I really love this chapter!


"This is stupid," Reese said, sitting at the counter next to her brother and staring at the massive mound of cards in front of him.

"It's not stupid, it's heartfelt."

"It's ridiculous. You have too many friends to make each of them a personalized Valentine. You can't do it."

"I can do anything I put my mind to."

"That's not true, you can't play basketball and you got 50% on the last geography test."

"Geography is hard."

"I know, I got a 60 on it."

"If I try hard enough I can absolutely make a card for each one of my friends."

"But what if you forget one? Or if you do one of them twice? Or you confuse the ones for people with the same name? What if you write a card for Hunter 1 and give it to Hunter 2?"

"I would never confuse Hunter 1 and Hunter 2. Hunter 2 is one of my best friends, I'm not gonna just hand him the wrong card."

"Are you going to make me a card?"

"Well, not in front of you."

"That's fair. Are you going to make a nicer card for Scout than you do for the others?"

"I don't know yet, I'm saving his for last."

"What if, and this is just speculation, no one else at school cares as much about Valentine's day as you do?"

"That's fine. I think that everyone is going to appreciate getting a card tomorrow anyway."

"But why?"

"Because everyone needs a little bit of encouragement every now and then. And if a little card on an overly commercial holiday helps them feel more important, then I'm going to make hundreds of little cards. Because they're all important to me. And I don't need you to understand that, Reese, and I don't need them to be important to you. Because you're important to me, but I only care about basketball because it's important to you. I only care about soccer because you care about soccer. You don't expect me to care about sports beyond that, and I don't expect you to care about my friends beyond basic human respect."

Reese stared at him for a second, stunned. It meant a lot to her that he cared so much about people, especially since she had such a hard time doing the same.

All she said was, "You're weird."

"I know," he said with a laugh. And then she left to go make him his Valentine's day card.

Luca was up late that night finishing up his lengthy love letters to all the people in his life that brightened his day. For his friends and classmates, for his teachers, for his parents, for his aunts and uncles. He didn't hold back, he wrote and wrote and wrote. He even wrote one for his future sibling, penning this heartfelt little note about how excited he was to meet the kid in approximately 26 weeks. He and Reese hadn't picked out a name yet, though they were still suggesting them to that day.

"Jeremy, like that one musical that Uncle Khary wasn't supposed to show us," Luca suggested when they were getting ready in the morning.

"Jeremy what?"

"Jeremy Carson? We could sing to him, it's always so pretty when they sing Jeremy in the musical."

Reese laughed and sang, "Jeremy, is in big bad trouble right now…" She actually had a very pretty voice.

Luca continued, "It's a trouble that he can't see, but we've gotta help him somehow…"

"We can't name him Jeremy Carson, we can't give him JC initials. That stands for Jesus Christ, Luca. Jesus Christ figures have to be the hero, the protagonist! Our little bro or sis should just be able to be themselves. I bet that they're going to be an introvert."

"Aw, man, I can't be the only extrovert in the family," Luca said as he loaded cards into his backpack. They added a couple of pounds to his already heavy load.

"How about Jeremy Paul?" Reese suggested.

"No. Jeremy Aaron?"

"We can't use Aaron, that's grandpa's name."

"Oh yeah."

"What about Sam?"

"Jeremy Sam?"

"No, Sam as a first name. Gender-neutral, like my name."

"Sam what?"

"Well, if it was a girl her full name should be Samantha Elise?" Reese said, adding, "And if it was a boy, maybe Samuel Elliot."

"I like Elliot. Jeremy Elliot."

"Nah, Jeremy's already gone."

"Sam's gone. We're keeping Elliot as a middle name," Luca decided.

"Okay. That's a gender-neutral name too, actually. Sam Elliot could be a girl or a boy."

"Sam Elliot isn't going to exist! Sam doesn't fit with Reese and Luca. We have cool people names. They need a cool people name too."

"You're such a dork," Reese said with a laugh, as they headed for the car, "how do you feel about the name Hillary?"

"I don't like it, but H could be good. Maybe Heather?"

"Like that other musical Uncle Khary wasn't supposed to show us?"

"Oh yeah. Not Heather. Harper? That's a cute name, and gender-neutral."

"Harper Elliot? Maybe."

"I miss Winter, to be honest," Luca said.

"We can't name a baby Winter if they were born in July."

"Yeah but there's that really pretty AJR song…"

"Nonetheless, no Winter. Maybe when you have kids."

"What about when you have kids?" Luca asked, arms crossed.

"I'm not having kids."

Luca stared at her for a second before he answered, "Okay. Sounds good. Then Harper and I will provide mom and dad with grandkids."

"No rush," GoGo said from the front seat, cluing them into her involvement in the conversation, "Harper and I are good right now." Luca laughed a little.

"I got you a card, mom! I'll give everyone in the family their cards tonight at dinner."

"Thanks, Luca. I got you guys some things for Valentine's day as well."

"Oh, cool! Thank you!"

"You're welcome. Have a good day at school, guys!"

Luca waved as she left and then began the labor-intensive act of delivering a lot, lot, lot of love letters. None of them were actually romantic, but each of them was detailed enough to tell his friends the reasons why he cared about them. Everyone was super excited to get them, even Zayne, though he pretended it was lame. Scout nearly cried when he read the sweet card. Many of them had a card for him in return, or some candy, or a stuffed animal. He was the king of middle school, after all, so he made many, many trips to his locker to fill it with the presents from his peasants. He carried one giant stuffed dog around with him for the whole day, unable to fit it in his locker. He named it much faster than he and Reese were able to name their future sibling, calling the giant plushie Comet, since Nova had given it to him.

Reese didn't get the same shower of affection. She exchanged cards with her basketball team, and Addison brought in cookies. Sara made the three of them matching friendship bracelets and then Reese considered the holiday over. Until right before lunch, when she had to get her lunch bag out of her locker. Her brother's locker, right next to hers, was overflowing with affection from his followers, and she was happy for him. She knew that she and Scout would be helping to carry all of that to the car at the end of the day. She'd even made Scout a card the way she'd made Luca one. He was like family now. But she didn't expect him to make her a card. She didn't expect anyone to notice her at all. She would have preferred that.

Until her locker door swung open and a piece of paper fluttered out. She picked it up, assuming it was meant for Luca's locker, and saw her name at the top. Her name. She didn't freak out right away. Then she read a little further down the letter and instantly crumpled it up, booking it to Luca's table and trying not to cry.

"Which one of you sick freaks wrote this?" She half-screamed at his pool of friends, thrusting the letter in front of Luca, who had been the center of attention anyway.

"What? What's wrong, Reese? Are you okay?"

"I didn't ask for a love letter!" Reese continued to freak out, louder than she had intended, "I didn't ask for a secret admirer. It's cowardly to keep it a secret and it's unwanted entirely! So kindly shove your degrading assessment of my body and what you'd like to do to it up your butt!" At this point, a teacher had come over and taken her to the nurse's office to calm down. Luca then read the letter, getting this calm, quiet, angry look on his face.

"Listen, I don't care who wrote this. I still value all of you as friends but you cannot cross this line ever again, you hear me? You cannot sexualize my twin sister, you cannot put her in this position and expect her to feel happy about it. She's 13! I'm not mad at any of you. But I will be if you try any other advances on my sister, whether or not you thought it was romantic."

"You should go check on her," Scout suggested, "if anyone confesses I'll let you know."

"Okay." Luca grabbed his backpack and headed for the nurse's office, where he found his sister crying and hugging herself, arguing with the nurse.

"I don't care if it's mean, they were mean. I'm not going to apologize!"

"You shouldn't have to," Luca said, immediately taking her side, "I told them that if it was them that that letter wasn't okay. I know you don't really like romance."

"It was gross, Luca…"

"I know, I read it. Disgusting. But you're better than that, Reese. You're worth more than some crude confession shoved inside your locker. I wrote you a card, I was going to give it to you at dinner, but you can read it now." Luca pulled the letter out of his backpack and handed it to her.

"Thanks…" She sniffled, opening it and then reading it, tears continuing to fall.

Luca's letter read:

Dear Reese,

You're my very best friend. From the beginning, you've always been there, and I know you always will be. So I'll always be there for you. No matter what happens we'll go into the future together. I know that we're unstoppable together because you're unstoppable alone. You're the best person I know. You're so strong and awesome. When you put your mind to something you always accomplish it. I'm so proud of you and so inspired by you. You make me want to be better. You make me better. I'm so excited to take on the world with you, Reese Renee. You never have to change for anyone. Keep being you.

Love,

Luca.

"Oh my gosh, Luca," she said through tears, "did you write something this stupidly sappy for everyone?" Luca laughed, wrapping an arm around his sister.

"Not exactly, mostly just family, including Scout. I tried to put a little extra love for the people I thought needed it, too, like Hunter 2 and Zayne and the new girl, Charlotte?"

"Charlotte's a pretty name. Reminds me of the children's book."

"We're not naming our future sister Charlotte."

"Too basic?"

"Too basic. Don't forget, we're super cool people."

"We are super cool people. I wrote you a letter too. Here." She pulled her own letter out of her bag. Luca tentatively opened it.

Dear Luca,

You make me feel secure, in this world that's constantly shifting and changing. You're a weirdo and I don't necessarily understand you all of the time, but you're always there for me, and I'm always going to be there for you. You're my best friend and I can't imagine a world without you, and I don't want to. Even if we're miles apart, you'll always be my brother, so we'll always be kind of together. Thank you for being yourself, Luca, thank you for caring about people and about me. Even if I can't always show it, I care about you too. I love you.

-Reese

"Aww, Reese, you're a big softie."

"Am not!"

"Come here." He opened his arms for a hug and she readily accepted it.

"Reese?" The nurse asked, "Do you want to go home early? I can call one of your parents."

"No, it's okay, I'm fine. I'm sorry for the outburst."

"It's okay, it's perfectly understandable to be overwhelmed by a situation. If you change your mind, just let a teacher know."

Luca walked out with her, an arm wrapped around his sister, "I'll intervene if anything like this ever happens again, I promise."

"I know you will, dork," Reese said with half of a smile.

"Things will get better," Luca promised.

"Whatever you say, Lu. I think… I think I'm going to see if I can start talking to someone. Like mom and dad suggested. Today sucked. I want to see if I can… Not feel like that, again." Luca gave her a second big hug.

"I really am so proud of you. I love you," he said into the hug. Reese laughed a little.

"Thanks… I love you too."

No promises that Baby 3 will have the names discussed in any of the chapters leading up to the actual birth. No promise that Baby 3 won't have the names discussed in any of the chapters leading up to the actual birth.