When Constellations Form (Light in the Dark 4)

A little girl who can be and do anything she wants to do.

It’s a beautiful and amazing thing.

I walk Thea to her car. “Do you have to go back to work?” I ask her.

She shakes her head and pushes a piece of light brown hair out of her eyes. “No, Laurel gave me the day off. What about you?”

“Coach gave me the rest of the day off.” I shove my hands in the pockets of my jeans, looking down at the glossy ultrasound photo Thea holds. It has an arrow pointing between her legs saying IT’S A GIRL. “Should we go around and tell everybody?” I ask. She shakes her head and I raise a brow. “No?”

“Well, I mean, I want to tell them, but let’s make it fun.”

I tilt my head to the side. “What do you have in mind?”

“You’ll see.”

Twenty minutes later, I find myself at a party supply store, strolling the aisles, while Thea calls everyone and begs them to come over to our place for dinner.

She hangs up from her last phone call and looks up at me. “Everyone can be there by seven, so we’ll reveal the gender and have dinner.”

“And what kind of dinner are we having?” I ask, raising a brow. I doubt we have enough food for a meal that feeds all of us.

She waves a hand dismissively. “We’ll order pizza. It’ll be fine.”

/>

I nod along with her idea. “Pizza works.”

It’s easy enough to feed a bunch of people pizza. Everybody loves pizza.

“Okay, so what are we doing?” I ask, leaning against the cart as I push it.

“I think we should get one of those really big black balloons and fill it with pink confetti and pop it.”

I think over her idea. “Yeah, that sounds cool and easy enough.”

“I thought so too. It’s too short notice to do like cupcakes or something, and I don’t want to wait.” She vibrates with excitement so I believe her. She’s smiling from ear to ear. It’s the first time through this whole pregnancy that I’ve actually felt like she’s happy about it.

We head to the counter and order a gender reveal balloon.

The guy working the counter looks like he’s barely in high school. He’s tall and scrawny with acne. He moves in slow motion and it’s obvious he hates his job.

After a ridiculously long amount of time, we finally get our balloon, and I’d be praying it was indeed filled with pink confetti if I hadn’t seen him do it, but it’s a miracle he didn’t mess it up. The kid acts so flustered about everything.

We head out of the store and kiss goodbye, since we’re in separate cars and head home.

We still have hours until dinner, which sucks, because I just want everyone to know.

I’m going to have a daughter.

It’s so fucking crazy and exciting.

I can’t wait to be able to hold her, and tell her I love her, because I do.

It’s so crazy to me that I can already love someone I can’t see. It doesn’t matter, though. She’s half me and half Thea, so she’s already perfect.

We arrive back at the house and Thea immediately grabs her laptop and blanket, getting fixed on the couch.

“I want to look at nursery ideas,” she tells me.