Summary: Summer lovin', the name game, house hunters

A/N: Thanks for your patience with this update, friends. I had a really bad week. Got some difficult news that plunged me into an emotional spiral for a few days. I'm still dealing with it. I had to back off writing for a little while, but I couldn't stay away for too long because the sweetness of this particular fic is kind of healing. So if this chapter is a little bit extra fluffy, that's why. Let us wade through their happiness together.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Gold In The Air of Summer

TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS — HEAD OF LETTUCE

Rey wasn't good at relationships.

Her previous forays into couple-hood with others had been failed experiments, really. She wanted them to work, she thought, and at the point of breakup she always wondered what had gone wrong. But every time, after she'd thought about it for a while, she always came to the same conclusion. She just really sucked at being vulnerable with another person.

She always held something of herself back. Kept one foot out, ready to make her getaway before he could get hurt.

Trust didn't come easily to Rey. At least, not the kind of deep, willing certainty necessary for a meaningful and lasting relationship. Committing herself to someone like that felt like two people jumping off a cliff hand in hand. She couldn't ever make that leap before. She smiled and played along and let a few of them call her girlfriend and she did the things expected of her, but she kept an eye on an open door and held back pieces of her heart, waiting for it to inevitably fall apart. And it always did. Either she messed up, or they did, but usually it came down to each partner realizing that Rey only ever circled the perimeter of their relationship, investigating the edges for weak points.

She pretended not to know why she couldn't hang on to romance. But she did know. Of course she knew.

Trauma was a sticky thing. Hard to scrape off. Hard to be rid of.

Therapy helped. She'd been going off and on for years, before she even arrived in the States. Her circle of good, safe friends helped even more. Even though none but Ben knew about her darkest shadows, she felt genuinely loved and understood by them. She learned how to trust others by being among them, practicing a little at a time.

And Ben...

With him, it had always been so damn easy. Maybe because she only let herself see him as a friend, or maybe it was just their compatible natures. Nothing about him threatened her. Nothing about their friendship made her feel restless or nervous, like she was merely one bad day away from getting hurt. She didn't hunt for escape points or wait for him to realize he didn't want her after all. Nothing between them ever felt like pressure.

He didn't ask for her to trust him and jump off any cliffs.

And so, paradoxically, she did trust him. Profoundly. As deep as trust could go, right to the most hidden, secret chambers of her heart. It built so subtly, she didn't even realize how much trust she'd had in him until she told him all about her bad childhood and the things she'd been through. Her wounds. And Ben, he responded exactly right. She felt fully seen for the first time in her life. He didn't treat her trauma like a burden, didn't abandon her on the steps of a church rather than deal with her. He kept her close. They went along as they had before, content with this natural friendship, Ben still acting like she was his favorite person in the whole world. Even though he knew how far her fractures ran.

In retrospect, she should have realized then that she was destined to fall in love with him.

How could she not? She'd never felt so safe to be herself with anyone before.

So this...this thing with him, it was new. And so different. Sometimes she got spooked by how it was all unfolding so effortlessly, each step forward not some giant stair to climb, but as easy as taking a breath. Jumping off the cliff and into this mutual free fall, it wasn't a leap. It required no courage, no bracing moment of fear. After that afternoon on the hilltop when they'd said those words, everything just sort of slid into place and suddenly she was flying with him.

The real shame was how long it took her to get to this point. Because they could have been enjoying all along the kind of life they had during the summer of Rey's second trimester.

A golden summer, swathed in the carefree, dream-like bliss that all the best summers share. Rey couldn't remember a happier one in her whole life.

Not even the physical discomforts of her condition could put a damper on her happiness. She ran hot, so hot, for those blazing months, her body transforming into a living heater determined to sweat her down to a wasted wick of a person. But Ben found a way to turn this into a tool for incredible intimacy. He whisked her off to his parent's private pool as often as she wanted. He instituted cool showers together every night, showers that sometimes included teasing touches and almost always ended with two slick, cold bodies colliding once they got to the sprawling expanse of Ben's bed. During the day, he plied her with popsicles and slushees aplenty, and when she was really too hot to endure it, he'd leave work to come home and use ice cubes on her in ways she would have blushed to explain to her friends.

She'd never been so glad to be so uncomfortably hot all the time.

They did all the usual things they did every summer — went to movies in the park, attended outdoor concerts, joined their friends for every one of Poe's backyard barbecues, watched the Independence Day parade from Rose and Hux's balcony (endured the typical jokes she and Hux always got on that particular day) and then found a grassy spot on a hill the same evening to lay out on a blanket and watch the fireworks. They went to a carnival and, despite signs warning against it and Ben's half-hearted protests, Rey bribed a bored ride attendant to allow her on the ferris wheel. Nothing happened, of course, except a lovely ride with Ben. She didn't try to go on any other rides, even though she was reasonably certain these piddly little attractions wouldn't do her or the hidden little girl any harm. Instead she took pictures of their friends on the rides and amused herself posting the most embarrassing ones to social media.

Yes, much of that summer was similar to how it had always been, but there were new things too. Things that the rules of their NSA friendship had not allowed before. Like all the kissing. Like the time Ben bought several pints of fancy artisan ice cream on his way home from work and they made a complete mess of the sheets tasting the different flavors off each other's bodies. Ben liked best the mascarpone-blackberry flavor. She liked best the dark chocolate-raspberry.

They did silly kid stuff too, as if making up for all the time they'd lost skirting around this thing. When they went to a children's entrepreneur fair and bought homemade bath bombs off a little girl, they filled an inflatable pool in the tiny spit of yard Ben had behind his condo and dumped all of them into the water at once. At the same fair they bought miniature homemade piñatas and busted them up, delighted to find a bag of pop rocks among the candy. After that discovery, Ben filled his mouth with them, pinned her to the couch, and showed her what it was to make out with literal fireworks sparking between their tongues. Like a couple of lovesick teenagers.

Rey loved it. She loved every minute.

But probably her favorite event of the summer was when Ben took her to his parents lake house for a week. Han and Leia went too.

Rey supposed he'd brought all his girlfriends there at some point. It was such a pretty, private little place, secluded among tall trees along a quiet shore of a vast, tree-rimmed lake. A great place for a romantic escape. But the very first day there, Han teased Ben about finally finding the courage to bring a girl, and Rey learned that she was the first.

This pleased her in ways she didn't have the language to articulate.

She loved that week at the lake house. Watching Ben and his parents interact in this intimate setting provided her with so much entertainment. They were a testy bunch, quarrelsome and easily exasperated, but their arguments never carried real heat, and never caused real injury. Mostly they bickered, but in a way that left no doubt how much they truly loved one another. Ben and his father, particularly, often butted heads over trivial things. But just as often as they fought, Rey would catch them engaged in some pursuit together. Like trying to clean out the choke valve on their little boat. Or when Ben got up early one morning to sit on the dock with his father and fish off the side. One time, inexplicably, Rey went into the den and found Han trying to show Ben how to carefully wrap a loaf of broad in a towel. When they saw her they both got flustered immediately and tried to hide their activities. Han tore off a huge chunk of bread and stuffed it into his mouth to avoid having to explain, which seemed to horrify Ben.

Rey never really did get a clear answer about what that one was about.

Both Han and Leia welcomed Rey with all the warmth she could have hoped for. They seemed genuinely happy to have her there. Leia showed Rey all the photo albums she kept at the Lake House, old pictures of Ben as a baby and a child. A gangly kid with big ears, a lopsided grin, and a whole lotta hair. Rey loved him. Leia patted Rey's belly and said she wondered if their daughter would look more like him, or like her.

Han discovered Rey had a knack for fixing things, and together they worked on fixing up an old pinball machine he kept at the lake house as a project. Before the week was up, they had it working again and the four of them took turns trying to beat each other's high scores. Leia was hopelessly terrible at it, but she was also a good sport and kept trying anyway. Ben turned out to be the pinball wizard no one expected.

On the second to last night there, she experienced one of those rare moments of pure peace. The sky had opened in spectacular fashion, so the four of them sat on the porch and watched the rain scatter across the lake, lightning slicing dramatically through the sky while thunder grumbled discontentedly around them.

Rey would remember that night for years to come. She and Ben occupied the porch swing, with her tucked up against him, her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. On her other side, Leia sat beside Han in a couple of wicker chairs, their feet propped up together on a coffee table. Everyone had a hot mug in hand, sipping herbal teas. Nobody really talked much as they took in the squall, but a feeling of togetherness permeated every particle of the charged night air. Rey had never been so certain that this moment right here was what the word family meant. That somewhere in those meaningful letters, this moment had been painted. And a few minutes later when Leia got up and fetched a blanket, tucking it in around them before spreading one for her and Han to stave off the chill of the rain, Rey knew that she'd finally glimpsed the definition of the word mother.

At times over the course of that week at the lake, Rey felt distinctly that she'd come at last to the rest at the end of a long journey. She'd struggled alone for so long, clawed her way through his life on sheer fury alone, stubbornly refusing to drown even when the ghosts of her past kept dragging her under. Now she didn't struggle anymore. She wasn't drowning. Finally, the universe had granted her a token for her tenacity. Her prize? A good man who understood her. A version of parents who willingly embraced her as theirs. A family of her own in the making.

Yes, sometimes she felt at peace with these turn of events. And other times, she doubted. This much happiness couldn't really be meant for her. She'd been allowed a lovely taste, and that's all, and someday the other shoe would drop and she'd end up alone. These thoughts were fleeting, thankfully, and she managed to trample them down with a healthy reminder that the hard parts were yet to come. To have this family of her own, she still had to push another human out of her body.

A human who still didn't have a name.

Because they were truly hopeless at that particular task. Extraordinarily bad. True champions of not taking it seriously at all.

Not that they hadn't tried. It was just that Ben had this absurd memory for music. As unrelated as the two seemed, Rey quickly realized that the latter really complicated the former.

It started with a name that Rey didn't even really know if she liked. While browsing a popular naming website, a lump of discomfort sitting low in her gut because this whole naming thing was leagues outside her comfort zone, Rey discovered a list entitled Names of Powerful Female Figures. Her brow quirked in interest, and the clicked through, vaguely supposing that a powerful woman namesake could be a good idea. Right? A good mother would want her daughter to emulate a strong example, right?

She started at the top of the list, deciding to say them out loud to hear how the sounds felt on hr tongue, how they cut through the air.

"Athena," she read, immediately amused. Goddess names, she supposed, were literally powerful.

"Athee-na!" Ben sang idly from the kitchen table where he was busy scrolling real estate websites.

Rey, reclined on the couch in the living room, lifted her head and shot him a startled look over the back of the sofa.

"What?" he said, blank-faced.

"You just...you just burst into song?" she said uncertainly, as if maybe he wasn't even aware he'd done it.

He laughed. "Athena."

Rey's brow furrowed. "Yeah."

Ben stared at her expectantly, his eyes widening. Apparently there was some significance here she was missing, but for the life of her, Rey could not begin to fathom what that was.

She shook her head, baffled. "Are you especially excited about that name?"

Had their search ended at this one first suggestion? Rey didn't know if she particularly loved the name, but then, she didn't really know about any part of this process. Did Athena match the squirmy creature currently jamming something hard into what felt like Rey's kidneys?

"No, it's a song," Ben chuckled, singing softly, "Athena, I had no idea how much I need her. No? Nothing?"

Rey shrugged helplessly.

He got up from the table, excited agitation manifesting in his quick movements now. He swept a hand through his hair, swinging his head in that disbelieving expression he wore when he thought she'd said something ridiculous. "No, I know you've heard it. You have. You'll recognize it. It's by The Who."

She laughed as he busied himself turning on his stereo and pairing it with his phone, because apparently this song couldn't go un-listened to.

It wouldn't be a one time thing. When Roger Daltrey finished singing about just a girl, Ben sat down next to her on the couch and nodded at the computer. "What else? Give me another."

Eleanor (for Eleanor Roosevelt, Rey assumed) turned into an impromptu karaoke session with Paul and the boys. Then the wind cried Mary, and Susan (B. Anthony?) became Wake Up Little Susie.

"Mixing their mythology a little, aren't they?" Rey said after the Everly Brothers faded out, "to have Athena and Diana in the same list?"

"Diana!" Ben said, his face lighting up. "Now that one is fun. You'll love the lyrics on this."

The speakers blared a male singer Rey didn't recognize, do-wop'ing his way through a very 50's-sounding song about a girl who was so old and he, the singer, was so young. Rey laughed. Ben nodded along, looking far too pleased with himself and tapping out the rhythm against her stomach. He leaned over and said in a low murmur,

"What do you think, little olive, are you a Diana?"

No, Rey thought. That didn't sound like it fit.

Ben's eyes widened and he sat up suddenly. "Wait, there's another. If age-gap cougar love doesn't convince you," he said, navigating to a new song on his phone. "How about something a little more familiar?"

Suddenly the living room filled with One Direction exultantly singing about a Diana whose language they didn't speak, but whom they wanted to save anyway.

They got absolutely nowhere that night, but Rey laughed so much she went to bed with aching abs, so really, she couldn't complain. One of the things she'd always enjoyed about their friendship over the years was how she alone knew about Ben's completely goofy side. He never made a fool of himself around anyone but her. Honestly, Rey didn't even know if Rose or their other friends would believe her if she tried to tell him he'd pulled her to in to bust cheesy moves and dance crazily around his living room with him. There had been other moments like that over the years, and Rey loved being the sole keeper of his silly side.

"How is it possible," Rose asked her a week after, "that you guys still can't think of any names?"

Rey shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know! Nothing seems to stick. We're just...not cut out for this part, I guess."

"Pick a theme," Rose urged. "Like, virtue names or something."

"Virtue names," she snorted. "Like Chastity?"

"Like Hope, Faith, Grace, that kind of thing. I don't know. Or not, but you know, a theme."

Rey told Ben about that conversation later, and he found it highly amusing.

"Virtue names," he said derisively. "Some puritanical standard to live up to? Like...Temperance?"

"Prudence?" Rey grinned.

"Patience," he said sagely, nodding.

She laughed. "Honor."

He looked up from the peppers he had on the fire of his gas range, filling the house with the mouth-watering aroma of roasted red pepper. "Courage."

"Modesty."

"Fortitude."

"Steadfastness? Nessie?"

They kept going like that, listing off increasingly ridiculous virtues as Rey chopped the chicken and Ben prepped the bruschetta. Afterward it devolved, somehow, into a discussion of The Scarlet Letter.

They really struggled to stay on topic.

Especially with that accursed jukebox in Ben's head going off all the time. Rey could soon swear that for every name, someone had written a song. And Ben had inevitably heard that song. It became a kind of game of hers to see if she could stump him. He was surprisingly hard to stump. She began to take more interest in finding obscure names no one had ever sung about than actually considering what she thought would suit their daughter.

They did, of course, hit the big ones. Layla. Annie. Cecilia. Lucy. Mandy. Jenny. Maggie. Fucking Caroline. Rey had walked right into that one, reading it off a list, not even realizing until it was too late what a perfect set-up she'd given him. And then of course they had to listen to the whole song, and sing along loudly.)

But there were other names too. Ones she'd certainly never heard sung, but which Ben nonetheless played for her. Evelyn. Charlie. Melissa. Josephine. Margot. Beatrice. So many more. Rey did wonder what it meant that for every girl who had ever been given a name, there was a corresponding songwriter who wanted to immortalize her.

"Face it," Ben sighed as they wandered through a late July farmer's market. "If you want a name that's never been put into song, you might have to make something up yourself."

At this point Rey felt a little irritable for no real reason other than heat and hormones. She threw back a little more tersely than he deserved, "What, like those weird syllables people just throw together and pretend is a trendy new name? Brixley? Irelyn? Taylee? Justus?"

Ben laughed. "Some people love those names."

"Some people forget they're naming adults and not perma-babies," she grouched. "What kind of self-respecting adult woman wants to introduce herself as Brixley?"

"I mean, for sure you won't find any songs named after them."

"I don't care if there's a song. It might even be a benefit, if it's a good song."

He stopped to buy a giant frozen lemonade, and Rey wondered how he could possibly know that icy cold citrus sounded so heavenly right in that moment. "Okay, well let's explore that theme idea again," he said after paying. They stepped aside while the booth attendant prepared the drink. "How about vintage? Old school names. I think I like old school names."

It was the first time he'd really given any indication of what his preferences were, and Rey wondered why he'd never bothered to mention this before. It certainly would have narrowed down their search a bit. But as soon as he handed over the frozen lemonade and she took a drink, her mind and mood began to cool. She didn't care that it was taking so long to find a name. Really, she didn't. Leia had been right about the fun part, at least.

"Vintage," she repeated thoughtfully. "Like Florence?"

"Florence isn't bad," he said with a small smile. "Hazel?"

"Hazel is nice." She settled back into their walk, nursing her drink. "Agnes?"

"No Agnes," he chuckled. "Phoebe?"

"Makes me think of Friends," she hummed.

"June?"

"Aw," she said with a small smile. "June is kind of nice."

He paused at a produce stand, loading up on as much fresh fruit as his market bag could carry. "Alice?"

"Makes me think of Lewis Carroll, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. A literary connection could be fun. Alice is nice."

"If you want literary," he said with amusement, "I'm rather fond of Scout."

"No Scout," she laughed. "That wasn't even her name, anyway."

"I know. It was Jean Louise." He winced and shook his head. "But no on Jean. That makes me think of Jean Grey, and she's way too tragic a character."

"Tragic? What do you mean? The Phoenix is powerful! She should have been on that list!"

After that, they fell into a debate about X-Men and the various storylines Jean Grey had been through during different comic runs. That discussion lasted the entire rest of their trip to the Farmer's market, and a little bit into the afternoon too, until they finally went with Finn and Poe to see an old Hitchcock film playing at one of the art theaters. After that they really just talked about the genius of Hitchcock.

Truly hopeless.

But Rey didn't mind. On a certain level, all this nonsense reassured her that things between them were much the same as they'd always been. When Ben had been away, she'd been suffocating by the terror that any significant shift in their relationship would spell their doom. That telling him those words, I love you, would change what they had. Would ruin it.

It didn't.

They were exactly the same as before, except now they kissed and cuddled and put words to the feelings tumbling around in their hearts. And now they didn't pretend there would ever be anyone else.

But it felt wrong to refer to him as her boyfriend. The word felt...inadequate. When people asked, she said he was her partner. That sounded okay to her. Because they were quest mates on this new journey together. Teammates. Co-conspirators.

"Like Frodo and Sam," she mused to him one night as they sat in bed. She leaned against the headboard. He reclined against her, angled strategically to avoid crushing her ever-growing bump. He thumbed through real estate listings yet again. She braided and unbraided his luscious hair.

"Then you're Frodo, and I'm Sam," he replied easily, "Because you're the one doing the hard work here."

Sometimes Rey really did feel like he was carrying her. When her emotions boiled over. When she got afraid and overwhelmed and suddenly panicked about the reality of having a baby. Forever. It felt like he carried her until she could find her footing again. But sometimes their roles reversed. Sometimes Ben struggled, and then Rey stepped in to comfort. She'd never tell Ben she was glad of his freak outs, but they certainly made her feel less cowardly for having her own. And besides, this caring thing, it made them even closer. Ben was always an affectionate fool after she'd spent time soothing him.

She liked learning with him. Liked exploring new coping skills. Liked moving through this undiscovered country of a real relationship. And time slipped through her fingers like sand through an hourglass, the summer bleeding out, until she was staring down the barrel of her third and final trimester.

Twenty-eight weeks. Twelve to go. And then they'd be parents.

Twelve weeks to finally accomplish the task that eluded her — provide her daughter with a sound to tie to her identity.

"What about a family name?" she asked him.

He'd finished with a client early and took a long lunch, meeting her at the cafe where she'd set up to work for the morning. She was done now, and eating with him. Currently he nibbled on rosemary fries, reading over one of the radio commercial scripts she'd written for a local audiophile speaker company.

His attention flicked up from her script, a little surprised at the question. "You want to talk about that? Don't you want my opinion on this?"

She shrugged. "Sure. What is your opinion?"

"It's good," he said with a smirk, and closed her laptop. "But you already knew that, I think."

She did. It was definitely one of her stronger scripts.

"So," she said expectantly. "Family name?"

Ben pressed his lips into a line, producing an uneasy noise, like a discontented rumble in his chest. "I'm not a big fan."

"You don't like any of your family names, or you don't like the idea of them in general?"

"Both." He seemed amused then. "Besides, there are only three names to choose from in my family. My mother, my aunt, my grandmother. I don't like Leia, Mara, or Padme. Do you?"

"Leia isn't so bad," Rey admitted after some thought. She smiled a little. "It would probably make your mother really happy. Or we could pick something else. Like...Hannah, after your father?"

He grimaced. "No. Neither. It's important to me that she forge her own identity in this life. I'm not...I'm not eager to saddle her with some legacy to live up to, like I had."

"A legacy isn't the worst thing," she mused. "It's better than having nothing at all."

His expression softened. He shifted his long legs under the table, perching them on the bar beneath her chair, right between her own legs. A small gesture of comfort, since he couldn't reach her hands currently in her lap. "You're right. And she will have a family. She'll have a heritage. I just don't want her to have to wear someone else's name as she makes her way in the world. She'll already have mine to back her up. Let's find something uniquely her own for a first name."

Warmth spread through Rey's chest at this reminder, grateful anew that this little girl would have her father's name behind her. To tether her to people, to him, to his father and mother. Solo was a good name to carry. Good enough that she could have her own and not feel alone in the world.

Good enough, maybe, that Rey could almost admit that she wanted it too.

Not that she'd say that out loud.

"Okay," she said instead, taking a deep breath. "So family is out. What's next? A new theme?"

He relaxed back in his chair. "Fruits and vegetables?"

She snickered. "Norse Gods?"

That made him crack a grin around another fry. "Freya? Frigg?"

"Oh, Frigg is a gem."

"You know," he mused, "Loki turned himself into a woman for a few of the myths. We could call her Loki."

Rey snorted so hard she actually choked on the sip of water she'd just taken, almost sending it straight through her nose.

Ben grinned and handed her a napkin as she laughed through her coughing fit. He didn't let up. "Sif? Sigyn? Hel? We've got some great options here. What do you think?"

"Hel is definitely the winner," she said when she'd recovered enough breath to speak.

Ben's hand opened in a motioning gesture. "There's so many possibilities with that one. Think of it. We'd get to say really metal things like, Hel is awake. Or, Rey, can you go to Hel? Or, Hey friends, this is Hel. It's just so versatile."

They really, really couldn't take this name thing seriously. Nobody could understand why they didn't have even a single option they were actually considering, none more exasperated than Leia, but it really was too hard to explain. Somehow they always deflected away from actually deciding, finding it easier to joke around, or sing, or devolve into literary critiques of Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Honestly, they should just silently compare lists and circle the ones they liked. Then they wouldn't be able to distract each other.

"Maybe she just won't have a name," she finally sighed when their lunch ended and Ben had to head back to work.

"Hey," he said encouragingly, pulling her to her feet because it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage her new center of gravity. "Don't worry. We will find one. When we do, and when it's the right one, it'll just stick."

He'd said that before. Rey wondered when that stick would finally happen, though. Because right now, everything just felt like...someone else. Like someone who could just walk in and introduce themselves. Not their person. The baby, the girl, the woman, who wouldn't exist if it weren't for them.

"Too bad it's frowned upon to give them numbers," she said wryly as she slid her laptop into her shoulder bag and started to follow him out. "She could just be called three."

"Three?"

She touched his arm. "One—" she touched her chest, "two—" and then she touched her rounded middle, "three."

Ben smiled one of his big, full smiles. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Three, huh? It's not great."

"A color then," she teased. "Green?"

They exited the cafe, standing out front, caught in the reluctance of parting. Ben's eyes flashed wickedly and a smirk danced along the edges of his lush mouth. "Green. You know, Joni Mitchell has this sweet song about her daughter. You know what she calls her girl, in the song?"

Rey groaned before he even said it.

He laughed. "Little Green."

"You, Ben Solo," she sighed, leaning up on her toes to kiss him once, sparks zipping through her veins even still. "You are impossible."

House hunting, for some reason, was no easier than choosing a baby name. Rey had never been through the process before, but it seemed to her that it really shouldn't have been this hard to find something. Their real estate agent, a woman by the name of Ciena Kyrell, assured them that their experiences were not normal. That she'd never experienced so much bad luck in her career, and they would definitely find something soon. Rey really wondered about that last part after their eighth failed showing.

The first house they tried looked beautiful from the pictures. Pictures that turned out to be carefully angled and selectively curated, because when they showed up to look at the place, they found all kinds of interesting…surprises. Like a stripper pole in the middle of the living room, complete with a color-changing spotlight and everything. And a bedroom that had been heavily renovated to depict something from a popular BDSM book trilogy-turned-blockbuster movie. Those things might have been easily taken care of with a little remodel, as Ciena gamely pointed out, but it was when they went to the basement to find a wall-to-wall collection of amateur oil paintings of what could only be assumed were the previous owners, naked and engaged in erotic activities, Ben firmly declared he definitely could not unsee any of it and the house was out of the running.

At another house they went to, Rey got halfway up the front drive before her nose told her something was very off. When Ciena opened the door, they were hit with a blast of cat-urine ammonia scent so strong Rey actually started to gag. She grabbed Ben, begged him not to go in that house because he'd come out smelling like a litterbox and she could not associate that scent with him. It would be indelibly imprinted on her brain, no matter how many showers he took.

And at the third house they tried to see, Ciena checked and double checked that the house would be empty, but when they took a tour of the upstairs, they found a naked man waiting in a doorway. When he saw Ben, he screamed and grabbed a pillow to cover his small endowment, shouting insults about how he specifically said no dicks in the craigslist personals ad.

The fourth house had a mummified cat in the cupboard under the stairs.

The fifth house had been on the market for a long time without any movement. It was nice, actually. An older home with a 70's style facade but updated interior. Nothing strange in any of the rooms. The trouble came while exploring the bedrooms, Ben kicked up some dust from a bookshelf and sneezed, loudly and unexpectedly, and the baby jumped, startled into a fierce kick or stretch or something that pressed hard on Rey's already compressed bladder. She had to make a mad dash for the bathroom. When she finished, she discovered to her everlasting horror that the water to the home had been shut off. She made a quick, humiliating exit and told Ben they had to go. She didn't tell him why until later, and then she had to sit through ten minutes of his laughter.

The sixth house had a full spread of finger foods and fruits and vegetables in the kitchen, which was lovely. Another couple toured the home with their agent just before Ben, Rey, and Ciena arrived. The other agent assured them the food was for prospective buyers, so everyone ate generously. Just when they were about to leave, the owner came home and burst into tears, saying she had a bridge group coming to play in an hour and that food was for them. It didn't change anything about the suitability of the home, but they all agreed there was no coming back from that.

The seventh house was definitely, definitely haunted. Walking through left Rey chilled and afraid and wanting to scrape a very bad vibe off her skin for hours after.

The eighth house was filthy. A layer of grime coated everything. The toilet and tub were black with mold. They got out of that one quickly too.

"Just come live in my neighborhood," Poe complained to them one day when they related some of these horror stories. "This is craziness. These homes are nice, and it'd be great to have you guys so close. I can even vet the property first so you don't have to walk in to some nightmare scenario again."

"Thanks," Ben said, "but we'll find something."

So confident. The summer was quickly fading away without a name or a home, yet here he stood, still so certain that things would work out in the twelve weeks they had left.

But Rey trusted him in this too. Truthfully, this home buying process made her feel a little jumpy anyway, even without all the weirdness. She'd never lived in a home like the ones they were looking at. She'd dreamed about it, sure, in those far-away pipe dreams she used to entertain to help herself fall asleep at night. Dreams of those fancy family houses where there was a loving mother and loving father, a few kids, plenty of food, comfy beds and warm baths enough for everyone. Thinking of these things soothed her to sleep during those dark, cold days. But she never imagined it could be in her future. She knew, in fact, that it couldn't. That she wasn't meant for that.

So to stand on the threshold now, to watch Ben carve out this kind of life for them, the three of them, and know that she could really have all of that — sometimes it got to be too much, emotionally speaking.

Sometimes her happiness felt too strong, and sometimes it felt edged with a kind of ache, close to sadness, that she'd never known life could be this good. She hurt for her young self, so alone, suffering, knowing that no one had cared enough about her to give her the kind of childhood she and Ben wanted to give their daughter.

Somehow, Ben could tell when her thoughts turned dark like this. He gathered her in his arms and kissed away the tightly tangled feelings, reminding her that the past was gone, and that right now, in the future, she was deeply loved.

So the summer yielded no progress on either the name or the home front, but they did emerge with a fistful of memories that Rey considered some of their best ever. And each day, she fell further in love.

Next Up: "Have you thought about any birthing classes?" Doctor Holdo asked.
Or: in which Ben and Rey continue to screw around with their impending parenthood.

Goal is Monday. Hang in there with me, friends. I really love you and your support.