24. Beatriz #2
Laughter rolls through the stadium, affectionate and loud. My vision blurs. I blink hard and keep my eyes on him, because if I look anywhere else, I’ll miss this and I refuse to miss even a second.
He shifts the mic to his other hand and, for just a second, rubs his fingers together like he’s wiping off the nerves. Then he starts.
“When I was sixteen, I asked you to be my girlfriend, and you said yes before I finished the question.” He smiles at the memory and it softens everything inside me.
“I didn’t know then that the yes would shape my life forever.
I just knew that when you smiled, I felt like I was standing where I was supposed to.
Like my sole purpose on this planet was to see you happy, to make you laugh. ”
A whistle from the upper decks. Someone yells “?Eso!” The screen shows my face and I want to bury it in my hands but I don’t. I let him see me, all of me.
“I have not always been brave,” he says, voice lower now, steady.
“Once, I let fear make decisions I should have made with my heart. I lost you because I wasn’t strong enough to stay.
” He swallows, and the whole stadium feels like it leans closer.
“I broke both of us. And then—months ago—you walked back into my life like a sunrise, and I promised myself I would never let fear sit in my chair again. Nunca más.”
If I could touch him, I would. I curl my fingers into the fabric of my dress and hold on.
“I love you,” he says simply, and there’s that tilt in his mouth that means he’s past nerves now.
He’s in it. “Bee, I love the way you talk with your hands when you’re excited and try to stuff them into your pockets when you’re nervous.
I love your lists taped to the fridge, and the way you underline phrases in books like you’d ever forget them.
I love that you make me go to church and then sneak me extra arroz at lunch like we aren’t both being watched.
” A ripple of laughter. “I love your stubbornness.
I love your softness. I love that when the game is hard, you press your thumb over my knuckle and it's like I can breathe again.”
The mic picks up my quick gasp. I don’t care. My cheeks are wet and I don’t care about that, either.
“I love the forgiveness you gave me when I didn’t deserve it, and the future you handed back to me when I thought I’d spent it all,” he goes on, eyes shining.
My knees feel strange. Not weak. Just… ready.
The camera catches Gael and Niko on the sideline, both grinning like idiots.
Diego makes a heart with his hands. Carlos pretends to wipe a tear.
The whole team is in on it and somehow I’m charmed instead of annoyed.
They look like brothers who all conspired to get me here.
Alejandro breathes out once, and the stadium quiets like the grass rustling in the air is too loud to hear over.
“So,” he says, and there’s humor again, a sparkle. “Because I’m not dumb, I didn’t play with a ring in my pocket.” He jerks his chin toward the bench. “Diego's been babysitting something for me all match, and he threatened not to give it back unless I scored, which was rude.”
Diego hams it up, pats the front of his warm-up jacket like he’s searching for a lost treasure, then pulls a tiny velvet box from the inner pocket with exaggerated relief. He holds it in the air to wild cheers, kisses it for drama, and sprints it over.
I laugh. I cry. I want to hug everyone.
Alejandro hands the mic back to the host without looking away from me, takes the small box, and suddenly the world shrinks down to the square of green beneath our feet and this man I have loved my whole life. The stadium might as well be a heartbeat.
He drops to one knee as naturally as blinking.
The crowd shouts and claps. The clap-clap-clap of a chant starting and then dissolving because everyone wants to hear.
He opens the box. The ring catches light from everywhere. I can’t see details. I can only see the future it stands for, shining back at me.
“Beatriz,” he says, not into a mic now, but it doesn’t matter because the camera is on his mouth and everyone can read it anyway.
He doesn’t look away from me. “Mi amor. Mi vida. My best friend.” His voice dips, and I feel it like a hand on my heart.
“Marry me. Let’s have Sunday afternoons, and fights we apologize for and make better.
Let’s have mornings where we trip over each other in the kitchen and nights where we don’t sleep because we’re laughing.
” His mouth curves. “Let’s do Miami and everywhere else. Let’s do always. Say yes.”
He could have said a thousand more words or ten fewer, and I would have said the same thing.
“Yes,” flies out of me before I even know I’m speaking. Then louder, because this is the one time in my life I want a stadium to hear me. “Yes! Dios mío, sí!”
He exhales this sound that cracks me open and slides the ring onto my finger with hands that are steady now.
“It was my mom's,” he whispers just to me before the crowd detonates—cheers, whistles, a few air horns, a streamer from somewhere spiraling down like confetti. The camera jumps to Camila, who is crying and laughing and filming terribly. It catches their coach clapping like he’s trying not to grin and failing.
It finds a little girl in the front row covering her mouth with both hands like she knows she’ll remember this forever.
Alejandro stands fast and I go straight into him. We collide in the center of all that noise and I kiss him like I’m making a vow with my mouth—here, now, always. He kisses me back the same way, hands anchoring my waist, forehead against mine when we break, both of us laughing.
“I love you,” I say, useless but true, over and over, like maybe the repetition will tattoo it to his skin.
“Te amo,” he says, voice wrecked, and then he does the most Alejandro thing—he tips his head toward the team. “We had a budget for signs,” he murmurs, mischief sparking through his tears. “Don’t kill me.”
“What did you do?” I whisper, and then I turn.
The guys have lined up along the touchline, each holding a poster board high over their heads, game-day marker strokes thick and bold. It starts at one end with Diego holding one that says:
BEE, I SWEAR HE’S LESS ANNOYING IN PERSON.
Laughter ripples. Beside him is Niko's reading:
HE PROMISES TO SHARE THE REMOTE.
Then there's Carlos’:
WE’LL BABYSIT. SOMETIMES.
The crowd howls.
Gael comes last:
HE’LL LOVE YOU SIEMPRE. I’LL MAKE SURE.
Awwws sound throughout the stands, sweet and loud. The last card is simple—block letters, a little crooked, like it was made with shaking hands.
ALEJANDRO:
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
I laugh and cry at the same time, an embarrassing hiccup sound I will pretend never happened. I nod toward the line, my chest so full I don’t know how to hold it all. “You kill me,” I tell him.
He wipes a tear from my cheek with the back of his knuckle. “I know.”
The host offers the mic again, and he takes it without looking away from me. “She said yes,” he tells the stadium, voice a little rough. The roar that answers is a living organism that prickles my skin.
He leans down, touches his forehead to mine, and lowers his voice so only I can hear it. “Gracias,” he whispers. “For finding me twice. For staying. For believing me when it mattered.”
I could answer with a novel and still not say enough. But I settle for the truth. “You are my home.”
A chant starts somewhere behind us—our team name and his name mixed together with a rhythm that makes me want to laugh again. The ref taps his watch in a very theatrical “wrap it up” motion. Alejandro looks sadly at the mic like he’s giving away a puppy.
“One more thing,” he says, and even the ref relents, grinning.
Alejandro turns me slightly toward the camera, still holding my hand, our fingers a hard knot. “Bee,” he says, back to soft. “I’m going to spend the rest of the match proving I deserve this.” His smile is all mischief for a second. “Then I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing it.”
“Rude,” I whisper, laughing through tears. “You just made the whole city swoon.”
“Good,” he says, hands skimming my waist like he can’t help it. “They should know.”
He kisses my forehead, then presses the mic back into the host’s hand.
Giving me one last look that says everything we didn’t have time to say, he jogs backward toward the huddle.
The team engulfs him—headlocks, shoulder slaps, a lot of shouting.
Gael breaks away long enough to blow Camila a kiss and mime a baby bump, which makes me snort.
In the distance, I can see Camila wheezing with laughter.
I stare at the ring blinking against my skin. It sits there like it’s always belonged, a small circle that somehow holds our entire story. I touch it with my thumb—light, disbelieving—and then I can’t stop smiling. It hurts, in a good way.
The stadium music snaps back on. The announcer says something about love and luck and returning to play. People around us clap me on the shoulder as I make my way back toward the VIP railing. Someone yells “Felicidades!” and I beam like a fool and say thank you to every single face.
Camila is waiting with open arms. I fold into her and we both laugh-cry in that insane way women do when love is flinging fireworks at them. “Bea,” she sniffles, wiping under her eyes with the back of her hand. “I knew it. I knew today felt like a movie.”
I look at her, heart surging. “I’m so happy,” I tell her, which is small for what I feel, but it’s all I’ve got.
“Me too,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Now scream for your fiancé.”
Fiancé.
Oh God.
My chest does that thing again where it can’t contain all the light.
We slide back into our seats as the whistle blows.
The guys are on the ball instantly. Alejandro is grinning—actually grinning—while he presses high, cuts a pass, and lays it off with a touch so smooth I clap without meaning to.
He glances toward me once more, just a sliver of a look, a flash of teeth, and then he’s gone again, all focus.
“Come on,” I murmur, a useless little prayer. “Let it be perfect.”
Five minutes later, it is.
It’s not a miracle goal. It’s better. It’s a team one—five passes, a run that opens space, and then Alejandro arriving like he was born for the exact gap that appears. He doesn’t blast it. He places it.
The roar is immediate and massive, and I swear I feel it in my teeth. He peels away, arms wide, teammates swallowing him. Then—because he’s him—he turns toward where I am, taps his ring finger, and bows like a ridiculous, gorgeous show-off. The stadium loses its mind.
I don’t even realize I’ve stood until Camila hauls me into a hug that knocks the breath from me. “This is disgustingly sweet,” she yells, laughing. “I love it.”
I scream until my throat hurts and then I scream more. I think of Andrea leaping off a couch. I think of my father sitting very still, clearing his throat, maybe pretending it didn't happen.
The rest of the match flies. When the final whistle blows and our side takes it, I barely hear the commentary. I’m already moving. The usher opens the gate again for friends and family, and I’m there at the rail as the team comes around, clapping the crowd.
Alejandro finds me quick. Of course he does. He reaches up, palms my face, and kisses me like the stadium doesn’t exist. Someone wolf-whistles. Someone else chants “BEA, ANDALE!” and I laugh into his mouth because what else do you do when love turns a city into your backyard?
“Hi, fiancée,” he says when we break, voice low and hoarse, eyes wrecked and happy.
“Hi,” I whisper, useless and perfect.
The field keeps swirling—players, cameras, kids hopping up and down near the railing. Through it all, Alejandro never stops touching me. Wrist, palm, elbow, cheek. Like he knows I still don’t believe in permanence and he’s building it with his hands.
I look down at the ring again. My chest does that up-rush thing for the thousandth time. I lift my hand between us, and he smiles at the sight like it’s the first time, like it will be the first time every time.
“Mi amor,” he says quietly, the noise dimming to a hum around us. “Lista?”
“For what?”
“For the rest,” he says, mouth tipping. “For our life together.”
I could make a joke. I could tease him for being dramatic. I don’t. I just nod, because I have never been more sure of anything. “Sí,” I whisper. “Para siempre. Forever.”
He kisses me again, quick and sure, and then he’s pulled back into the current—team, press, fans—and I watch him go with a heart so full it almost aches. He glances back every few steps.
Camila loops her arm through mine as the stadium starts to empty, both of us smiling like we have a secret the whole city already knows. “So,” she says, bumping my shoulder. “Think you can eat? Or are you going to live on joy alone?”
“Joy and a churro,” I say, laughing. “Maybe both.”
We start toward the tunnel to meet him on the other side, and the big screen flashes a replay of his goal—clean, calm, inevitable. Underneath it, in letters so big they make me dizzy, the words appear. SHE SAID YES.
I touch the ring one more time, hold my hand up so it catches the light, and think—finally—this is ours. All of it. All the way.