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When she turns to look at me, her face is lit with a kind of joy that makes everything else fade away. The soreness in my legs, the ridiculousness of this outing it all disappears when she smiles like that.
EPILOGUE PART THREE
“Ahoy matey!It’s my daughter’s twenty-second year on this earth. Give a big round of applause for the lovely little cabbage!” he shouts to a man on a paddleboard.
I roll my eyes, but it's impossible not to smile. This is so quintessentially my dad, taking something as simple as a pedal boat and turning it into an excursion.
“This is how I die,” Rafael mutters, sinking back into his seat. “On a plastic toy boat, in front of ducks, being yelled at in two languages.”
“There's cake at the end of this journey. Doesn't that make it worth it?” I ask, whispering so my dad won’t direct any more attention toward Rafa.
He gives me a look, the kind that saysonly because of you, and my heart does a little flip.
Even as I sit at this small rustic table tucked in the corner of a restaurant my dad tookMamanon their twentieth wedding anniversary, I still find it hard to believe that we made it off of that pedal boat dry.
A waiter with two small lemon tarts and a chocolate mousse approaches the table, smiling as he sets the tarts in front of Dad and me and passes the mousse to Rafael.
“Thank you,” I say as Dad digs around in his “murse.” He’s now on some man-purse kick thanks to Rafael’s genius idea to take him shopping down the riviera after pedal boating.
He produces a cake topper that looks a lot like a closed-up flower. “Wouldn’t be a birthday without a candle,” he says, and his smirk gives him away immediately. He presses the plastic into the tart and grabs out a pack of matches. “You know, the one positive thing that came out of that pandemic is that I don’t see as many people blowing out their candles on a communal dessert. That’s just disgusting. I’m not sure why we ever did that. It really shouldn’t have taken a global pandemic to help people realise that.”
I chuckle, sucking in a breath, but before I can answer, he’s lit the match and pressed it to the top of the candle. It starts to spin, opening slowly. Each petal has a candle leading to a sparkler in the centre. Each candle becomes lit one by one, and finally, the sparkler starts throwing off tiny flecks of glittery flames as the stupid piece of plastic starts to sing.
Rafael leans in close to my ear. “Make a wish,mi vida,” he whispers softly.
But I don’t need to.
I already got it.
EPILOGUE PART FOUR
THREE YEARS LATER
My foot bouncesat a million kilometres an hour against the metal stands as I watch in awe of my incredible wife.
My chest expands with a fluttering feeling, adrenaline rushing through my veins, and my throat feels so tight it’s hard to get a good breath between each gasp and yell I let out.
Elise sprints down the pitch in the final moments of play, her dark ponytail swishing behind her as she pushes past Spain’s defence. The announcer's words become muffled, my brain unable to keep up with all the extra stimulus as Elise narrowly escapes with the ball.
My breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh of air, relief flooding my still tight chest, but as the timer ticks down and heropportunity to win the twenty twenty-eight Summer Olympics for Argentina seems to be slipping out of her grasp, my blood is pounding through my veins.
Five.
She pumps her arm, gritting her teeth and gaining speed.
Four.
Spain sidles up beside her, nearly stealing the ball.
Three.
She takes the chance, kicking the ball with such force it physically knocks her on her ass. She was too far from the goal. There’s no way that’ll land.
Two.
I’m out of my seat, my fists balled, and my nails digging into my palms as the stands quiet, silence filling the space.
One.