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Jonah
It’s blazing sun in Des Moines, the sultry summer breeze doing nothing to cut the heat rippling up from every concrete surface in the parking lot. I have to keep the air conditioning in my new truck running while we have our existential breakdown.
Gray sits stiffly in the passenger seat, staring at theMy Little Ponyblanket folded in his lap, running his fingers across the fluffy pastel colors. If I put my hand on his back, I know I’ll feel his heart slamming around in his chest like a bird trapped in a cage.
I rub his neck, and he leans into my touch. “Are you still with me, baby?”
He pulls in a shaky breath, his voice almost a whisper. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”
At first, I think he means being a father. Then I realize he means being the little girl waiting for us inside the Family Services building. Being chosen. Having a family.
If he were me, he’d be crying right now, but he always feels things quietly. Some people thought he didn’t have feelings, but I know that’s a lie. So I start tearing up instead, because unlike him I’m a fucking sap.
I wipe my eyes roughly on the sleeve of the collared shirt Gray insisted I wear for the occasion. “Shit, look at us.”
That coaxes a smile out of him, his anxious eyes searching my face.
It took a four-hour drive and going through hell to find an adoption agency in Iowa that would work with a gay couple. After we won that battle, I had to beat my parents’ asses to stop them from throwing a welcome home party with the entire town, scaring this poor kid to death on her first day here. I restricted them to buying her a cake and some microwave fish fingers, because apparently that’s her favorite food.
I take Gray’s face in my hand and stroke the skin under his eyes. He’s gotten a lot more tan after a few years in Iowa. His face has more lines where he laughs, and his eyes hold a new kind of peace, one that comes from long hours in the shop watching me work and a slow-paced legal practice just helping locals with their small, everyday problems. He’s so beautiful, like he’s grown into the soul I always saw inside him.
“Let’s go get our little girl, huh?”
He nods slowly, letting my presence anchor him. As we cross the parking lot, he grips my hand so tightly I can’t feel my fingers, his other hand holding the blanket he spent hours picking out for her. The woman behind the front desk beams at us. “You’re here for McKenzie, right? Congratulations.”
Gray lets me do the talking as she chatters away at us, leading us back through the hallways to where our daughter’s waiting to go home. She’s a three-year-old with flyaway blonde curls who hasn’t been adopted yet because she has a seizure condition.
We went to an adoption event almost a year ago, one where you meet a lot of children, and when I realized Gray was gone I looked over and saw him sitting in the corner with this girl in his lap, playing with her toy ponies. He didn’t leave her side for the entire six hours of the event; they had to throw us out forty minutes after closing. That’s when I knew she was the one.
All through the process of getting our house approved and working with a nurse to learn how to handle all her medical needs, we’ve driven eight hours every Saturday to play with her. Any time we’re not with her, Gray has sulked around our house staring at pictures of her and asking me if I know how to help him build her a treehouse when she gets bigger. Of course I do.
His hand tightens on mine as we round the corner and find McKenzie sitting with a social worker, dwarfed by a huge suitcase of all her possessions. She loves me too, I know she does, but as soon as she sees Gray her whole face lights up and she throws herself off the bench, running straight into his arms as he drops onto his knees.
Fuck, I hate this man. He makes me cry all the damn time.
Gray
I remember buildings like this, so many of them. So many rooms with no one in them but me, always waiting for someone who never came.
“What’s this?” McKenzie tugs on the blanket under my arm, her wild blue eyes peering up at me. I think even Jonah’s going to have a hard time keeping up with this one. We have a great property for her to run around on, a river where she can look for frogs, and a house we’ve spent the last two years fixing up to be ready for her and her future siblings.
“I got you a present.” I help her unfold the blanket on the floor to show her the rainbow of six ponies.
“That’s my favorite.” She slaps the pink pony, the loud, relentlessly cheerful one with way too much energy.
“Mine, too.” I glance over at Jonah, deep in conversation with the social worker. He’s grown into such a confident man; I haven’t heard him use words likestupidin years, and when he stopped saying it, everyone else slowly did, too.
Already tired, McKenzie crawls into my lap and cuddles against my chest. I wrap the blanket around her. “Ready to go home soon?”
I can feel her nod. She barely knows what that means, but she’s going to find out so soon—a room already decorated and full of toys, doting grandparents, the dog Jonah really wants to get her that I’m still pretending I won’t agree to even though we both know I will.
But for now, I just pull her tight in my arms and smell the fruity scent of her shampoo as her curls tickle my chin, closing my eyes and truly letting go for the first time in my life to focus on this quiet moment. The long, strange journey that began in a first-class lavatory and ended on the floor of a dingy social services building in Des Moines, Iowa.
If I were taken back to the beginning again and again, if I were offered all the choices in the universe, I would always choose each and every step that led me here, no matter how much they hurt.
I feel a gentle hand in my hair and look up to see Jonah smiling down at us. “Are you two ready to go home?”
