want for a big family. Ever since we got married, hell, even before we got married, I had that IUD taken out and we started trying in earnest. He knew about my fertility struggles, and I knew it might take a long time before anything happened.
And nothing happened.
Believe me, we have a lot of sex, it’s one thing that has never slowed down between us, but that doesn’t seem to make a difference.
All the check-ups we’ve both been having, visits to the fertility clinics, haven’t resulted in anything. As far as the doctors are concerned, I’m just not fertile enough and it might be something I’ve always had, considering what happened with Grace, or it could just be that I’m forty-three now and getting older, and the older I get, the harder it’s going to be.
Even IVF treatments haven’t taken and it got to a point where it was too hard on my body, and to be honest, on my heart. Each time there was so much hope on the line, that I would come crashing down under depression when it failed. I started to see a doctor to help deal with the mental aspect of it, and Alejo helped to pull me out of it too, even though he was suffering as well.
So now, well now things have taken another route.
We’ve decided to adopt.
It wasn’t something to be taken lightly. It’s a big decision to decide not to continue to try and have your own, essentially give up on that dream, and instead open your heart to a child out there. It’s not for everyone and it’s stressful too. The process is difficult, trying and tiring. Over the last eight months, we’ve had one application fall through at the last minute and we’re currently waiting to hear about another one, a baby boy in Mali, knowing it could happen again, knowing that it might not ever happen.
But I have faith that we’ll end up where we’re supposed to end up.
As long as we’re going there together.
“Did you hear from Luciano?” Mateo asks. “I missed a call from him the other day.”
“I did,” Alejo says. “He said he’s coming to Lisbon in a few weeks and if we had time to meet him there. He’ll probably end up in Madrid anyway.”
Luciano lasted two more years as Real Madrid’s captain before his age (and his shoulder) forced him to retire. Now he’s ridiculously loaded and living the good life on some Portuguese island in the Atlantic. He still comes back to the continent every now and then, and we always do our best to meet up with him.
Alejo has now taken his place as captain. He’s young and he’s still trying to find his footing as a leader, but he’s so good on the pitch, so dedicated to the game, and so perfect at uniting everyone, getting them motivated and pumped on his passion, his emotions really driving them to wins. I don’t think there could be anyone better to take Luciano’s place.
“I would love to go to Lisbon again,” Vera says, and I’m not surprised to see she’s finished her glass of sparkling sangría. She drinks like a fish and I did say my sangría was the best. She looks at me. “If they go, we should go too. Get some shopping done. Stuff our faces with pastel de nata. Fuck that stuff is good.”
I’m about to tell Vera that it’s on when Alejo’s cell phone rings.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, knowing that we try and have a no cell phones at the table rule, just to give ourselves a break from the go, go, go world out there and take time to be present.
I roll my eyes and he answers.
“Hello?”
I look back at Vera, figuring the call can’t be that important since it’s seven at night. “Anyway,” I tell her, “ I would love to do a couples trip. That sounds like fun.”
“But Luciano would be the fifth wheel,” Mateo points out.
“Didn’t you say that he was seeing someone or…” Vera asks.
“Oh my god,” Alejo says excitedly into the phone, putting his hand to his mouth, his eyes open wide. “Oh my god.”
I furrow my brow, looking at Mateo and Vera, who seem equally confused.
I lean across the table, trying to catch his eye. “What is it?” I ask.
He just stares at me, blinking, and watching his face is like watching someone come alive for the first time. “He’s ours,” he says faintly.
“?Que?” I ask but even as I say the word, the realization is dawning on me and hope is building in my chest, a fire that grows higher and higher.
This can’t be…
“Alejo,” I whisper urgently. “What is it?”
He just nods, mouth agape, listening to someone on the phone. He begins to smile, wider and wider. “Okay,” he says into the phone. “Okay, thank you. Thank you so much!”
He hangs up, stares at the phone for a second, and then yells at the top of his lungs, “Yesssssssss!”
He literally kicks back his chair and leaps on top of the fucking table. He’s stepping in the food, everyone’s drinks are knocked over, sangría spilling everywhere, and he pulls the same pose as he would if he scored a goal, arms out to the side, fists curled, neck corded as he yells at the ceiling in pure, unadulterated joy.
“He’s ours!” he yells, and then he drops down to his knees and crawls across the table, grabbing my face and kissing me harder and deeper than I’ve ever been kissed before, a kiss that promises me that my world is changing again.
For the better.
“He’s ours,” he cries out as he pulls away, squeezing my face, tears in his eyes. “Our baby. We’re getting our baby! We’re going to have our son!”
The news slams into me like a brick.
Every single heartache, every disappointment, all the shame and the grief and the sorrow that we’ve both had to navigate. My loss. All of it comes barreling through me at once and out the other side of my soul, like it’s been cleansed and made pure.
Our baby.
We have our baby.
I immediately break down, crying into Alejo’s arms as the two of us hold on, just as we’ve held onto each other for so long, knowing that soon we’ll be holding on to one more little soul.
“Te amo, Thalia,” he whispers to me.
“Te amo, Alejo.”
We kiss and I hear Vera crying and Mateo is wishing us a congratulations and I know that every single moment we’ve gone through, every single choice we’ve made, and every single path we’ve followed has led us right here to this moment.
Life has been happening for us this whole time.
Now it will happen for the three of us.
THE END