April 19th 2020

Chapter 110
Their Road to Houston

Waking up on Thursday morning, Lucas just managed to catch the sound of his phone vibrating on the night stand. His first thought was that it could be Maeve, reaching out for the willing ear he had extended to her. Instead, it was a text from Sophie, to confirm that he was still coming up to Houston that afternoon for a visit. He texted her back and told her that yes, he would be there.

The last couple months had done a lot in improving Sophie's overall physical condition. She was allowed, in growing degrees, to put weight on her leg, to actually walk. Two crutches had become one, and from there a sometimes wobbly but on the whole unassisted motion. Between this and her physical therapy, she was on her way to where she'd eventually need to be in order to get cleared for duty, but the outlook was that it would take a few more months to get her there, and this was really where the struggle heightened. The more normal she got to feel, all she'd be thinking about would be that she was ready to push on, to retrain herself for what her job demanded… and she just wasn't there, not yet.

The improvements weren't just about physicality, of course. Sophie had been taking strides in dealing with the more emotional and psychological component of her recovery, of the whole incident, and on that she wasn't alone. Chiara may not have suffered any bodily harm, but anyone who'd been by her side through that horrible night and the days and weeks that had followed could tell that Sophie's wife had been dealt a wound of a whole other kind. It wasn't until Sophie had finally reached her breaking point, over the summer, that both she and Chiara had been able to do what they had been meant to do all along, to just talk, in all honesty. From that, from what Lucas and Maya and the rest of their friends had been able to glean, they had started to work at those scars that no one could see.

It manifested in Chiara by way of something like freedom. This wasn't to say that she was trapped before, and if she was then she was her own jailer. Ever since that night when she'd been told that her wife had been severely injured on the job, that there was genuine fear for her survival, it was as though she had started to hold her breath. And even as time had passed, even as the danger had retreated and disappeared, she couldn't let it go. It became the vast majority of what her life was about, and even though it became so by her own choice, for her love toward Sophie, it in no way diminished the effect it had on her.

Sophie had been seeing it, all this time, and it had instilled in her this fear that sooner or later it would get to be too much and Chiara would just leave. But then she had been so caught up in her own issues that she'd been left feeling sort of helpless to do anything about it, to even say that she was aware. Instead, she had been working overtime with this goal to see everything go back to normal, like she'd been turning the music up to deafening levels, rather than to hear her very own cries for help. That day over the summer when she'd finally broken, the music had gone silent, and her voice had started to come and be heard.

Much as it had left Lucas and Maya with that feeling all over again, where they just wanted to be in Houston, with their friends, to act as support, they had to carry on with the normal pace of their own lives and all the while stay updated with calls, and texts, and visits. They went up at least once a week, and Lucas had been going every Thursday, as his classes ended at two, which enabled him to head up to Houston for a little while before returning home to Austin.

When he would go up there, up to the house which had been his home of four years throughout college, he would find Sophie… That was really the best way to put it. He wasn't being met with anything less than the girl who had been his friend for the past seven years and some. Chiara may have been holding her breath, but Sophie had been carrying a mask, and now all that was in the past.

On last Thursday's visit, he had been met with Sophie the Romantic, who had apparently been thinking a lot about his and Maya's wedding. She had moved past feeling that bit of guilt over the fact that they had displaced the whole thing for her sake. Now, what she instead felt was a fervent determination for it to be 'the best wedding that's not mine.' Lucas didn't want her to go and think she had to dip into her mother's money and connections to get them anything extravagant, but she assured him that wasn't her intention. She didn't believe the big stuff was necessary in order to make this a memorable celebration of Maya and his love story.

"So, what does that mean exactly?" he'd asked her, like 'alright, I'm game, try me.'

"It means 'make me your wedding planner,'" Sophie had grinned, chin up. "I might not be able to work, but I'm mobile again, and I need…"

"A project?" he'd guessed. Sophie nodded firmly.

When he'd told Maya all this, she'd been on board without a moment's thought. Thinking about it only convinced her even more; it meant she'd get to see and talk to their friend even more.

Lucas drove out to Houston that afternoon, after his classes were over, wondering what the house would look like when he got there. The bits he'd been overhearing in the past week left him picturing Wedding Central camped out in the middle of Sophie and Chiara's living room. Considering that the wedding wasn't for another several months, he would also imagine the other inhabitants of the house might take issue with it.

The first thing he did notice as he drove up the street had nothing to do with Sophie or the wedding. Instead, his eyes were drawn across the street from the old college house. Just a few weeks ago, they'd heard through Chiara that the Shaws were moving. He'd seen he sign planted out front when he'd been over the last few weeks, and now he came up to find an addition to the sign, indicating that the house had been sold. Even though he and Maya hadn't lived out here for over a year, they would still get the occasional call from Mr. or Mrs. Shaw, checking in on them, and it was really appreciated. The couple was moving to be nearer to their children and grandchildren, and Lucas knew he would miss seeing them whenever he visited.

The addition to the sign wasn't the only thing that caught his attention. After he'd parked in front of Sophie and Chiara's, Lucas climbed out and jogged across the street to where he'd spotted Asher and Ray standing on the lawn, looking up to the house as they spoke.

"Hey!" he called out to them, and they turned.

"Afternoon," Asher tipped his head with a smile.

"What are you doing out here?" Lucas asked. His former teammates shared a look that felt very much like 'should we tell him?'

"Just looking at our house," Ray declared, pointing over to the door. Lucas' face did its own bit of talking, probably coming off like a lot of surprised words.

"Wait, you bought it?" he finally managed to speak, gesturing to the 'sold' sign. "When was this… I mean, you never said…"

"We weren't going to say anything until we got an answer," Asher explained. "We only told the girls, because it would have been weird to just go up to them one day like 'hey, guess what, we bought a house right across the street from you, surprise!'" he intoned.

"Wow…" Lucas laughed. Now that the surprise had started to wear off of him, he was only left with happiness at the thought of having all of them stay this close to one another. It made him think of Maya and Riley, who might have envisioned a similar set up if not for the fact that he and Maya had their house, out on the lane. "How did they react?"

"Chiara blurted out something in Italian I think was like a good swear?" Ray chuckled.

"Sophie declared us the starting line of our very own Pride parade," Asher indicated the stretch of road that separated the two houses.

As he would tell Maya later on, once he'd made it back home, Lucas had followed the guys back over to Sophie and Chiara's for the rest of the story. There he had discovered that the living room had not been taken over by wedding items. That honor went instead to the one of the spare rooms upstairs, though he had been prohibited from seeing anything as of yet. He had also been met with Sophie, who was happy to share her excitement over the guys buying the Shaws' house.

"They're only moving in the spring, and she's already making plans for tag team decorations on Halloween and Christmas," Lucas told Maya. This made her laugh out loud. She was already mirroring Sophie in her reaction to the news, declaring it to be a brilliant choice.

As exuberant as Maya was, Lucas was generally more reserved, but it in no way diminished his own feelings over their friends' news. Already he had been so thrilled in the last year to have the two of them back living in Texas, even if it was two hours away from them. That was nothing, after four years of cross country distances. Without diminishing the place that Ray had in his life, he couldn't pretend as though he hadn't missed Asher especially, and Zay while he had been in Boston.

Those two guys, and Dylan along with them, had been his oldest friends, as good as brothers, and then they had been gone. They had reached a point in their lives now where none of them were tethered to wherever their parents were, and it would make it easy for any of them to suddenly follow an opportunity, which their friends could only support. Last year, Zay and Nadine had returned to Austin, they had gotten married, moved into their house, just as Lucas and Maya had moved into their own. Meanwhile, Asher and Ray had been living at Sophie and Chiara's house, and all the while it made for a feeling like they could have gone off again at any time.

Now, with this house, they were setting down roots, and it made Lucas eager to see what the future would hold for all of them, for his oldest friends and him.

"Oh, by the way, they're all coming up for Halloween this year," Lucas told Maya, who got excited all over again. "Asher tried to talk me into reviving the turtles, but I told him I couldn't," he pointed to his face with its growing coverage.

"A bearded turtle…" Maya pondered with a laugh.

"Chiara said that she never got to dress up for Halloween as a kid, but Sophie said they'd figure something out. And Ray doesn't have pictures from when he was little, his parents still have those. I told him I'd try and do something about it." Maya took all this in with a slow nod.

"I have to say, I am really looking forward to this year's party," she told him. "And just you wait until the night after that…"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners