April 13th 2020

Chapter 104
Their Sounds of Harmony

"So why now?"

The next morning, with the band hitting the stage in the evening, the rest of the band was due over at Maya and Lucas' house for one more practice before they packed everything up and headed to the club. Nadine had turned up a good couple of hours ahead of time, all because Zay had learned that she'd told Maya about their baby plans and he wanted to go and tell Lucas. They'd come through the door, and Nadine had kept just behind her husband, so she might discreetly sign to their friends and ask that they pretend like Lucas didn't know yet. The girls had excused themselves to head into the basement, where they settled down on the floor, each with their instrument in hand. They weren't playing any one song, but one would start something and the other would come in with their own bit to expand on the rest. Maya had asked her question as they paused for Nadine to adjust her violin.

"It was just… Zay was ready, you know? I'd see him with Hunter, with Willow and Lion's kids, and Ada, and your siblings, and he just becomes this other, really bright person," Nadine tried to put the feeling into words, and Maya could see it in her head, thinking back.

"Okay, but what about you?"

"I have wanted kids since pretty much forever," Nadine told her. "And looking at what the next however many years of my life are going to be, with school, and then every step that's going to get me to where I want to be as a doctor, there's never going to be a right time. So I just looked at him, and I saw what I saw, and I looked at myself, taking all the career part out of the equation, and… I told him I was ready if he was."

"Which he was," Maya nodded.

"Oh, I came back from school the next day and he had books, and videos, and articles about what to do and not do and the best ways to get pregnant," Nadine chuckled.

"Wow," Maya laughed along.

"Sometimes you might think he's forgotten the part where I'm a medical student with the way he comes at me like 'did you know that…' If I didn't love him so much…" Nadine shook her head with a smirk. "There have been a few times where I've been tempted to mess with him and make him think we'd succeeded, but I'm almost scared that he'd be halfway up the stairs and turning the spare room into a nursery before I had a chance to tell him it was a joke."

"He's going to be one of those guys who passes out in the delivery room, isn't he?"

"He's going to drive up to the hospital and realize he forgot me back at the house," Nadine countered, making Maya laugh.

"Here I thought that after seeing Farkle and Isadora have a kid it wouldn't be as weird when any of our friends from way back when would start down that road, too, but… no, it's still so weird to imagine him up there as a dad," she nodded upward. "In a good way," she specified, looking back to Nadine.

"Oh, I get that," she added her own slow nod. "The guy goes all wobbly around blood… but he's also got such a good heart… When it comes down to it, I couldn't think of anyone I'd rather raise kids with more than him." Maya smiled at this, giving a few strokes of her guitar in a lullaby like tone. It made Nadine laugh even as she motioned for her to stop, repeating the up nod to indicate Zay's presence on the floor above.

Maya and Nadine looked up at once, hearing sounds from upstairs they had to assume would be Zay's finally getting around to saying his bit, and possibly Lucas overcompensating in order to hide the fact he already knew. The girls looked back to one another.

"I say this with all the love in my heart, but those two are just a couple of giant nerds," Maya shook her head. Nadine echoed this sentiment with a shake of her own.

"So what about you two," she turned to Maya, who looked back at her.

"Us two… have a wedding to think about first," she pointed out with a chuckle. "After that…" she let out a breath, considering the question. "After that, it's game on, I guess." The idea had her smiling, no doubt about it. "Lucas and me, we've been ready. If things had happened differently, right now… we could have had a three-year-old already," she calculated, the result leaving her just a bit awed. She still thought about it, now and then, their maybe baby that wasn't. That Halloween night being nearly four years ago already though, that was the wild part.

"How are we even here, now?" Nadine remarked. Maya shook her head.

"Not a clue."

They carried on playing around with their instruments, challenging themselves from time to time to take any one of the band's songs and twisting them over to a different genre. Nadine, of course, had her violin, which made it all too easy for her to go and create 'the classical mix.' Maya would just sit and listen to her, finding it near impossible to think of anything else as her friend played along.

"One of these days, we need to work something like that into an album," she told Nadine with a hum. "Got a few classical singers in Stage Ready, we could so make it work."

"Yeah, that would actually be great," Nadine agreed. "You know who else you could get to do that though…"

"No?" Maya frowned, not following.

"There was that interview the other day, wasn't there? Ree Forster was talking about her tour, and her new album, and she said how her daughter was doing a duet with her? She's training for the opera, isn't she?"

"She is, yeah, but it's not like we're all old pals all of a sudden, I can't start asking for favors, which is what this would be. Anyway, TXNY has always been our thing, local. I'd rather give a chance to someone around here to make something happen."

"Yeah, that's fair…" Nadine agreed. "We could do it for Christmas this year," she went on, and at this Maya was all smiles.

"Liking that so far," she set her guitar aside. "How would it still be 'us' though? I mean I can't sing like that, don't think any of us can. And once you remove that, even the instruments don't exactly fit, except maybe you, and Riley…"

"Then let's not make it us," Nadine told her, even as the thought seemed to occur to her. Maya looked back at her, rightly confused. "We can organize it… produce it… but put other talents in the spotlight. And we can do like you all did two years ago, donate the proceeds…"

"Liking this more and more…"

By the time the rest of the band started to arrive, they had an even more solid plan put together, which they wasted no time to share. To no surprise, it was received with much the same levels of enthusiasm as the two of them had been experiencing, putting all these pieces together.

"How come you were already here?" Riley already asked. "We thought you were picking us up."

"And why does Zay look like a firecracker up there?" Rosa added, pointing back toward the stairs.

"He was just really eager to talk to Lucas about something, I have no idea," Nadine shrugged, and for knowing that this was a flat out lie, Maya was impressed at how seamless it came off.

"I thought you two went to dinner at their house last night," Kayla pointed out, turning to Maya.

"Yeah, we were," Maya confirmed. Kayla gave her a look which, sign or no, was easily understood as 'so what happened between then and today that was so important?' "How should I know?" Maya shrugged, turning to Nadine as though to ask 'do you know?'

"No idea," she shook her head, and later they would laugh over how smoothly this had gone over.

"Hey, so I have the lists for the compilation brackets," Maya got up to get a small stack of sheets from the shelves under the stairs and set them in the middle of their circle on the ground.

The others all went in closer to have a look. Ten years, ten lists of songs they had put out in that time… Almost like school years, they would go from summer to summer, each anniversary of the band's creation. The most recent one, of course, running from summer 2026 to summer 2027, was very short and would continue to be updated along the way, so it would have to go last, but in the meantime there was plenty for them to look at from the previous nine years. The lineups would be indicated for each, from the original four, to the new additions when they'd been brought together in Houston, and then to the current set back in Austin again.

For a while, they just talked and signed over one another, pointing out one song and bringing up some memory or another relating to it, from creation to performance… They never forgot any of their songs, but just looking at these lists, and the vast numbers of songs they contained, it was understandable if any of them had slipped somewhere in the recesses of their minds. Soon, they were making predictions for which songs were likely to either win the years or come near to the top.

"Ramona says she's going to do her best so the new site can go up by December at the latest, we can get the brackets up around then, yeah?" Maya looked around. The others were on board.

"Christmas album, brackets, anniversary, do you know what all those things have in common?" Rosa asked, rising to her feet and getting her bass.

"Not today?" Riley guessed, moving to her keyboard as Kayla, Maya, and Nadine moved to get in position, too, so they would get their practice underway for the thing that was today, which was the club gig. Soon, music floated from the basement and up through the rest of the house.

When they'd done as much as they would do, they went upstairs to get changed as the guys went down to pack up the instruments and get them into the minivan. Maya shared a quick knowing smirk with Lucas as they passed one another, the two of them being the only ones – save for the couple in question – to know what was turning Zay into a motivated helper as he presented himself. You'd think he and Nadine had already succeeded in their attempts, going off the cheerful bounce in his step, and it was really amusing to see, though again, for those who had no idea what this was about.

"Can I just say, I love show days…" Lucas shook his head with a smile as he came back into the house sometime later, just as Maya came back down the stairs, changed from 'casual Maya' to 'stage Maya.' She reached the bottom of the steps and gave him a full slow turn for the complete effect. "Very… sparkly," Lucas declared, getting a laugh in return.

"So, Zay's big news?" she asked, while they had a few seconds to themselves.

"He is going to pass out when it's for real," Lucas estimated.

"That's what I said, too!" Maya whispered.

"Alright, let's go, let's go!" Rosa came bounding down the stairs a moment later, and Maya and Lucas both went into discreet mode at once. "Why is everyone being weird today?" Rosa sighed, walking past them.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners