A/N: Sorry for the delay again, been a bit scatterbrained these days ;)

February 15th 2020

Chapter 46
Their Careers to Share

Maya: There's going to be six of us at dinner tonight. Can you pick up a couple things on your way?

Lucas: Sure, send a list.

Lucas: Guessing Cecilia is the 4th, who are 5th and 6th?

Maya: The former Bostonians!

Maya had packed up the last of her work for the day to bring home with her so she'd be able to leave early, get home, and start cooking. This dinner was turning into something more than she'd anticipated, and the more time she had for it, the least likely it would be that she'd rush and turn into 'chaotic chef Maya.' She was going to make the best 'happy first day of school/congratulations on the date/thanks for being awesome friends' meal she could.

"Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of food out right now, don't give me those looks," she squinted at Trix and Lou. Both dogs had been circling her feet from the moment she'd started working at the stove. Now they were sitting to attention, staring up at her with those eyes… "You're going to start whining and booping my legs now, aren't you?" They kept looking at her. If possible, their eyes got bigger and brighter. "You are bullies, the both of you. Cuddly, sweet bullies, and I am weak today," she whispered with a sigh before grabbing them both a little something and crouching to hold it out to them. They abandoned their polite poses at once and stepped up to eat from her hands. "Don't think this is going to be a thing, okay?"

The next person to arrive at the house turned out to be Cecilia. It had happened before, on those evenings where the girl ended up joining them for dinner, that they would arrive and find she had already arrived. She would be waiting patiently on the porch, doing homework, or reading a book, or playing on her phone… She'd told them once how, with all the time she'd spent in the hospital after the accident, she had developed pro-level skills at patience. She always came prepared in case of a wait.

"You know, in the future, we might just have to get you a key," Maya greeted her as she was let in. "Outside it's cold, inside there's dogs." Trix and Lou had followed her, always eager to greet a guest, especially when they caught a familiar scent. Now, they illustrated her point on the benefits of having a way into the house.

"I…" Cecilia looked like she meant to say something but wasn't sure how. They'd only just seen each other that morning, and yet… A lot had changed for all of them since she had caught a ride to school with the Schmidt twins and Dora and Adam. Very possibly, Cecilia was looking at her now and wondering if things between them were about to change, now that she and Sam were going to having a date…

"I'm going to take a guess here and assume your father is not exactly… skilled… with hair and makeup and all that stuff," Maya coaxed her into the subject.

"Uh… no."

"Right, so, how about, whenever you and Sam have the date, I help you get ready." The way Cecilia looked at her now, with something like hope mixed with grief, she knew exactly where her mind had gone. "Yeah?" Maya smiled. Cecilia slowly nodded. "Do you know what you're going to wear?" She shook her head. "We can fix that," Maya promised.

"Okay… I-I mean thank you…" Cecilia replied, finally breathing out.

The two of them had never really gotten to spend much time on their own since coming into one another's lives. Now, they worked together to get dinner ready, and what Maya noticed the most was that, as momentarily shy as she'd gotten on first arrival, Cecilia was quick to recover. As long as she'd known the girl, that had been part of who she was. She had something of fearlessness in her. Maya hated that she saw it this way, but she suspected this trait had come along in the aftermath of the crash which had cost the life of her mother and the full mobility of her body. It could also have explained how she'd come to leave that note for Sam today, a bit of a 'life is short' nudge.

Nadine and Zay had arrived as finishing touches were going on in the kitchen. Maya trusted Nadine not to have gone into much detail with her husband about what they'd discussed earlier, for her part as much as Sam's, but even what little she would have told – that Sam was going to be taking a girl out on a date – would have been enough to shift Zay into curiosity mode. Now he was here, and there was a girl who could well be The Girl, Sam's Girl. Nadine and Maya would try not to chuckle, much as they felt the urge to, watching Zay interact with Cecilia like a nosy uncle. Lucky for her, Cecilia wasn't flustered at all by this. She answered his questions swiftly, though keeping to herself what parts she didn't want to share and doing so very politely. Zay was rightly impressed with her, and he wasn't alone.

The questions had been cut short by Sam's arrival, and oh how there was the slightest magic beat when he and Cecilia saw each other again for the first time since that morning, at her school. Just the way they seemed to balloon up on a smile, Maya could well imagine how they had gone through this day, replaying the moment over and over in their heads and trying to rein in the expressions that would have extended over to their faces.

Then they remembered that there were other people in the room, other people who would be watching this moment between them. They both sort of did their own version of clearing one's throat, playing it cool.

"I, uh… I didn't know you guys were going to be here. Are you having dinner with us?" Sam asked Zay and Nadine.

"Yes," Zay replied, and Maya swore that he sort of paused on his way to saying something else, considered it for a moment, and redirected elsewhere, like he'd been told not to mention certain things. She gave Nadine a look and mouthed a silent 'thank you,' thinking about what he could have innocently said and ended up making her brother – who was not nearly as fearless as Cecilia – go about as red as her dyed hair. "If it helps, I didn't know about this until this afternoon."

Had it been anything but day one, Lucas would likely not have been home until much later than he ended up arriving. Maya and Sam might have been accustomed to delaying their own dinners in order to have the meal with him, but they wouldn't have wanted to make their guests do the same, even if they would have probably agreed to it. But since it was the first day, and he knew the professor who taught his last class of that day would not be keeping them very long, he was able to make it in time for a relatively prompt dinner.

"I'm not going to say I can't wait until everyone goes home, but I will say that I have missed you a lot today," Lucas declared as he walked up from his car to find Maya waiting for him on the porch. "You look like you missed me, too, standing out here," he informed her, climbing on to the porch.

"Now what's wrong with standing outside?" she smiled, her feet leaving the ground when he pulled her into his arms. "Say the word, I will kick them out right now."

"What about Sam?"

"I feel like crashing on a friend's couch is an important experience in any college student's life," she shrugged, making him laugh before kissing her.

"I might consider it," he told her, looking at her… He really had missed her so much.

"You're not going to believe how much you missed today," she looked at him with that spark in her eyes, intriguing him at once.

"Oh?" She tipped her head back to look through the window, making sure the others were still chatting it up inside, before turning to him again. Just to be on the safe side, she started to sign, keeping her hands as close to herself as possible.

"My brother is going on a date with C-C." That was their sign for her, and even so, Lucas looked like he wondered if he'd seen that right.

"Cecilia?" he spelled it out, and Maya nodded. "He asked her out?"

"No, she did." Lucas stared at her. "Yeah," she confirmed before giving him a quick rundown of the morning, with the note, and the talk, and going to the school, and how Sam had been ever since he'd come back out of there.

"Wow…" Lucas spoke out loud, and Maya shushed him. "Sorry," he signed with a sheepish smile. "So this is good news, yeah?"

"Great news. Speaking of that… My mother went on an audition today," she switched back to speaking out loud, now that they weren't talking about people who were just feet away from them.

"Wait, what?" Lucas gladly allowed his surprise to be vocalized here.

"Yeah, for the lead role in a play that's coming up. She had me help her run her lines for the audition in her office this morning."

"Okay, but, don't get me wrong here, but I thought… I mean, she hasn't been acting since you guys moved out here, right?"

"No, no, she hasn't," Maya confirmed, shifting her thoughts briefly on to those Stage Ready notes on her office wall before her brain even had time to try and turn this around until she was off again. "Doesn't mean she didn't want to though, and now she's going for it. "And Lucas, she was just… She was so good, like better than I'd ever seen her, by a long mile. I think she might actually have a shot at this."

And what if she doesn't get it? After all this time, all this waiting for another chance? What happens to her if they say no? Maybe they'll say it's because she has her other job, something, but all she'll think will be that she wasn't good enough.

"Alright, so now you heard about a bit of Sam's day, and my day… How did it go today?"

"Pretty great, actually. Got one of my new professors today, and she was very good, like… she didn't keep us all period, but she probably could have and we would have stayed."

"I love those…" Maya sighed enviously.

"Oh, and I don't know what happened over the holidays, but Josie showed up and she looked completely different."

"Different how?" Maya asked, suddenly the one receiving the surprise instead of dishing it out.

"Like more the way she was when Willow and Lion got married. I swear, for a second I thought she'd say she wanted to be called Josephine now. And she was nice… not that she was mean before, she was just… Josie… except now she's this."

"Drastic change like that… I kind of want to know what it's about, too," Maya admitted. "But for now… For now there's friends, and dinner…"

"Good, I missed you all, and I'm hungry, two for two."

By the end of the night, Zay and Nadine drove Cecilia home, and Sam told his sister that the date had been set for the following Saturday evening. He also told her that Cecilia had asked for him to mention that she would be calling Maya about 'you-know-what.'

"What did you talk about before I got here?" Sam had to ask.

"Oh, you know, girl stuff," she casually shrugged. "You'll find out soon enough."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners