April 29th 2020

Chapter 120
Their Rally Around Friends

November always got to feel like it went by in the blink of an eye. They were just swept along on this river of holidays, and fall weather, and so it would get to be that one second the city was covered in spooky pumpkins, and ghosts, and witches, and then it would be turkeys and cornucopias… Thanksgiving was just a few days away, and Maya and Lucas were hosting their families for dinner, which was proving to be a bit more stressful than they had anticipated. It wasn't as though they'd never had one side or the other or even both at once over for dinner before, but this wasn't any old dinner, was it? It was a dinner, a day, that came with a capital letter, and special items, and a parade…

"My mom just texted," Maya told Lucas as they walked along the grocery store aisles. He turned his head away from where he'd been looking for a spice. "A kid in the twins' class told them about what happened to turkeys before they end up as dinner, and now Gracie is mortified and won't eat it," she revealed, which left him with much the same expression as her, which went along the line of 'I get it, and I'm sorry, but I also kind of want to laugh a little.'

"So, we need to come up with an alternative?" Lucas guessed.

"I will channel Chiara and make her pasta," Maya declared with a nod, the solution having come to her about as soon as she'd read her mother's text. Gracie was a pasta fiend through and through, especially the ones made by her big sister, who was reasonably proud of her own growth in the kitchen in recent years. Shawn would tease her that it helped a lot that she'd started following recipes instead of previous instincts which had led to one or two truly troubling creations. "Maybe some of the other kids will want that, too. If she's the only one eating that, she'll give those eyes, you know?"

"Familiar with those, yeah," Lucas nodded. "Do we need to add anything for that?"

It would be the two of them, along with Shawn and Katy, the twins, MJ, and Haley, and then Tom and Melinda, and Pappy Joe and Patty, too. Sam had briefly meant to go back to Tucson to spend Thanksgiving with the family out there, especially with them headed to New Orleans in December to visit James' side while he had chosen to spend Christmas in Texas. But then Cecilia had asked if he would come over to her house, to help bolster this small dinner she was set to have with her father in a continued effort to strengthen things between the often absent professor and his daughter. He could not say no to that, so Sam chose to stay.

On the whole, everything appeared to be back on track in the land of Sam and Cecilia and Dora. After the shake-up of Dora and Adam's break, and then Adam's new relationship essentially removing him from their unit of friends, and the issue of overlapping feelings, it really felt as though Halloween had allowed the trio to reset their clocks. Then again, after two years of this, both Maya and Lucas were just a bit curious about whether they would run into more drama on the following year's party. For the trio's sake, they hoped this was a duology and not a trilogy.

More than three weeks having passed since the last day of October, they could definitely say that this year's party had been the field for a lot of developments. While it had seen a return to peace for Sam, it had also brought a pair of young zombie folk closer. From having been little more than classmates for as long as they could remember, suddenly Missy Sanderson and Kai Avelino were growing more and more inseparable by the day. There had been no talk of dates or whether Kai felt for Maya and Lucas' young neighbor in the same way she did, not yet. For now, they were becoming friends, which seemed to be good enough as far as Missy was concerned. She wasn't ready to tempt fate and risk losing what they already had, which was pretty solid and wonderful.

Every time Lucas went up to the farm in the morning, whenever they would meet on the road as they walked their respective dogs, whenever Missy would just pop in out of the blue, they would clock no more than a minute or two before some variation of 'I was talking to Kai…' or 'Kai texted me…' or 'Kai and I were at school and…' And from what they had been hearing from Kai's older brother and sister, they were getting a similar kind of chatter from him about the farm girl.

Coming out of the grocery store, Maya and Lucas ran into Ramona and a couple of former classmates of hers from when she'd been in university here in Austin, while the rest of them had been in Houston. Neither of them had followed on that same path as her, and they had sort of lost touch because of it, but after the divorce, after going back to the apartment which was now hers alone, she had ended up reaching out to Gabriela and Ariana, who had been like sisters to her for a good four years. They had been catching up, and spending a lot more time together, and while Gabriela lived happily with her on again/off again boyfriend, Ariana had recently been left to crash on their couch due to a failed engagement and had been on the verge of having to consider moving back to New York with her family. Now, instead, she and Ramona were looking to become roommates in the weeks to come, which would also mean Maya no longer had to be her virtual roomie.

She was doing so much better now than she had at the start of the semester, when everything had gone crumbling with her and Robbie, and by now the same could be said for Robbie, too. He had only really started to get back on track after his little half-brother had started on the mend. His surgery had been a success, and all signs pointed to his making a full recovery. Robbie had become so attached to the little guy, and in turn it had allowed all four of the boys to really get to know and care for one another. It was complicated, with the secret of this other family, but between the brothers it was really not so complicated, something Maya was perhaps best placed to understand.

Thinking of Robbie and his brother, of course, they would also be left to think about Josie. Even now, none of the others had any idea that she was the one who had been Scott's donor. Only Lucas knew, and Maya along with him, and once Josie herself had realized they did know, she had allowed for visits. Lucas had tried to play it cool, as he passed the notes he'd promised her, but clearly his attentiveness had been a giveaway.

It was the first time they had been in her apartment, and the Josie they found here felt a whole lot more like the person they vaguely recalled meeting at Willow and Lion's wedding. The fact that she was presenting herself to them in this manner was as good of a sign as any that she was trusting them as she did very few people in her life. Thinking back to the girl they had known in Houston, who had barely felt like a person at all, the one they'd found here felt so much smaller and yet so much more real. Even so, they were also left with the impression that it almost took more for her to show this side than to be this construct of herself she presented at school, even now that she'd pulled back some of the way.

"Hey, when you see Maeve, can you check what she's going to be doing for Thanksgiving?" Maya asked as they loaded their bags into the car. All they knew for now was what Lucas had heard from her a few days back, which was that she wasn't going to her parents' on the day. It would have been too much of a mine field for her to navigate with her secrets.

So far, they had kept their promise not to tell anyone about the baby, but the gathering would have felt like too much of an opportunity for something to be said where it wasn't supposed to be said. This went for that secret, as much as for the one she still held over them, the part where she wasn't looking to raise the child. She didn't want to tell them while she was still figuring it all out and end up getting it wrong. She may not have been looking to remain this baby's mother, but for now it was still her responsibility to look out for that small life, and she would do right by it.

Being the only ones who knew about it, Lucas and Maya were also the only people she could turn to whenever something new was added to the mix. She had told them how she had met with the baby's father, the first time, and chickened out from telling him why she had sought him out. It wasn't until the second time, which he had mistaken for a date, that she'd told him how she was pregnant and the child was his. Maya and Lucas had been on the premises, just in case… mostly to keep her from flaking again, and after Maeve had said her part, the guy had looked ready to pass out.

There was no questioning of whether she was telling the truth, if she was trying to saddle him with a charge that was not really his to carry. She said it was his baby and he trusted it. That was one part though, and with the way Maeve had looked back at them, the second part was possibly the one that frightened her the most. Now he knew about the baby, great. But what would he say when she explained the conundrum she found herself in? She wasn't going to keep it. She would give birth to it, but that would be the extent. This was his kid too though, so she wanted him to have a say. If he was ready to take the child and raise it, that was what they would do. If he wasn't, then it would mean adoption.

He hadn't made up his mind on that day, and as of yet he was still weighing his options. But he was around. He would check in with Maeve regularly, and he wanted to go with her whenever she had appointments, which he had already done once. What would happen next, well… they'd just have to wait and see.

"Yeah, I'll do that, absolutely," Lucas nodded. Even if she couldn't be with her own family this year, he couldn't see why she couldn't be with another family.

They climbed into the car and drove off toward home. On the radio, Ree Forster sang Maya's words, and it reminded them the concert was drawing closer by the day. The way things were headed, Maya's third contract song would be hitting the airwaves right around that time, even as the TXNY produced Christmas album would be coming about. It would make for some very magical holidays, but for now they had this one holiday to get through first, their holiday to host, with a whole lot of food to prepare, now including pasta for the turkey-weary Gracie Hunter, and an additional guest, once Lucas invited her.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners