25. Alejandro #2
“Two,” she says decisively. “We start with two and then we’ll see if you behave.”
“I’ll behave terribly.”
“I know,” she says, and I can hear her smile. “Career-wise… I’m happy teaching. Maybe I’ll try for a leadership role later.”
“Anything you want, reina. We’ll make it fit. On the road when you can, home when you need. I’ll learn how to cook more than three things.”
“You have three?”
“Eggs. Toast. Arroz.”
“So talented,” she says, and then quiets, like an idea is forming in that pretty little head of hers. “Camila told me something,” she says, softer now. “Before the game. She thinks… she might be pregnant.”
I grin so hard my face hurts. “Our family expands either way, huh?”
“Either way,” she echoes, and I feel her exhale like it knocks something free. “I love that you said our .”
“It is ours,” I say simply. “You're just as big a part of it as I am.”
We watch a cruise ship light up the dark like a moving city. She lifts my hand and kisses the pulse in my wrist. The movement puts her left hand in perfect line with the moonlight. It hits the stone and flares. Pride hits me again like the first whistle of the match.
“You wearing my mother's ring will never get old,” I murmur.
“I was thinking the same. It looks… good there.” She wiggles her fingers. Then glances at me. “You were unreasonably calm out there with a microphone.”
“I blacked out,” I say. “If they replay it, I’ll know what I said.”
“You were perfect.” Her voice dips. “You said things only I know.”
“Because only you needed to know them.”
She turns fully toward me, knee up, the shirt slipping off her shoulder, collarbone peeking through to taunt me. “You’re going to make me cry.”
“Not yet,” I say softly. “But… soon, maybe.”
Her eyes search mine, curious, open. “Ale?”
I reach under the lounge chair and pull out the small velvet box I brought out with us like a thief in the night. I don’t make a speech about it because this needs to be simple. I open it, and her breath stops so hard I feel it pull the air out of my chest, too.
Her other ring. Her mother’s.
I hold the box in my palm so she doesn’t have to touch it until she’s ready.
“Your father,” I say quietly, “gave me his blessing.” I watch her eyes; I feel the shock and the soft and the hurt and the healing slide across her, one after the other.
“And he gave me this. He asked me to be good to you.” My throat goes rough. “I promised him I would. Siempre.”
Bee’s hand flies to her mouth. Tears fill fast and don’t fall yet. “He… he gave it to you?”
“He did.”
Her fingers tremble; I take the ring and hold her right hand steady. “With me?” I ask.
“With you,” she whispers, and the first tear slides, bright and quiet.
I slide her mother’s ring onto her right ring finger, slow and sure. Two hands. Two circles. Two histories folding into one. She stares at them both like they’re telling her a story she never thought she'd hear.
“Do you think she’d be happy we’re finally doing this? Your mom, I mean.” I ask, barely above a whisper, because this is the part that matters more than any stadium noise.
Bee nods, tears spilling over now, not heavy, just inevitable. “She always said it,” she whispers, voice breaking open, and I know she’s hearing her mother and not me now. “She said you’d be the man I’d marry. She said it like she already knew.”
I pull her in. No speeches. Just a kiss on the cheek, the temple, the corner of her mouth, my thumb catching tears she doesn’t apologize for. “Then I’ll spend the rest of my life proving her right,” I say into her hair.
We sit with it. With the ocean and the heat and the rings and the soft sound a heart makes when it stops guarding itself.
She sniffles once, laughs at herself for sniffing, wipes her face with my shirt like I don’t care about fabric, and then leans back to study her hands again. “Two rings,” she says in awe.
“Una para cada mano,” I remind her.
She smiles, watery and bright. “One for each hand? You planned that?”
“Not, really,” I admit. “I never imagined your father would give me the ring.”
She settles against me again, future heavy and light at the same time. “We’re really doing this,” she murmurs. “All of it.”
“All of it,” I say. “Sunday lunches. Away games. Bad hotel coffee. Late December, if you want it. Two kids if I behave. Three if I’m very good.”
“Don’t push it,” she says, laughing.
“I’ll try to be humble,” I lie.
We stay on the terrace until the moon rises further.
The breeze picks up just enough to raise the hairs on her arm; I tuck the blanket around her shoulders and she pretends not to notice how quickly I did it.
When she shivers anyway, I pull her closer, and she climbs into my lap like she belongs there, because she does.
“Another kiss,” she says. As if I would ever say no.
“Greedy,” I murmur against her mouth.
“Only a little,” she fires back, and I laugh into the kiss, because she always steals my best lines.
After a while, the breeze cools to an uncomfortable degree for only a shirt on, so I guide her back inside. She turns at the door, walks backward into the bedroom with that smile that undoes me, and crooks a finger. I follow, because I’m smart.
There’s urgency again, but it’s different now—less frantic, more certain. When I sit on the bed, she climbs on me and I hold her steady. I tell her what she is to me and she tells me what I am to her. When we break apart, it’s with a softness that promises a bright future.
Later, we lie tangled in sheets and each other. She lifts her head, studying me like she’s trying to memorize lines she already knows. “Hi,” she whispers, smiling like the moon.
“Hi,” I say, smiling like a fool.
“You happy?”
“Yes,” I answer, without thinking or blinking. “You?”
“So much it hurts.”
“Where?” I ask, pretending concern.
She taps her heart. “Here.” Then taps lower. “And here.”
“Remedy,” I say, rolling us, and she squeals and then sighs, the best sound in two languages.
We fall asleep to the ocean’s endless exhale. Sometime in the middle of the night, she shifts, and both rings catch a sliver of moonlight and flash at me. I swear they wink. I press my mouth to her hair and say a quiet thank you I don’t have the right words for.
Morning will come with coffee and texts and siblings and teammates and a thousand questions about dates and venues and colors I’ve never heard of.
We’ll say yes and no and we’ll see. We’ll kiss in the kitchen.
We’ll burn toast. We’ll get dressed for lunch with her family and I will hold her hand all the way in, because I can.
And when Senor Ayala looks at her right hand and sees what he gave resting there, I’ll watch his jaw flex and then loosen. I’ll hear Andrea gasp and then swear and then hug us both at once. I’ll be good to his daughter like I promised.
But right now, it’s just us. Just the soft sound of her breathing and the warm slide of her leg over mine.
Just the quiet of a house that finally feels like exactly what should be—home.
I lie there and let it fill me, a peaceful contentment that I only feel with her.
My chest loosens; my shoulders drop, and the last hard pieces inside me go soft.
“Te amo,” she murmurs against my skin, half-asleep, the words slipping out.
“I love you, too,” I answer, and then, because it’s true now in a way it’s never been, I add, “para siempre.”
“Forever,” she echoes, smiling into my chest.
I close my eyes and sleep finds me easy for once.
When it does, I dream of our future. It looks like her in a white dress in a room full of light, walking toward me slow enough for me to memorize the way her mouth curves when she tries not to cry.
It looks like a table with too many chairs and never enough food.
It looks like a game and a whistle and her on the sideline with both hands lifted and those two rings bright as stadium lights, cheering me on because that’s what she does—always has.
Mi amor.