We never thought we’d get here.

Not because we didn’t want it—God, we did—but because somewhere deep down, there’s still that voice we both carry. The one that says people like us don’t get the white-picket-fence kind of dream. But the thing is, we didn’t want the picket fence. We just wanted something ours. Something real. A tiny life we could love.

Seven years in, and the love hasn’t softened. If anything, it’s gotten heavier in our chests—in the best way. We still brush our teeth side by side, still bicker over takeout orders, still fall asleep with our legs tangled like we’re afraid the other might float away. We bought the house last spring, a two-bedroom tucked in a quiet corner of Hawkins, with peeling paint and a porch that creaks if you so much as breathe too hard on it. It’s nothing fancy. But the first time we stepped inside, it smelled like new starts. And that was enough.

We painted the spare room pink. Not a soft pink either—Eddie picked this loud, bubblegum shade that looked like it belonged in a Barbie Dreamhouse. Steve argued about it for all of two minutes before caving, laughing when Eddie got paint on his nose. “If we’re doing this,” Eddie had said, stepping back and looking at the walls with this kind of wonder in his eyes, “we’re doing it with heart.”

The paperwork was hell. Visits, forms, interviews that made us both feel like we were being dissected. Eddie stopped smoking—or at least tried—and Steve started putting sticky notes on the fridge with affirmations like ‘You are not your past’ and ‘You’ve got this’. Some mornings, we’d sit in silence at the kitchen table, coffee going cold between our hands, wondering if the universe was just stringing us along. But still, we waited. Still, we hoped.

Then came the morning everything changed.

It was a Thursday. Steve had just made French toast, and Eddie was halfway through reading a comic over breakfast when the phone rang. We both stared at it like it was a bomb about to go off.

“You get it,” Eddie muttered, nudging Steve with his foot under the table.

“No, you get it,” Steve shot back, already standing up.

He answered on the fourth ring, voice cracking just slightly. “Hello?”

It was the agency.

We remember every second of that call like it’s etched into our bones.

“Yes,” the woman said, her voice warm, careful, real. “We wanted to let you know that there’s a little girl at the agency who we think you might want to meet.”

There was a pause so thick you could cut it with a knife. Steve turned to look at Eddie, eyes already wide. Eddie dropped his comic, mouth slightly open.

“It’s not official,” the woman continued, “but we thought of you both right away.”

Steve covered the mouthpiece. “They want us to meet a little girl.”

Eddie stood up so fast his chair tipped backward. “A little girl?”

We said yes, of course. Tripped over each other to get the words out. The rest of the conversation was a blur—times, directions, a reminder that nothing was guaranteed yet. But our hearts were already racing, full-speed into something that had only existed as a maybe until that very second.

When we hung up, we just stood there, dumbstruck.

“We’re meeting a little girl,” Steve said softly, like if he said it too loud, it might disappear.

“I need to sit down,” Eddie muttered, and then didn’t. He just leaned into Steve and kissed him, slow and trembling. “We’re gonna be so fucking good at this.”

We didn’t talk much on the drive. Steve gripped the wheel like it was the only thing keeping him from flying off the planet, and Eddie kept tapping his fingers on his thigh, counting the miles like heartbeats. We both stared out the windshield, the world flying past us in smudges of green and gray as we imagined what you might be like, but inside the car, everything felt still—like a breath held before a song begins.

As we pulled into the lot of the agency, Eddie reached over and squeezed Steve’s hand.

“You ready?” he asked.

Steve smiled, eyes shining.

“Like you can’t imagine.”

And then we walked in.