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In March, they started talking a lot less about hypotheticals and a lot more about plans. Callum and Nerea took Jamie with them to a meeting with their solicitor to make, as Nerea rather euphemistically called them, arrangements. A civil union between the three of them was obviously outside the realm of possibility. The next best thing they could do for Jamie, as Callum explained, was to make sure he had as many of the rights and protections of marriage as they could give him — and that he did the same for them, where he could. There were wills to amend, powers of attorney to write, contracts to negotiate and sign. Jamie spent a day feeling overwhelmed and then devoted himself to learning everything he could about any laws relating to situations similar to theirs.
There were more than a few, and with the help of Callum’s solicitor, Jamie learned to understand most of them. It at least gave him something to read on set of his new movie that wasn’t horrifying stories of high-risk pregnancies. Which was good, because Nerea had threatened to kick him out of the flat if he kept doing that.
The day the last of the papers — for now — were signed, Callum, Nerea, and Jamie went out for lunch together and then went to look at yet another flat. The housing market in London was more intimidating than any lawyers’ papers.
From the moment Jamie stepped inside he knew this was the right one. From Nerea’s soft gasp and Callum’s voice murmuring to the estate agent, Jamie suspected he wasn’t alone in that assessment. There would be renovations needed, of course, but that just meant the final product would be more theirs. As Jamie stood in the kitchen — warm and bright the way the kitchen in Spain was — he found himself unexpectedly overwhelmed.
“Do you mind if I step outside for a moment?” he said to no one in particular.
Nerea, with a worried glance at his face, shook her head. Callum offered to go with him, but Jamie demurred.
He walked down the street a little way until he found a bit of park that would be perfect to take the baby to once it was born. Four, almost five months in, and Nerea was just starting to let them say when instead of if. They’d agreed, also, to tell Piper, Margarita, and Leigh about the pregnancy once they’d found a place to live and settled all the arrangements. Aside from reiterating that Jamie should tell his parents, Callum and Nerea had left Jamie to share that news himself on his own time.
Despite the lovely conversation he’d had with his mother at Christmas, Jamie had been avoiding his father. He was a gentle man, but Jamie hadn’t been able to shake the dread he’d felt at his mother’s pronouncement that his father wasn’t ready to speak with him. Jamie never wanted to disappoint him and was afraid he already had. Until now, he’d called home only when his father was at work.
Jamie sank down on a bench under a big tree that was just starting to bud and pulled out his mobile. He flipped through his contacts, not to his parents’ home number, but to his father’s mobile. It was time to face this.
“Jamie? Is that you?” Hugh answered. Jamie’s heart clenched at the worry in his voice.
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me, Dad.”
“Are you all right, Jamie?” His father asked when Jamie said nothing else.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m fine. Listen. I owe you an apology. A lot of apologies. I also have some stuff I need to say. If you want to listen.”
“Foolish boy,” his father said, worried and fond all at once. Jamie wondered what he’d done well in a past life for his father to speak so kindly and easily to him when they hadn’t exchanged two words since December. “You know your mother tells me things.”
“I know, but you should hear it from me. And there’s some new news.”
“I’m listening,” Hugh said. He sounded apprehensive, which didn’t help Jamie’s unsettled state. But still, his father was speaking to him again, and that was more than he might have hoped for. “I can’t promise I’ll like it,” his father went on. “But I am listening.”
His mother had said much the same thing every time he’d called since Christmas. The conversations had been calm and affectionate, but there were often long silences as they both tried their best. Jamie found it exhausting. He had no idea how his father had been taking any of it. He’d been scared to ask.
“Good. Thank you,” Jamie said. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the slightly-damp slats of the bench. “Are you sitting down?”
“Are you all right?” his father asked again, but this time his voice was sharp.
“No. I mean, yes, I’m fine and it’s not anything bad. It’s fantastic, really, but it’s not small, and I’m almost sure you want to be sitting down for this one.”
“Out with it,” his father said as sternly as he ever had when Jamie had come home guilty-faced over typical teenage transgressions.
“Nerea’s pregnant,” Jamie said.
“Oh,” his father said. His voice was strangled. “Is it yours?”
“I — we don’t know. And if we did, it wouldn’t matter. Not to me or Callum or Nerea. I — we’re in the middle of house hunting. Like, right in the middle. I think we’ve found the one actually. Callum had that look on his face, and then I just had to step outside and call you.”
“For my approval?” his father sounded, of all things, amused. Jamie tried to remember if he had ever once asked for his father’s approval for anything in his life. He suspected he hadn’t.
“No,” Jamie said. “But you should know you’re going to have another grandchild.”
“I didn’t know something so normal could feel so unexpected,” his father said, his voice awed.
“Welcome to the last year of my life.” Jamie hoped his father wouldn’t question that, wouldn’t make him explain that falling in love was an obvious, easy thing, no matter how complex or unusual the circumstances.
“You planning to introduce us to them any time soon?” his father asked. It sounded like a challenge.
“Do you want to meet them?” His mother, in all their calls, had never asked. Jamie had assumed she wasn’t ready yet and had worried she never would be.
“Yes, I want to meet the people my son is making a life with,” his father said indignantly. “What kind of question is that?”
“Well, yours didn’t sound like a real happy one,” Jamie said matter-of-factly.
“It’s a lot Jamie. Who’s going to be on the birth certificate? Whose last name will the child have? Are you going to raise it Catholic — ”
“Dad, all I’m worried about right now is a healthy baby. And that’s all complicated. Really complicated.”
“You should have something that’s yours,” his father said firmly.
“I do,” Jamie said. “I will. And it’s still complicated. I have spent so much time with lawyers lately. We need to be as protected as we can; we know that.”
“Then you bring the baby up here and baptize it.”
“You want to run interference with Father Donovan on that? Because I sure don’t.” Jamie couldn’t even imagine how that conversation would go.
“You come up here, with your partners, and make proper introductions to the rest of your family,” his father said. “It’ll be good for Aoife, to meet them before her own wedding. Since I assume you’ll be bringing them.”
“Do you have any idea how much chaos that will make?” Jamie asked, even as he reeled a bit with relief. Not only was his father not yelling at him or hanging up on him, he was demanding Jamie stay a part of the family and welcoming Callum and Nerea into it too.
“Because there’s three of you or because you’re with a movie star?” his father asked.
“By the time the baby’s born, I’ll be a movie star too,” Jamie said.
His father gave a muffled laugh. Jamie could picture him shaking his head.
“Your mother is going to have a lot to say about this. And that’s before she has to worry about the notice in the church bulletin.”
Jamie grinned. Then he asked, “Is she going to be embarrassed?” That possibility was a lot less funny.
“What’s church for if not gossip?” his father admitted.
Jamie tried to imagine that, his mother enjoying the whispers and stares of her friends and neighbors as she carried her grandbaby to church. Now that he thought about it, his mum and Nerea might have a lot to talk about, and wouldn’t that be both strange and wonderful?
“I’ve told you before,” Hugh said into Jamie’s silence. “If you just walk with your head high, like you’ve done nothing wrong — because you haven’t — people won’t say a word. Not people who matter. No one, and no one’s family, is perfect. Who has the right to say anything to you?”
“I thought that was about me being bi, not about me being in a relationship with a married couple with a baby on the way,” Jamie blurted.
This time, his father laughed out loud. The rich, warm sound reminded Jamie of everything he loved about his family, home, and Dublin.
“One contributed to the other,” his father said. “And that’s life, Jamie-boy. Too many surprises — some of them good — and then wanting to spare the people you love pain. And if you think you know that already, there’s depths still coming. Once that baby’s born, you’ll do anything for it. You think you’re ferocious now.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Jamie asked. “For me to be even more all the ways I’ve always driven both you and Mum mad?”
“Of course it is,” Hugh said. “Your child happy and truly himself? No father can ask for more than that.”
“Well,” Jamie said as he thought about how he was going to relay this conversation to Callum and Nerea. He blinked eyes suddenly damp with tears. “I can definitely promise you I’m happy.”
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Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed The Art of Three, you should try The Opposite of Drowning.
Want more scorching sexual tension, and the drama of competitive ice skating? Try After the Gold.
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If you want more romance, magical realism, and mythology in a contemporary setting, try A Queen from the North.
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If you're looking for high-heat Hollywood romance, complicated relationships and chosen families, try Starling.
