February 20th 2020

Chapter 51
Their Bonds to Family

"So…" Maya slowly spoke, her voice breaking the silence in the car which had invaded and persisted for what felt like the past ten to fifteen minutes of this ride. Lucas was so focused on his driving, like he was off in some other place in his mind, and he had nothing extra left to provide after the thinking and the driving. Seeing him shut down like that, she was already shifting her own perceptions for the night to come and the part she'd have to play in it. "Anything you want to tell me before we head in there? Because the feeling I'm getting right now is that I really shouldn't be going in blind right now. I mean, I get why you haven't told me much before. It's not like they were in your life all that much, yeah? I've met so much of your family over the years, but not those two, and I don't get why we scored the invitation all of a sudden…"

"Due diligence," Lucas finally spoke. Maya blinked.

"Right…"

"They don't do gatherings, so this is their way of acknowledging that we're getting married. They're not going to come to the wedding." It was so straightforward, the way he said it, which just made it feel to Maya like he was receiving her questions and answering them but he was still way off in the back of his head. Looking out the window, she had an idea.

"Hey, let's stop in here for a minute? I need to pick up something. We've got time." Again seeming to respond to a request more than acknowledging her directly, he'd pulled the car up to the curb and parked. As soon as this was done, she swiftly reached out and took the keys from the ignition.

"Hey…" he blinked.

"What's up?" she asked, and there was no room for negotiation here. He looked at her. As much as she had those flare ups where her head could spiral out so far, just as she'd done not long ago with her teaching dilemma, he had this moment in his past that had rattled him so that, at times, he could still feel the aftershocks. By now, even if she didn't know what the shockwaves had done, she knew enough to see that look on his face and find the epicenter.

"After I got suspended, there were a lot of people around us who had 'things to say,' to my parents, to me…" he started. Maya nodded. She'd heard about that, more than once. Some of them were at one end of the spectrum, the Coach Wileys of the world, but while Lucas had him, and his friends, it was only a small percentage, buried under a lot of noise. It didn't take a lot of guessing to know where this was going, as far as Russell and Nicolette Walker were concerned. "My parents didn't talk to them for… like three years after that. Remember, once in 9th grade, I ended up spending the weekend at Zay's? We had that movie marathon the whole two days."

"I remember GiGi showed up at one point and sat with us. She kept asking questions and looking surprised," Maya recalled, smiling at the memory.

"Right, well, Great Aunt Nic had a stroke, and one thing led to another and my parents went up to visit and patched things up."

"You didn't," Maya guessed.

"I tried," he looked at her. "I really did, okay?"

"I believe you," she reached and took his hand.

"But whenever I see them, it's like I'm right back there. I remember everything they said to me, about me. I'm polite, treat them as well as I would anyone, but in my head, it's the same thing again and again. And what's worse is I look at them and I know… they don't get it. They don't think they did anything wrong, no, so they have nothing to apologize for."

"Lucas… Why are we even going out there tonight?" she breathed, scooting up close and still holding his hand. "Screw courtesy, okay? They don't deserve it. You said it yourself, they're not going to come to the wedding, and honestly I wouldn't want them there to begin with. Let them stay up there if they don't want to come down. I'd much rather we had dinner in a restaurant, you and me and our fancy looking selves."

"It just feels like I'd be giving them the satisfaction," Lucas admitted. "Anyway, Mike and Keith and the kids will be out there because of me, for backup. We can't just send them in on their own."

"Then we're just going to have to rescue them out of there," Maya smirked. Lucas looked at her for a moment, considering, and finally he smiled. "You're going to need these," she handed him back the keys.

Whether it was chance or the universe giving them a sign that they were making the right call, they arrived at the house right on the tail of Lucas' uncle's car. While Maya stayed in the car, Lucas went out and over to the driver's side window to talk to his uncle. The window rolled down to present him with the smiling face of Michael Sullivan. He and his big sister might have been twins if not for the years in between them.

"You're looking way more upbeat than I expected to find you, this close to all of that," he nodded over to the house, getting a knowing chuckle out of his husband in the passenger seat. In the back, Lucas was getting some cheerful greetings from his three little cousins, all of them looking like they were trying to climb out of their seats to get to him. "Ladies, butts in your seats!" Michael addressed the trio in the rear view mirror. "I see you, go on," he pointed blindly over his shoulder, which sent the girls giggling as they did as told.

"So, change of plans," Lucas told his uncles. "Want to get out of here?"

Soon after, they all ended up a group of notably overdressed patrons taking up a table at Ma Maggie's. Uncle Mike had taken care of informing the Walkers that the dinner wouldn't be taking place after all. Whatever he'd told them, neither Lucas nor Maya were told, and they didn't care to find out. It wouldn't be hard to cut his great aunt and uncle out of his life, with what little of a role they already played in it.

"Let me just…" Maya reached out and loosened Lucas' tie from around his neck and then removed it entirely. "Better," she smiled. "One more thing…" she undid the top button on his shirt. "Even better." The smile on his face was made of all the love he felt for her in that moment, for having convinced him to reclaim this night.

"Lucas! Lucas!" the eldest of the three girls called from across the table. Her name was Lea, and she was ten years old.

"Yes, Lea?" he turned to her, matching intensity for intensity. She wanted to be an actress, though with her cousin she was more for hamming than acting. He tested her ability to keep a straight face at every turn.

"Can I be in your wedding?" she asked, with a directness she'd honed in from the age of two.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, intrigued for her answer. She had that all prepared already.

"I want to read a poem." Lucas turned to Maya, who was having her own struggles at keeping it together right then. She had to nod.

"Go for it," Lucas told her, and she practically pumped her fists in victory. When Lucas felt a tap at his arm, he looked to his side, where the smallest of the sisters sat staring up at him with big brown eyes her fathers called her 'hypnoteyes,' because you just wanted to give her everything she asked for when she turned them on you. "Yes, Lydia?" he asked the four-year-old. She'd been staring intently at the menu ever since they'd put it before her, and now she pointed to one of the pictures and looked back at him. "You want that?" She nodded. "Where'd your voice go?" he crouched in his chair to be a bit closer to eye level with her.

"Itches," she plucked at the tights on her short legs before turning to her papa, which was Keith. "Can I take them off?"

"They're bugging you bad, huh?" Keith asked, in his deep, deep voice. Lydia nodded. "Alright, come on, Hypnoteyes, let's go. No reason to give everyone a show," he led her off to the bathrooms.

"Hey, Lara, you're doing okay with all this?" Lucas turned to the last of his cousins here tonight, aged seven, or as she would say, the very middle child. An August baby, her older sister was three years and four months older, while her younger sister was… three years and four months younger. All of them having been adopted as newborns, Michael and Keith would say they couldn't have planned it that way if they tried.

"Sure," Lara shrugged, sitting primly in her dress and neatly combed hair like she always looked this way. She didn't. She was usually dressed for sports, for outdoor play. Some would call her a tomboy; Lara hated the word. She wasn't a 'tomboy,' she was a… Lara girl…

"You sure?" Maya asked.

"Daddy said if I dressed up like this tonight I could go to soccer camp next summer," Lara simply stated, smiling brightly. Maya snorted at this, stretching her hand across the table in a fist, which the girl bumped with a grin.

"Alright, here we are, good as new," Keith returned, his youngest daughter held aloft until he could set her down on her chair. "As you were," he tapped her head before sitting in his own chair. Lydia turned to her cousin at once, climbing on to her knees on the chair so she could be taller.

"Is it true you're going to be a… animal doctor?"

"Working on it, yeah," he confirmed.

"Our neighbor, she has a cat, and the cat had babies! I want one, but Papa said we can't because they make Daddy sick. They said we could get a bird. What's the best kind of bird? I want a blue one. Or a green one… I want to call it Sheldon. Does it have to be in a cage all the time? What if it goes out a window?"

"Easy there, take a breath," Michael told her, laughing, as she turned to look at him. "Now, you two," he turned to his nephew and his fiancée. The only reason I even agreed to this song and dance tonight was to hear about this wedding. Five months, that is not a lot of time."

"Just because it took us a year…" Keith shook his head at his husband.

"It was not a year… Ten months, maybe eleven…" Michael casually brushed this off. "And that is without a single dress in sight, although given the chance, I could have put all those little brides to shame."

"Oh, I can believe that," Maya laughed.

"Have you found yours yet?" Michael turned to her.

"Uh, sort of. I'm, uh, designing it and getting some of the girls at the theater to help make it."

"You're doing what now?" the man sat up, his voice sounding like 'tell me everything and do you have pictures?'

Later, as they would drive on home, the proud owners of three new drawings, one from each of the Sullivan-Reyes girls, Lucas would thank Maya again for this change in plans. He had come away feeling lifted by this night with his uncles and cousins when he had expected to return like a man climbing a hill with a boulder on his back. It should always be this way…

"I need to remember to get Lydia this book I saw the other day at work."

"So Many Birds Of So Many Colors?"

"I don't think that was the title, but that was definitely the subject," Lucas laughed.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners