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It’s a hot night. A sticky night. The type you associate with sparklers and smiling so hard your cheeks hurt and wishing it will never end.
The perfect night for a baby shower. If Ronan had any notions of fatherhood beyond Opal, whom he had pulled from his own subconscious fully fledged, he would have the baby shower on a night like tonight. The pasture of the Barns has been strung with Edison bulbs that emitted a magical glow and glow bugs were flitting in and out of the mass of people, in their peak season. Before the sun went down, when the baby shower had been more traditional and not like a party scene out of a movie, the rest of the decorations Henry precisely picked had been picturesque: all faux marble columns, golden ivy, flowing linens, and bees with fluttering wings.
From his vantage point, Ronan could see Opal popping above the crowds occasionally, Adam probably tossing her up and catching her. If he strained, he could almost hear the peals of her laughter. If he closed his eyes, he could perfectly picture their smiles as Adam caught her again and again. It brought a small smile to his face, a private one.
The door to the house clicked shut and the porch groaned as someone approached him. Note to self: bring the porch to the top of the to-do reno list.
Blue settled next to him, leaning her back against the railing where Ronan’s elbows were resting on. “You’re missing the party.”
Ronan studied her, backlit from the party, out of reach of the house lights. She looked vaguely angelic: a white off-the-shoulder dress cinched over her baby bump with a golden belt, greenery in her messy hair, and shimmering gold dust on the skin of her shoulders and face. “So are you.”
Blue shrugged. “Had to pee. The baby’s kicking my kidney today.”
Ronan opened his mouth then shut it. “I don’t think that’s how that works.”
Blue laughed. It was a sharp, almost obnoxious sound, overlapping the sounds of the party. The party had taken on its own life, rising and falling, music turned up loud enough Ronan was glad he didn’t have neighbors. At this point, the only thing resembling a baby shower was Blue’s presence, heavily pregnant.
“Congrats, by the way,” Ronan said. The words were bulky in his mouth, not quite rolling off the tongue right. “I don’t know if I ever told you.” He had, in his own way. Not explicitly, never explicitly.
Blue’s hands moved from the rail to the underside of her stomach, highlighting the curve of it. Ronan wondered if he would be able to see the baby kick, if he tried hard enough. She looked at him, a small smile on her face. “Thank you.”
Ronan nodded once.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Blue asked, breaking the silence they had lapsed into. Ronan liked that about her, she wasn’t irked by the gaps in conversation or his broody silences and sharp responses.
He jerked his head as an answer.
“It’s a boy.”
Ronan stood up, rolling his shoulders out. He saw Opal fly up, focused in on her giddy laughter. She would be miserable tomorrow, sleep deprived and cranky, but it was worth it. Ronan knew she was having a blast. “How do you know?”
“I'm almost a psychic.”
Oh. Right. Minor technicality. “Gansey doesn’t know.”
She shook her head. A piece of hair fell out of it’s restraints. She tucked it behind her ear. It was shockingly girly and innocent, it jarred against the vision of her in his head. “He wants it to be a surprise.”
“Well, technically-”
Blue cut him off by laughing. Her eyes scrunched up in the corner and she clapped a hand over her mouth. She chipped her front tooth hiking ruins in Peru with Henry and Gansey in their gap year. She laughed with her hand as a buffer now, and Ronan still hadn’t figured out who to fight for it, for making her feel insecure about her smile. “Oh, Ronan,” she said.
“Blue.”
Blue pursed her lips, an act that didn’t make sense since was still smiling. Her hand drifted down to rest on the crest of her stomach. “We’re having trouble with a middle name though. We have one picked for a girl, but…”
Ronan snorted. He dug his hands into his pockets and leaned against the siding of the house. “Well?”
“What about Lynch?” She asked casually, but her eyes were sharp and sparkling. She knew exactly what she was doing. Of course she did. Fuck her. She was one of the people he loved most in the world.
“Terrible middle name, frankly. Too many last names to give a kid.”
Blue’s attention wavered away for a second. She looked over her shoulder at the party. “Noah Lynch.” It rolled off her tongue, her accent coating the words, dripping honey and sweet tea and long summer days and nights off of them. As an afterthought, “Gansey-Sargent.”
“A mouthful,” he said, though his heart was rolling in somersaults at it. Something about the absurd name, full of all the names that meant the most to him, tugged at his insides.
She focused back on him, that teasing smile still dancing on her face. “Just a thought. Who knows what we’ll go with.”
Ronan wrinkled his nose at that. In his pockets, his fingers fidgeted, his right hand playing with the simple platinum band tucked into the dark corner. “Bet Chang would let you give the kid his last name as a middle name. Probably would let you throw it into the hyphenated part too.”
Blue scoffed. “He is not in love with us.”
Ronan snorted at that. An ongoing source of disagreement. Blue and Gansey very much only had eyes for each other, but Ronan was certain Henry also wanted a sliver of that. Almost one hundred percent certain, he had a knack for knowing these things. Blue rolled her eyes at him and swatted his shoulder.
“Plus,” she carried on pointedly, “I think he should be named after his godfather at least a little.”
Another constant point of contention. “Adam is also his godfather.”
Blue smiled, running her hands down the side of her bump. Ronan had never understood why pregnant women touched their stomachs so much until Blue had started showing. Even without being the father, Ronan was obsessed with the child; when Blue would come to Barns he would just sit and watch, wrapped in awe of the niece or nephew he was to gain. He had never imagined he could feel so strongly for a person he had never met. It was so strong it rivaled his love for Opal, the strongest he has ever felt, something he had thought comparable. “You two are going to be great. The perfect uncles.”
Ronan scrubbed his head, the beginning of stubble roughing up the pads of his fingers. “Noah would be laughing right now.” Maybe it's random, doesn’t fit into the flow of conversation but the reference of being a family is the actualization of late night talks in the open living room on Monmouth. “Doubled over, crying laughing.”
“Oh?”
“We used to talk. Before you, before everything. We would talk about having a family, a big one.” Ronan pauses, grief tightening up his throat. The pain that had followed Noah’s death had faded, but the flashes that caught him sometimes were debilitating. “Kids and wives.” He snorted; in all the iterations of those conversations he had never stopped and said, No, I will never be marrying a woman, but carry on. “We’d talk about being uncles, the kids being cousins, you know, making our own family where nothing bad would ever happen. Where we made the rules.”
“Oh Ronan.”
Ronan reached out and put his arms around Blue’s shoulders. She was small enough that she slotted herself against him, pressed close enough he could feel a particularly rough kick from the baby. “Don’t talk like that. That wasn’t the point of the story.”
Blue laughed, “Okay, carry on.”
“Once Gansey and Adam were sleeping, Noah and I would go to my room and we’d drink—or I’d drink and Noah would pretend to because, well, he was dead and I’d wax poetic about Gansey, sometimes Adam, and Noah would laugh at me until he was blue in the face and I was almost drunk.”
Blue giggled. “I can’t imagine that.” She laughed again, then winces imperceptibly just as Ronan feels another kick. “No wait, I can.” She’s lost in giggles again and Ronan relished in it, the way her whole body shakes with it. She breathed in sharply, giggles still finding their way through it. “Oh my god, you were in love with Gansey.”
Ronan snorted. Reached up and messed up her hair. “Thought I was.”
“What happened?”
Ronan shrugged. “You. Adam. Not sure.”
“Right, yeah, I have no idea what that means.”
“I’m not sure either.”
Blue poked Ronan’s ribs. “Were you jealous? Of little old me?”
Ronan pushed her weight off of him briefly and she shrieked, but before she could rebalance herself he pulled her back into him. He’s not sure when the last time he was physically affectionate with someone who wasn’t Adam or Opal was, but it’s nice. Blue is warm, they both are, but she’s practically radiating heat. “No.”
Blue laughed, whacking him repeatedly on the stomach. “Oh! You were!”
Ronan remained silent. Then, “No. Of course not.”
Blue snorted. “Yeah right.”
“Only so you stop saying I was jealous,” Ronan said defiantly. “You just made me see things differently.”
Blue bursted out laughing. She curled over with it, pushing herself away from Ronan and bracing her hands on her knees. Ronan couldn’t help but laugh with her. Her pitchy, unwavering laugh, had the magic of making everyone want to laugh as well, and Ronan wasn’t immune.
The laughs eventually faded to silence padded by the sounds of the party, but neither of them made to leave. Blue rested against the wall, her arm pressed against Ronan’s. “Does this mean we have the same type?”
“What?”
“Yeah. We were both into Adam or Gansey at one point and now we have kids with either Adam or Gansey.” Blue chuckled and Ronan was slightly amused by the mere image of it.
Ronan pointedly did not answer, though. The idea of having the same type as Blue was slightly disturbing. The thought of trying to compare the similarities of Adam and Gansey that both of them found attractive was decidedly more so. “I think, maggot, the idea that we’re both Adam’s type is more concerning.”
Ronan felt Blue’s judgmental stare on him and he looked over to meet her eyes. They were shining with mirth and tears were still wet on her face from her last voyage into hysterics. Their eyes met and they both started laughing again. It was impossible not to. Laughter of this kind—stomach-clenching, lung-heaving laughter—was addicting.
“What are you two laughing about?”
Still laughing, Ronan looked up to see Gansey, Gansey-ish as ever in a mint green polo and borderline atrocious linen shorts. “You and Adam.”
Blue snorted and laughed harder, covering her hand with her mouth. She stifled her laugh back enough to choke out, “I’m sorry babe.”
Gansey smiled good-naturedly. He was unflappable when it came to the two of them it always seemed. (Unless they were in danger. But no one was in danger. And danger would not be welcomed back for a very long time.) “Ah, I see.”
The door to the house slammed shut from someone kicking it shut. The deck groaned as they approached. Adam materialized in sight, corners of his mouth quirked up, posture loose and relaxed. “You see what, Gansey?”
“They’re laughing at us.”
It was enough to set Blue and Ronan off again. They were insatiable. Maybe it was something in the air, the heady, summer, party air.
“Oh,” Adam said, but he didn’t seem fazed. He smiled slightly and squeezed Ronan’s shaking shoulder. “Makes sense.”
Blue snorted once more, bringing a smile to Gansey’s face. His eyes softened; he was so soft for her. She forced herself to take a deep breath and straightened up. She tucked her mussed up hair behind her ears and smiled. “Well, of course. What else would the two of us be doing?”
They fell silent as everyone seemed to briefly ponder the absurd question. And then they were all laughing. It was…perfect.
It’s a perfect night. It’s a hot night. A sticky night. The type of night you spend with the people you love the most in the world, your family. It’s the type of night you remember because you laughed so hard you cried.