February 19th 2020
Chapter 50
Their Bonds to Progress
If the first month of this year was any indication, then it was going to be one monumental year for a lot of people. February was only starting, and each day that passed took them closer and closer to what was to be The Biggest Day of this giant year.
They couldn't keep that cat in the bag for very long, not if they expected to get a move on with their preparations for the wedding and have it all go off smoothly. July 11th… They would think about that date, or they would be made to think about the month of July, or summer at all, and it would be like… a tiny pocket of energy, breaking open and flooding through them.
The secret had finally come out the day they'd had the party for Maya's birthday. It was a surprise, at the house, and while Maya had been out with Sam, everyone else had been arriving, with presents, and food… Lucas was showing Nellie and Gracie how to blow balloons, to middling success, when he'd happened to look over and spot Nadine as she pulled something from a drawer and asked 'What's this?'
Lucas recognized the brochure from a distance, but before he could do a thing about it, his mother had looked over and seen the picture on the front. The untied balloon had slipped from his hand and gone flying as the air burst right back out of it. It had made both twins jump, though Gracie had hit the deck at once. MJ, nonplussed and sitting nearby as he sorted the bag of balloons by color, had turned and crouched to join her, as though wondering 'oh, are we playing hide and seek?'
There had been no way around it, and he'd had to confirm that, yes, they were making plans for the wedding, and he had told his mother, and Nadine, and any of the others hanging around now, that it would be over the summer, but he wouldn't tell them the date just yet. It felt like something that needed to happen when Maya was there with him. If anything, it had gotten everyone to work faster to get the party set up, as though that would make her arrive faster and with her the chance to finally hear more about the upcoming nuptials.
Maya gave a good show of acting surprised, which might have just been her being happy to see everyone there that day, but Lucas didn't doubt for a second that she'd seen right through whatever story Sam had cooked up to get her out of the house. Plus, well… it was kind of impossible to hide everyone's cars all that well around here, even if they had parked up at the Sanderson farm.
Lucas had taken the very first opportunity he'd found to quickly let her know about the brochure situation. To everyone's credit, they waited until later in the day to finally inquire about the wedding date.
Since that day, they had been weaving through a constant field of helpful information both expected and unexpected, even as they dodged entirely unwanted information.
"Is it just me, or does everyone have a completely different vision of what this wedding should look like?" Maya had wondered aloud one night.
"No," Lucas assured her. "Sometimes I'm not sure they even remember who it's all for."
The expanding timetable bringing them closer to the day they'd exchange their vows now came, it seemed, with a rising number of social engagements, in particular family dinners. Now, as far as Maya went, family meant the Hunter Harts, here in Austin, and the Harts up in Tucson, and they were not coming over, not now. Instead, the happy couple was being summoned by the various branches of the Friar family, as well as those of his mother's family. The branches of the Sullivans were to be found in more than one city in Texas, though, for the time being at least, the ones who wanted to see them weren't so far away.
It was tonight, in fact, that Lucas and Maya were to head out to be hosted for dinner at the home of Melinda's great aunt and uncle. The prospect had been one that left them a bit stressed, and in order to alleviate some of this, without coming off too obvious about it, Melinda had convinced her younger brother to find a valid reason to end up at that dinner as well. Now it would be Maya and Lucas, and their hosts, and Michael Sullivan and his family.
"Hey," Maya leaned over the back of the couch where Sam sat with one of his textbooks open in his lap. He'd been focused enough that her arrival startled him.
"Geez!" he blinked, looking back at her.
"How do I look?" she stood back so he could see.
"How do you want to look?" Sam asked back. Maya considered this. In nearly eleven years of living out here and knowing Lucas, she had never met the couple they were headed to visit. All she knew about them came from mentions here and there, courtesy of Lucas and his parents. It wasn't that they were bad people, or even rude people, but on the whole they preferred to keep to themselves, which made this invitation particularly intriguing.
"Not like a fluffy little lamb strolling into predator land," she finally told her brother. "That would be a terrible theme park," she muttered after a beat. Sam bit back a laugh.
"You look great," he promised. "Distinguished, but not stuck up."
"I'll take it," she breathed, walking forward again. "Now, you," she pointed at him. "I have… absolute faith in you that you won't use this opportunity, alone with your girlfriend in this house tonight, to… you know…" she awkwardly stated, as uncomfortable at bringing up this subject as Sam was at being involved in it.
"Maya!" he frowned.
"Hey, look, no one wants to talk about it, so if you don't do anything that will require me to bring it up again, in so… so much more detail, then we won't have a problem, will we?" she pointed out.
"Nothing will happen," Sam sighed.
"See, you say that," Maya waved her finger at him, "And then you're just sitting around, and it's dark, and it's quiet, and all of a sudden…"
"Stop! Stop it right now!" he clamped his hands over his ears, abandoning his book on the couch and dashing for the stairs.
"You'll thank me later!" she called after him.
"What are you doing?" She stood up straight now and turned around, finding Lucas had returned from his errand.
"Putting the fear of whatever he needs to be afraid of in him?" she casually informed him, her face splitting into a smile when she saw he was looking her over, noticing her look for the night. "I'll take that as a sign of your approval?"
"Not sure what it's a sign of, but do we need to go out there tonight?" he joked.
"I don't know, you tell me, these are your mother's people, how do they feel about tardiness and commitments?" she countered.
"Okay, fine…" Lucas gave a semi-accurate reverse impression of a child being forced to go to bed. He wasn't looking forward to this night, not all of it at least. Years of anecdotes confirmed that he didn't particularly care for his great aunt Nicolette and great uncle Russell. If it wasn't for his uncles and their kids being there, too, he might have discovered new and valid reasons to bail out.
They both knew they had nothing to worry about as far as Sam and Cecilia went. Sure, they had been dating for nearly a month now, but they still had a giggly sort of feeling in them whenever either of them stated the fact that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. So, as far as anything more… hands on… was concerned, she felt something like 99.9% certain that there was nothing to worry about. The final 0.1% went in favor of the line of thought 'his mother put him in my care, for Lucas and me to look after him as she would do if he was still in her house.'
The part that was at once odd and relieving was how Sam's relationship with Cecilia had done so much more than what could have been expected. For one thing, it had somehow managed to realign much of what had been thrown into disarray the previous fall, where his friendship with Dora Cassidy was concerned. It was as though the simple reality that they both had someone in their lives, and that they were both happy, made it so that they were able to tap back into who they had been as friends before everything had gone twisted. All of a sudden, it was the four of them, Sam and Cecilia and Dora and Adam, a lot of the time hanging out, here at the house or at any of the others' homes…
"You know you can just use that key we gave you," Lucas greeted Cecilia with a smile when she arrived, a few minutes before he and Maya had to leave.
"I know," Cecilia nodded, leaving it at that though there was the feeling that there might have been a 'but' to follow. They knew she had used it before, on those days where she came to have dinner with them and she'd be the first one there. She would be found sitting on the couch, with the dogs to keep her company. Beyond that though, they hadn't seen her use it to let herself in when any one of them would be in the house. "It's a tie-wearing dinner?" she inquired now, pointing to the thing around his neck.
"Very much," he confirmed, resisting the urge to reach up and loosen it a bit… or take it off entirely. He wasn't so much opposed to the tie as he was to what it represented in this case.
"Maybe we could go with you," Cecilia suggested. "Sam's young college genius, and my dad's a professor, so I talk pretentious know-it-all," she informed him, making him chuckle. "Not my dad," she quickly specified. "Just… some of the people he has to deal with…"
"I get it," Lucas told her. "And thanks, but we'll be okay. You two have fun here tonight," he nodded, trying not to sound like he'd just said 'someone should get to at least.'
"But not too much fun?" Cecilia guessed, with a much more unflappable attitude than her boyfriend, who'd almost done the whole fingers-in-the-ears, la-la-la-can't-hear-you routine. Lucas couldn't respond to that, so he just cleared his throat before calling up the stairs that she'd arrived. A moment later, there were steps on the stairs, and Sam had re-emerged from wherever he'd gone hiding.
"Hey…" he smiled, approaching her and giving a small hug. Lucas and Maya had no idea if the two of them had kissed. Sure, by now, they probably had, but then if they had to go off any evidence they had themselves witnessed then they were out of luck, because they hadn't seen anything, no chaste peck, no make-out session, and nothing in between. Maya was sure they had to have kissed, but Sam was too shy to show it. Lucas tended to agree.
"Right," Maya came back along, grabbing her jacket and slipping it on over her dress. "Dinner is up to you, cook, order, whatever you want, just so long as it's here. You know how to reach us," she told her brother and his girlfriend, who both nodded. "Last chance?" she turned to Lucas. "In or out?" He looked at her, at the young couple… Part of him really wanted to say 'let's just stay here,' but no. It wouldn't be so bad. And at least there would be his uncles and the kids to keep him in some right place. That's what he told himself, because otherwise he'd say something more like 'well I can't just leave them in there all by themselves…'
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
