June 30th 2022

Chapter 181
Our Days of Song

"You know what… You know what…" Riley asked, her voice showing the clear signs of post-performance exhaustion. Sitting there among her bandmates, the five of them all along the large couch in the back of the club, they all looked the way she sounded… Spent, completely, but also exhilarated.

"Why do I have a feeling that she's about to say something that's going to upset us?" Rosa muttered as she turned a suspicious eye toward her. Riley gasped defensively, which got a chuckle out of Maya, Nadine, and Morgan.

"What is it, Honey?" Maya asked, limply tapping her bandmate and best friend's knee.

"I was going to say… This is so much more exhausting than it used to be," Riley finally pronounced herself, resulting in Rosa making a noise that sounded a lot like 'told you so.'

"And it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that three of us have three to five small children at home?" Nadine turned her head toward Riley. Maya showed her approval of this statement with a slow nod and the raising of a tired hand. Riley took this and looked to Morgan and Rosa, then Maya and Nadine. She wasn't convinced. They all looked beat after the night's TXNY show.

"The kids, the jobs…" Maya elaborated.

"The ages…" Rosa tacked on with a teasing grin.

"Whoever's closer, please do something about that one?" Nadine gave a lighthearted glower in their youngest member's direction. Morgan graciously took up the charge and 'kicked' Rosa.

Sure, she wasn't wrong, but it was still a generally accepted rule that they just shouldn't bring it up. If they didn't say it, then it wasn't a thing, was it? Anyway, it wasn't like they were saying they were ancient all of a sudden. Their present lineup was securely between thirty and thirty-three, so they had a long way to go before they ever needed to tap out and stop going the way that they were going. Still, how could they not remember the days where – most of them at least – had been in their teens and early twenties? It was like jumping over a short fence that only got taller by the year. The increments were manageable, but they stacked up, and they'd keep stacking up.

"The kids, definitely the kids," Maya told Riley, and they all chose to accept this, whether or not they were one of their three band moms.

"Yeah…" Riley breathed.

"So, all we have to do now is wait until they're not so little, yeah?" Morgan suggested, and Maya, Riley, and Nadine made a sound like 'yeah, I guess, but they're cute when they're small.'

"At which point you'll be pushing forty…" Rosa whispered.

"Morgan, get her," Maya pointed, and Morgan pounced before Rosa could slip away.

It was a long-running tradition for them to make the most of their summers as far as the band went. Not all of them were teachers with a schedule that significantly changed for those months every year, but that didn't stop all five of them from putting in the effort to push forward with their music over the season. The rule remained what it had always been: so long as people out there wanted TXNY, they would carry on, and so they did. This summer had definitely needed to start a little later with Maya, who had not yet returned to 'active band duty' after having Mackenzie, once school had let out, but now here she was, three months post baby, and she was back front and center… Three months already…

Over the last week, they'd been booked for a series of shows on alternating nights, of which tonight had been the fourth and final. They'd been sharing this stage time, as they had done since they'd come properly into the spotlight, with We Are Sisters.

This was the first time the sister band got to do a series of shows like this, and it was kind of sweetly hilarious to see them live through it all. Cara had experience under her belt, but she also had a five-month-old at home. Little Felix may have started sleeping a lot better than he'd done when he'd just been born, but he was still small and prone to leaving his parents exhausted without either one of them taking the stage. Next to her, Olivia had also done more shows than her schoolmates, while Nika and Jenny were still finding their way. They were all getting to discover together what the TXNY members had taken to refer to as 'the good tired.' They'd be spent, but they'd also be wired just enough that they'd feel as though they could run around the block a couple of times.

With her thoughts swimming in post-show energy, Maya thought about those girls, her students in particular. The four of them, plus songwriter Ava, had really been coming more and more into their own, and Maya felt as though they'd hit their stride as soon as Jenny – or Echo, as she was known on stage – had joined the band. It was like all along before, while they were good, they had remained incomplete. But then Jenny/Echo had come along, and the circuit had been completed and… ta-da, We Are Sisters. They had more songs, enough that they had put out their very first album just a couple of weeks ago, which was why they were all giving these shows this week. They were their own thing, not just an extension of TXNY, and they were really, truly, wonderful. Maya felt like she would have been a fan regardless of her connection with everyone in that band.

Right now, as they were nearing August and, thus, the start of the new school year, it was all too normal that, of that lineup, she be focused on one in particular. Jenny…

Earlier that night, she had told them all – We Are Sisters and TXNY alike – that she wasn't waiting until the start of the school year to leave 'Cody' behind for good. She hadn't decided yet exactly when she would officially break from her current setup, wherein she was Jenny at home, Echo on stage, but still Cody everywhere else, but it would happen in two to three weeks at the latest.

"Would it be weird if I said I wanted to… say goodbye to Cody?" she'd asked.

"Like a memorial?" Nika had smiled, and it had made Jenny chuckle. Yes, maybe like a memorial.

Maya knew that the Marshalls had already been preparing for this shift with their daughter. They had been talking to the school, which meant that some of the staff there was now aware of their transgender junior. She was not the first, or the only one in present attendance, but it was one point of school pride that theirs was a space recognized for being generally welcoming in this respect. It wasn't without its limits, and it wasn't perfect, but they also knew that, unfortunately, it could have been so much worse.

Soon, the word would go out among the teachers, letting them know that 'Cody Marshall' was now to be addressed as Jennifer or Jenny Marshall, and for knowing her colleagues, Maya expected this part of the transition to go smoothly. It was the other part that was going to be impossible to gauge, not until they were in the middle of it, and they saw how the rest of the student body responded. Maya so desperately wanted this to be a wonderful time of freedom and discovery for Jenny, free of any feelings whatsoever like she wasn't welcome, or she couldn't just be herself. But even if she could and she would provide that much at least in her own classroom, there was also the rest of the school… and every other place beyond.

She supposed it was only normal that she worry like this, yeah? She cared so, so much for Jenny, she'd followed her on this journey of hers. Between all this, and being a teacher and a mom… Yeah, there was no way she was going to be Captain Cool & Collected about it. She could only imagine what the Marshalls were feeling, what Jenny was feeling. She was so excited about leaving Cody behind that it nearly counteracted her nerves, but they weren't gone.

Rest in peace, Cody… Long live Jenny Marshall. That was going to be turning over in her head now, thanks to this thought of a memorial. It was giving her ideas, and she couldn't decide whether they were funny or morbid.

As exhausting as show nights were – and show weeks even more so – Maya had long been one to appreciate what came after these shows. Back in high school and college, it had meant gathering, the band and their friends, somewhere to eat, and talk, and generally exist in that sort of post-performance euphoria they'd feel. Nowadays, while they still felt it and basked in it together a while, as they'd done on the couch back at the club, the 'coming home to sleeping little girls and a waiting husband' was really holding its own as the superior post-show experience.

"Missed you out there tonight, I have to say," Maya hummed as she came through the door and found Lucas just on the other side, like he'd seen or heard the car arriving to drop her off and had been on his way to meet her outside, but she'd beat him to it.

"Would have been there, too," he smiled as they embraced and kissed, briefly, then less so…

"It was for a worthy cause," Maya reasoned. Lucas thought so, too. "How was it tonight?" she asked as they made their way to climb up the stairs, so they might get a look in at their sleeping little ones… if they were all still as asleep as they'd been when he'd last checked on them.

"Eliza and Emma were there, helped out with dinner, and by that, I mean they picked up a couple of pizzas. Yes, there's some left, it's in the fridge," he told her before she could even ask. Now though she had to stop on the stairs and consider. Was it too late for pizza? Once upon a time, she might have said there was no such thing. And now… Tomorrow, it'll still be there… "Then we took the girls up the road to the Sandersons' to see Turtle, hung around over there for a while… They got some new goat kids, four of them, that was a big hit with everyone," he chuckled, laughed outright when he saw the saucer eyes on his wife, which were very much like their daughters'. "The little Macaroni did pretty good with the bottle, though I swear she gave me the eye for a few seconds there, like she was thinking 'this is different, but okay.'" That one cracked Maya up so much that they had to stop again at the top of the stairs.

"Just tell me one thing…" she looked to Lucas as he waited by her side, casually holding a hand at her waist. He made a face to show he was thinking of answers before looking at her again.

"Yes, I have pictures of the goats… and the goats with the girls… Videos, too," he informed her, and she grinned, pointed her finger at him.

"This is why you win. Right there, hands down," she decided, and he kissed her once more.

"You want to see what I got?" he asked.

"Yes, please… After I go make the rounds," she added, and he nodded. Of course. There was always one, without fail, who would wake up when she did this, but that just meant that she got to go and hold one of them for a bit until they went back to sleep, so really it wasn't discouraged. Tonight, the honors went to Lucy, and did she ever hold on tight to her mother when she spotted her standing there. She soon got up from her bed to go to her. "Hey there, bun bun, have I got a story for you…"

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners