March 19th 2020

Chapter 79
Their Music to Play

"You know what I'm not going to miss? Finals stress. You don't realize it when you're in the middle of it, but when it's not happening to you, it's kind of annoying," Maya told Riley and Nadine as the three of them sat in the basement, waiting for the last two of their bandmates to arrive for practice. Nadine was sitting in front of the drum set, just sort of 'air drumming,' like she was trying to see if she still had it even though she wasn't their drummer anymore. Maya sat on the ground, absently strumming at her guitar, maybe chasing a melody stuck at the back of her mind, while Riley sat behind her, pulling her hair into a pair of braids.

"You think that's bad, you've never been around a bunch of med students before a test. Some of them sound like a mix between a human and a text book, and it's really unsettling," Nadine frowned.

"When Rosa comes, just no one ask how hers are going, okay?" Riley told the other two.

"Not good?" Maya asked sympathetically.

"Oh, it's probably fine, but she's in this really kind of… self-defeating mood, you know? If you ask her, she's the dumbest person in the world."

"Not possible, I know him," Nadine joked, getting a smirk out of the other two.

When Maya's phone rang, they all startled, like they thought it was going to be Rosa and she'd overheard them. Instead, it was another TXNY member, retired.

"Hey, Willow, we're about to have practice, say hi!" Maya smiled, putting the call on speaker. Nadine and Riley both called out their greetings over one another.

"Hey, guys," Willow laughed on the line.

"So, what's up?"

"Oh, you know, same old, had a baby…" she breathed.

"Wait, what?" Maya sat up, the half-made braid falling out of Riley's hands even as the girl moved around her friend to be closer to the phone. Nadine left the drums and did the same. "Already?"

"What do you mean, already, he was a week late," Willow laughed again, and now they could just hear in her voice the turn of exhaustion that would have come from all this. "It all happened pretty fast, I was here at the hospital for a check-up, and then boom, labor. Lion barely made it in time. Little man was in a hurry."

"How's he doing?" Nadine asked.

"Oh, he's so good," Willow reported. "All fingers and toes accounted for, some good, healthy lungs… He's called William, after my grandfather, but we're calling him Liam."

"Please send all the pictures," Riley requested, beaming.

"And give him kisses from us," Maya added. "We'll come up to visit tomorrow, give you time to get some rest."

"Good, can't wait."

After hanging up, it wasn't two minutes that their phones all chirped with the arrival of a message. When they looked, they found a few pictures, courtesy of proud third-time papa Lion. Little Liam was in his mother's arms, surrounded by big sister Zola and now big brother Sekani. Already established to be the last of Lion and Willow's children, the baby looked far from lacking in people to love him and see him through life.

"Willow had the baby?" Rosa appeared on the stairs a few minutes later, with Kayla on her heel.

"She sent you the pictures, too?" Nadine guessed.

"Another Will-something," Kayla signed. They already were amused after they'd realized they had a Willow and a Will, and a Leona and a Lion…

"Good call on going for the diminutive then?" Maya spoke and signed.

"You're going to go and see them tomorrow, right?" Rosa asked, getting confirmation. "Good, I'm coming, too."

"Me, too," Kayla added.

After talking about Willow and Lion and the new baby for a little while, they had finally started to move into warm-up mode. Today was the last day of finals for pretty much all their college friends, Dylan, and Rosa and Sam, Lucas, too. They'd already had this band practice on the books, but now this was to be followed with a sort of dinner/party for the small group. Rosa had that air about her like she was still riding the 'oh, hey, no more finals, wow' feeling, so they didn't bring up the subject in case it sent her on a new spiral of self-doubt.

They had a gig coming up, an end of term party thrown for Lucas' class and their friends, by 'new old Josie,' as they would call her at times, ever since she'd come back from break with a new attitude and new look that was more like how she used to be, before they'd known her, when she'd been Willow's friend. They still didn't know what had caused the change, or if anything substantial had caused it, but then no one could dare ask her, in case it made her change back again.

"How are things going with the camp?" Nadine asked Maya.

"Oh!" she blinked, remembering… "I drew up some designs for the shirts, I wanted to show you guys," she got up and dashed up the stairs to go and find her mock-ups. When she got up to the ground floor, she discovered Sam had arrived. He was laid out on the couch, feet dangling over the armrest. "Hey, you alright?" Maya asked, trying not to laugh at the sort of bewildered look on his face.

"There were so many questions… And so little time… No one could stop for a second, not even to go to the bathroom… The first person that finished, they left when there was just ten minutes left…" he recounted.

"Wow…" Maya replied, with sympathy now. She went and sat next to where his head was, looking down at him, prodding his forehead with her finger. He didn't even bat it away as he normally would, so she decided to stop on her own after a while. "We're about to start practice in the basement, you gonna be okay? Is it going to be too loud?"

"I can't decide if you're mocking me or not," Sam frowned.

"Bit of both, if I'm being honest," Maya shrugged.

"I'll be fine. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll pass out."

"Dude…" Maya laughed, leaning over to hug him as best she could. "I'd say go upstairs, but I'm not sure how much it'll cover the sound from down there."

"It's pretty good, actually," Sam reported. "In my room, so in the attic it'd probably be almost completely quiet."

"Oh, wow, I had no idea. Alright, then you can go up there, lay back, look up at… well, not the stars yet, but the sun should be setting at some point, yeah?"

"I'll be fine here," he repeated, waving dismissively in a way that suggested he'd choose the thrum of live music nearby over having to go up the stairs or even move from where he was at the moment.

"Want me to get you a snack?" Maya asked, brushing the fringe out of his face.

"Are there any cookies left?" Sam turned his eyes up at her.

"The GiGi cookies?" she asked, and he nodded. "Normally I'd lie and say there weren't any left, but you're all miserable and tired, so you can have my secret stash. Consider yourself sworn to secrecy."

"Like I'd do anything to jeopardize my living arrangements," he held up his hand, doing his best to line up with her hand for shaking. Maya took this to translate as 'brother-sister confidentiality.' Maya walked/crawled her way to the other end of the couch and reached into the end table's drawer, pulling out what looked like a box of pencils and instead held four cookies. "Oh, so that's what that is," Sam blinked, sitting up. "I'll just take two," he reached in to take them.

"Eat the cookies, Sammy," Maya smiled, leaving him the box. She got up, paused. "What was I coming here to… oh, yeah," she moved to the stairs, heading up to the second floor and then up again into the attic, where she'd left her sketches on her drawing desk. By the time she made it back down to the living room, the box of pencils sat empty on the coffee table. "I was gone for like a minute, did you chew?" she stared at her brother, who was just swallowing the last bit, checking his face for crumbs with a swipe of his hand.

"They were really good," he defended himself, smiling. Maya stared at him for a moment, then nodded.

"Alright, fair."

She headed back down into the basement, finding that Riley had taken her braiding fingers into Rosa's raven hair, fixing her up with as much as she could give, with how their friend had recently cut her hair back to shoulder-length, which was really what they saw whenever they pictured her in their heads. By what she'd been able to get off their signing, it looked to Maya like Nadine and Kayla were talking drummer to drummer.

"Right, so what do you think?" Maya showed them the sketches. There were four designs, which was really one design with three variants. "This is like the main one, and then I've got one each that's more focused on like… vocal, and dance, and stage… And that's what colors the shirts are going to be," she pointed to where she'd scribbled a bit of a color in the corner of each sketch.

"Great, you can spot who's who at a distance," Rosa teased.

"You joke, but yeah, pretty much," Maya pointed at her.

"Can I have all of them?" Riley asked. She looked like she wanted to come up and look closer, before remembering she was in the middle of doing Rosa's hair.

"Sure," Maya laughed.

The girls continued looking over the sketches while Riley finished with Rosa and then went back to finish Maya's hair, which was left to one completed braid and another half-made one still sort of holding together. When this was done, they had finally gotten to get warm up done and actually start their practice. After a while, they found Sam had come down and sat in the stairs, looking on. He was eventually joined by Dylan, and then Lucas along with him. They always loved having an audience, especially when that audience was made of friends or family. It made them feel a bit more like they were actually performing, and that was kind of what they wanted, wasn't it?

"Hey, how'd it go?" Maya asked Lucas once the practice was done.

"Why are you whispering?" he asked back.

"Trying not to set off Rosa," Maya replied.

"Right, makes sense," Lucas nodded. "It went pretty good, I think. Essay questions were kind of intense, but I did my best."

"Then you did great," Maya smiled, ever the supportive fiancée. She was thanked with a kiss. "And, as a bonus, now you're no longer road guy every day, you get to sleep in a little later… or not sleep, you do what you want."

"I'll consider my options," Lucas promised. "So, not to rush, but what's the plan for dinner? Are we going out or ordering in?"

"We'll let the people decide," she indicated the others sitting or standing around the basement. "Oh, hey, did you see about Willow?"

"I saw the pictures, yeah," he grinned now.

"Not going to lie, every time they have another one, I'm getting deeper and deeper in the 'awww, I want one' hole," Maya smiled innocently.

"Hey, you know, I'm ready for it whenever you are," Lucas went on smiling, too.

"Yeah, but maybe let's just wait until after the wedding, the dress is already perfect without me having to get the girls to let it out," she joked.

"Like I said, ready when you are," he told her. She believed it, and it kept a bounce in her step for the rest of the night.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners