You're My Person.

Treinta y Nueve

After they had found her body, her lifeless, white, cold body while seemingly also in peace, a peace that she wouldn't have found while being alive. Aitana was inconsolable. She had never, ever before in her life, experienced this kind of pain. She took a break from football. It didn't feel right to go out there and pretend like nothing was wrong. She simply couldn't do it. She spent the days after in Andorra's old house. It had almost been sold but the selling of the house was now on hold after the terrible loss. It was empty but Andorra's old bed still felt like it was her bed. Every day, the midfielder waited, laying in the bed, looking at the door that stayed close, no matter how much she was begging with her mind for that beautiful goalkeeper to walk through the door. 

She was only 19.

She hadn't deserved to die.

But yet, here they were, Aitana, heartbroken and grieve filled, a new emptiness in her heart of which she didn't know that it could even feel that empty as it did at that moment.

Her parents were left with taking care of the funeral while Aitana thought about all of their moments together.

That's when she realized something. A conversation that the two of them had shared that only Aitana had remembered because the other one had been as high as a kite.

She gasped and got herself somehow out of the bed and she raced downstairs and out of the house, running over to her own house where she burst through the door. "Whatever plans you have for her funeral, throw them all out of the window."

Aitana's mom looked at her with raised eyebrows. Aitana had lost weight, dark heavy bags under her eyes, looking skinnier, her face thinner while she was wearing Andorra's clothes, the pants almost falling off her hips as Andorra always had a bigger size but they had to let Aitana grieve in her own way and had given her the space that she wanted. "What do you mean sweetie?"

"She doesn't-" She choked on her words as she was catching her breath at the same time, the tears rolling freely over her cheeks again. "She didn't want a sad funeral. She wanted us, everyone, to remember who she is- was. She never wanted a funeral filled with sadness. She didn't want us to cry over her death, she didn't want to leave this world, making everyone feel sad. She wanted the world to celebrate how she lived. We should honor that... please."

Her father and mother looked at each other and slowly nodded their heads. "Did she ever tell you anything else?"

"No. Only that she demanded that Highway to hell would be played because in her words, there was no way in hell that she was going to heaven, sorry for my language."

"It's fine honey. Come here. We will make sure that everyone will remember her by how she lived and not by how she died."

Aitana nodded her head and climbed into the outstretched arms of her mother, crawling on her lap like she did as a small child, finding the same comfort and warmth as she did when she was still young, the emptiness in her heart remaining. Rosa stroked Aitana's messy hair with her fingers. "We found something else."

"What did you find?"

"We found letters. They were hidden in the cereal box. I assume they are letters anyway. There's one for the entirety of the Barcelona team and staff, one for us, one for Jackie Groenen and one for you."

Aitana sat up and removed herself from her mother's lap when her mother gave her the envelope. The midfielder excused herself and walked to her room, laying down on Andorra's side, the smell of her late girlfriend still embedded into the pillow after the many nights that Andorra had spent there. The tears started to flow once again as her thumb gently trailed over her name written in Andorra's handwriting. She very carefully opened the seal that had closed the envelope and took the folded paper out of the envelope, carefully unfolding it as a page filled with her handwriting was shown right in front of her eyes.