A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!
July 22nd 2022
Chapter 203
Our Legacy of Entertainment
It was possibly the funniest thing in the world for Kacey, Lucy, and Remy Friar to watch as their father came along, a giant human as far as their vantage point showed them, next to their short and very plastic toy basketball hoop. The peak comedy in this would come when he'd take the matching ball in his big, fully grown man hands and come lumbering along to make some amazing play, with long strides, and turns, right up to then… plop, he'd drop the ball through the ring. Of course, he knew that this amused them, which only served to make him do crazier and crazier run-ups, sometimes tag teaming with Marianne, who was just as motivated as he was to ham it up for her little sisters. The two-year-old trio would look on and cheer and laugh every time.
"Daddy, gimme!" Kacey reached out her hands, which was the signal, always, that as funny as his shenanigans were, now the triplets wanted to play, too. Sooner or later, one of them would ask for the ball, and so he'd give it back, and then they would get their turn.
Lucas didn't think he could ever properly express how much he loved being out here like this, him, and his little daughters, sharing this sport that he and their mother loved, and participated in… They were none of them obligated to love it, too, or even like it, but then it was a part of their lives, and so far, they all responded to it like this, with an eagerness to play, too. They were still very small, sure, and their skills varied, mostly came off to chance and the size of the equipment, but the more they'd be out here, the more he and Maya would get to see how much they had started to genuinely pick up on it. This had been the case with Marianne, too, when she'd started out, and now, just weeks away from her sixth birthday, she was showing how much she'd learned, and her potential was becoming clearer, so who knew what would come with the triplets? Would they all keep playing as they grew up? Maybe, maybe not, but for now it was the height of excitement whenever they'd get to play with their father.
Of course, with game play, whether or not they were going as intensely as either of their parents had done in actual games, there could be the occasional incident, as there was today, when Lucy tripped and fell. Lucas had not even seen the fall itself, only heard the aftermath when the little blonde started to screech her head off. He fell in along with the other three girls standing in front of the house, his greater height used this time for action more than comedy, as he bent past the girls and scooped up the one sitting on the ground, red in the face and crying.
"Hey, hey, now…" Lucas hushed as he just held her for a moment to help her calm down. Oh, she would cling to him so tight even when she wasn't hurt, so right here he doubted he could have pried her away if he wanted to. He could have let her go and she would never have fallen, but he didn't. He just kept her wrapped up in his arms and reassured her.
"Daddy, there's blood on her knee," Marianne reported. "It's on your shirt now, too." He looked down as best he could with a two-year-old welded on to him. She had indeed scraped her knee, nothing too serious, nothing that couldn't be easily fixed, but then try and tell her that right now…
"What about the other side, can you see?" he asked, and Marianne tipped to have a look, dodging around Kacey and Remy, who were standing very close to their father in an attempt to see to their triplet.
"That one, too," Marianne told him.
"My goodness, that was a lot, huh?" Lucas breathed, kissed the little wet face. "Anywhere else? Hands?" It was just the knees. "Okay, come on, let's go fix that up."
It never occurred to them until situations like these came along just how much they had grown as parents. It wasn't as though it was ever suddenly okay when one of their kids was hurt or sick, but there wasn't that same panic, more of a clear focus. They could deal with scraped knees; they'd done it before. Whereas the first scraped knee, on Marianne, oh… They could look back on it and laugh now, and that was the good part. And so today, a crying child didn't send them running, especially when they knew that the other was already with them.
While Lucas had been outside with the little girls, Maya had been inside, with the baby, putting in some diary time before they had to head out. She had heard Lucy's cries, even knew it was her from so far away and not her sisters, but she also knew that Lucas would already be tending to her, and within a minute she heard them coming into the house, climbing up the stairs, so she left her desk and came down from the second floor. There, she got to see them coming, Marianne first, Kacey and Remy behind her, and then Lucas and Lucy at the rear.
"What happened?" Maya asked.
"Lucy fell and she hurt her knees," Marianne told her, already moving ahead to the bathroom down the hall. By the time they got there, she'd pulled out the little first aid kit and fished out the prize: the collection of colorful band-aids. Lucy was going to get two of those, and because they were as bright and cute as they were, a couple of those bandages were bound to end up on the little twins, even if they didn't have any cuts to cover. They went through more boxes of the things that way than they could actually say.
The big trick in getting Lucy to let go of her father was to promise her something equally precious, which was that she'd have her mother. Maya got her from Lucas, the better to start tending to those knees, while he now had to hurry and go change his shirt. Walking around with a couple of blood stains like that was not going to be appropriate for today… or any day. As he changed and went to bring his old shirt downstairs to tend the stains, he knew Maya – along with Marianne, Kacey, and Remy – would be cleaning up Lucy's knees, applying the band-aids… By the time he returned upstairs and went to find them, it was all over, though Lucy was still stuck to her mother, no longer crying but still needing the comfort of her presence, and her voice as she hummed some random tune. It was doing the trick, and soon they would be able to head out at last.
As they made their way to the Hunter house, the talk started off with the tale of Lucy's knees before turning back to the last week and some, to the basketball tryouts at school and the aftermath. Maya had been there, and it had been more or less what she'd expected of this year's run. There were the returning players, the seniors like Anton and Olivia, and the sophomores like Nellie, Gracie, Desi, Bobby, Ethan, and Tre, and there were newcomers, only freshmen like Maia Bennett this time around… What Maya seemed to pick up on, more than those new players, were the people who weren't there. Two of them she knew could have been great assets, on any team, because she'd seen them play.
Whether it had to do with the fact that she'd known the gym teacher for more of his life than she hadn't known him or just that he was a good guy, Dylan had made it so that Maya could have the gym at lunch time on Friday. It had been a big ask, she realized, because she knew what it was like on tryout days, knew some kids would want to come in and practice ahead of that afternoon, but this felt appropriate to her, and it did to Dylan, too, so they had done it. And they had used that time to put forth an idea. By that point, it had really become Jenny's thing, and as she'd talked Ash into meeting her at the gym at lunch, she'd also called on a couple other students from the school she knew were in a similar situation to the two of them, who for one reason or another could not join the regular school teams but who were all of them excellent players. Maya watched them go, playing two on two, and it was as thrilling as anything. She'd made the pitch to them, to form their own team. Their numbers were small for now, but the way they saw it, it wouldn't be hard to find more. They would form this community for themselves, they would get to share in this sport together… and maybe, just maybe, they would get to show people, help to fight for themselves and so many others… If nothing else, they would have fun.
Ash and the others were on board, and all of the past week, Maya had been hearing from them and Jenny how they had been reaching out, looking for teammates. They had locked in a few already – from a couple of other schools – thanks to Jenny talking to her former adversaries, from the boys' teams at those schools, boys she knew she could trust in this. They had put her in touch with these other kids, and they'd been meeting, playing together… She and Ash had been able to put their minds at ease over the school teams and not going for tryouts, and that was far more than any of them could have asked for. Maya had already told them that she looked forward to attending their first game, and she meant it. They would all be there, her and Lucas and the girls.
"Hey, bunny girl, what happened here?" Shawn contemplated his little granddaughter as she and her sisters came through the door into the Hunter Hart house. One of her knees was adorned with a pink bandage covered in cupcakes, while the other had a blue bandage with happy, swimming sea creatures.
"I fall down," she informed him, right before Kacey and Remy showed their prizes. Kacey had one bandage on her arm, which Maya suspected was so that it would look like her arm, and Lucas' arm, with their tattoos. Remy had wanted hers over her belly button… She thought it was funny, but that was also on brand for her. She was always poking at her belly button, and her sisters', and her parents'… So far, she wasn't doing it to strangers, and thank goodness for that.
"Oh, no," Shawn 'gasped.' "Do we need to make it better?" he asked, and Lucy told him that her mother had done it already… though her tone may have indicated that she wouldn't be totally opposed to some extra 'make it better' attention… just to be safe.
Today may have looked like most any day where the family would get together, but it really wasn't, and it was enough that Marianne and her sisters went and had their special lockets on. Today, even though they were watching from home and not off at some movie theater here or in another city, they would get to see what Haley Hunter had been up to in late summer and early fall. She was back home and at school nowadays, and frankly she was glad about that even if she did have the time of her life in New York. When she'd come back, she'd told her sister and their mother how she really understood now what they'd been saying, about how no matter how much they enjoyed their own careers out there, with music or television, those would never replace what it was like to be here, home, in their own lives.
While she'd been out there, as much as it had been about rehearsals and then shooting for the movie – with bits of down time with her father, and school time with her tutor – she had learned a lot, especially as she'd been made to consider her future. Did she want to keep doing this? Be in movies? Yes, wholeheartedly. It had been amazing! But she didn't want to be an actress, no. She wanted to keep doing what she'd done, with her gymnastics, and her circus arts… But being out there, she'd come to realize how much further she could go. She envisioned so many options, and the big one right now was that, alongside her circus arts classes, which she would continue, she wanted to start learning martial arts. So now, on top of showing up and having her want to show some new thing she'd learned to do with gymnastics and the likes, she wanted to show them what she'd been learning in her new classes.
The morning's incident and subsequent bandaging was long forgotten by the time they all got to sit around the living room and watch the movie. The triplets were in their usual spot… on the floor, either standing or sitting, and as they did with their grandmother's show, when they spotted a familiar face, they got very excited. This time around, they were far from alone, and they were momentarily startled by the outbursts from the others, but beyond that… There she was! There was Haley, on the screen!
As wild as it had been, the first time they'd all seen Katy on television – those of them who had been alive at the time – it was just a whole other thing when it came to Haley. This turn had really come out of nowhere, even though they all knew deep down that something like this was bound to be in her future, the way she was going. Either way, she was there, with hair and makeup and costume, and no matter how many times they'd seen her at some showcase or another, this was different, this was up-close and with the motion of the cameras, and the music, and just…
Neither Shawn nor Katy were able to stop crying from seeing their girl whenever she appeared, which just made Haley giggle. Meanwhile, Nellie, Gracie, and MJ were just so excited for their little sister, and the four of them were all sort of bunched up together, with the littlest of them at the heart of the bunch. On the couch, with Mackenzie passing between them from time to time, Maya and Lucas were somewhere in the middle of those two extremes of reactions. This was so much… and they couldn't get enough. That wasn't going to be an issue. Going by how their daughters reacted, they had a feeling this movie would be on constant rotation in their house for a good long while.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
