’s some of you in her too.”
He does the Infantil drop-off most mornings, even though she only goes two days a week, and it’s more finger painting than curriculum. He still acts like she’s going off to college.
“You’ve got your snack?” he asks, kneeling by the car seat. “Your water bottle? Your tiny stuffed giraffe who cannot survive without you?”
“Yes, Papí,” Alora says, gently pushing his face away with one hand.
Ferran grins, kisses her forehead anyway. “What do we say if someone pushes you?”
“I say, ‘Don’t do that. I’ll tell my papá.’”
“And what happens if someone doesn’t share their crayons?”
“I forgive them because they might be having a tough day.”
Ferran blinks. “You’ve been talking to your mamí again, haven’t you.”
Alora shrugs. “He says nice things.”
At home, Ferran does all the things he swore he’d never care about.
He keeps a box of her old drawings. Has a playlist full of lullabies that are secretly just soft Spanish pop songs he likes. Once tried to learn how to braid her hair from a TikTok, failed spectacularly, and then refused to cut the mess out because she called it “princess hair” and spun in circles to show it off.
He paints her fingernails with the concentration of a brain surgeon while she’s watching cartoons. Let's her colour in his tattoos with marker, something which has become one of her favourite things to do on long flights. Has shown up to training with smudged glitter on his jaw at least twice and doesn’t deny it when the others ask.
“She’s got you wrapped around her whole hand,” Pedri tells him one night, watching Alora fall asleep on his chest.
Ferran doesn’t even blink. “She earned it.”
One afternoon, while Pedri is at recovery and the house is unusually quiet, Ferran and Alora sit cross-legged on the living room floor. He’s cutting paper shapes for her to glue onto a construction-paper “family spaceship.” She’s drawing a stick-figure version of all three dogs.
“Where’s this spaceship going?” Ferran asks.
“To my friend’s house. But first, we have to stop at the petrol station.”
He nods, “Do we need snacks?”
“Yes. But not yucky stuff. Only the good things.”
“I hear you.”
Alora pauses, then looks up. “Papí?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you gonna be my Papí forever?”
Ferran freezes for a second. Not because he doesn’t know the answer, but because he knows it too fast.
He puts down the scissors, wipes glue from his fingers, and leans forward.
“Sí, amorcita. Siempre y siempre.”
She nods like that’s satisfactory. “Vale. Good.”
That night, after she’s asleep and the carrot’s finally made its way to the bin, Ferran sits on the edge of the bed, undoing the laces of his shoes.
Pedri’s already half under the blanket, reading. “She tell you about the spaceship?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ferran says. “We’ve got a layover at some toddler’s and a snack break at the pretend Mobil down the street.”
Pedri hums. “Big plans.”
“She asked me if I’d be her Papí forever.”
That gets Pedri’s attention. He sets the book down, looks over.
“What’d you say?”
Ferran shrugs. “What else could I say?”
Pedri’s quiet for a beat. Then, simply, “She’s lucky.”
Ferran crawls in next to him. “We both are.”
- sofía ✎ᝰ.