April 20th 2022

Chapter 110
Our Spirit of Play

For as long as Maya had taught at their old high school, both she and Lucas had been very good about being involved in encouraging the basketball teams. They attended as many games as they reasonably could, especially at the end of the seasons. It had become just a bit more difficult once they'd become parents, especially after the triplets were born, but even when they couldn't be there in person they had kept up with the games, the scores… Now, this year, oh… They couldn't think of a time when they had been more excited for the teams to come together since they had both been players themselves. It would all begin with this, today: the try outs.

"Hello, Orlando family, Auntie Maya out here, giving you a good shot of Coach Dad taking his first steps out there. Check out that jacket… Looking good, Dylan!" Maya raised her voice, getting his attention turned to her and her phone, which he correctly guessed to be recording. He waved at her and she waved back. "Now, I promise, I'm only up here for you guys, okay? Riley, Nicky, Emily, Megan, this is for you. I would never dream of sitting here to tease one of my dearest and oldest friends and tell embarrassing teenaged stories to his future team, we're agreeing on that, yeah? Okay, good."

"Liar," a voice startled her, and she nearly dropped her phone as she looked to the side to find her father sitting down next to her.

"Am not," she chuckled, pausing her recording. "I am a supportive friend, colleague…"

"Fibber," Shawn maintained, and she squinted at him. "Please, do you know how often I've seen that look?" he smiled. He was scanning the gym now, so she tapped his shoulder and pointed down the other end, where he would be able to find what he was looking for. They had just looked up, too, so they spotted the pair of them in the stands, and a moment later they were sprinting across the floor and climbing up to join them.

"We thought you were kidding!" Nellie told Shawn as she hugged her father, a second or two ahead of her twin. Both of them were in their gym clothes, warmed up and waiting for try-outs to start.

"Who, me? I never kid," Shawn insisted, which earned him a noise out of his eldest that read something like 'oh, who's the fibber now?' "Hey, you go out there and show them what you can do, yeah? We'll be right here. Won't embarrass you, I swear." The girls laughed, which was the only accurate response in this case. They quickly went and hugged their big sister before climbing back down to be with their friends.

"Should I chalk that one up on the side of nurture there, Father Dear?" Maya asked with a smirk.

"I don't know, you already had a lot of that in you when we met, so I think that's just you. But, hey, that's probably why we got along so well from the start," he shrugged as he sat back down with her. She couldn't argue with that, could she? She just smiled, bumped her shoulder to his. "So, who do we have out here?" Shawn asked, gesturing to the groupings of kids out on the floor even as he and Dylan saw each other and greeted one another from afar.

As she went about pointing out one kid and another, telling her father what she knew about them so far as their skills were concerned, she was deeply aware of the fact that, as they sat here, he had no idea that he was about to be a grandfather again. They were sitting close enough that their elbows would brush, and she kept having to resist the reflex to reach down and ensure that her shirt wasn't sitting in any way that would reveal her changing shape. They were planning to tell people soon, they were, and that was all the more reason for them not to end up blowing said surprise while sitting in the middle of the gym bleachers, with the echo of the space and so many students running along.

"What about that one there?" Shawn asked. Maya turned back to him, asking with a look which one he was referring to. He directed her and she knew who he'd meant without his having to point him out. "Keeps looking at you then looks away, like he doesn't want you to see him back."

"That's, uh, Cody Marshall," she revealed as casually as possible. If it was like he'd said – and of course it was – and they were cut from the same cloth him and her, it wouldn't take much for him to grasp that there was something on her mind when it came to the sophomore boy.

"Oh, your mailman's kid?" Shawn asked, and she nodded. She told him what she could about Cody as a player. Luckily, the try outs officially started soon after this, so they were able to focus on what was going on out there, on Dylan stepping into his coach shoes at last, on Nellie and Gracie and their friends… Maya went on recording Dylan for his family while Shawn's phone was on the twins.

Where Maya was concerned, it helped her to keep focused on what was going on, and she needed that extra help, truly. What part of her mind wasn't concentrating on the gym floor was back in that corner reserved for Cody and that whole ongoing situation… if she could call it that. They had been back in school for nearly a month already and she could probably count on one hand the number of words she'd gotten out of him in all that time. She hadn't brought up that day at the mall and neither had he. It could almost have been a non-event.

Except it had happened, and it was enough that, even now, when she'd clearly said and done nothing, he continued to minimize their chances for any kind of contact, especially where she might have managed to hold him back for a direct conversation. He had withdrawn from the knitting club, claiming that it was to deal with his schoolwork even though Maya knew that was a lie. More than once, she'd spotted him on lunch periods, sitting outside, his food eaten and just… waiting. Carina, his exchange camper, would be with him, so they'd be chatting, but still Cody would have this look to him like he was counting down the minutes until they were back in class and the day could sooner or later come to an end.

She wanted to talk to him, she did, but then it always just felt like he had not come down an inch from where he'd been at the start of the year, after the mall. She'd hoped that by now he would have found some peace again, enough that they could have a conversation, but it hadn't happened. He still had this tension about him, like so much of his conscious mind while he was at school was devoted to the fact that someone knew his secret… part of his secret… and she could let it slip at any moment. She wouldn't do that, and surely deep down a part of him knew that, except just now he was too scared, and he couldn't access those thoughts.

It can't keep going like this. It's making things so much worse for him.

She had been determined not to tell anyone about what had happened that day, and she'd kept that word, but… she needed to talk to someone, to figure out what she should do. She couldn't solve this one on her own. She would talk to Lucas…

"Look, look!" Shawn tapped her arm and nearly made her drop her phone for the second time that day, getting her to look over to where the girls were having their turn. It was really kind of wonderful to see, and Maya smiled easily as she saw her sisters and Desi play. She could recall playing with them plenty of times over the years, usually when they came over to her house. It wasn't as though she'd spent years wondering if they would follow her and join the team, too, but now that it was happening… Yeah, it felt kind of awesome. They were looking really good out there.

"Hunter! Hunter!" she shouted at them. "Go, Desi!"

"That'll be your girls someday," Shawn confidently claimed, smiling at her without tearing his eyes away from his daughters. Maya felt a good flutter at the thought, as much for Marianne, Kacey, Remy, and Lucy as… their brother? Sister? "If they want to," Shawn amended, and Maya smiled and nodded.

"I think Marianne definitely has her eyes on it right now," she stated, and Shawn chuckled. She sure did. "Bit too early to tell with the triplets, but right now I'd say it's not impossible." She might have shown uncertainty as far as Lucy, but then she would have done the same for Gracie once upon a time, and there she was. She wasn't as intense a player as her twin, but she more than held her own. Maya knew that both her parents supported her in joining the team, though they would be lying if they said that there wasn't some lingering question over what this would all mean for her hip. What if it made things worse for her over time?

When the try outs were done, the twins and their friends came jogging over to where Maya and Shawn sat in the stands. They wanted to know how they'd done, calling on Maya especially, not as their art teacher but as a former star player, former team captain. She was glad to be able to tell them that they'd all been excellent, and she backed up this claim with remarks on something each of them had done. They were not looking forward to the long wait before the lists went up, but they trusted that she knew what she was talking about and left with their heads at peace.

"Alright, that's my cue," Shawn stood up, stopping to hug his eldest before he went. "I was only allowed to show up here if I took them all to dinner after," he informed her, and Maya chuckled. "Hey, I don't mind," he held up his hands and she nodded. She believed him.

The kids had cleared out by now. Cody had disappeared without a trace before she could think to look for him. As she climbed down from the stands, Maya was met with Dylan as he parted from the girls' coach and came over to her.

"Wouldn't it be great if one day it was you and me out there, coaching these teams?" Dylan asked with a smirk, and Maya had to laugh.

"What, five, pretty soon six kids, a husband, one full time job and a few side… endeavors… isn't enough? Contrary to popular belief, I do sleep… sometimes… Going to be less of that for a while a few months from now, but… Yeah, I think I'm good with all my titles right now, not looking to add Coach, too," she kindly declined, and Dylan smiled. Fair enough. "You were pretty good out there, by the way."

"Felt good, too," he breathed.

"I feel like you need a hat," Maya told him, inspecting him with a scrutinizing eye. "Then again… do we want to hide the hair…" she countered her point. "So difficult to choose."

"Ha," Dylan chuckled.

"We can give it a shot. Oh, I'm getting so many ideas for the inscriptions… Just you wait, it'll be a good one. You can keep it for big games, to help you concentrate all that coach power of yours."

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners