February 24th 2021

Chapter 55
Our Plans For a Fund

"There she is! Hi! Hello! Oh, I missed you, too. Yes, I did," Maya hummed as she lifted Marianne into her arms and kissed her cheek, kissed her little hand when it was presented, palm out. They could always count nowadays how a reunion with the near four-month-old would be followed by her starting to cry if she wasn't held by the returnee for a good little while. When it would be both of her parents, well, Lucas would always defer to Maya in getting the honors.

By the time they'd gotten through the game and then lunch with the girls' team, they were informed that Granny Lizzie had already gotten Marianne back home, so they didn't have to take a detour on the way. They got to just come home and spend some much desired time with their daughter. Maya brought her out to the nursery for a bit of tummy time. Both she and Lucas would be continuously amused by how she'd react to the activity every time, a sort of curiosity, like she was very intrigued about this different kind of motion presented to her.

"Where are you running to, huh?" Lucas asked in a soft voice as he sat with the two of them and watched as Marianne's little feet would move about, even as her raised head was focused on the crochet bear Maya was showing her. Shae had made it, over the summer, on the tour, and it was a recurring participant in these activities.

"I don't know, she looks like she's practicing for a bit of riding time, huh?" Maya grinned. "How about it, Hucklebucket?" she asked, tipping her head to meet the baby's eyes. Marianne made a halfway squealing sort of noise in response, and that was good enough for them.

"You're right, I totally see it now," Lucas nodded. Maya nodded back, teetering the bear along like it was walking, to see how Marianne would track its movements. "So, what was going on back at the restaurant? With the Shelby twins?"

"Oh!" Maya replied with new excitement, remembering. "Well, they were telling me how their class was looking to take a trip together, their senior year," she revealed. "They asked about fundraising, and we talked about the pup fund…"

"So, they recruited you," Lucas guessed, chuckling. Maya was always one to count on for projects.

"You could look a bit surprised," she joked, looking back at him, and inadvertently taking the bear out of Marianne's line of sight, causing her to complain at once. "Sorry, sorry, here you go," Maya brought the little thing closer again.

It seemed almost fitting, with this subject hanging overhead, that they were due for a group dinner that evening. These gatherings felt very much like the pup fund, now that they thought about it, in how they had started as something smaller, informal, with some or more of their old friends getting together for a dinner, at this one or that one's house. It was so much better when they got the whole gang together, all of those in Austin and Houston. Maya and Lucas (and Marianne), Zay and Nadine (and Mia), Riley and Dylan (and soon baby boy Orlando), Sophie, Chiara, Ray, and Asher (and Giulia, and soon baby Garcia), and Rosa and Jenna… Those were the greatest nights.

All it took was for them to clock in two consecutive weeks with a full compliment, and then for someone to say that they needed to make it three for three. That turned into four for four, and five for five, and in no time, it became every week, every Saturday or Sunday, whichever had a better chance of getting them all at once. They would rotate on hosts, everyone getting a turn before they'd start again, not necessarily in the same order.

The tradition was important to all of them, and they could see it, all of them. As much as they tried not to let life get in the middle and give them the impression that they were drifting apart, it had gotten to feel for a little while like they weren't getting to see each other for much too long. They spoke, they wrote, regularly, but it just wasn't the same as being together. And on top of that, well, it went without saying, but their families were growing. Soon, they'd have five kids among that dinner group, and the idea of seeing them grow up together, of having these regular dinners to hang out… It was very exciting. In time, they'd go and grow, maybe have their own kids' table…

Tonight, the place to be was the Babineaux house, and so after getting Marianne through her tummy time or, as they'd come to call it, her giddy-up time, Maya and Lucas went about getting her as ready as they would be before finally getting in the car and making their way to Zay and Nadine's. They were the first to arrive, and this allowed them to take some time in the living room, watching their girls interact with one another. Mia was already coming up on fifteen months, just three months behind Giulia Choi, and like her she was so very taken with baby Marianne. In reverse, possibly thanks to those weekly dinners, Marianne was showing a growing affection for the older girls, too. You put the three of them together, and it could well be the beginnings of a whole new pack of inseparable friends.

"I think she was waiting for you guys earlier," Nadine laughed, holding Marianne in her lap while Mia stood next to her, holding on to her mother's leg and staring up at the baby who in turn would wave her arms in her direction. "She was sitting in the hall, playing around with one of her toys. Every once in a while, she'd look at the door for a couple seconds, and then it was back to her toy. We'd go to her and she'd look too content that we just couldn't move her away from there. Just patiently waiting…"

"You did that, huh?" Maya beamed, looking to the small girl standing nearby. She may not have shared their blood, but oh, one look at her right there, and she felt so deeply like them. She had something in her smile that felt so like Zay, and then that focus in her… That was all Nadine, no doubt to it. "Want to come say hi?" Maya asked, holding out her hands. At once, Mia abandoned her post and teetered over to where Auntie Maya could sweep her up and hold her and make her laugh with her 'assault' of kisses.

Once Rosa and Jenna arrived, they all started to shift toward the kitchen, the better to get started on dinner. Helping hands were not hard to find, and by the time Dylan and Riley arrived – the latter making a beeline for the bathroom – everything was either ready or in the oven and on its way to ready. Finally, the group out of Houston joined them, giving way to the theater of Mia and Giulia meeting one another with hugs. Truly, the plural applied, as they would wrap their short little arms around one another, and hold, and release, only to repeat the act, once, and again, and sometimes a couple more times.

"How are we doing in there?" Lucas asked Chiara as she arrived in the kitchen, almost looking like she'd been meaning to help with the dinner prep and was now disappointed that she'd missed it. But she looked to her friend there and she turned to smiles, eyes tipping down to take in her small belly, all of three months and some dust along but undoubtedly visible, more so than the first time, with Giulia, at this point.

"Oh, everything is just fine, nothing I did not see the last time," Chiara reported. "I thought for sure it would be easier now that I had done it before, and it is, some of it, but it is still…" she gestured to herself and then nodded to him as though to say 'pregnancy, you know,' and Lucas chuckled. Yes, he knew, if only from an external perspective.

One thing that had definitely not gone away was how the other three in their combined family unit would start to hover about her, the further into the pregnancy she would get. Lucas could just about see this added awareness in both Sophie and Asher, the two of them so unavoidably aware that this baby growing inside Chiara was part of them. It was like they felt a heightened responsibility for whatever she was going through in this pregnancy compared to the one where she and Ray had been combined to create Giulia.

With all present and accounted for, the table was soon fully occupied, as the friends sat together and talked a while before dinner was served. This part tended to go the way of everyone catching up with everyone. At the moment, a lot of that revolved around their two mothers-to-be and how they were doing, and then those three little girls there among them. Until there was actually food, it didn't matter so much where they ended up, so they'd generally be kept in three neighboring laps, tonight being Jenna, Ray, and Asher. Then the highchairs were out for Mia and Giulia, and Marianne ended up in her father's lap.

When Maya shared her discussion with the Shelby twins, and the start of plans for the senior trip of the class of 2033, it was like a ripple across the faces of those of them who'd been part of that trip back when they had been seniors. They had all planned it from long before, too, even before Sophie had been part of their group. And Sophie, well… That was the summer when she'd met Chiara in person for the first time, when the two of them had started. With this second child on the way now, the memory felt that much more potent all at once.

"Oh, can I help?" Riley asked right away, upon learning that Maya would be involved in the planning. There had been no surprise here either about her jumping to be part of it all. For her part, Riley looked like she was considering the part where she'd be on leave before long, and the idea of a project felt very important. More than that still, it was a project with her best friend, and it was for their old school, for the students, and right about now her mama-drive was going hyper.

"You can, and you should," Maya bowed her head before lifting a smile to her. "Once I know more, I can stop by the house, it'll be great."

As to the subject of the pup fund then, or the as-yet-undecided-beneficiary fund for the current freshman class still far from the nostalgia of imminent graduation, the memories were once again alive with laughter. They would toss back moments they recalled having cost them or someone else a quarter or two or six. Lucas would look to Maya, and she'd get a feeling like he was remembering just what she was feeling, those moments where they would go walking together and purposefully call up some nostalgia beat or another and gladly pay up however many quarters they had triggered.

As much good as the pup fund would get to do for whoever they gave the money to, as those subsequent graduating classes had done, right up to the current one, Maya and Lucas and their friends knew how much that whole endeavor would have a side effect on those kids. It would be impossible for all of them to acknowledge their shared nostalgia without finding themselves that much further bound to one another as a group. They would remember this final year of high school, the good, the bad, and everything in between.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners