June 3rd 2020

Chapter 155
Their Progress Toward the Music

It used to be that a car driving up the lane, at any time where the band TXNY would be practicing in the Friar house's basement, would have its passengers catch some of the music as they passed by. Eventually they would maybe realize that they didn't hear any of it anymore. If they ended up walking around that house however, they would pick up on a faint drone of muffled sound, coming from the six-sided structure surrounded by flowers, parked up on the grounds beyond. And if they opened the door…

After nearly ten years of making basements their home for bringing songs to life, the band in its current lineup had finally taken the next step up and made the Hex its base of operations.

The first time they had all walked in, on the delayed 'grand opening,' the bandmates had been left in awe. One might have thought they had walked into a place which demanded reverence, and where the instruments in the back were somebody's else's and not the ones which belonged to them and had been played by them for any number of years. It had taken some time, where they'd looked around, and inspected the items posted to the walls, the ones on the shelves… but finally they had gone and picked up their instruments, and they'd kicked off their very first Hex session.

The set up soon left its mark, as Maya, Riley, Rosa, Nadine, and Kayla came out on the other side of that practice with this feeling like it might have been the best they'd had. For Maya, it had been her first opportunity to put Charlie's gift to use in a setting beyond a solo bit of strumming, and it left her with that eternally favored feeling of inspiration, where she would just come up with a new song, or start to draw, or paint…

It was their third session now, or it was about to be. They were just warming up when there was a knock at the door and Ramona came in.

"Hey! Wasn't sure you'd make it," Maya smiled.

"I know, I'm sorry, I had to wait until Ben or Carter came back," Ramona explained, dropping to the couch with a sigh.

"How's Itty Bitty doing?" Rosa inquired.

"She just won't sleep…" Ramona told her, sounding mildly exasperated.

Erin Allison Hastings was nearly two weeks old now. Lucas, Maya, and Sam had barely landed back in Austin, after their quick trip over to Tucson that Lucas had found a message from Ramona of all people, letting him know that Maeve had gone into labor. By the time he'd been able to call her back, baby Erin had made her entrance into the world. The two of them, Ramona and Maeve, had been part of two different sections of Lucas' life, his school and his job, and then in the last couple of months, events had conspired and brought the two of them in the same orbit, thanks to the Hastings brothers.

The closer that Ramona got to younger brother Ben soon meant that she got to interact with older brother Carter, as the two of them were also recent roommates. Ben had moved in with his brother, when it had come to be that he would take on the responsibility of raising a child. As such, Ramona had gotten to hang out with Maeve, whenever she'd be by the apartment to see Carter. They'd already known one another, of course, for knowing and being friends with Lucas, but now they were becoming friends on their own. Ramona had accompanied Maeve on her what would turn out to be her last doctor's appointment pre-baby, as she'd gone into labor right there in the waiting room. It had saved Maeve the need to get to the hospital, if nothing else.

Carter had just barely made it in time to see his daughter born, and so Ramona had been the one there with Maeve, close enough to the whole time that Maeve had insisted Ramona should stay to the end. As the story would be told later on, the reason was revealed soon enough why Ramona had to stay. When the baby had finally been born, her sharp little cries flooding the room, she would be handed to her father, as had already been decided. She would find comfort in him, in arms that loved her and cherished her from the beginning, and then Maeve… Maeve had needed comfort of her own, not to be alone, as she processed all that she had just lived, today and the previous months, and how it would all change going forward, now that the baby was no longer part of her.

When they'd gone to visit Maeve, back at her apartment, they had been startled at first by the state she had been in. The way she acted, a stranger would have had no idea that up until a few days before she had been pregnant, wouldn't have known she had a child anywhere in the world. It wasn't long that they'd been left to understand this was her coping, that her never having intended to become a mother did not change the fact that she had been pregnant, and had carried that child to term, and had given that child over to her father when she was born, just as she'd always said she would. There was a lot for her to sort through, and she just wasn't there yet.

In the meantime, baby Erin was placed in the care of her father, and her uncle, and her uncle's girlfriend, Ramona, who had been indispensable in helping the Hastings brothers adjust to the newborn.

"You look like you could use a nap," Maya gave her a sympathetic smile. "This might not be the place for it though," she pointed out, as the bandmates readied themselves to start.

"That's okay," Ramona promised. "There are worse things to fall asleep to."

It was weird to Maya sometimes the way she was able to sing and play, all the while thinking about something else. These days, it was hard not to have babies on the brain. With the birth of baby Erin, they had just about come to the end of what had felt like the 'baby boom of 2027,' but then had they really? Maya could just see Nadine, out of the corner of her eye as she played, and it was hard to be thinking about sweet Harry Olsen, and Maisie Hart-Lane, and now Erin Hastings, without remembering the struggles Nadine and Zay had gone through and continued to go through, in their desire to become parents. The rest of the band still didn't know, because Nadine didn't want them to, didn't want to bring them down. Maya didn't know if she saw it that way, but it wasn't her choice to make, and so she respected Nadine's wishes. Still, she knew all this baby talk had to be difficult for her, and Maya could only do so much to steer them away from it without giving away Nadine's secret.

The music helped, at least she felt that it did, hoped that it did. They had a show coming up, which was always a sure fire way of getting them all pumped and ready to go. Heightening that feeling was a rumor going around – according to Riley and Kayla – that Ree Forster might show up to see their show.

At their previous practice, Kayla had come along, looking giddy to the point where she'd just held out her phone to whichever of her bandmates would take it and see what she'd just seen. Riley had been the one to take it, and a few seconds later she'd… squeaked. Turning to the others, she informed them that Ree would be in Austin on the day of and the day following their show.

"Okay?" Rosa had responded to this, expressing what was more or less Maya and Nadine's reaction, too.

"She's coming, she has to be!" Riley insisted.

"Coming to what?" Nadine asked.

"To the show, obviously!" Kayla signed, still giving off the impression of someone who would be speaking in a high pitched and startling tone.

"Riley?" Maya asked her. Riley read out the short post, which was Ree apologizing about missing some event in San Diego because she would 'have to be in Austin that weekend.'

"Have to be, have to be," Riley shook the phone at her.

They hadn't subscribed to the theory just yet, though like a song stuck in your head, the thought kept prodding at them in the days that followed. Eventually, Maya had started to believe it, too, though she didn't say so around Riley or Kayla or the others. It was believable enough however, enough that she'd finally gone all in and called Betsy Young. A quick conversation with her mother's cousin, the captain of the Ree Forster fan club as far as their family was concerned, had reinforced the theory even more, enough that by the end of the conversation, there had only been one solution.

"Hey, how would you like to come see me play?"

Betsy was absolutely on board, and in no time she had confirmed that she would be making the trip back to Texas, there to be met by Regan and Kyleigh who would come up from Memphis as they'd done back in December for Ree's concert.

"Are we debuting the new song?" Rosa asked, as practice neared its end.

"I don't know, are we?" Maya turned this question over to Nadine, who had lead vocals on that new song. It was the one Maya had started composing as she'd worked on her family painting and worked out the new seating chart with Sophie. She'd sort of forgotten about it for a while, with the studio construction, and the trip to Arkansas, and Tucson, and everything in between… But then she'd picked it up again and the more she'd worked on it, the more it started to feel, in her heart and mind, that the voice she was hearing sing those words was not her own but Nadine's instead.

When she had presented her with the sheet music, lyrics and all, Nadine had stared at it for a moment like she didn't know what she was supposed to do with it. But the more she'd looked at it, she'd understood what her part in it was going to be.

"Give it a shot, okay?" Maya nodded at her, smiling. She firmly believe that the music would help. It wouldn't patch up every little wound in her friend, but it could hold her together, just a little closer. The first time she'd sung it, with only Maya accompanying her on the guitar, both of them sitting at the heart of the Hex, it had really felt as though Nadine had taken a great, deep breath. It made her happy, whether or not she could say why.

Now, as she was asked whether she would be ready to perform it on stage or not, she was momentarily uncertain, like she spotlight might challenge that feeling. In the end, she gave a decisive nod. She would perform the new song. As the others started to contemplate where they would put this one in the set list, Maya looked to Nadine, and it seemed as though, whatever path she'd taken in order to make up her mind here had taken her down more than one road. Something else had been decided here, and whatever it was, for now, she kept it to herself

This show coming up in just a few days was essentially kicking off the run up to their tenth anniversary events. Between that and the wedding, now just a little over a month, the coming summer could already have been classified as 'wonderfully hectic,' and she couldn't wait for all of it and everything else in between.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners