Positive

Maya held onto Carina’s hand tightly, sure she had managed to fuck up what she was sure had been a good, thoughtful gesture. Maya looked over where she had been picturing a breakfast table where they would eat French toast on the weekends. Maya breaths out, “we can just forget about this whole thing. Alright? It was just an idea, but we can forget it. Okay, I didn’t mean to pressure you, Carina. We can forget this, and we can just do something fun today. Okay, it was an impulsive and I know we still have a lot of work to do.”

“No, Maya, it’s not that, this is,” Carina looks around the room and smiles, “it’s perfetta. It’s… we could raise our family here.”

Not sure what had Carina upset then if she liked the house, Maya asked, “but it was too much too soon?” Maya thinking that she knew what the twitch of Carina’s eyebrow meant she added, “I don’t want to push you, Carina. If this too much, we can just table this for now.”

“You aren’t, Bambina,” Carina says, and she moves her hand up to cup Maya’s face and gives Maya a kiss. Further confusing Maya to what was going on with Carina.

“Something’s wrong,” Maya says knowing that Carina is struggling with something.

Carina breathes out, “I’m pregnant.”

Maya heard the words. ‘Pregnant.’ Carina was pregnant and Maya said, “you’re pregnant?” Needing to hear it again.

“Sí, about 10 weeks along, I can practically smell pregnancy on other women, but my skills seemed to have failed me with my own,” Carina says.

“Pregnant,” Maya repeats, Carina carrying their child, would it still be theirs? Maya knows that Carina knows she has been doing the work, but would that be enough for Carina. Would the work she had been doing be enough for Carina to want to raise this child with her, now. Would Carina still want to raise the baby with her, after everything.

“Maya, are you okay?” Carina asks wearily.

“I just… would you trust me with the baby. I want to be their mom. Am I, their mom?” Maya asks nervously.

Carina crinkles her eyebrows in confusion, “of course you’ll be their mom, Bambina, why wouldn’t…”

“You weren’t sure you wanted to raise a baby with me, and I don’t blame you,” Maya says quickly, remembering their fight on the roof of the station. Carina saying that she didn’t want to raise child with the chaos Maya brought to their lives, “I’ll put in the work. I won’t be like my father.”

Carina steps back into Maya’s space and takes Maya’s face in her hands, “Bambina, I don’t want a lifetime of apologizes from you. I just want you and I to raise our baby. Happy and in love. With laughter and family moments and have sex. And without knowing it you managed to find the perfect place for us to raise our baby.”

Maya smiles and leans in for a kiss, then she pulls back and surprises Carina by leaning down and placing a kiss on Carina’s stomach, Maya hears Carina laugh and then quiets down when she hears Maya speak, “hey there baby. I’m gonna be your mom. I’m gonna do my best to be good at this, but your mama she will be great it right away. So, you don’t have to worry, okay?”

At that Carina pulls Maya up, “you’ll be an amazing mother, Maya, of that I have no doubt.”

“I want to be,” Maya says and leans in for a kiss.

“You will be, we both will be,” Carina promises with a kiss.

“Yeah?” Maya asks softly not sure that she believes in herself as much as Carina does.

“Sí,” Carina says with a smile and another kiss.

Maya suddenly looks around and remembers that they are in a burnt-out house that while no longer a fire hazard, has plenty of hazards, “you can’t be in here.”

“What?” Carina laughs at Maya’s abrupt change in topic.

“This place was a crazy idea to begin with, but with you pregnant, we’ll find something that already has walls and no smell of smoke and a roof that doesn’t have a huge hole in,” Maya says and practically drags Carina back outside to the front lawn safely away from the potential dangers.

“Maya,” Carina laughs letting Maya drag her back outside, when they got there, she pulls Maya back to her, “wait a minute.”

“Are you okay?” Maya asks worried Carina might have gotten hurt by some piece of debris or something.

“I’m fine,” Carina assures Maya and pulls Maya into an embrace with Maya in front of Carina, who had her arms around Maya, Carina puts her chin on Maya’s shoulder and tilts her head to speak into Maya’s ear, “I’m perfetta, we are going to have a little bambino and you have found us a home to raise our family in.”

Maya leans into Carina’s embrace, loving the feel of Carina around her, it had been too long since Maya had felt this, “ah, no. I found a death trap. We can find something less…” Maya trails off not sure why she thought this was a good idea, this place would be months of work and contractors and everything else involved.

“I think this one is perfect, Bambina,” Carina says, “if that room right there,” Carina points up to the second story, “isn’t the master bedroom I think it should be the bambino’s room. That way they get natural sunlight going into their room.”

“Yea? That would be nice, the study I mentioned in right off the kitchen that way you could work there and not be too far from the kitchen when you are in the thick of it. The basement would be the perfect size for a small home gym. Upstairs right off the stairs there is an open area, that could be the kid’s playroom and when they get older it could games or whatever they are into.” Maya says saying more of her ideas for the house, she had been surprised by how easily the ideas had come to her. But there was just something about the house that screamed to her that it should be theirs. That it was theirs and they just needed to make it official. It’s why she had decided that she had to show Carina it right after her shift.

“Let’s do it, bambina,” Carina says and seals the deal with a kiss on the cheek before releasing Maya.

Maya nods, “okay, I’ll make some calls and we’ll start the process.”

Maya and Carina make their way back to Maya’s car. Maya opened Carina’s door and hurries over to the drives side.

Something comes to Maya, and she says, “can I ask something?”

“Of course,” Carina says still smiling and she reaches over the consul to rest her hand on Maya’s thigh.

Maya looks down at Carina’s hand before speaking, “when did you… no that’s… I’m sorry that you had to do this insemination alone. Or I guess that you felt like you had to.”

Carina tilts her head and moves her hand from Maya’s thigh and Maya thinks she messed up by asking, but Carina surprises her by saying, “I thought you were going to ask about me taking the test without you.”

“No, I understand why you didn’t,” Maya says though she was sad that they hadn’t found out together, but she didn’t really care when she found she was just happy that an insemination had finally worked.

“It wasn’t for whatever reason you are thinking, I just had been feeling slightly nauseous ever since your lasagna. At first, I just thought it was lingering, and didn’t give it much thought and then the clinic happened, and my stomach hadn’t been right since then. Then a couple of days ago I realized I hadn’t gotten my period. Which with the hormones and injections, that has been all over the place. And I just thought maybe I should take a test. We’ve been taking things slow and not actively talking about babies and our future. I didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?” Maya asks when Carina breaks off.

“The negatives were hard on us both, but I guess I was worried the blue in your eyes would fade again. I couldn’t handle seeing it not while everything was going so well between us. And I thought it was such a long shot, that I thought I would take the test. See the negative and we could build ourselves up to going back to trying again.”

“Except it was positive,” Maya smiles, and then remembers all the negatives before, months of negatives. Months of losing, it had been hard and frustrating because there was no way to make this work until it wanted to. You couldn’t work out or diet in just the right way to get a positive pregnancy test.

“It was,” Carina says and looks over at Maya, “and you were there.”

“Was where?” Maya asks not understanding what Carina had said.

“The insemination,” Carina prompts.

“I…”

“It was at the station, very romantic, you had leave and I was laying on the floor in the shower,” Carina says teasingly.

“But the morning before I ended up,” Maya cuts herself off not wanting to mention the hospital and all the pain that day brought into their lives directly, instead she said, “the test you took, you said it was negative.”

“It was a bit early,” Carina says, “false negatives do happen.”

“I can’t believe it worked,” Maya marvels they hadn’t been in a great place, well Maya hadn’t been. Six months of trying and failing and then they had their blowup on the roof. And that was time that stuck not, any of the previous months where they had happened happier before the cracks had really come out.

“It did,” Carina says.

“After all this time, I am going to have a little version of you to count my blessings on,” Maya says and she feels happy tears at remembering the afternoon that they had decided that Carina would carry, that day had been everything and now almost a year later the idea was becoming a reality.

“We are,” Carina agrees and leans over the consul and gives Maya a kiss. Maya leans her head against Carina’s, and they sit like this smiling at each other, “let’s go back to the hotel.”

Maya moves to sit up in the driver’s seat, and she starts the car, and she begins driving towards Carina’s hotel, making sure to drive carefully as her whole world was in the car with her.