March 20th 2020

Chapter 80
Their Music to Relax

"I can't believe I did a whole year out here already," Rosa declared as the girls from the band and the guys sat out on the porch after dinner. "I was in college already before, but before I picked my major I was just sort of… going, you know? I learned things, but I learn things on my own all the time. This year was the first one where I felt really motivated by what I was learning, you know?" she smiled, looking to the others. They all looked back at her without saying a word. "What?" she asked. "What?"

"Nothing," Maya elected herself to tempt fate. "Nothing, we're just…"

"Oh, guys, relax, I'm fine," Rosa finally understood. They didn't seem to buy it right away. "Really, I am, okay? I know I was acting a bit weird, but I'm like that whenever I have a test. This time it just really came out, I guess. Have you guys just been keeping quiet around me?"

There was an overlap of many voices at this, all rushing to insist that they weren't doing that at all, which just might have suggested otherwise.

"So you're excited for next year then?" Lucas asked, attempting to recover the conversation.

"I am, yeah," Rosa nodded. "But I'm also not mad at having some time off, too. Hey, so, after the gig for the future vets out there, do we have anything else coming up? I was thinking I'd like to go spend a few weeks back in Houston with my mom."

"Nothing fixed except those camp days we're doing somewhere in the summer, right?" Nadine asked, looking to Maya.

"Yeah, no, that's the only thing right now," she confirmed. "Although we are going to have to figure out what we're doing in the next little while… I didn't want to put any feelers out for shows and events until after finals were over," she looked to Rosa, who gave her an appreciative smile.

Truth be told, part of the reason she hadn't gone seeking other gigs yet, along with academics, sort of had to do with what the summer was going to be shaping up to be for her. Was there the tiniest part of her that kept thinking 'I was supposed to be getting married this summer'? Maybe there was, a very small one, way back somewhere, so far back that she didn't really feel it or notice it unless she stopped and asked herself if it was there, which was really never. Mostly she was thinking about her siblings and their parents, who'd be coming to Austin for several weeks, and about Stage Ready camp…

Last summer had been all about them transitioning from one chapter in their lives to another. Zay and Nadine had gotten married, Farkle and Isadora were on their way to becoming parents, and a lot of them had moved and settled into new living situations, new cities, or old cities…

Now a year had gone by, as their timelines continued to be delineated by fall and summer as a start and an end. As it had done many times before, the end of the year, the start of summer, had left them in a position to stop, and look around, and contemplate…

Lucas, for instance, could hardly believe that he and Maya had been living in this house for nearly a whole year already. He still remembered so vividly all the time he had spent out here, on his own or with friends, with family, working to make the place ready for the big moment. And then the house had been done, and the big moment had come… He'd brought Maya out here, and he'd asked her to marry him, and she'd said yes. They'd moved in, not long after that, and then Sam had come to live with them, and then months had gone by, and now… now here they were, all of them.

He still had so vivid an impression in his mind of the house as it had been, the night of the engagement, and then in the days after they'd moved in and started to unpack. Now, looking around the place, all he could see was… their home. They had really started to make something of it, so much that it just felt more and more theirs every day, without their really noticing it unless they stopped and really looked, as he did now. It used to be that he'd walk in here and still tell himself this was his grandparents' place, but now… now it was just his home, his and Maya's, and Sam's… And with what he and Maya had been discussing on the stairs…

"Why are you smiling?" Maya inquired, looking like the expression on his face had been impossible not to echo.

"Just… things," he shrugged, then "You, kind of," which brightened her own smile.

"What did I do to encourage this?" she inquired.

"At the risk of sounding corny, you don't have to do anything, I'm mostly just happy that you're around," he explained.

"Corny is good," she promised, walking her fingers along his hand until she could clasp it.

"One of these days, I'm telling you, we need to do a world tour," Rosa declared out of nowhere, drawing the others' attention and chuckles.

"Okay, calm down, superstar," Nadine pulled her back from sitting upright until she had an arm around her. Rosa looked halfway caught between wanting to protest this restraint and actually preferring to allow it to go on because she was at ease. In the end, she leaned into it, like she'd told herself 'hey, I'm on vacation.'

"It would be fun though, wouldn't it?" she asked.

"Not wrong there," Maya agreed.

"Do you need a roadie?" Sam raised his hand. "I'd like to go."

"There's no world tour," she nudged her brother's leg with her foot. "Not yet anyway, but if you want to carry my stuff around, Sammy, all you have to do is do it, and be quick about it."

"Ha, ha," Sam flatly replied, retaliating by giving his sister much of what he got.

"Hey, hey, just because you're taller than me now, it doesn't mean I can't still kick your a…" Maya was cut off when Lucas put his arm around her and ensured part of that arm covered her mouth. She turned her eyes up at him with a squint, letting her hands do the talking instead, getting a chuckle out of her brother and the others.

"My parents lost it when my friends showed me signs like that," Kayla revealed with an accompanying laugh. "There was nothing they could do once I knew them. I thought they were hilarious."

"I thought so, too," Maya returned. Kayla had been the one to show her, of course. And seeing as she'd been older now than she'd been when she'd learned them, their significance and origin had done so as well, which had made for a laugh-inducing lesson with her then new friend and bandmate.

"My granddad used to say 'If I hear you saying filth like that, I'll wash your mouth out with soap!'" Dylan imitated the old man, to much amusement. "Now I can't stop thinking how that wouldn't work for signing…"

"My father would threaten to take away my phone. It did the job," Kayla informed him, getting new laughs from the others.

"Alright, so maybe we can't do the world, but can we at least try and do some shows somewhere other than Austin, or Houston, or just Texas in general?" Rosa renewed her query. The girls looked to one another, thinking about the suggestion.

"We could do that, couldn't we?" Riley asked. "We've been living out here for like ten years now, but there's plenty of places that aren't so far off and we haven't seen them. It could be like… half tour, half sightseeing…"

"And we might find ourselves some willing guides out there like we did on the Europe trip," Nadine threw in.

"We found guides, Sophie found a wife, we found a friend, successes all around," Maya nodded with a grin. "I'm in if you are," she told her bandmates before looking to Lucas. It wasn't as though she needed permission, but it still felt like the least she could do was see what he thought.

"What are we thinking, put decals on Sparkles and turn her into a tour minivan?" he asked her with a smirk that made her snort.

"That's either going to be the best thing ever or a recipe for disaster. Like hey, random creeps, follow the girls!" Rosa intoned.

"We're going to need some muscle," Nadine agreed.

"Like this?" Dylan asked, flexing both arms for display. He wasn't exactly lacking in strength, even though he generally got taken for being a big on the weaker side. Still, knowing how accident prone he could be to begin with, it was no wonder Riley just casually reached out to pull her boyfriend's arms back down. Her face said 'I love you, so please don't.' They could tell he'd been joking, but Riley still had to be sure.

"Was thinking more like this," Maya tapped Lucas' arm, still around her. He kissed the top of her head, as though declaring his intentions to the world and anyone who'd dare so much as to look at her funny. "Oh, and Bishop would be good for it, too."

"Where are you going?" Lucas asked Sam, when the boy suddenly stood up and moved toward the house.

"Getting a notepad and a pen and a map," Sam replied, carrying on into the house. Once he returned, he handed all this to Rosa, who looked at him in surprise. "What, it was your idea," he shrugged. She still looked a bit stunned at possibly being put in charge, but from the looks of the rest of the band, they were on board, too.

So, they started to work it out, all of them together. It could be hard to manage all of their schedules at the same time, along with availabilities at the actual venues they would want to play at. They all had jobs, and families, and there was Sophie… The plan became about hitting cities they could get to in a reasonable amount of time, so they might drive back after the shows, even if it meant driving through the night and being home by morning. They soon started to throw in the possibility of hitting further cities, in a bit of one-two punch with a night in a hotel in between. The map was marked along the way, and by the end of the night they had sort of a plan. Rosa vowed to start making calls the very next day… in the car on the way to Houston of course. They had to see baby Liam Obi.

"You know you're going to have a few people who are going to want to follow you wherever you all go and play," Lucas told Maya as they went back inside, once their friends had gone home. "Like my cousins, and your sisters…"

"VIPs!" Maya happily proclaimed.

"It's not going to be too much, is it?" he asked. "With your family visiting, and the camp, and the regular sessions, and the tour?"

"I know, I tend to want to do a lot at the same time," Maya turned back to him. "It's like my brain won't be satisfied unless it's doing five things all at once sometimes."

"What, just five?" he teased, making her laugh.

"But… I also know that I have you there with me, to see what I don't see and tell me to slow down if I need to, and I love that about you."

"I do my best," he nodded.

"Your best is excellent," she assured him, and he bowed his head in appreciation.

"Well, this summer definitely won't be boring, will it?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners