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

February 25th 2021

Chapter 56
Our Plans For a Trip

It was just a little over a week before the Shelby twins came to the house. They had reached out to their 'benched' art teacher via a note left in Ruby's diary, and Maya had responded in kind so that, on Monday when they got them back, they knew what to do. She wasn't about to write the address in there, but they were instructed to ask Bodhi, and so it was the three of them that came. Lucas would tease his wife and point out how many of her students came into their home, but then each one was clearly so welcome, by the both of them, frankly, and they always looked like they felt welcome, as well they should.

She hadn't necessarily set out to seat Bodhi as part of this sort of planning committee, but then here they were, and maybe it was for the better. From the start, she'd sensed in him a deep feeling of disconnect from his class, his peers. She felt it in equal amounts to his need to feel like he belonged, like he was part of it all. He had the quiz team, and he was thriving with them, but it didn't have to stop there, did it? The senior trip would be something good for him to get a hand in.

Also part of this group, per her request, was Riley. Maya did not forget her, and when she went about setting the meeting time with the Shelby girls, she made sure that her old friend would be able to attend. She was still working for a few weeks more, though she wasn't seeing as many patients later in the day, so she was done in time for Maya to swing by and pick her up before bringing her to the house. They stopped at the bakery on the way because Riley had a desperate craving for something in there, and Maya knew that feeling too much to stand in its way.

It was in moments like these when it really felt as though it sank in that they would very soon both be mothers together, raising their children in tandem. Maya couldn't say that this was exactly some old, long-standing dream of theirs, as though they had been thinking of this since they were six. But they had always sought to carry on living their lives as best friends should do, as far as they knew the meaning at the time. And even though real life had a way of adding caveats to all that, they were here, weren't they? Just over twenty years under their belts, with memories of school, and love, and life, marriages and now children… She couldn't wait for Marianne to get to be with Riley's boy, in the way she'd seen Giulia and Mia be with her. With hers and Riley's though, of course, she couldn't help but have added stakes in this eventual friendship. The two of them were best friends, had been for so long, so of course their children had to follow in that, right? It was a silly little notion, but then she could just see Lucas and Zay, looking to Marianne and Mia the same way.

"Hey, buddy… You're really active today," Maya smiled. She and Riley were sitting back on the couch, after arriving at the house with the pastries, and as they waited for Ruby, Abby, and Bodhi, baby boy Orlando was treating his future godmother with some good kicks.

"He likes these things," Riley informed her, mid-bite.

"And that's the only reason you send Dylan to grab you some on his way home every other night?" Maya teased.

"For the baby," Riley smiled and casually shrugged.

"Uh-huh," Maya hummed, laughing when she felt him kick again.

"Oh, but look," Riley hummed, keeping the pastry in one hand, and carefully using what parts of the other didn't have crumbs or other sticky elements on them to pull her phone from her pocket and set it on her knee. With her pinky finger she unlocked her screen, pulled up her gallery and found one picture before nudging the phone, which nearly slipped off her leg until Maya caught it with a laugh. Then she saw that it was a picture of the nursery door, back at her house. It now held one of the colorful plaques Maya had made for her and Dylan.

"So, you decided?"

"We already call him that all the time," Riley nodded happily, getting back to her treat. "If we change our mind, we have the other one."

"You do have that, yes," Maya smiled. After a moment, she had to ask… "This does mean that people will know then, won't it? Unless you only put it up for the picture… or you don't intend to let anyone up the stairs at your place until after young Mr. Orlando is on the outside," she whispered.

"No, we know," Riley laughed now. "We'll tell. But I wanted to get to tell you before we did that."

"Right, right, yeah…" Maya slowly nodded, letting the moment hold before turning a look mixed between mischief and innocence. "I may have told someone…" Riley blinked at her. "Don't worry, she's not a big talker, she won't tell."

"Oh…" she relaxed now, as Maya pulled another of the pastries from the box. She'd barely bitten into it when the doorbell rang, sending the dogs in a chorus of barks that woke Marianne from her nap. "I got her," Riley moved to rise while Maya went to let their guests in.

"Hey, guys!" she smiled once her bite had been swallowed. "Come in," she stepped aside to let the trio in. "If you're hungry, please help yourselves from the box there," she indicated the coffee table. "If you're not, I can pack you one up for later. The more I leave lying around, they will disappear very fast," she whispered the last part, with a look tipped toward her best friend, presently holding Marianne and swaying with her. This made the twins and Bodhi chuckle. Ruby and Abby moved to the box at once and took one pastry each, while their classmate's progress was interrupted by a curious Crowley trying to climb his leg and giving the overwhelming impression of being excited. "Someone likes you," Maya laughed. "Didn't get to present you last time. Bodhi, Crowley. Crowley, Bodhi," she made the introductions.

"Hello, Crowley," Bodhi smiled brightly, crouching, and then kneeling before the dog, who took this as further invitation to get closer to the newcomer. Bodhi picked him up and was met with rising eagerness from the animal.

"He doesn't get one of those, but I'll show you where the doggy treats are," Maya promised.

"Look at Jules," they heard Abby laugh. She and Ruby were now standing before one of the pictures on the living room wall, showing the old teams at one of the end-of-year parties, in the yard at the Shelby house. It was one of their… wackier ones, when the old Halloween costumes had been put to work in compensation for a shoot off loss for the guys against the girls. Zay was still wet from when he'd accidentally been knocked into the pool. The picture was a recent addition to the wall, having been unearthed in the set up of the trophies and pictures in the case up in the attic.

"You know, I remember when we'd be at practice, or hanging around at games, and she'd go and tell us about you two, show us pictures…" Maya told the girls, smiling at the happy memories this called up. They'd barely gotten to play together, the two of them, only a year, and yet she'd remained so much of an influence on her life, a great friend. Now, to get this privilege of teaching her little sisters…

When the group finally relocated to the kitchen table to get started, it was as chaotically informal as could be expected. Bodhi was trailed by the dog who'd gone and adopted him like his new favorite person, to the point where he ended up spending most of the time that afternoon in the boy's lap, especially once he'd been presented with one of the promised doggy treats. Then there was Riley, sitting in what best position she could find to contain the pain in her back. And there was Marianne, who spent the span of the gathering being passed from one Shelby girl to the other and looking just the tiniest bit confused, like she recognized a resemblance of some kind, but couldn't go so far as to piece together what it meant.

"So, tell me what you've got so far," Maya looked to the students. To no surprise, Ruby was the one to break out the notes, and they were so neatly written that they might have been believed to be typed if Maya didn't know for a fact that it was just the way she wrote. She could just see the surprise and artistic admiration in Bodhi's eyes, which was almost too funny. Of course, he would see this as an art as much as anything.

"We talked to everyone in our year," Ruby told Maya. "Miss Alcott let us take a few minutes in our English class, and then to the others, too. Pretty much everyone was interested, but the trip wouldn't be for another three years, and I think some of them aren't ready to make that kind of commitment," she went on, tipping just on the side of annoyance, like she didn't understand how that was so hard.

"Alright, well, what are we looking at? Yes, no, maybe?" Maya asked, to keep her going.

"No one actually said no, it's more like yes, or maybe, or maaaaaybe…" Abby explained.

"There's like twenty-eighty on the definite yeses and then the maybes," Ruby cut to the point.

"Right…" Maya looked to Riley, who appeared as perplexed as she was. They weren't going to get very far with numbers like that. Now the students were looking concerned that their project would crash and burn before it really had a chance to take off in earnest.

"It's early, yeah?" Bodhi spoke up now, and the others turned to him. "All they heard was that there might be a trip in a few years. Maybe they'll be more into it if we tell them where we'd go, what we'd do," he shrugged. "Right?"

"Yes," Maya smiled.

"If we work with the goal of getting everyone in that class on that trip and not everyone goes in the end, then whatever's left can be added to the pup fund," Riley offered.

"It should," Ruby nodded, and both she and her sister looked as though their disheartened moods had been washed away and replaced with brightened optimism. They could do so much with a mood like that.

"So… the big question… Where do you guys want to go?" Maya asked the freshmen. Her eyes ticked toward Ruby's notes like she fully expected her to bust out a whole list of suggestions, and the girl chuckled before showing that she had been all of two seconds away from showing she had those.

"We were talking about it at lunch last Friday," Abby explained, pointing to herself, Ruby, and Bodhi. "The way we see it, there's sort of two avenues: educational or recreational. Do we want to learn or just do some sightseeing, go to the beach, that kind of thing."

"No reason it can't be both, right?" Ruby added.

"You're talking to a bona fide museum nut over here, I can't make that choice for you," Maya pointed out, making them laugh. "I will say, if this trip happens before the year is over, there is always a way of making it interesting."

"Interesting…" Bodhi repeated, not quite following.

"Frame it the right way, and any number of teachers might be convinced to give you guys a final project, or extra credit, tailored to wherever the trip would take you. And if that's not enough, you get the bonus of actually going on that trip," she finished her explanation with a sort of 'ta-da' hand flourish. "I know I could think of a lot of projects for my class."

"So, column one then… Or a bit of both?" Ruby guessed, even as Abby was passing her Marianne and she received her with a warm smile.

"Both, I say both," Riley declared with a pronounced nod. She was also eyeing the box of pastries again, and the temptation appeared both strong and painful. She needed to resist… for now.

"Okay, hang on," Maya got up and jogged off up the stairs and all the way to her shelves lined with old sketchbooks from through the years. Those with a special purpose, more than day-to-day drawings, like the ones she sought now, had their own space, so she was able to snatch them up and return at once down to the kitchen. The stack was deposited on the table with a satisfying thud.

"What are those?" Abby asked.

"Travel sketchbooks," Maya breathed, smiling proudly. Bodhi started to reach for one, then paused and looked to his teacher. "Yeah, go for it," she nodded in invitation. That was what they were there for, yeah?

For a while, they would be paging through those books, looking at the drawings, the paintings… They would show them to one another, and Maya or Maya and Riley would share stories, depending on whether this was from a trip they'd both been on or not. Whenever they came across something that had potential for this trip, it was added to a brand new page in Ruby's notebook. Bodhi had the honeymoon book, and it was just as well that Maya had thought better of including anything in there that she wouldn't have been able to show family or friends.

"I really want to go there someday… Paris…" Bodhi breathed, fixating on a rough sketch of the statue in Maya and Lucas' hotel lobby.

"Maybe you will… in three years," Maya told him, and it was a notion that pleased him so very much.

"Where was this?" Abby asked, holding up the For Starters book open to a page that had caught her eye.

"That…" Maya leaned to see, carefully balancing the baby in her arms. "That was in South Africa," she smiled as she recalled the day. "We took a wrong turn, walking around after we'd checked into the hotel, but we ended up there, so it was definitely a kind of… wrong turn that became a right turn."

"This one?" Ruby asked, showing another, in fact their senior trip book, and here Maya would nod to Riley so she could see it, too.

"Italy," she beamed. "Oh, that was the day Sophie met Chiara," she recalled, before she and Maya quickly recounted the tale of their friends. It was really one of their favorite love stories, thinking of all the pieces that had to fall into place for that one moment to happen. All these trips, looking back, Maya just felt so fortunate to have been able to go to these places. It wasn't just about collecting ideas anymore. Looking through her various sketchbooks, she was becoming more and more determined to see to it that those kids got to go on this trip, got to make some great memories of their own.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners