October 23rd 2022
Chapter 296
Our Spookies in Sleepovers
When he told Maya about Marianne's wish for a Sleepster, she was on board at once, as he'd figured she would be. When he listed off who she'd wanted to invite for this 'not a big one' sleepover, he could just see her eyebrow arch higher and higher as he told her what seemed like very few words. But then they were used to receiving all these people, so she was counting faster than him, until he stopped and, a few seconds later, she breathed out.
"What?" he asked awkwardly.
"Fifty-eight," she reported, and his jaw might have physically dropped.
"Are you serious? How…" But taking a moment now, he realized she was right. If this went the way she'd said, that would be how many people would be in the house. They were starting off with ten people for having the two of them, their daughters, and their granddaughter, and from there it all went very fast, so… Could they reduce this somehow? All these people were friends or family, they wanted them here, yes, but… surely…
"This is what we get for being very friendly, huh?" Maya joked.
"What if we just keep the kids?" Lucas suggested with a shrug. "You and me, Ella, Eliza and Emma and the guys if they're up to it, and then…" Maya watched him for a moment, and then she was counting again, separating out those he'd have her keep and remove to come down to…
"Thirty-eight," she slowly nodded. He gestured at her. Better already? "Of which… twenty-four are seven and under," she went on.
"Yeah," Lucas nodded, and his easy confidence that they could pull that off was hard to argue with. She laughed, tipped her head.
"Okay, then…"
Did it have the potential to be a giant headache? Definitely. Would they do it anyway for their daughter? In a heartbeat. Anyway, they knew all these kids, knew what they were in for. They weren't worried. And as a bonus, they'd be giving a lot of their friends a night to themselves. Soon, along with Marianne, Lucy, Kacey, Remy, Mackenzie, and Aubrey, along with Eliza and Emma and their boyfriends, their guests would arrive. After their parents would have driven them down to Houston from their home in Dallas, ten-year-old Ada Marie Minkus and her eight-year-old brother Bertie would be brought to Austin along with Giulia Choi, Connor Garcia, Jae Zvolensky, and Valentina and Santiago Mantovani by Ella Friar. No sooner would she have dropped those passengers off that she'd turn right back around to go pick up her daughter from her father's apartment. Tori could easily have been picked up by one of the others, by her grandparents especially, but Ella had insisted on being the one to go. They'd get to spend this Sleepster together, yes, but ahead of that, she longed for a bit of one-on-one time with her girl before they ended up surrounded by kids at every turn.
Nellie Hunter won the right to drive herself and her siblings over her twin in a fierce match of rock paper scissors, and so she came along with Gracie, MJ, and Haley, all of them looking forward to this mad edition of Sleepster. They would be of that middling crowd, old enough to be counted on to look after the whole wild bunch of little kids, and they were up to the challenge. Dylan came and dropped off his trio even as Zay came and brought his own, adding Nicky, Emily, Megan, Mia, Izzy, and GiGi to the mix. They'd barely left that Cara came, escorting her own twenty-month-old son, Felix, along with his five-year-old cousin, Francesca, and looking every bit the fretful mama at leaving him behind but finally going on her way. He couldn't have been in better hands.
Last of all came Marianne's friends. Sleepster had so evolved over the years, so that its original definition, its original purpose, could have seemed to deviate into something completely new, but then it hadn't, had it? Not really. Yes, it had started out as a sister sleepover, only the girls there with them, while the boys would gather elsewhere. They still did it that way, sometimes, except if they did then it was generally so that they were still in the same house, just separated. But even back in the early days, where the now seventeen-year-old Hunter twins were no bigger than some of the little kids in attendance today, the definition of sister – and by extension brother, too – was not restricted to actual siblings, by blood, marriage, or adoption. It could also count those people, friends, or relatives of another title, who were as near to siblings where their feelings were concerned. Now that Marianne was part of the Sleepster crowd, it was her privilege as well to bring along those she counted as her dearest friends, those she saw as something like family, too.
The girls were all regulars when it came to sleepovers, either at the Friar house or at any of their homes. Winnie Grayson, June Abernathy, and Harper Beaumont were Marianne's best friends, every step of the way. But they also had Lily, Priya's daughter, one year their junior but always one of them whenever they could include her. And per Marianne's request and invitation, they had her classmate and friend, Mosi Okafor.
He had never been to the Friar house yet, but then Marianne had only been to his house for the first time just under two weeks ago, so it would have happened sooner or later. One look at him as his mother dropped him off and it was clear that this was the first time that he was going to spend the night at someone's house that wasn't a relative. The six-year-old tried not to look apprehensive, but he couldn't fight it back as much as he'd like. It took Marianne grabbing his hand and leading him along to meet the others for him to snap out of it, and then he was good to go.
With all of them there now, it was to wonder how hectic it would all have been if the others had come along, too. Oh, it was very noisy already, with all these children running everywhere. Even Maya and Lucas, who were used to having five of them now running all over the place day in and out, were looking momentarily overwhelmed, but they knew that they needed to pull it together, and so they did. First things first, they would get everyone settled in, and when that was done, then they'd have to see what everyone wanted to do. They had a good idea of something that would keep them all entertained, but it would come down to whether they were up to it or not.
Hallowannie was right around the corner, and that would mean another round of their outdoor games, along with the hay maze and the costume contest, and the candy… so much candy… They had their old standards, returning every year, but then they would also try and introduce new games each year, rotate some of them so it wouldn't always be the same thing every single year without change, without variety. So, it hadn't been long that they'd had this thought, of using this opportunity, having the kids around, to test out some new ideas, seeing how the kids of every age would do. It was the middle of the afternoon when everyone had finally arrived and so they got to play out there until dinner time. They'd ordered several pizzas, which they ate, all of them spread out around the kitchen where they'd done their best to add tables and extra chairs to fit all their young guests.
After dinner, the kids wanted to go back to the games, and so they did, for a little while. In the spirit of finishing the evening with a bit of peace, they ended on a movie, where their younger attendees were slowly but surely brought down for the count and carried off to their beds for the night, already in their PJs, teeth already brushed, too. For all that, they knew even without asking her that there was absolutely no way that Marianne would be shuffled off like one of the little kids this time. She was not going to be allowed to stay up hours and hours past her normal bedtime, but she and her friends would still get to stick things out longer than usual, and that was already something.
Later, they would joke about how they had just sailed through this kid heavy sleepover in every aspect except maybe one, and that was the chaos that was born out of everyone needing their turn to go to the bathroom before bed. Having three bathrooms on hand might have seemed like a save in this situation, but it was still a lot of close calls as they did their best to divide and conquer and make certain that everyone had their turn without any… incident. Alas, they failed in that respect when it came to four-year-old Jae, who had to be helped and changed into brand new PJs before he could eventually make it up to bed with his siblings and all the other little kids. His big sister Giulia took care of everything, and Jae would not let her out of his sight for a second after that.
"Hey… All good here?" Lucas quietly asked when he came back along with the kids who'd used the bathroom below to find Maya trailing the hallway with her little nephew in her arms. Felix Arroyo, four months shy of two years old, was either already asleep or right on the cusp of it, there in his aunt's hold, and from experience Lucas knew that it might take a bit before she could put him down. This would be as much for the boy's needs as for his aunt's. As she would go on telling people, she still had time to make up for from when he'd been out living in New York with his parents.
"Depends on how you look at it," Maya responded, just as quietly if not quieter. Lucas inquired on her meaning with a curious look. "This right here, this is the danger zone," she informed him with a nod, and now he couldn't help but chuckle.
"The what now?" he asked. To clarify, Maya turned sideways, so he might get a peek at Mr. Felix with his precious sleepy face. Lucas' smile came easily, reaching out to brush at Cara's son's dark, loose curls. He was definitely asleep. "The danger zone," he understood now, slowly nodding as Maya breathed out.
"Yeah…" she leaned to kiss the top of the boy's head. "We are not even going to entertain that thought, are we, Huckleberry?" she raised a finger to point at him without lifting her hand away from her nephew's back. Lucas held his hands up in mock surrender, smiling anyhow. He knew the danger zone well; it was the one that started off somewhere innocent like 'imagine if we'd had a boy somewhere with all our girls' and then deviated to the side like maybe if they went and tried for one more, they'd get lucky. That was just a slippery slope which, never minding what had happened after Aubrey and the measures he had taken, was one that they could not afford to take.
"Well, we've got him," Lucas nodded to their nephew. "And in a couple months' time, we'll have Sam and Dora's boy…"
"Yeah…" Maya hummed, smiling to herself.
"Won't be the same, but… close enough?"
"Close enough," Maya agreed. "Alright, let's see if this one is ready to let me go. You know, when he's sleepy, I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm his mother. It's the… all this," she gestured at her face before moving to bring Felix to rest with his cousins for the night.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
