Epilogue
Carlos
The next year…
The apartment is streaked with gray with early morning light. Izan snores from the floor and the fan turns lazily above me.
I should get up. We have plans today. But Jade is still asleep beside me, her hair a mess across the pillow, one arm flung over my chest, and I’m content to stay exactly here.
Last year, I met Jade at the airport and told her I loved her.
A few weeks later, she moved to Austin, and I visited shortly after.
It took seven months.
Seven months of video calls with Fernando and his family when I was in Austin, but more often video calls with Jade.
When I was able to visit, I loved being there with her, falling more and more for her every day.
I semi-retired, handing off more work and balancing my life until we landed on something permanent.
And then she got an offer.
Centro de Investigación Avanzada en Salud, one of Madrid’s top research hospitals, needed someone to lead their oncology patient care innovation program—and they’d been watching her work with the patient advocacy network all summer.
It wasn’t as research-heavy as her past job, but it was better—more autonomy, bigger budget, the chance to shape how patients actually experienced treatment, not just study it from a lab.
She took it without hesitation.
And now she’s here. Permanently. In our apartment—not mine, ours—with her clothes in the closet and her ridiculous collection of sex toys in a dresser in the closet and her research papers scattered across the dining table.
The two shoeboxes of Polaroids live on the shelf above the wardrobe now, the corkboard on the wall off to her side of the bed.
She put up enough old pictures to cover half of it, and we’re working on adding more. More of Madrid, but different. Us.
She stirs beside me, makes a small sound of protest at being awake.
“Morning,” I murmur.
“No.” She burrows deeper into the pillow. “It’s too early.”
“It’s almost eight.”
“Exactly. Too early.”
I laugh and kiss her shoulder. “We have lunch with Fernando and Diana at eleven.”
“That’s in three hours.”
“And we need to go buy a gift.”
“It won’t take us three hours.”
“Jade—”
“Fine, fine. I’m up.” She rolls over to face me, eyes still half-closed. “But I’m grumpy about it.”
“Noted.”
She opens one eye. “Coffee first?”
“Already made.”
“This is why I love you.”
“Just for the coffee?”
“Also for your face. And other things.” She stretches, yawns. “But mostly the coffee.”
I get up and bring her a mug—one of the ridiculous ones, this one says “I’m not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right”—and she accepts it like I’ve brought her gold.
“So,” she says, propped up against the headboard. “Carmen’s birthday lunch. I thought Diana said no gifts?”
“Diana always says no gifts. Fernando always ignores her.”
“So we’re bringing a gift.”
“We’re bringing a gift.” I sit on the edge of the bed. “I was thinking a football. She’s obsessed with kicking things right now.”
“Perfect. We can pick it up at Decathlon. And she can kick it around in the park after she opens it. And go by the market to get flowers for Diana.”
I mentally adjust what time we need to leave, because Jade loves wandering in the market, and I don’t want to be late.
Jade sips her coffee, and I watch her—this woman who upended my life, who made me brave enough to risk everything, who spent seven months in Austin searching for a way back for me.
“What?” she asks, catching me staring.
“Nothing. Just . . . happy.”
“Me too.” She sets down her mug, reaches for me. “Come here.”
I do, and she pulls me into a kiss that tastes like coffee and morning and home.
“Carlos?” she says when we break apart.
“Mmm?”
“Thank you for giving me your family.”
“You’re welcome. Now come on—shower. We’ll be late.”
“Bossy.”
“Efficient.”
She laughs and climbs out of bed, and I watch her pad toward the bathroom, Izan trailing behind her hopefully.
My life. Our life. Exactly as it should be.
Fernando and Diana’s apartment is in chaos when we arrive. Carmen is turning two, and apparently two is the age where she has opinions about everything.
“No!” she shrieks when Diana tries to put her in the high chair. “No no no!”
“Carmen, please—”
“NO!”
Fernando looks up from the kitchen where he’s plating food. “She’s been like this all morning.”
“It’s the terrible twos,” Jade says.
“Right on time,” Diana says, defeated. “Everything is a battle.”
“Let me try,” Jade says, setting down the round gift that is very obviously a football. She crouches in front of Carmen. “Hey, Carmen. Want to see what Jade brought you?”
When we moved back to Madrid, Jade resumed her Spanish lessons with Manny. We speak Spanish at home more often than English, at Jade’s insistence, unless we’re with Jade’s friends.
Carmen stops mid-shriek. “Present?”
“A present. But only if you sit in your chair like a big girl.”
Carmen considers this. Then, miracle of miracles, she reaches her arms up for help getting into the high chair.
“How did you do that?” Diana asks, amazed.
“Bribery,” Jade says cheerfully. “It’s all about the bribery.”
Fernando laughs. “I like her method better than ours.”
Jade slings her bag over the back of a chair and sits down next to Carmen. My granddaughter is staring at the gift-wrapped ball set on the table and Jade quickly pulls out her Polaroid and snaps a picture.
We settle around the table—the four of us plus Carmen in her high chair, making a mess of her tortilla. Izan has stationed himself under Carmen’s chair, ever hopeful for dropped food.
“So,” Diana says, serving paella. “How’s wedding planning going?”
Not us—Tessa and Luc. They’re going to have a small wedding in the South of France, and Jade and I will attend, along with Emma and Santo, Sara and Chris, and Luc’s grandmother.
“Good. The pictures of the hotel are beautiful. It’s going to be so romantic. And we got my dress just in time.”
“So romantic,” Diana echoes. “Fernando, you should take notes. Now that Grandpa lives here we need a vacation.”
“You said you loved traveling with Carmen!”
“That was before Carmen learned the word ‘no.’”
Jade and I exchange a look. I press my lips together. She doesn’t bother—she lets the laugh out, warm and unguarded, and it sets Fernando off, and then Diana, and even Carmen looks up from her tortilla with an expression of deep suspicion at what the adults find so funny.
This is what Jade does. She laughs first and gives everyone else permission to follow. I noticed it on the tour—the way a room loosened when she relaxed into it. It hasn’t changed. It won’t.
“Does it inspire any feelings in you two?” Fernando asks, grinning. “Our little Carmen would be very cute carrying the arras . . .”
Jade frowns. “Arras?”
“The coins exchanged by the bride and groom at a wedding,” I explain. “Fernando is asking if we want to get married.”
“Oh, uh, we haven’t . . .”
I hide a smile. It’s not often I see Jade lost for words.
“Fernando,” Diana scolds. “Don’t pressure them.”
“I’m not pressuring! I’m asking!”
“It’s fine,” Jade says, and I can see her recalibrating in real time—the half-second of genuine flustered giving way to performance. She straightens. Folds her hands on the table. Adopts the expression of someone about to deliver a very considered response.
“And to answer your question,” she says, with great dignity, “we haven’t talked about it. Formally.”
“Have you talked about it informally?” Fernando asks.
She points at him. “You’re very annoying, you know that?”
Fernando beams. “My favorite hobby is annoying Dad. Now I get to annoy you too. Why haven’t you talked about it?”
She looks at me. I look at her. “Because we’re already committed,” I say. “A wedding doesn’t change anything.”
“It does legally,” Fernando points out.
“He has a point,” Jade says.
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
“I don’t know. Are you asking me?”
“This is the worst proposal I’ve ever seen,” Diana says.
“It’s not a proposal,” Jade and I say in unison.
Carmen bangs her spoon. “CAKE!”
“No cake until after lunch,” Fernando tells her.
“CAKE NOW!”
“This is what you have to look forward to,” Diana tells us. “Marriage, kids, tiny dictators who demand cake.”
“I think we’ll skip the kids part,” Jade says.
“Wait, are you two actually talking about getting married?” Fernando asks.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Are we?”
Jade considers. “Maybe? Eventually? When we’re ready?”
“That’s very committal,” Fernando says dryly.
“We’re working on it,” Jade tells him.
The conversation moves on—Diana asking about my retirement projects (I’ve been doing translation work, consulting, enjoying having free time), Fernando talking about work, Carmen demanding more attention—and I realize something.
This is it. This is the life we built.
Not perfect. Not always easy. But ours.