February 27th 2020

Chapter 58
Their Contract on a Sleepover

They had been preparing for this, for several weeks now. It wasn't easy to figure out a right time to send the kids out of Tucson, factoring in that they were all in school, and also to account for when Maya and Lucas would be in the ability to host them. But then the kids had a four-day weekend ahead of them, which fell in a favorable time for their sister, and so it had been arranged. The unaccompanied minors had been put on a plane in Tucson and picked up by Lucas and Sam in Austin, the girls dropped off at the house for their 'Sleepster,' while the boys were to be taken off to adventures of their own.

"Maya, look!" Wyatt came running for his sister when she walked out to say hello to him and Teddy Lane. He held out a small plane, about six inches long, identified with the airline and everything. Knowing her little brother's love for his 'ship' back home, this leap to airplanes did not surprise her.

"Wow, is that the one you guys flew on?" she asked, taking it when he offered it to her.

"Yeah! The lady gave it to me. Her name is Jodie, she's nice."

"Well, thank you, Jodie," Maya made like she intended to keep the plane, which resulted in the boy flinching like he was tempted to reach for it back but knew enough to doubt whether this was a genuine 'theft.' "Should I keep it safe here while you guys are out doing whatever it is you're going to be doing?" Her brother smiled at once.

"Okay," he nodded.

"Okay," she laughed. "Hugs now?" She got a good one, a real oof! breath taker, as Wyatt threw his arms around her. "There it is," she spoke, exaggerating her breathlessness and making him laugh. He soon let go, hurrying over to Sam again, thrilled as he was to be with his big brother again. This left Maya able to go and say hello to Teddy. "You all got one?" she guessed, holding up the toy plane.

"Yeah," Teddy nodded. "I already told him he could have mine… So did the others."

"The scamp's got five planes and he won't give me one?" Maya 'gasped.'

After the boys had gone away again, she returned into the house to find what her sisters were getting up to. So far, everyone was fairly at ease. The story of the flight from Tucson was keeping the twins entertained, while Haley was being seen to by Cara, her biggest little sister getting a kick out of making her littlest one laugh. Cara had vowed, when it had become official that they were all coming, that she would help Maya keep an eye on all the others, being that she was the oldest next to her. She was the oldest in the house now that Sam was in college, and she took the role very seriously, especially when she'd be babysitting Eliza and Wyatt, and sometimes Emma as well.

Emma Lane looked at her when she came back into the house, and she just looked so happy to be here… to be included as one of Maya's sisters. It hadn't even required a second moment's thought, to be honest. When she'd made the call to Abigail, her pitch for the trip involved all three girls here, and both boys, too, of course. James and the kids were just part of their unit now. There had been rumblings of their trying to figure out a way that they'd all move in together, though as far as Maya knew they hadn't made up their minds yet as to who would move in with whom.

"Alright, the boys have gone, now it's just us," Maya informed the group, setting Wyatt's plane on a shelf out of reach from Haley and the dogs. "What do you all want to…"

"Can we see your dress?" Eliza cut in at once, causing an eruption of curious voices even as she left her host momentarily speechless.

"My dress…"

"For the wedding," Emma chimed in, tagging from her best friend.

"Yes, I figured that was the one," Maya told her. "I just…"

"I want to see it!" Nellie declared, never having met a plea she didn't support.

"I want to see it, too," Gracie put in, quieter as ever.

"Well, it's not…" Maya blinked, trying to come up with a valid response, knowing only one of those would do against this lot.

"Is it ready?" Cara asked, and Maya couldn't say for sure if this was meant to be an out that she was giving her, but she took it.

"Yeah, no, it's not, sorry," she told Cara and the others, who all looked as disappointed as a guilt trip had the power to make you feel rotten. "But, you know what," she thought of something quick, "We need to talk about your dresses." Oh, she had them now.

"Ours?" Eliza asked.

"Of course, yours. You guys are all going to be there, yeah? And you have to be in the wedding, which means people have to know that you are." The girls looked to one another.

"What do we do?" Nellie asked.

"Well…" Maya came and knelt and then sat on the ground with the twins, looking to them and the girls on the couch. There were a lot of them, but that wasn't about to stop her including them all if she could. "The two of you would look great coming down the aisle ahead of me as flower girls," she told Nellie and Gracie. "You know, the same way you did at Zay and Nadine's wedding?"

"Yeah!" Nellie was all smiles now. She had loved being a flower girl. "I'll do even better this time, because I'm going to be almost seven," she declared with pride.

"You keep getting older, don't you?" Maya chuckled. "What about you, Mouse Mouse?" she looked to Gracie. "You want to do that again, too?" Gracie's response was silent but definitive, giving a spirited nod.

"We need to practice," Nellie turned to her twin, then repeated it again to Maya.

"I don't have any flower petals right now," Maya told her. "But I'm sure we can come up with something."

"What about us?" Eliza asked.

"Oh, now you…" Maya looked up to the trio – and Haley – on the couch.

Narrowing down the bridesmaids already had been a difficulty, though only the kind of difficulty one might call 'a good problem to have.' She had so many girl friends to think about, to the point where she didn't know how she was supposed to decide who would and would not be a bridesmaid, because how many could she realistically have?

The contenders… Well, Riley was her maid of honor, and that was all, but after that, who did she have? Her bandmates, current and former… Nadine, Isadora, Rosa, Kayla, Willow. Her former roommates, Sophie and Chiara. And Rebecca, couldn't leave out Rebecca. Already, if she restricted it to what she felt were the core of her close girl friends, that was nine bridesmaids. And now she had her three young sisters to think about. She had been thinking about them. Some of the others, if she didn't pick them, for some valid reason, they would understand a whole lot better than the girls would, at their age. She didn't want them feeling left out. A dozen bridesmaids, while a nice sort of number, did feel on the excessive side.

Of all the people she might have consulted on this, she'd ended up figuring it out on a call with Willow. She was due to give birth to baby Obi number three in just a couple of months now, another boy to follow the soon to be big brother, Sekani. After having been pregnant, as both she and Maya had previously stated, for the better part of the last few years, it finally got to feel like she'd had enough and would be glad to be out of that whole cycle once this last baby was born. With three kids four years and under, one of them all of two months, by the time the wedding rolled around, Willow was respectfully taking herself out of the running for bridesmaid.

"Alright, well that's one less… It'd all be so much easier to make cuts if people kept doing it themselves…"

"Too many people?" Willow had laughed.

"It was a dozen, now I've got eleven… What's a good number?"

"Whatever number works for you, Maya, come on, it's your wedding. And we're all going to be there anyway, so might as well do what you want."

"Alright, that's… Yeah, that makes sense," she'd nodded to herself, feeling just a bit of that weight lifted. "Okay but now I'm down to eleven, and I did kind of like that even dozen."

"I'm sure there's someone else and you're just not seeing it yet."

As of yet, she had not had this supposed revelation over who she might call up as her twelfth bridesmaid, and it was starting to give her anxiety like she was forgetting someone and it was about to smack her in the face it was so obvious.

It couldn't be Leona, unfortunately. Even before she'd started to consider who she would have as her bridesmaids, she had told her former co-worker about her wedding date and the girl's face had fallen at once. She was to spend the summer abroad, an opportunity she couldn't turn down. Maya had understood, and seeing how much it pained her friend that she wouldn't be able to make it was sign enough that she cared.

Whoever this twelfth would be, for the time being she had three of them right here with her, and it was high time that they knew.

"Right, so, I was hoping that you all would be part of my bridesmaids," she told Cara, Eliza, and Emma. Their responses fell along the line of giddiness, and surprise, and complete shock.

"Me, too?" Emma Lane asked.

"Yeah, you, too," Maya tapped the girl's leg. "If you want to, I mean…"

The way the girl rushed down to hug her, in a flash, finally got Maya to figure out who she'd been missing. Shae… She had to ask Shae, or… Oh, Franny! How had she forgotten… Oh, now this might have been too much. Here she'd thought the problem was solved, but now… For the time being, it couldn't be solved, not today. She would have to focus on what was important now. She would just hug the Lane girl, which led her to doing the same with Eliza, and with Cara, and the twins… Looking to all of her sisters' giddy faces, she felt once again just so thankful to even have them in her life.

"Okay, troops," she breathed, brushing tears from the corner of her eyes. "Should we go look at dresses for everyone or should we practice what we're all going to do?"

The answers flew at her from all around, and they varied. Some preferred doing one thing first, others wanted another. After sorting everyone out, she could sort of discern that it was a split vote. Nellie and Cara wanted to look at the dresses, Eliza and Emma wanted to know what being a bridesmaid meant, and Gracie sat there with a look on her face that said 'I'll do whatever everyone else does.' Haley played with Cara's braid.

"Look, we're going to do both, it's just about deciding what we do first. And we're not going anywhere, just looking on the computer for the dresses, yeah? So what should we do?" There was silence now, as the girls considered their options. Finally, Gracie raised her hand. "Yes, Mouse?"

"Well, I just thought… If we know what our dress is going to look like, maybe we can practice better after?" she quietly explained. Maya grinned. That was her Mouse Mouse, always thinking along even when everyone else was talking over one another.

"That sounds fair," Maya nodded. "Everyone on board?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners