May 31st 2020

Chapter 152
Their Construction of Hope

5th week of construction

"What is this now, like the third date?" Nadine asked, as she and Maya stood up in the attic, looking down on the studio below, the crew back at work once again. Lucas was down there, too, with Zay, who had wanted to get a closer look. From what they could see, he kept trying to get closer, and Lucas would keep having to pull him back, which made the pair in the attic laugh.

"Third, yeah," Maya confirmed. "She almost had to cancel, her computer broke down and she lost a big chunk of one of her final papers for the semester, so she had to do it all again. Ben offered to make them dinner and be moral support while she worked," she recounted, hearing Ramona's voice in the back of her mind and the smile it carried as she'd told Maya about the evening.

"Alright, Build-a-Ben…" Nadine nodded, spying the guy down there, laying in the path with another of the team.

"A lot of crazy things had to happen for those two to even meet, and now date, it's hard to wrap your head around it sometimes," Maya pointed out as they moved from the window. Nadine took a seat at Maya's drawing desk, turning the chair this way and that, inspecting the Clutterbucket family portrait, which was still not quite done, all those weeks after it had been started.

"Yeah…" she replied, eyes still on the painting, while Maya plopped on to the bean bag and stared up at the sky through the window above.

"Not two years ago, Ramona was happily married, and then that all fell apart, and she lived here with us for weeks before she could go back to her apartment, and she became a really close friend, to us, to the band… Meanwhile, Maeve and Carter met at that party, got together, got pregnant, and then the studio plan happened, and Lucas knew Carter was in this business, and we hired him, and he brought his brother, and then… magic…" she whispered, bringing together her two hands, which she had used to stand for Ramona and Ben in her retelling.

When she got no response, she lifted her head to find Nadine hadn't caught a word of it, head lost in the clouds somewhere. It was like something had come and tugged her down into depths.

"Z?" she sat up. Nadine blinked, looked over at her.

"Yeah?" she asked, maybe trying to look natural but never quite chasing out this bead of sadness, of frustration. Maya didn't even have to ask what this was.

"It'll happen," she promised.

"Might not," Nadine sniffed. Maya stood up and moved toward her friend. "It's been almost eight months now, and even if I wasn't in med school, I'd still look at everything that's happened since and be able to reach this conclusion that something's not right, with one of us, or both of us…"

"It's just… It depends, I guess, depends whether everything happens the way it has to, all at once, or…"

"Maya, the New Year's test was positive," Nadine cut in with a confession that left her friend and bandmate blindsided.

"What do you mean…"

"I was pregnant. Went to the doctor's, confirmed it… We were going to wait a few weeks to tell everyone for sure, then a week later…" Nadine's voice faltered.

Maya didn't know what to say, didn't know that she could have said it if she did. She hadn't realized, none of them had realized… And neither of them had said a word about it, which left Maya to wonder if anyone out there knew that this had happened, other than Nadine or Zay or their doctor. She might have asked why they hadn't said anything, not to any of them, but it didn't feel right for her to put the question to a friend who already had the look of one tentatively passing this weight she had carried nearly on her own, that someone might support it with her. Maya only had to think of her mother, who had lost a pregnancy between MJ and Haley, or even of how she might feel, if it should ever happen to her and… It sent shivers down her spine. All she could do was reach out and take Nadine's hands in hers.

"Nadine, I'm so sorry," she told her, trying not to let her emotions resolve in tears. All she could think now was whether they might all have been joking around about this thing and that, never realizing their friends were going through the aftermath of it all, and now… now…

It was a testament to their friendship, twelve years strong, how little Nadine actually needed to say in order for Maya to put the pieces together. She'd only needed to be given one, and then the rest would follow through, painful as it was. She thought about January, and the months since, the last few weeks, and the very terrible conclusion she'd been left to reach was that… it had happened again. They had lost another one, and a great deal of their hope along with it.

There was little for her to do then except to hug her friend where she sat, hoping maybe that she could convey how much she cared for her, loved her, and wanted to be there for her, as much as she needed her to be. Nadine didn't cry, but she held on to her friend, held on like it just might leech the hurt out of her.

When they had gotten to see about all they could see of the studio in construction, Lucas and Zay had gone back into the house, where lunch was just about ready. While Zay had gotten hold of Archer, as the dog was drawn into the kitchen by the sound of the door, Lucas had made his way upstairs to find the girls and let them know they would be eating soon. There was something about the quiet as he reached the top of the stairs that felt instantly foreboding.

Climbing up the attic steps, quietly still, he found his fiancée holding their friend as she sat at the desk chair. Neither of them moved or showed any sign that they knew he was there, and Lucas did nothing to disrupt this. All he could feel of the scene told him that he should leave them be, and so he went back down, hesitating for a few seconds whether he was supposed to tell Zay about this. Nadine was his wife, but whatever was going on with her, it was up to her to decide when to let him in, no?

As he walked back into the kitchen, Zay was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, which he had turned to face in the direction of where Archer was now eating from his bowl, replenished by Zay in the time Lucas had been upstairs, clearly.

Lucas and Zay had been friends now for just about twenty years. Neither of them remembered a time when they had not known the other. Nadine would tease them at times and call him Zay's first spouse, which both of them accepted and called upon from time to time, usually to tease the other's fiancée or wife. All joking aside however, it made Lucas an expert in the minutiae of Isaiah Babineaux. It had all been fine when they were outside, looking at the studio, chatting with the crew, but right here, when his best friend was on his own… the appearance did not match what Lucas really saw. There was something trying to gain on his active thoughts, and he didn't want it to get there, so he busied himself, bringing relief to the forefront, that it might hold back the unwanted invasion.

"They're going to be a few minutes, I think," Lucas told Zay, as he came and sat down across from him. Zay looked at him, like he was about to say 'alright, that's fine,' but then… well… they had both known each other that long, hadn't they?

"Might be longer than that," Zay looked back to the dog.

It was coming on a few minutes when he started to share the story, just as Nadine had to have done it back in the attic. Zay told his best friend how twice now, in nearly half a year, he and Nadine had been on this spinning rollercoaster, with the ups of finding themselves expecting, followed by that sharp drop down of finding it had not held, that they'd lost one and then the other. Lucas was as speechless, as helpless as Maya had been.

"The first one was hard, but the second one…" Zay shook his head, still looking at Archer. "The brave face is just not easy to hold on to. Now she wants us to stop trying for a while, and I'm all for it, I… I don't want to put her through that again, but… well, what happens when we do try again, what happens if we lose it again, if… if it starts off well, and holds, and holds, and then…" he breathed out, running a hand over his face and around to clasp the back of his neck, trying to ground himself when there were clearly so many feelings trying to come out.

After all the crap they'd gone through, back in Boston, the breakup, the time apart and the reconciliation… they were ready for this next step in their lives, but now…

"Look, I'm sorry, maybe we should just go, don't want to bum out your day and…" Zay moved to rise, but Lucas stopped him.

"I'd rather be there for the two of you than have a 'good' day, and I know Maya would feel the same. Stay, please. When they come down, we'll eat, we'll do… something, I don't know what yet… It doesn't all have to be on your shoulders, alright?"

"She's in pain…" Zay breathed. "It's Nadine, and she can carry on and hide it real well, but at home, it's only us and then… I did this to her, man…"

"Zay…" Lucas shook his head, sitting forward.

"No, I know that we decided to try for this baby together, I know… I know… But something's going wrong, two times now, and I can't shake the feeling that it's my fault, and I don't… I can't… She shouldn't have to go through something like that, I should be… I don't know what to do…" He was spiraling, Lucas could see it, and it was difficult to watch, but then he couldn't get in the middle of it, had to let his best friend let it out. He and Nadine had existed in this truth over the past few months, just the two of them, and now to finally open up to other people, it would be something they both needed, on their own.

Lunch was not exactly what they'd expected, by the time Maya and Nadine finally came down to join the guys. One look between them all and it was clear now that all four of them were on the same page. Maya had gone and hugged Zay, as Lucas did the same for Nadine. No one knew what to say, and no one did, that was all they really needed, to have their friends there with them like this.

Little by little, as they'd sat around the table for lunch, they had started to talk, not about Zay and Nadine and their struggles toward parenthood, but about the studio, as they had been before all the secrets had come out. Maya and Lucas both knew it would take time for their friends to properly recover from this, but in the meantime life carried on, and they did all they could to carry on with it, so that was what the two of them would do as well, to the best of their abilities.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners