A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

February 4th 2020

Chapter 35
Their Support of a Legacy

"I'm really starting to understand the way you get with these things now," Lucas told Maya as the two of them led the way, their whole group weaving its way up to their seats here and there along the rows.

"And what way is that exactly?" she wondered.

"You know, just really kind of… too much excitement for too little a container, and that's not a joke about your height," he pointed back at her before she could presume as much. "It's just it's almost time, it's all coming together, and now the waiting feels like…"

"Like you're about to burst, my little container?" she teased.

"Kind of, yeah. How do you even stand it?"

"It's not like this is the first time you've done this, I mean what about the house, the proposal? That lasted way longer than any of this," Maya pointed out as they finally sat down.

"But on the whole, that was mostly just about you and me, this…" he looked around the gym, the crowded stands… "This is so many more people, and no matter how nervous I might have been… I had a good idea of how it would all pan out," he smiled when he felt her loop her fingers with his, the ring showing brightly on her finger.

"He's going to love it," Maya told him, leaning briefly to his shoulder.

She was right, it had all been very quick. It had been two weeks, just about, since that day he'd run into the coach over at the bookstore, and now here they were. As much work as it had required, he knew that for his part… this whole thing had been in the works for much longer than two weeks. This was him repaying his gratitude for an action already a decade past. And that was long enough.

He'd told Maya plenty about his plan as she'd driven him to school the previous morning, and then again at lunch when he'd discovered that she'd stuck around. He'd been more than happy to have her come and join the group when they all ate. It wasn't until he'd come home that evening, brought back by Robbie and Ramona, that he'd finally been able to show her all the things he'd gathered. Sam was spending the night at the Cassidy house, a sleepover to which Cecilia, Adam, and the Schmidt twins had been invited as well, so it had allowed the reunited pair some time to themselves. They'd ordered in and Lucas had taken Maya on a trip down Mark Wiley memory lane.

"You know he, and my dad, and Uncle Hank, and Mr. Shelby were all in school together? They were all on the boys' team together. There are still so many trophies and awards on display back there that they all got together."

That had been one of the things he'd found himself fixating on the most. He would look at those pictures, Wiley in his school days, and to find so many faces he could recognize, not just because he knew them as adults but because he knew a lot of their kids, had grown up with many of them… It was like history repeating, or… the next chapter of one generations' long saga… Years from now, he and his friends would be the ones bringing their own children into those schools, continuing the story.

"I'm just trying so hard not to focus on how weird it is to see your dad at that age," Maya would smile. "You really do look so much alike."

"Pappy Joe would make jokes how there could be no doubt where I came from. It would make my dad laugh… not so much my mom."

As easy as it was to get caught up with the throwback of those photos, this whole thing wasn't just about Mark Wiley the student, the high school basketball star. It was about what had come afterward, when he'd gone and become a teacher and a coach, and there was more than enough there for them to discover and to highlight. Lucas had found articles in local papers, from that first year where he'd taken over as coach, and the consensus seemed to go that he had made that school's basketball program into what it was today, taking it from years of wavering successes and overwhelming defeats into one of the best in the area. There had been some parents who'd moved their kids to ensure they could attend that school, so they could be coached by Mark Wiley. Mark leaves his mark. That was one of the headlines, and Lucas had sort of adopted it as a nickname for this project, this day.

There had been some debate about when exactly they would spring the surprise. The boys' team would be on the court, and the last thing they wanted was to go and do their thing and end up throwing everyone off, costing them the game. Thankfully, with the help of their old principal, they had been able to set things in motion so that the boys would get to play the following morning, turning it into a double day as the girls were set to play in the afternoon. Everyone would be aware of this already, including the players… just not their coach. He still believed he was getting his boys set for a game.

The gym felt like it buzzed with energy, with all these people here, so many of them here specifically on invitation. Lucas hadn't spoken or written to all of them separately, which would have taken forever, but he'd had some point people who had reached out to others and passed the information back toward him. He could sort of spot out the ones he had spoken to. They would see him and wave at him, some of them, he suspected, only recognizing him because they took one look at him and figured out he had to be Thomas Friar's kid.

"He's totally going to figure it out," Lucas shook his head with a sigh.

"What? Why?" Maya asked.

"Everyone looks kind of… suspicious," he gestured around.

"No, that's just you," Zay leaned in from where he sat, one row behind, and clamped his hands to his best friend's shoulders, making Maya and their nearby friends chuckle.

"Yeah, relax, you're going to pass out," Asher insisted.

"Am not," Lucas frowned.

"Aren't you though?" Maeve tipped her head back, sitting in front of them.

"Oh, there's my mom, be right back," Ramona left her seat and scurried after a tiny woman looking lost.

"Maya!" a child's voice called, and they turned to see that it had belonged to Nellie Hunter, coming along with her twin, her little brother, and her parents. "Can we sit with you?"

"What do you think I've been saving these seats for?" Maya grinned, welcoming the leaping hug from the six-year-old and squeezing tight. Sure, it could still be days sometimes in between one visit and another, but somehow the knowledge that they hadn't seen their big sister because she'd been away made the reunions feel even more significant.

"When does the game begin?" Melinda Friar asked as she and her husband arrived.

"There's not actually a game today, Mom, remember?" Lucas stood, indicating where they had to sit.

"Oh, you know what I meant," she waved this off.

"Another twenty minutes or so," Lucas answered. He couldn't predict whether Coach Wiley would be coming around the gym at any point before the game, though he had his inside men in the form of the boys' team, who had their marching orders handed to them by the girls' coach. They were to ensure the surprise wouldn't be blown and everything would go as planned. "Okay, maybe I'm overdoing it just a little," he quietly told Maya as they were coming down to the last minute. For having been part of those teams, they knew to trust in a punctual start, and that hadn't changed in the eight years since they'd left.

"In through the nose, out through the mouth, Huckleberry," she smiled, squeezing his hand.

"Right, yeah, makes sense…" he slowly breathed.

From the moment the boys' team and their coach came out into the gym, and all up until their time in the gym was done, it all felt as though everything went by so fast. The wait had been endless but the event itself just went by so quickly.

Naturally, the opposing team, once the game had been pushed to the next day, had no reason to show up today, and so they hadn't come. Lucas could see the boys as they all sat there now, pretending like they had no idea what was about to happen, some of them maybe playing too heavily in the 'where's the other team, what's going on?' act. The coach didn't see any of this though. He was too busy asking himself that very same question.

Then, from the family's usual spot, seven-year-old Jane Wiley had gotten up and walked across the empty court toward her father, carrying a flat box on her extended arms. The hush fallen over the gym was enough to clue the coach to the possibility that something might have been going on, but not so much that he'd understand exactly what that something was. When his youngest daughter stopped and held out the box to him, he bent forward to speak and finally stood back up, pulling open the box being offered to him. For having been the one to pack it, Lucas would be one of the few to have his curiosity extinguished as he didn't have to ask 'what's in that box?'

He knew that what Mark Wiley wasn't seeing yet was a couple stacks of envelopes banded together, and a book at the very bottom, because all he could see at the moment would be an old jersey, in the old colors of his high school, folded to show the back, with the number 36 underneath the name WILEY.

And when he'd look back up again, there would be many more jerseys now. Across the many spectators filling the bleachers to capacity and standing room that day, all of them who'd played with him in school would be wearing those same colors, that same team. All the kids who had not been players, who only knew him to be their gym teacher, had the school's athletics shirt, like they'd just stepped into gym class once again. And then, all those he had coached at this school, who far outnumbered his former teammates and students, far outnumbered the 'civilians,' too, wore the colors of that same team represented by the boys on the court that day. The girls had their jerseys, too. He may not have been their coach, but he'd been there for them as much as the boys. All of them were cheering now, some of them waving signs that heralded them as the class of one year or another, the champions of this season or that one…

Coach Wiley was taking it all in, little by little, and he would see the faces, he would recognize the people, and his eyes didn't take long to start tearing up.

Some of them had come up to speak, one by one, sharing stories, sharing the many reasons why the man leaving at the end of the year mattered to all of them enough that they had to say it in this way. Lucas hadn't gone up, hadn't wanted to draw attention to himself, even as the people had started to step down from the bleachers, coming up to talk with the coach, reuniting with some of the others in the gym that day. By then, the lunch spread they had organized was brought in, and people got to serve themselves.

"You going up there anytime soon?" Maya asked, coming to sit with Lucas as he looked on to the scene. She held up a plate she'd filled and he grabbed a sandwich. "I mean I get what you're trying to do, I do." He looked at her. "He helped you without asking for thanks, you're thanking him without asking for any in return… Except you did know, or else we wouldn't all be here today. If you don't tell him, I will," she stared him down.

"You wouldn't," he stared back, unable to keep from chuckling.

"All those people who went up and said their bit, they had plenty to be thankful for and they said it, why do you think?" That was an easy question, wasn't it? The man had meant so much to them, and just because he'd done it all without asking for notice, that didn't mean he shouldn't see that gratitude acknowledged.

His secret was let out anyway. Barely a minute later, as he and Maya were still sharing her plate, the coach came up to the bleachers where they sat.

"It's been brought to my attention that you were behind all of this," he nodded to Lucas, a smile at the corner of his lips and in his eyes.

"Who told?" Maya couldn't help asking.

"That would be my most mature child," he revealed, looking back to where Jane Wiley was dribbling one of the balls, moving around the 8th graders and showing she may yet have had a jersey of her own in the future.

"I'll go see if she wants a teammate," Maya set the plate aside, dusting off her hands as she climbed down and took a moment to hug the coach before jogging off to join the girl.

"You know, I was starting to think people were talking behind my back the last week or so. Now I know why," Coach Wiley climbed up to sit with Lucas. "You did all this?" he asked, looking around.

"Did you look under the jersey yet?" Lucas asked. With the letters, being messages from those who had been unable to come, for reasons of distance above all, the book had been posted outside the gym door, for all to sign as they came in, before being inserted into the box and left in the capable hands of little Jane.

"I did," the coach smiled. "And you're not answering my question."

"I just… After we talked that day, I couldn't get it out of my head. You did so much for me, and I never got to say thanks. And everyone I talked to, Maeve, Ramona, Julia… They all had stories like mine, so it all kind of came together."

"I was only doing my job…" the coach told him, but Lucas shook his head.

"It felt like a lot more than that, to them, to me. That day, when you came to my house and you told my mom and dad about trying to get me back in school, I heard you talking, I knew it was you. It meant… a whole lot to me, to hear what you had to say. And I never said anything back. I guess this is like… thank you, with interest."

"You know, I always suspected about that day, but I never said…" Wiley chuckled. "I can't even begin to tell you, seeing all of them out there… It really puts a lot of things in perspective… Thank you, Lucas," he turned back to him, and Lucas tipped his head. He had a feeling this wouldn't be the last time they saw one another, not after those years in between.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners