A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

December 23rd 2019

Chapter 357
Their Cheers For Moments

It was the last day of May… After mentally crossing off each of those days in his head, Lucas found himself with just one more square to check off, and then he could turn that page. And right at the top there would be the much anticipated day… June 1st. Tomorrow, his friends were getting married. Tomorrow, he was proposing to Maya. He had half a mind to ask her or Rosa to drive instead of him, like his excitement would cause him to veer off the road at one time or another.

They ended up with just the three of them in his car, with Dylan and Riley riding along in Sophie's car. Right about now, Riley was probably telling them and Chiara all about the secret of the record deal, even if it wasn't going to be happening anymore.

It had started out that all of them would be riding in his car, with the stack of wedding clothes riding in the back with Sophie and Chiara, but then as they'd put everything in the cars it had become a concern among them that the neatly pressed clothes might tumble off the seat at some point. The last thing they – or Nadine – needed was one more issue, so they had come up with this compromise of sticking Riley and Dylan back there, to hold the stack on their laps. Meanwhile, Rosa was babysitting several gifts sitting in the back of Lucas' car with her.

"Oh, this one's good," Maya held up the sketchbook, which she'd had open in her lap, so Rosa could see the drawing.

"Spain?" Rosa guessed, and Maya nodded. "You're not going to rip it out, are you?"

"No," Maya laughed. "I'll scan it, print it… If I had more time, I would redo it."

"I've been told I have horrible timing with my ideas," Lucas looked at her.

"Did I say that?" she innocently asked, putting a marker between the pages before continuing to flip through. Rosa had another of the sketchbooks in the back, looking for the ones of Zay and Nadine. Maya had always found herself drawn to capture moments of her friends when they were happy, whether they were alone, or with other friends, or with their boyfriends or girlfriends… She had plenty of them throughout the years.

With those two having been off in Boston the last few years, she didn't have so many recent ones of them, especially with that period where they hadn't been on speaking terms. She would make up for it now. She had a fresh sketchbook she'd grabbed on her way out, which she intended to fill with images of their wedding. Under the circumstances, a belated present would be understandable. Maybe she could redo the other drawings in there, too.

"How do you think they're taking the news back there?" Lucas asked, speaking of the second car.

"Wait, she told you, didn't she?" Rosa spoke before Maya could answer.

"Just last night," Maya informed her.

"I knew it," Rosa laughed, turning around to try and get a look of the other car. "I can't tell what they're saying, but I think Riley just told them."

"Speaking of telling…" Maya looked at her via the rear-view mirror. Rosa turned forward again. Maya tried to indicate Lucas as discreetly as possible, while he was looking forward.

"What… Oh, he knows," Rosa declared, and Maya turned to look at Lucas, who had no idea what this was about, having been too focused on the road to see any hand gestures.

"What do I know?" he asked.

"About school, me picking what I want to study," Rosa explained before looking back to Maya, as Lucas nodded. "I was looking at the university's website one morning when he drove us to the bookstore. We were going to be doing inventory for a while, so I figured it'd be easier if he knew, and then we could discuss options while we were working. He was very helpful."

"Yeah, he does that," Maya turned a smile toward Lucas, who just kept on looking ahead, even if he was smiling, too. "I am still very happy for you, by the way. I did say that, right?"

"It was implied," Rosa confirmed. "And also thanks."

"So then you're going back to zero, huh? A whole four years ahead of you," Maya realized. She'd done two years, but now that she actually had a degree to earn up…

"Yeah, well, some things I've already done, so it won't be so bad as with…" She coughed here, interrupting her sentence, but Maya and Lucas shared a look at once, confirming that they weren't the only ones to think it sounded fake, like she'd made herself cough in order to prevent herself saying whatever she had been about to say next.

"You want to try that again?" Lucas asked.

"What?" Rosa asked.

"Wow, you suck at lying," Maya turned to look at her.

"I do not," their backseat roomie protested.

"Okay, then I'm just going to sit like this, staring at you, until we get to Austin, and then I'll have Riley take over. I've known her most of my life, trust me, she's good for it. She goes around like she's a princess, all sweet and innocent, but you've seen her playing video games, yeah?"

"Okay, okay, geez!" Rosa spoke louder to bury her, letting out a sigh before taking out her phone, tapping what they guessed to be a text. Once she'd sent it, she held up her hand with the index finger up. Hold on. Her phone went ding a few seconds later, she hummed, looked up. "Dylan's going to start college in the fall, too," she revealed.

"What?" Lucas and Maya asked at once, both of them struck silence for a minute or so. After all this time, four years of them going to school while he worked at the catering service, and the community center, and the café at the university…

He'd always said, after telling them that he wasn't going to school like the rest of them, that he hadn't specifically ruled out college forever, but at that point, coming out of high school, it wasn't what he saw for himself, so he wasn't going to go. It hadn't sat well with his family, which was part of the reason why he'd chosen to go to Houston with them. But now they were going back, so did that have anything to do with his choice, or had he been working toward that for a while and he just hadn't said anything?

"What's he going to study?" Maya asked.

"Health and physical education," Rosa revealed. "He wants to be a gym teacher."

As surprised as they'd been to hear he was finally going to college, to hear what he was going to do it for, it actually made sense. The thing Dylan would take away from his years in Houston – other than getting together with Riley, finally – would be the work he'd done with the community center throughout that time. He had never been so happy as when he got to share stories of the kids he'd coach at basketball. If he could keep doing that all his life, he would be happy, they could see it.

Now this meant that, in four years' time, they'd be seeing another batch of graduations. They'd have Rosa and Dylan here, and Lucas there, and even Sam Hart, and Joseph Hillard, who were themselves about to get their high school diplomas.

Just about three quarters of the way through the journey into Austin, Nadine's messages started up again, and she had not calmed down by a mile. If anything, she was getting even more frazzled. Maya felt like, if they didn't get out there soon, she would either decide to grab Zay and elope, or cancel the whole wedding altogether, rather than have to deal with any of this chaos for much longer. She needed order, and this was a mess.

"Not telling you to speed, but try and get us there as fast as you can so we can have a nice wedding instead of a murder or something?" Maya begged Lucas with a 'I'm joking but I'm also kind of not' smile before reading out some of Nadine's latest messages.

"Woah! Should I be feeling like I'm too young for this?" Rosa blinked. Maya's phone dinged and she looked at it.

"Plug your ears and start humming," she told Rosa before she could share it with Lucas.

They made it into Austin, and much as they would have liked to go and unload the car, maybe sit and relax after the long drive, they knew they needed to go and find Nadine and Zay before things got any crazier for them. They broke off from their motorcade of two and headed toward the Zhu house.

"Hi, Maya!" they were greeted at the door by eight-year-old Olivia Zhu. She had grown up so much since they'd all moved to Houston, and though they had seen Nadine's youngest sister a few times since, it always felt like she'd grown several inches at each interval. Maya and Lucas both could remember holding her when she'd just been born, and now she was just a fully formed kid…

"Hey, Liv, where's…" They heard a door slam upstairs, which made the girl jump. "Never mind, I've figured it out," Maya patted her shoulder and moved ahead, looking to Lucas on the way. He nodded and she jogged up the stairs.

"Hey, you've met Rosa before, yeah?" Lucas asked the girl, who was staring at her all saucer-eyed now, shaking her head. Clearly, they had not met before, but Olivia knew who she was. Rosa presented her hands for a double high five, and she got it, complete with a more relaxed smile.

Upstairs, Maya crossed an annoyed looking Mrs. Zhu, who took a moment to somehow regain her composure enough to welcome her guest before pleading for her to 'talk some sense into that one,' pointing to her eldest daughter's door.

"I… will do what I can," Maya awkwardly replied before going up to the door. She knocked, only to have this greeted by a flurry of loud Mandarin. "Uh, can you try that again? I'll take English or French?" A moment later, the door opened and she was pulled inside. She was vaguely aware of the door shutting again as she was hugged by the bride to be. "Hey… hey… I'm here, your full-service maid of honor bodyguard, what do you need?"

"This right here, this is good," Nadine informed her.

"Hugs on tap, no problem. Just so I know where we stand, you haven't throttled anyone yet, have you?" This managed to dislodge a laugh from her friend.

"No, but I'm seriously considering it." When they finally went and pulled apart, they ended up sitting on Nadine's old bed. The room hadn't changed all that much in four years, even without her living there. Her parents had kept it up this way, which was either very sweet or very creepy, depending on which way you looked at it. Maya had memories of teenaged shenanigans to help her see it as the former.

"Hey…" she finally got a look at Nadine's face and saw clear signs that she'd been crying, showing in puffy, blotchy areas over her usually perfect, clear skin. "This isn't just about seating charts and music, is it?"

"No," Nadine shook her head. Maya took her hand in hers. "My parents have known that I'm bisexual since I was eleven years old. Even then, they knew I understood what it meant, and they never treated it as a misunderstanding or a phase. It took them a while to understand it, especially seeing as I've been with Zay for so long, but they know that, no matter what, it's part of who I am."

"Yeah, of course," Maya nodded, unsure where this was going.

"My grandmother didn't know," Nadine looked up at her.

"Oh… The one who lives in China, or…"

"Yeah," Nadine sighed.

"Guessing she does now?" Maya awkwardly asked.

"It just kind of happened, I… Rebecca's moms are coming, and she saw their names on the chart. She started saying… things I'd rather not repeat. I wasn't going to say anything except to try and make sure she wouldn't say anything to them when she saw them at the wedding… or to Asher and Ray… or to Sophie and Chiara…"

"Getting the picture," Maya breathed out.

"Marley felt bad, for them, and for me. She wanted to defend us, she didn't realize…"

"That she'd be outing you in the process…"

"Yeah…" Nadine's voice cracked. "She feels awful, Michaela's with her now, to try and get her to stop crying. Now my grandmother got herself a hotel room, she's not coming to the wedding. Doesn't matter that I'm marrying a man, as far as she's concerned, I'm just…" Maya pulled her into a hug, and they sat there in silence for a while. "I sort of took it out on everyone else since," Nadine sheepishly admitted. "My parents weren't there when it happened, and my grandmother's too proud to actually acknowledge anything, even though she is, by going away. I know they're trying to help, I just…"

"I know. Don't worry, I'll figure something out…"

"Look, forget about my grandmother, please. You're not going to change her mind, and I don't want her to come if she's going to make things uncomfortable for anyone." She wasn't even thinking about whether she would be uncomfortable because of her grandmother, she only cared about her friends, and their families, and Zay…

"Already forgot her," Maya promised. "So, should I go now or are we still on the hugs, because I mean it, I will keep on hugging you all the way up the aisle if I have to. It'll be weird, but it'll be a story to tell your grandkids someday." Nadine burst out laughing some more, squeezing her good.

"I knew I picked right when I chose you."

"Please, you were stuck with me from the day we met," Maya smiled.

"I've missed you so much…"

"Well, now we're all back together again," Maya told her, pressing some comforting kisses to the top of Nadine's head before wiping a few tears from her own eyes now. "That means we have four years to make up for. How does your future hubby feel about sleepovers?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners