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Andrew is holding up two bougie six-packs of seltzers under the harsh fluorescent glow of deli lighting when his phone goes off in his pocket. It’s only ten-thirty, and it’s still on vibrate, so he squints at Aaron’s name on his screen. He sets the blackberry flavor down, handing the peach one to Neil to set in the basket.
“Hello.”
“They’re twins,” Aaron says, breathless.
The urge strikes to check his pockets for a carton. Andrew just turns to where Neil is wandering down the aisle in loud Crocs. “I’m with Neil.”
Aaron scoffs into the phone, and Andrew sets all of his weight on one hip.
“They’re twins,” Aaron says again, like Andrew could forget.
Neil turns at the sound of his name and looks inquisitively at Andrew. He’s pretty sure Neil can’t hear the phone with the tinny audio and buzz of coolers around them, and when Andrew cranes his neck he can see the distinct lack of an aid against Neil’s right ear.
Andrew doesn’t move the phone from his ear. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Aaron says, his punchline. “They just saw the second one, Katelyn’s fine, and it’s really all fine.”
Andrew hums. He leads them out of the aisle and towards the bread against a far wall, Neil trailing dutifully behind.
“Did you order a crib yet? You need two, you know.”
“I know, Andrew.”
Neil has caught on, Andrew thinks. He stays quiet, and Andrew studies their all-black sneakers and green camo Crocs side by side while he sucks on his teeth.
Andrew decides he doesn't have the bandwidth to dissect the thought of another set of Minyard twins existing. “We booked our flights the other day. We’ll be on a road trip, but we should get a night there.”
“They’ll probably come early,” Aaron says, and Andrew is glad Neil is close enough to the phone to hear.
“Okay,” Andrew manages, and he ends the call with a gentle tap.
They do come early. Andrew and Neil meet two little girls when they’re just a week old, though, and between Katelyn tiredly nursing one and the constant diaper changes, Andrew doesn’t think they've missed much. Both he and Neil are a little grimy from locker-room showers, but he can’t fault the rushed exit and two-hour drive in a rental SUV.
Aaron had opened the door in a t-shirt with a hole in the collar that says “Doctor’s Husband.”
“You came.”
Andrew pushes past him, slowly toes his shoes off, and sets his coat on a bench they keep in the entryway. Neil follows.
Neither Fran nor Flora weighed more than six pounds at birth. Neither of them looks any bigger now, tucked into Katelyn’s side in a big, blue recliner. Both names were Katelyn's idea, Andrew knows, and he’s sure Aaron’s grateful for it. He pauses to look on the threshold.
“They’re so little,” Neil says, a little awed. Andrew doesn’t turn to him.
Katelyn’s eyelids are low, and the gray sweater she’s wearing is too loose at the collar to be stylish. She and Aaron match. “Do you want to hold them?” she asks, sitting up a bit.
“Wash your hands,” Aaron says, not even giving Andrew a moment to process. He feels high, really, looking around a granite-countered kitchen with bottles on a drying rack and a window into the dark backyard. He washes his hands for thirty seconds with soapy water. Neil does the same.
When they’re back in the living room, safely sitting on the couch, Aaron lifts one of the twins from Katelyn’s arms. He thinks the pink nail on her hand means it’s Francesca Minyard. Her little face and the baby-blue onesie she’s snapped into lodge their way into his chest like shrapnel, right between his ribs.
She’s a quiet mound in Aaron’s arms. He crouches down to pass her over, but for a moment, both men just watch her. She’s curling her hands into fists and entering wakefulness, although her eyes are still just slits. Neil is quiet, and Andrew is grateful.
Fran is as heavy as a weight Andrew would use in PT if he fucked up his wrist. She’s warm, and her breathing is a lot of movement on such a small form, and she fits in the crook of Andrew’s elbow. His hand cups around her back, soft fabric meeting calloused palms.
Neil leans into her face, probably closer than Aaron would like by the way he stands with straight shoulders, and whispers, “It’s nice to meet you.”
It’s nice to meet you, Andrew thinks, hoping his eyes aren’t as wide as they feel. Katelyn is a hot gaze on him from where she’s sat with the other one, but after a few seconds, Aaron sits on Andrew’s other side, and sound can once again filter through Andrew’s ears.
“Can they even see yet?” he asks, a little too monotone because if it isn’t that, it’s something much worse.
“Close-up,” Aaron answers, hands set on his knees, and his knuckles a little white. Andrew is sure Katelyn’s family has visited. These kids, these babies, have not lived a life where Aaron and Katelyn are the only ones to hold them. He’s still not offended by Aaron’s fear.
Andrew holds back a flinch with his full body when Fran hiccups with her eyes closed; Aaron flinches. But then, it’s quiet, and they’re all still again.
“I’m giving Neil Flora,” Aaron says, and he stands to do so. He looks back the whole time, only turning for a brief second to meet Katelyn’s arms, and Andrew just watches this little bundle of life in his arms. She’s got dark eyelashes and a cowlick that is only visible through the darker patch of hair at her crown of wispy hair. He looks up, and remembering there’s a twin is almost enough to pull the ground out from under him.
They had talked about it a few times in the past months. One phone call, Andrew had been in the car on the way back from a vet appointment that he had to take both cats to alone, and he had been hung up on. It took them one more call to accept that Andrew needed to compartmentalize his thoughts on passing on Minyard genes and traumas before they could actually talk about it.
Neil takes Flora with less grace than Andrew. He reaches for her, at first, then tells Aaron to hold on as he wedges himself to sit all the way back on the couch. His hands aren’t shaking, probably through great force of will, but Andrew sees the way his tense expression is mirrored on Neil.
She eventually settles in his arms with open eyes and a fist that curls and reopens. Flora—Florence—looks identical to Fran at the end of the day. Aaron said there was a possibility that that wouldn’t be true, but Andrew knows otherwise.
Andrew only watches Neil for a moment. Fran stretches her arms high above her head in his grip, her eyes blinking open slowly. They’re blue. Katelyn has brown eyes. Andrew has no idea what’s happening there.
These babies will never know any version of any person in this room other than who they are now. They don’t know, at least not yet, that their father stood trial for horrible crimes and Andrew stood with him; scar tissue on Neil’s face is going to be a fact of life, not something they react to; and Katelyn is going to be their mom and Andrew’s sister-in-law. Andrew looks between both of the girls and doesn’t taste anything but something warm and nostalgic.
They had filled up the actual fridge and freezer with liquor and trays of prepped food, so Andrew finds himself elbow-deep in the freezer they keep in the garage to get another bag of ice. The coolers outside are fighting with tooth and nail to beat the July heat, but it’s really a losing battle when they’re opened every two fucking seconds.
“Uncle Drew,” Fran says while his head is in to try to figure out why this bag won’t get pulled out from under steaks and boxes of frozen dumplings, and he curses as he bangs his arm into a shelf in a flinch.
“Francesca,” he says, standing up.
She’s standing in the doorway from the kitchen to the garage, little blue sandals wrapped around her ankles and blue and red ribbons bouncing in her pigtails. She’s wearing a tank top that says "All American Girl."
Andrew scrubs at his hair, grateful he didn’t slam his head into the lid. “What are you looking for?”
She licks her lips, and Andrew can see the very distinct stain of a red popsicle around them. He squints at her while she rocks on her heels. “Uncle Neil said you keep popsicles in the garage.”
“Oh, he did?” Andrew asks, huffing a little laugh.
Fran nods, looking around the garage. They’ve got both the cars in, because they really only get one-and-a-half street spots in the neighborhood for guests. She scans the stack of cat carriers, the rack with half a dozen sticks in various states of tape and use, and the pile of sneakers that Andrew threw out here in a rage when Neil started and was unable to complete going through them. Andrew thinks, in his humble opinion, that they are all worthy of the garbage. Neil is insistent that he will wear them again.
Andrew sighs, reaching back down to pull out a pair of bomb pops. He herds Fran back into the house and out the back door, sliding it shut behind them.
“Share,” he says, breaking the paper apart and handing both of them to her. She runs off and around the corner, but it’s not really his problem.
They’ve got the big table and umbrella set up in the corner of the yard, and Andrew pads through the grass to set himself on the bench. Nicky is talking to Erik while being fully committed to devouring the wings Andrew smoked, and it’s kind of gross, and his elbow keeps knocking into Andrew, but he doesn’t even acknowledge his presence. Andrew lifts his can up and finds it empty.
Andrew squints back into the sun, seeing Fran obediently hold both popsicles while Flora gets out of an Adirondack chair by going under the armrest. She obediently passes the other popsicle over. Neil is sitting with them in the grass, his shorts and tank already stained with green.
“Andrew,” Nicky says, like he’s been saying it for a few seconds, and Andrew turns his head. “You should get me a piece of cake.”
“I was just in there,” Andrew says, craning to see the mess of chicken bones and remnants of salad in front of Nicky.
“Go,” Nicky says, pushing at him, an immovable force, until Andrew decides to get up himself.
He flips him off behind his back, but, for all his sighing, pushes back through the sliding glass door.
Kevin’s making a plate for himself inside, and Andrew meets his eyes as they look up. He looks good: tan, muscled, and broad, like mid-offseason usually brings for him.
Andrew picks up a paper plate from the stack, carefully cutting a square of the Texas sheet cake for Nicky. He leans against the counter while Kevin finishes up, taking a bite out of the cake.
“Don’t spoil your diet,” Kevin says, setting the plastic wrap back on the plate of fruit.
“’Won’t,” Andrew responds, licking frosting off his knuckle.
He steps over to the sink to rinse off his hands and watches out the window. Neil is on his knees, now, grabbing at the girls running around him with half-eaten popsicles. His doctor would be incredibly disappointed to see the way he’s stomping around on angry kneecaps.
Aaron yells from somewhere out of view, probably taking the last kebabs off the grill, “Don’t run with those in your hands!” The girls pause, skidding a little in the grass, and Andrew watches them turn to their father. Neil corrals them with his arms, and Fran focuses on finishing her popsicle while Flora acquiesces hers to Neil. Andrew watches with a bit of horror as the bomb pop get bitten off its stick and chewed.
“He’s going to get sick,” Kevin says, picking cantaloupe out of the fruit salad and popping it into his mouth.
“He’s indestructible,” Andrew says, picking up his plate and finally stepping back outside. The stones under the awning are warm in the shade, just from the sheer terrible heat summer has brought.
Kevin steps behind him, and Andrew looks back to make sure the door’s shut. Kevin slides the sunglasses on his head down over his eyes.
He sets the plate down in front of Nicky, ignoring the offended squawk at the missing piece, and zig-zags through sections of leafy shade to Neil.
Neil takes his hand to stand when it’s offered, brushing grass off his legs. His hand is sticky with popsicle but Andrew squeezes it once anyway before he lets go. “Have you eaten?” Andrew asks, picking a particularly large leaf off the back of Neil’s arm.
Neil hums an affirmative, watching the girls as they sit on the curbstone of the flowerbed. They’ve let the HOA figure out the landscaping for the past few years, hiring the same guys to do their backyard, and it does look nice. Not a lot of flowers, or anything super colorful, but the girls’ little blond heads stick out against big green bushes.
Neil’s smile is soft and stupid in the sun when Andrew looks over at him. He’s tanner than he’s ever been at this time of year, and getting darker, and Andrew attributes it to the home improvement and carpentry projects he does in the driveway. Andrew didn’t realize Neil was a homemaker at heart until they’d paid off a few years of the mortgage.
He’s not allowed to look for more than a few seconds before Neil turns and leans his shoulder into Andrew, smiling in that way he knows Andrew can’t refuse. “We should head down to the beach,” Neil says.
“It’s not going to be dark for hours,” Andrew says, instead of continuing the argument that the patch of Home Depot sand on the edge of their development’s pond is not a beach.
Neil shrugs at him, already leaving for the stack of Roman candles and sparklers against the side of the house.
Aaron yells for the last few hot dogs from the grill, and Flora immediately stands, abandoning her sister. “I need ketchup, Dad!” she yells, by far the loudest voice in the yard. She has never, in her life, experienced a lack of ketchup.
“You should put more sunscreen on,” Neil says, already walking off to the fireworks.
“Oh, but it’s a perfect time to do these at the fake beach.” Andrew picks up one of the boxes, hefting it under his arm. He looks down at himself as he does it, unfortunately aware that his meds will have him pink in half an hour if he’s not careful.
“Uncle Neil,” Fran says, slowly following them like a duckling. “Will you help me and Flora do the sparkles?”
Andrew closes his eyes as he walks to cope with his niece calling sparklers sparkles in her tiny little voice. He hears Neil reassure her that, yes, they will help them with the sparkles.
Fran is devouring a hot dog when Andrew reaches Aaron, and he grimaces at the mix of popsicle, chips, hot dog, and pasta salad that is sure to be going on. “Your daughter’s appetite is a horror.”
“Don’t comment on what she eats,” Aaron replies, automatically, focused on scraping off the grill. Andrew shrugs.
“We’re gonna go down to the pond in a few minutes,” Andrew says, stacking plates that had held raw meat and veggies with a grimace. The juices are pink on white ceramic. It’s a terrible thing to be an adult.
Aaron looks up, biting his lip at the fireworks in the yard. “That’s not a good idea.”
Andrew rolls his eyes instead of saying something too real and scathing about their own childhoods.
They eventually gather all of their shit and wander down, although it takes another half hour. Nicky can’t find his sneakers, so he’s wearing a pair of sandals that Kevin brought in his suitcase, and Katelyn is lugging a full first-aid kit.
Neil opens the gate that keeps the pond from being a hazard, letting the girls duck under his arm, before he pulls it open wide for everyone else. They wind down the narrow gravel path, while the girls run ahead of them.
The pond—no matter how much Neil insists Andrew is just ungrateful—really isn’t much. Yellow-brown sand, a line of rocks in the middle that someone must have arranged, and an algae-filled way into the water. There’s a flagpost in the middle of the sand, and Andrew sets water bottles and a towel around it. Neil is already peeling his socks and shoes off.
“Okay, so first, we’re going to get cattails, and then, we can do the sparklers,” Neil is saying, one eye on the girls to make sure they’re carefully putting their socks in their shoes and setting them down nicely.
“Uncle Neil, I don’t want Flora to fall into the water like she did at the pool.”
Andrew silences a laugh, thinking of Flora’s fat little baby body falling when she lost her balance, because she really hadn’t faced any lasting effects from the embarrassment. Now they tell Fran about it every once in a while to make sure she remembers.
“She won’t fall in the water, Fran,” Neil patiently says, a little better at hiding his laugh. “I can get you both cattails if it helps.”
The girls nod seriously and say that yes, it would, and Andrew stretches to stand up. His toes dig into the sand, and he looks back to where Kevin is on the edge of it. “Come sit, Kevin,” he says, knowing the man won’t refuse.
Kevin sits down next to where Andrew is standing, although he does it slowly. Andrew sits criss-cross beside him.
“They’re getting really big,” Kevin says quietly, picking at a string on his shorts. His legs are pulled up under him, the brace on the right one bulky and black. They’re both showing their age.
Andrew doesn’t say anything, but he does look over at Kevin. Kevin looks back at him until he breaks. Neil is now sitting on the edge of the pond, his feet in a patch of cattails and tall grasses, reaching for the best stems. The girls clap their hands behind him, jumping and squealing, until Neil hands them each a cattail.
“Okay, now shake!” Andrew hears him yell, and all three of his fools are spreading the fluff of cattails through the air.
It drifts through the air, mixing with downy blond heads, and landing to sink in the water. Reeds become tangled in seeds, a marker of Neil’s mess. Fran is laughing with her whole belly and reaching to grab cattail fur from the air, and Flora is right next to her. Neil’s smile could hurt somebody.
“Thea wants kids,” Kevin says, and Andrew whips his head over to him.
“Do you?” he asks, a little incredulous at the confession.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
Andrew doesn’t say anything for a minute, because this is likely a sensitive topic, and he’s learned some tact. At this point in their lives, Kevin is something simultaneously close to and far from a brother. Andrew cares enough to hold back his scathing response.
He watches Kevin’s lids fall low to avoid Andrew’s gaze, and the way his fingers continue to pick at the hem. He would be fidgeting more if he let himself.
“Maybe I don’t want kids,” Kevin says, finally looking up.
“Then don’t have any, Kevin.”
He leaves Kevin with that, knowing he’s going to have to dissect this conversation with Neil later, because really, what the fuck does “Thea wants kids” mean?
“Girls!” Aaron is yelling, holding three sparklers in one hand, “Get over here!”
Aaron and Neil get the girls set up with sparklers, carefully passing them over. Flora squeals and almost drops hers when Neil hands it over, but Neil forces it into her hands until she just holds it straight above her head. Fran does a little better, maybe thanks to her dad giving firm instructions on sparkler use. Neil should not have been a part of it.
Andrew looks around, past Kevin, past the girls, past the cattails. Nicky and Erik are struggling with a lighter from the kitchen that Andrew is sure doesn’t work. Katelyn is picking up sparkler boxes and wrappers, leaning against Aaron once she’s finished. It’s his family.
“Andrew,” Neil draws out, setting his hands on Andrew’s shoulders and leaning down. “I have a surprise for you.”
Andrew turns his head, already scared. “And what is that?”
Neil just laughs and pushes Andrew’s bangs off of his forehead, before he turns to their things and pulls some firework out of a bag.
Andrew had, very specifically, not wanted Neil to buy the fireworks. Fireworks was a strong word for what Andrew wanted, anyway. He wanted sparklers, and maybe some poppers, and a singular box of Roman candles for the adults to use. This is something Neil had found by himself. He pushes himself to stand and run after Neil when Neil runs.
“It’ll be fine!” Neil yells over his shoulder, darting his bare feet into the grass and skidding to a stop.
“What the fuck is that, Neil Josten?” Andrew says, whisper-shouting for the girls.
“It’s just a bottlerocket, I saw it on a video, it’ll be fine!”
Andrew squints at the paper-wrapped tube Neil is holding by a stick.
“Away from the girls,” Andrew says, stern.
Neil mimics him with some unfriendly mouthing, but pulls a blue lighter out of his pocket. Andrew takes a few big steps back and watches carefully.
It becomes particularly clear, extremely quickly, that bottlerockets are not meant to be held. Andrew did not know this fact until Neil yelled obscenities, letting the firework soar over the side of the pond, and shaking out the heat from his arm.
The whole group is shouting, and the girls are a little scared, but it settles down when Andrew waves them off. Not before yelling at Neil as quietly as he can.
“That was stupid,” he finishes his rant with, running fingers down red skin that probably won’t blister.
“Yeah,” Neil says, which is more of an apology than anything.
Eventually, though, the sparklers gleam bright against the night sky. The girls have mostly exhausted their fascination, which isn’t surprising, and both are becoming cranky kids hungry for dessert.
“Hey, babe,” Neil whispers from behind him, leaning his weight onto Andrew while he searches for a can of pop.
Andrew stands all the way up, leans his head back onto Neil’s shoulder. “Neil.”
“We just hosted Fourth of July,” Neil says, smirking and smug.
“It’s not over until they’re all out of my house.”
Neil huffs a laugh and gets off of Andrew, waving him off.
The girls are squatted at the edge of the water, talking to one another and poking at bits of greenery. Their shorts are both brown and green on the butts from sitting outside, and Fran’s hat is on backwards with the bow at her back. Flora’s got grass stuck to her legs all the way up to the knee.
They'd better remember this, Andrew thinks, taking stock of the food and home and adults with most of their lives together around him. These girls better have no idea what struggle to put on their college essay.