April 6th 2021

Chapter 96
Our Turn to Meet

All delays and detours to drop off babies at the Coleman house aside, everyone made it into the waiting room at the hospital by ten o'clock that night. All the usual suspects were here, friends from Houston and Austin both, some eager grandparents along with them. Diana Zvolensky had made certain to be in the state of Texas when her grandson would be born, which involved a lot of working from home, something she insisted she was not meant for. On this occasion, she set aside all discomforts; it was worth every second. Then of course, Asher's parents had made the trip, and in lieu of Ray's mother and father, his just about adoptive parents, the Friars, had been in that same car. The Mantovani family had been in the country for the past two weeks, coddling little Giulia, addressing her solely in Italian, the better to have her absorb the language even further, and looking after Chiara in the last days of her pregnancy. She was so happy to have them there, though the hovering could get to be too much.

Despite all assumptions, the baby came in ahead of the stroke of midnight, if by all of three minutes. This fact was revealed to everyone only as Ray came out to give them the big news, by which point they had rolled into the next day nearly half an hour before. It brought back memories of the night Giulia was born when Asher had been the one to come to them. The rest of them, whether they meant to or not, couldn't help but think about this mix-and-matching their friends were performing in bringing their family into the world. They couldn't help but remember who was or wasn't the 'contributing' parent, but then they'd be reminded how unimportant it was. This new baby was not Ray's, not biologically, just as Giulia wasn't Asher's, but they loved them as though they were. They were the blood of the one they loved, and that made them as good as theirs.

"Man, even when you're crying like that, you can't be even a little weird looking," Maya commented with a smirk, showing she was messing with him. Ray laughed through his happy tears.

"Our son is here," he announced, as though it hadn't been written all over his face. Here, it was as good as a signal for everyone else to fold in around him, to share in that happiness. "His birthday lasted all of three minutes, but we'll pretend like it's today for now."

The grandparents were the first to be sent along. As they waited for their turn, the others went about putting the word out where it needed to go. They let Joey Garcia know about his nephew, back in New York. He would have been here but couldn't get away for a couple of days. They called Tracy Coleman to share the news. Rosa and Jenna would go and watch the kids back there, a little while later, so Tracy might come over and visit the families. They let Farkle and Isadora know, naturally, and Shawn and Katy, and all the other parents who at one time or another had received their son or daughter's friends into their home.

When Maya and Lucas got their turn to visit the new baby, they headed into the room. Sophie was sitting up on the bed at her wife's side, and while Chiara slept, head to her shoulder, she held their son. Asher wasn't far off, keeping a sleeping Giulia in his arms.

"She fell asleep right when they brought her in, but we don't want to wake her," Ray explained, looking to his husband, in full 'possum support' mode and loving it. Giulia was growing to show herself as an ungraceful sleeper, and it was possibly one of her fathers' and mothers' favorite things about her.

"Got it," Maya spoke softly as they came up, already minding the sleeping Chiara. "So, who won?" she asked Sophie. This made her grin so much, even as she couldn't tear her eyes away from the baby boy. Pulling the blanket back, she let them see for themselves.

The big joke, naturally, had been whether or not Sophie's red hair, a supposedly very stubborn trait passed down through generations, would win out when coupled to everything Asher brought to the table.

"Honestly, I think they called it a tie," Sophie reported, and they had to agree. What little hair presently existed on the boy's head was really riding the line between red and brown. It all depended on the light. "I think it suits him very well," she added, her unending smile seeming to glow all over again.

As much as she would have held on to him forever, Sophie eventually passed the newborn into Maya's arms, and oh was he ever a sight to behold… Connor Martin Garcia… Here he was, creating another link in this peculiar little family unit his parents had created. Time and again, they would be shown how, as strange as the arrangement might have appeared in the beginning, it really worked, and all involved could not have been happier any other way. Time would tell whether they ever got to encounter any difficulties along the way, especially as the children would get older. They had their rooms, in the Garcia-Choi home as much as the Zvolensky-Mantovani home, and they ended up in one or the other on alternating nights, after having spent the evening with all four of their parents.

Would Giulia, and Connor, and their future siblings, wish to settle in one place more than the other? Who was to say? It wasn't an issue now, and if it ever became one, well, both the moms and the dads were of a mind that, no matter what, they would still be across the street from one another, and nighttime was for sleeping, so they could be where they wanted to be.

"Everything go alright with the delivery?" Lucas asked the three parents who were awake as he peered at the baby over Maya's shoulder.

"Definitely faster than last time," Ray nodded.

"She pretty much gave him his marching orders," Sophie added, turning her eyes to her sleeping wife even as her smile expressed unending pride for her.

"Oh, oh, hello… hi…" Maya smiled, as the baby blinked his eyes up at her. "The lashes on this kid…" she shook her head at him. "You guys are toast the second he figures out his superpower." The way he just kept on looking, no fussing, just contentment… Right now, she very much wanted to be holding her daughter soon, or else she'd be getting ideas in her head about starting for baby number two as soon as possible. This was not the time, and the sooner she remembered it the better.

"He's not exactly powerless right now, is he?" Lucas pointed out, even as he was having to combat those paternal stirrings himself. When Maya passed him the baby boy, Lucas was reminded, as he had been in holding Nicky Orlando, of those early days with Marianne. They weren't even that long ago, not quite a year, and for all that… She hadn't been this small in a long time, and there was no way around the nostalgia of those times, until the solution was all too clear, where his heart was concerned.

"Hey," Asher finally allowed himself to shift his hold on his daughter, as Giulia started to wake up again. He would have kept her as she'd been for as long as needed rather than to wake her. The girl blinked her little eyes and gave a mighty yawn as she situated herself again. Here was her papa holding her, and they were in a place she didn't know. But then Lucas went and passed the baby into Ray's arms, so he could approach the girl and present her with her baby brother.

"If I'm honest, do you promise not to think any part of this has a double meaning?" Maya asked Lucas, later on, as they made their way to Tracy Coleman's house to pick up Marianne and return to Austin.

"Of course," Lucas replied, giving eyes to show he wasn't sure where this was going.

"It's just that… Well, earlier, when we went in there and got to see Connor, it was really giving me some big…" she tried to find the right words, leaving her hands to try and claw for them without success. Lucas barely had to look at the way her hands were going to know what she was getting at.

"Baby fever vibes?" he asked, and she replied with a much too sheepish nod, her hands now gathered together in awkward fists. "No, hey, I get it, I was right there, too. And then when Giulia woke up…" Maya gasped at this, knowing exactly what it would have inspired in him, just as it did to her.

To see the little one, perched in Asher's arms, as they observed her very first meeting with her baby brother… She looked excited, so very excited. They had been preparing her as best they could over the last few months. Chiara had been telegraphing the idea of this small little creature for Giulia to be tender with, to protect. She would almost mime with her hands, referring to the invisible thing she held as 'piccolino,' and Giulia would press her little hands in the same way. She did it back there, in the hospital room, as soon as she saw Connor, showing how she understood he was the one, the little precious thing. It was as good as sealing their fates, the big sister and the little brother. She would always look out for him.

Suddenly, it wasn't just the idea of a new baby that Maya and Lucas felt so intrigued by. Now, it was the idea of a new baby and Marianne having a little brother or sister, of her no longer being an only child and how good it could be to watch them grow together. That was always the plan, of course, and it would happen, just… Right now, they were feeling just a bit more motivated for it to happen sooner rather than later.

"This isn't going to get any easier, is it?" Lucas sympathetically asked.

"Nope. And if we fall for it every time that we see any of these babies, I am just… never going to see my students again…" she waved her hand out the window. He knew she was joking around by now, and he laughed, but it didn't resolve the underlying issue, did it? They were going to feel this a lot, for the simple reason that they were in this time of building their family, and they knew what the big picture at the end would look like, more or less. It had him and her and several other little Friars around them

"You know what the solution is," he finally told her, as they were driving past their old college house. Maya smiled and looked over at him.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I do," she told him.

Arriving at Tracy's house, they found she had been brought a few items from either the guys or the girls' house, in order to accommodate Mia Babineaux, and Nicky Orlando, and of course one Marianne Christine Friar. Tracy had this one in her arms when Maya and Lucas arrived. According to Rosa's mother, Marianne had woken up just a minute ago, almost like she'd sensed them coming.

"You're going to be asleep again in a minute, aren't you? You just wanted to say hi?" Maya smiled with so much exhilarated joy at holding her baby girl, after all the feelings brought on by Connor's birth. Lucas had been a hundred percent right. All they had to do was focus on Marianne, and all would right itself. There would come a time for them to give her a brother or sister, maybe a couple of each, who knew?

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners