May 3rd 2020

Chapter 124
Their Rally Around Distance

"Can Cecilia and Dora sleep over on Friday?" Sam asked his sister on Wednesday morning, to which she said yes. "Great," he nodded, to her and then himself as he left the doorway to hers and Lucas' room. He was already on his way out to school, getting picked up by the Schmidt twins for a review before a test. Lucas was on his way to work at the bookstore today, and as ever, his body didn't seem on board with sleeping in just a bit, so he'd be awake, getting ready to go and do his bit at the Sanderson farm before shifting gears to selling books.

"Want to come with?" he asked Maya with a smile this morning. After getting dressed and having themselves a quick breakfast, they left the house, with the dogs on their trail – except for Archer, on his leash as he was still too small to be left to his own devices. "Did I hear a squeak when I was coming out of the shower earlier?"

"You heard a squeak? I am pretty sure I shouted just a bit," Maya grinned, fishing out her phone to show him the e-mail she'd woken up to. He read it as they walked past the mailbox and stalled for a moment.

"For real?" he blinked back at her. When she laughed and confirmed, he hugged her in a way that almost felt like a twirling step in a dance, as they never stopped walking in the process. "This is just… I mean last summer was crazy, with how big Ree's song got, but this… Your song, in a movie…" They had known who would be the voice behind the words on this one, not so long ago, but they had imagined it would be for an album of hers, never could have guessed it was going to be for anything like this.

"What if it's a flop?" Maya expressed the small worry which had been nagging at the back of her mind since not too long after checking out the message. In the time Lucas had spent in the shower, her emotions had taken such a journey, from immediate shock, to giddiness, and then straight into this 'what if' portion. She knew she couldn't help it, and she had gotten to a point where she almost just chose to let the worries come, so she could work through them and put them aside as sorted out.

"The song or the movie?" Lucas asked.

"Either? Both?"

"There's no way to know now, is there?"

"Not really, no, I know," Maya breathed.

"Do you get to go to the premiere or something?" Lucas pondered with a smile, which made her laugh.

"I'm not sure… I might push for it just to get you in a tux though," she gave him a once over and he assumed a bit of Bond-like posture that only served to make his bride to be giggle and bury her face in his arm as they went.

"You didn't tell Sam you already knew about the girls coming over," Lucas pointed out as they went on toward the farm.

"I know, I figured it would be easier just to let it be this way. If he's excited, I say let him be. He did look kind of excited, didn't he?"

"There was definitely a bit of a step up from what we've been getting lately," Lucas agreed.

"Good… good…" Maya breathed, mostly to herself.

"I've been thinking a lot about Houston lately," Lucas drew her attention back. "It's hard to believe we haven't lived there in nearly a year and a half already. Do you ever catch yourself thinking about going to the Nook? As though it's a five minute drive away instead of two hours?"

"I kind of do, actually," Maya chuckled. "Sometimes I get cravings, like big time for real, salivating cravings," she revealed. "I'm having one right now because of you…"

"Sorry," he apologized, undercut with a laugh as it was.

"You owe me a breakfast date now."

"I'm good for it," he assured her.

"I do miss it out there…" Maya reflected, breathing in the morning air. This was always her favorite part of the day, bar none. "Not in a sense that I'd rather be there than here," she amended, to which Lucas gave a nod. "It was just… Those were some great years, some of the best. I'd say The Best, but think of the pressure that would put on those ones yet to come," she smirked over at him, flexing her hand where the engagement ring managed to catch the sunlight.

"I know what you mean," Lucas squeezed the hand he held, brought it to his lips. "I'm sure, if anyone asked, I'd say the best thing to come out of that time was the fact that you and I started living together, and that's been really good."

"No complaints there," Maya smiled.

"For real though, I mean it's not like I was scared at the idea of living away from home, from my parents, but I never had to be, because I had you, and Dylan, and Riley, and Sophie…"

"Yeah…" It got her thinking of her brother again, as was to be expected. The only reason he was even in Austin, away from the rest of his family, was that she lived here.

He had been a fifteen-year-old kid, about to start college where he would be the runt of the litter no matter where he went. So, he had pitched this plan to go and live with his big sister, to get to do the whole 'away from home' college thing, and they had supported it, every step of the way. For Maya, it also meant getting to spend more time with her little brother, after having lived apart for most of their lives, so it was an even easier sell.

Beyond that though, she'd just been intent on encouraging him to do this for himself. After Kermit had died, he had become so focused on looking after his mother and younger siblings, that he could easily have gone to college in Tucson, the better to keep on being big brother/father figure to Cara, Eliza, and Wyatt. He could have put everything he had of himself toward their well-being and let that be his place in life. Instead, he had chosen this, had allowed himself his college experience. The last thing she wanted now was for him to come to regret it and slide back into brother mode.

Arriving at the farm, they were greeted by Mr. Sanderson, the grandfather, who had been a staple of these early hours for as long as Lucas could remember. Standing at the window in what had then been his grandparents' bedroom, what was now his and Maya's bedroom, they could just see the Sanderson farm in the distance, and without fail, every morning, if they looked and squinted their eyes they would catch that small figure walking along in his old tan hat.

"Morning!" Missy came bolting out to greet Maya and Lucas almost as soon as they arrived. She would always be there to assist, too, with her own dog at her heels. Now this morning, with Coraline finding the trio of Trix, Lou, and Archer also on the scene, it was a frenzy of happy dogs yapping at one another around their humans' feet. "I'm repainting one of the fences for Dad," Missy informed them. "I was thinking of doing something on them, not just the one color all over."

"Oh, that's my cue, show me," Maya smiled, trailing off with their young neighbor as she turned a wave to Lucas with a look like 'I guess you're on your own, Huckleberry.' He waved back with a smirk.

As Missy brought her over to the fence in question, Maya got the impression it was no accident she had decided to do this task today of any day. More often than not, Maya would end up accompanying Lucas on his farm stops on weekends and also on Wednesdays, when his being at work instead of school made for a later departure. When she had come bolting out the door as she would do every morning, there had been this flicker of gladness when she'd spotted Maya was there along with Lucas. She wanted to chat, and these days she had one preferred subject. It would have been so easy for her to stare down the girl and say 'just ask him out already,' but she had a strong feeling she didn't need to, that it would happen sooner or later. Then again, Sam had believed the same where Dora was concerned, and it had ended up far from that…

Here she was, back to thinking about her brother, sure, but then so what if she did? She cared about him so much, and right now he was in a weird space… It wasn't in her to just think 'oh, he'll get over it.' In her heart, it went a lot more like 'so long as he's in it, I'm in it.'

"Maya?"

She blinked, finding Missy was looking back at her, paintbrush in hand. She'd been stuck in her head for a moment or two, thinking about her brother… Maybe she was trying to keep him from sliding back into brother mode, but she had definitely fallen headlong into sister mode ever since Thanksgiving.

"Sorry, got lost for a second," she told Missy, getting back to work in tracing the flowers her young neighbor wanted to have along the fence posts.

As they went on painting, she would think about when she had been in much the same situation as Sam was, give or take a few variants. It wasn't exactly the same, was it? Here he was, awaiting the birth of what would be one more sibling, miles and miles away. All those years ago, when she'd had to consider leaving Austin for her own college education, she'd had to do so with the idea of leaving – at the time – her baby sisters, the first she'd ever had. Nellie and Gracie were by no means the eldest of her siblings, but by virtue of when they had all come into her life… Yeah, they were at the top of the list.

She had been seventeen years old when the twins were born, so even though at some point she had been made aware that her father had other kids somewhere, she had not known them personally, and she had been an only child for all seventeen of those years. And then her mother had married Shawn, and they'd had the girls, and they… they had changed her life, in ways very few people had done it. The idea that she should be away from them as they grew from infants and onward… She didn't want to miss all those early days, didn't want to allow herself to become a stranger in their midst. In the end she had decided on Houston, and it had all really been as good as it could get, short of being in Austin with them, but the result couldn't really factor in the choice, could it?

So, even though she'd had more than a year with them before the move, whereas Sam would be so much further away from his new brother or sister right from the start and for what would be the first two years of his or her life at the least… she got it. Hopefully, Friday's sleepover would do the good he needed to get. If it didn't, then there really was no telling what would happen next, what choices Sam would end up making. Maya may have found her loophole with Houston, but that didn't mean he would get one of his own without having to make a sacrifice or two. As selfish as it might have been, she really did not want his living with her and Lucas to be one of those sacrifices.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners