May 30th 2020

Chapter 151
Their Construction of Bonds

4th week of construction

"Well, who needs an alarm clock when you have a bunch of dudes with power tools…" Maya hummed as she sat up and stretched. Letting her arms flop back down again, she turned to find Lucas was also awake and aware of the noise coming from outside. "Look at you, Grumpy Man," she teased. Lucas gave her a look. "You are though, your eyebrows are giving me this," she mimed. "Don't get me wrong, as with just about anything coming from you, I'm not mad at it." This worked well enough in getting him to smile and forget about the noise.

"Sorry, the temps at the bookstore are just really making things more complicated these days…"

"Getting to you that bad, huh?" she tapped his knee sympathetically.

"It's temporary," Lucas shrugged. When Maeve had finally gone on maternity leave, she had ensured that, on the days he worked at the store at least, he would be taking over for her, looking after the rest of the team on their floor. He appreciated the vote of confidence, although now to find himself in charge of this team that included a couple of less than exemplary temps, one on his weekday and one over the weekends, he was left mildly concerned that it would reflect poorly on him if he couldn't get things back on track. He didn't want Maeve to return and find her well-oiled machine had been decimated.

"How about I see if Sam wants to go hang out with his friends tonight, and after our guests are gone, you and I can have ourselves a nice, casual, lowercase d home date…" Maya suggested. Lucas smiled now… It sounded like the perfect way to let his day off end, just him and her and a quiet night.

"Couldn't want anything else," he replied, and she leaned over to kiss him.

"Great. That's tonight though, and this morning we need to get ready before company shows up and we're not presentable," Maya tapped his chest with a nod before rolling away and getting out of bed.

Sam did not need much in the way of convincing when he was asked if he wanted to go out for the evening. He was supposed to help Dora with something for school anyway, so he would head out and join the Cassidys around dinner time and stay the night, making his way to school the following morning. Until then, there was little else to do but wait.

"Is your mother going to let us know when they're on their way?" Lucas asked Maya as she spied the workers through the kitchen window. "Maya," he called her name when she didn't respond or show signs of having heard him. She spun around, too innocent for her own good. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to see if Ben looks happy or bummed out," she shushed him.

"They can't hear us," Lucas pointed out as he moved to join her.

"Yeah, well, what kind of good-natured spy would I be if I just went shouting around?" Maya frowned, pulling for him to stay as out of view as possible while they looked in on the crew hard at work.

Operation Ramen – coined by Rosa – had been in effect since the day their friend had tipped her hand. It was a delicate effort, minding the fact that Ramona was wading back into waters she was still just a bit unsure about returning to. After a few days of trying to suss out whether he really truly was single – he was – and whether he had actually been spying Ramona up through the attic window as Nadine had suspected – unclear – and whether he might be interested in getting to know her some more, in a potentially date-like scenario.

They had been getting closer to that one when the weather had forced the crew to keep away for several days. By the time they'd come back, they were so intent on catching up on their delay that it never felt as though they could get in the way for 'matters of the heart.' And then… then, just as things were slowing back to a normal pace, and they were getting ready to pull that last answer from him, he had gotten ahead of them. Ramona had been at the house one afternoon, and as the crew was leaving for the day, Ben hung back and spoke to her for a few minutes. Then he left, and Ramona was smiling… He'd asked her out, and she'd said yes.

The date had happened now, the previous night, and there had been no word, good or bad, from Ramona as of yet, so all they had was the worker, busy at setting the wood panelling on the outside of the studio.

"He doesn't look down in the dumps or anything," Maya estimated. "That's good, ri…"

The sound of the doorbell startled them both like a pair of thieves who had tripped an alarm. Run for the hills!

"Door," Lucas breathed.

"Yup," Maya hurried off, willing herself to appear normal by the time she reached the door and pulled it open to find her mother and father, the little Hunters, and her grandparents. "Hey! Come in, come in," she stepped aside to let them in. The kids wasted no time in hurrying up to embrace their big sister, after which she was greeted by her grandmother, who still hugged her like she couldn't quite believe she was real, that this was all real and she had her daughter back and her grandchildren with her. And her grandfather, stoic and shy as she'd ever known him, came in with a surprisingly graceful hug, despite the vast height difference between them. When Rosa had been shown a picture of the two of them together, from when they had gone back to Arkansas on the day of Harry Olsen's birth, she'd laughed.

"With that in the gene pool, you have all the makings of becoming a giant someone's tiny grandmother someday."

"You're one to talk, Shorty," Maya had squinted at her.

Knowing that they would be coming, seeing the house for the first time, it had been hard, for Maya and Lucas both, not to harness a bit of that Sam brand of hyper cleanliness. Anyone would have told them that they had nothing to be worried about, that the house was great, and they were by no means messy, but knowing how the Clutterbuckets lived, compared to how the two of them and Sam lived, or how the Hunter-Harts lived… There was no way to know for sure exactly what they might have to say.

"It is really something, your grandfather gifting you this house, Lucas," Angela declared, looking around.

"It was, yes," Lucas nodded. "Can I show you around?" he asked, and Maya bit back a laugh, feeling as though he might as well have been wearing the old blazer again, with that tour guide sort of intonation. It had certainly charmed her grandmother, who accepted the offer and followed his lead. Soon they were all following, headed up the stairs, eventually into the attic, and back down and down again, and down some more with the basement. They ended up in the kitchen, where they all could sit at the table while coffee and juice was brought around.

A knock at the back door a minute later brought Ben into their midst, letting Maya and Lucas know that the crew was done for the day, and they would be back bright and early the next morning.

"Oh, I know you will," Maya nodded, smiling, as Ben nodded to them, and then to the guests as he found them staring back at him, before exiting again. So much for asking about the date, huh?

"How's the studio coming along?" Katy asked her daughter, while Shawn sought the answer to this same question by leaning back in his chair and nudging the curtain aside so he might see through the window.

"Studio?" Angela asked, and there was a brief beat of silence like 'oh, right, we didn't mention that, did we?' It wasn't like they weren't aware of her making music, or like they had been in any way disapproving on the matter… They might call it just… residual expectations?

"Yeah, uh… out there," Maya pointed to the window. "We're having it built there on the land, for practice with the band, and recording…" Her grandparents stood up and looked where she'd indicated.

The structure by now was getting to look more and more like what it would look like in the end, on the outside at least. When it would be completed, it would look as it should, like an extension of this house. There would be a path laid in the ground, leading from the kitchen door to the studio door, and flowers planted around the hexagon-shaped building. The inside still needed a lot of work, but it was coming together beautifully. Maya, Lucas, Sam, and pretty much anyone who came to the house in the last few weeks was drawn to get a look at the growing construction. Carter, Ben, and the rest of the crew were really doing a fine job.

"Maya told me how you got the place fixed up before you proposed to her," Tanner looked to Lucas as they all sat down again.

"Yes, Sir," he nodded. "I had a lot of help, especially with the attic. That wasn't there at all," he turned to Shawn, who smiled and bowed his head.

They talked a while about some of the work they had done here, and Maya could see how this was her grandfather's way of getting a measure of Lucas, of hearing him express himself. Taking in the scene, she could sort of see how this would have been a moment the young restless Katy would have seen as her father fishing for problems, for reasons to step in between the happy couple. Maybe, back then, there would have been some truth to it. Tanner did not hide from the fact that he had made mistakes in the past, mistakes which had sent his then only daughter, only child, running away. Charlie would say that, by the time she had come around, and grown, and started bringing David around, her father was a very different man.

"Do you know what's kind of weird?" Maya asked Lucas, later, after her family had gone back to the Hunter-Hart house. Tanner and Angela were staying at a hotel, would be in Austin for a few days more. Now, with Sam off at the Cassidy house, it was just them and the dogs, curled up on the couch with a movie.

"So, so many things?" Lucas replied, kissing the top of her head as his fingers gently grazed her arm. She laughed.

"Hello, you're engaged to me, what would you expect? Still… Sometimes, my grandfather just… he reminds me of…"

"Kermit?" Lucas filled in.

"Yeah," Maya looked back at him. "I don't know how to explain it, Dad and him, they don't look alike, or act alike, for the most part, but then there's the whole… Grandpa and Mom were estranged, and Dad and I were, too, and after we weren't, there was still this way Dad would get whenever he'd see me. Like he was just so happy, and so sad, at the same time."

"You don't think your grandfather's sick or anything, do you?" Lucas asked.

"No, no, nothing like that. It's… they both made this great big mistake, and maybe they knew all those years, but it never really… kicked in… not until after. And no matter how much they wished they could have done things differently before…" she shook her head. "I'd say Mom found a guy just like her father, but they really aren't, and she couldn't have known it would all happen that way. Like I said, weird." They were quiet for a few seconds. "Really not the best date conversation topic, huh?"

"I'd rather you share than keep it in," Lucas shrugged, and she let out a breath. "Want to talk flowers for the Hex?" he asked, nodding in the general direction of the studio. She sat up at once.

"I really do."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners