[ thirty two ]
At one point in the night, we seemed to have fallen asleep on the couch. And my parents returned from the novena later in the night, but we didn't hear them arrive. I was so emotionally drained and tired after being sick that a herd of elephants could have stampeded through the living room and it wouldn't have woken me or stirred my sleep.
My eyes opened the next morning and I looked around to see we were still on the couch, the television was off, and there was a blanket covering us. My mother had probably done that. James slept soundly by my side, and since I was an early riser, I got up and got into the shower while he got some more time to rest. James always slept longer, and more than I did. My habit was to fall asleep rather late and wake up early, his was to get up late every morning no matter what time he went to sleep the night before.
I went to my bedroom to gather some clean clothes to change into and went to the bathroom for a shower.
When I emerged, changed into my clean clothes, I found him in the kitchen with my mom. She was cooking breakfast while they talked, and it seemed to be a very entertaining conversation because the smile on James' face was unmistakable. The moment they saw me walk in, James pulled me into their conversation with excitement, "Your mom was just telling me about how you would force me to play house with you. And we supposedly lived on the terrace."
I snorted, "Hombre, you loved playing house. Don't deny it."
He quickly shook his head in denial. "Every time we played house, I felt like a little piece of my manliness was dying."
Cutting the distance between us from where I stood at the doorway and joining him at the table, I raised an eyebrow at him, "Why are we even talking about playing house and your dead manliness?"
He shot me a playful glare, but was smiling at me again the next second, "We were talking about it because I remembered one of your dolls was our daughter."
"You named her Salome." I recalled.
"And I decided," He stated, entirely serious, "When we have our first daughter, her name will be Salome."
I rolled my eyes at him with a smile. "What if we never have a daughter? What if we only have boys?" Or no children at all? Some couples were never able to have children, but I didn't want to think about that being a possibility.
"Arista, please, I don't even want to think it." He shut his eyes tightly and shook his head quickly. "I always wanted to have a little girl I could treat like a princess."
"And me?" I pouted, jutting out my bottom lip.
"Bonita, you're my queen." He replied, cupping my face in his hands and giving me a quick peck on the lips. "I can already picture us, a happy family, with our little Salome."
"When will you give me my first grandchild?" My mom blurted out joyfully, making a blush creep up onto my face. My mother was delighted that he was already thinking about having children together, but for me, there were still other very important things that needed to be done first. For one, he needed to end things with Giselle before we could be together, much less have children. Then he would need to propose and marry me, which was something I wouldn't deny him this time around. And one of the most important things for me was to get my diploma from the university.
I wanted to better myself, so that I wouldn't have to rely on James when I needed something. I wanted to make something of myself, and I also wanted to contribute to the household because it was a responsibility for two people, not just one.
"Mom," I sighed, if she wanted an answer, I could come up with an estimate. "Your grandchild will be born when I'm twenty five." That was three years from now, in which I estimated James and I would be two years into our marriage, happy, and I would have a journalism job that was a reward out of all the hard work I had put into my studies.
