February 20th 2021

Chapter 51
Our Plans For a Room

It would be entirely fair to say that Maya had been preparing for this moment from the day she'd found out Riley and Dylan were expecting. Actually… maybe before. Actually… maybe longer than the two of them had been married… or dating… But she had only actually started doing sketches for it once she'd known the baby was on its way. Whether she'd had ideas floating in her head before that point, that was entirely up to her.

But now the time had come. Baby Boy Orlando was all of three months away, and even though they could probably have waited another month or two, Riley really wanted to get a move on the nursery, and who was Maya to tell her no?

They'd had a bit of a brainstorming session, her and Lucas and Riley and Dylan, about how they wanted the room to look. Dylan wanted to help with the painting. More to the point, Maya sensed that he wanted to do as much as possible. The closer they were getting to the birth of his son, it really would feel like it got that much more important to Dylan that he be present as a parent, as a father, that he be as involved as he could be. Maya understood this too well. They had that in common, as children of parents who'd left.

Of course, she had mended bridges with Kermit in time, but she knew how that old gap continued to affect her, here and now, having Marianne in her life. She still felt something in her was compelled to go above and beyond. Some days, she would watch her, and she would think about all this time she was spending with her, and how many happy memories she was forming. And she would think how Marianne would not remember any of it herself. There would be pictures, and videos, and a whole lot of drawings, absolutely, but she would not actively remember it. When she did remember anything, it would be a lot of split times, with work, and school, and then home time, and so many other things, and Maya knew that this was just how life went, and it was fine, but… these weeks and months, this time they shared… It felt so infinitely special to her. She didn't want it to end.

Dylan, now… What did he have? His mother had left, and she'd remained out of reach all this time. Cards were sent, left unopened for reasons none would blame. And then last spring, everything had changed, been twisted upside down, when Maya had discovered the former Mrs. Orlando was now Mrs. Munroe, mother to one of her students. Dylan's mother had left him and his father and brother, but she hadn't left Austin. She'd remained here, with this man she'd been having an affair with, with the daughter they had conceived. She had remade her life, all the while keeping her sons out of it. If that wasn't bad enough, now there were two kids out there, Phoebe and her little brother, who had no idea about this part of their mother's life. Dylan couldn't bring himself to tell them once he'd known, so for the time being they were protected. What would happen later though? What would happen if or when they found out the truth?

Regardless of that question, there remained the reality which Dylan was stuck with, this part of his history behind him, and now this baby boy on his way with a future as yet unwritten. His story would not be the same, it couldn't be, and yet it was so utterly important to Dylan to give his son everything and show him how loved he was and would continue to be. This nursery, this was one part of it.

So, very early on, the agreement was made that Maya would see to tracing outlines, while Dylan would fill in the rest. She never stated in so many words that he was the reason for it, and he didn't bring up whether it was or not. All Maya had to do was look at her friend though, and she'd know how much he appreciated this.

Figuring out what they wanted to make of their baby's nursery turned out to be a lengthy process, as there were many more ideas than there was space on those walls to attend them all. Maya would try and narrow things down but would more often than not end up diminishing one second only to come up with a whole other thing in the next. Lucas thus found himself stuck in the position of the rational mind, getting the other three to pull everything together until they had an actual plan. They all agreed to give it a week, to really ensure that Dylan and Riley would not change their minds.

Now, with the time elapsed, the day had come for them to go and get things started. With the number of nurseries that they had decorated over the years, it was getting to be something almost comically familiar to them. They practically had a checklist in their heads, all good to go, and they headed off that morning, Maya, Lucas, Marianne, and Cara. She'd volunteered to help.

"Does that mean I get to know if it's a boy or a girl?" she asked as they drove to the house. "I mean, I'm not saying that a nursery should be overly pink or blue or anything like that, but it might still be sort of… evident, right?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Cara," Maya shrugged from the front passenger seat. She couldn't play completely coy, could she? She'd done the sketches for the room already, she knew what it would all look like, and Lucas did, too. Personally, she didn't see the place as looking particularly male or female, but then others might have a different opinion. Either way, if it couldn't be sussed out, then she wasn't going to tell.

"I know you know," Cara insisted.

"Didn't say I didn't," Maya replied, catching her sister's smile in the mirror.

They were greeted at the door by Door. This was a favored gag with Dylan, and somehow, they'd still laugh at it no matter how many times they heard it, to the point where they thought it to themselves if they were met by the dog without Dylan standing right there.

"Hey, girl, I'm happy to see you, too," Maya laughed as she bent to pet the dog who had already raised herself on her hind legs and pressed her front paws at Maya's legs. That wagging tail and frenetic energy was in equal parts seen as 'I am happy to see you, I know you and I love you' and 'you smell like my brother.' Surely, they'd be getting a similar reaction from Crowley when they went home. If it wasn't that two excited dogs underfoot might have been an issue with paint lying around, they might have brought him over with them.

They wasted no time in getting started. The crib had already been assembled, and as Riley would tell the others later on, Dylan had done it all by himself, well into the night. She'd been tempted to go and help him more than once, fearing the number of opportunities for her sometimes accident prone husband to hurt himself. She'd definitely heard him yelp and curse under his breath a couple of times, and today he had some bandages on two fingers and one on his leg somehow. But he wanted to do it by himself, and he had done it. The crib was sound and ready to welcome their boy.

While Maya saw to the tracing on the walls, Lucas and Cara helped Dylan with other tasks at hand. Riley was given an important task of her own, being the handling and care of one Marianne Christine Friar. To look at her, she clearly saw herself as having nabbed the best position. She held her, and spoke to her, hummed to help her on her way to sleep when she started to blink those little eyes like she was drifting off… Even when she was asleep and it would have been easy to look away and take note of the advancing progress of the room, Riley was just taken with the girl in her arms.

"Right, how does that look?" Maya breathed out as she stood back and scanned the walls after finishing her part. Dylan looked up and then did his own inspection. Going off the look on his face, it gave the impression that he'd liked the sketches, but he loved the actual full-sized version here on the walls. He turned back to his friend and pulled her into a great, thankful hug. Maya laughed, holding on when she felt her feet leave the ground. "Your turn now," she told him when he set her down.

"On it," he gladly went along, while Maya now ended up on the team with her husband and sister.

Dylan's part would be long enough that he was still working away when the rest of them had nothing left to do, not until he was done and everything was dried, so eventually the rest of them relocated downstairs in the living room, with his blessing. Before she or Riley would go though, Maya stopped her best friend so she could show her and Dylan something else she'd brought along.

"I wasn't sure which version would work best, I know you've been going back and forth with it, so I did both and you just use whichever one feels right, okay?" she explained before pulling out the two plaques from where she'd kept them hidden up to now. She showed these to the future parents, and she was very familiar with the feeling behind their smiles just now, seeing the name traced on each one. This time she'd done the colors, too, but then she'd had these made about as long as Riley and Dylan had told her and Lucas how they had selected their son's name.

"We'll figure it out, yeah?" Dylan nodded, looking to Riley as they each held one of the plaques.

The way she looked back at him, Maya could see in her oldest friend just… all this love she had for him. Along with that love came so much understanding for how much this baby meant to him, how much he loved their little guy even before he was ever born. She knew how important it would be for him that he got to live the best life, with two parents who would love him, and care for him, and be there… all the days of his life. He could not have found a better mother to his children.

Dylan saw to the parts of the mural that needed to be done first, the better for him to have help in moving the furniture where it belonged. He wasn't done with the rest by the time they all left, but they knew they would be getting loads of pictures by the time it was all done. As to the plaques, well, they would stay hidden somewhere until they decided which one to put up on that door, and until they decided it was time to reveal that they were having a boy and that they'd chosen his name. Maybe it wouldn't go up until that day in May when he came home for the first time and inhabited his nursery.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners