A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!

June 9th 2020

Chapter 161
Their Progress Toward Titles

"Here, here, Sam, take these," Maya held out her boots to her brother as they walked into the house. Well, Sam was walking in, and so was Lucas. Maya, on the other hand, was catching a ride on the Huckleberry Express, as she'd been allowed to hold on to her fiancé's back for the journey from the car. She'd managed to yank her boots off back in the car, but now they mostly thumped at Lucas' chest, every step he took with his 'load.'

"If I sold these, do you think I'd get a lot?" Sam joked as he grabbed the boots.

"Don't you dare, they're my lucky stage boots!" Maya pointed at him, as Lucas was already leading them up the stairs.

"Can you check the dog bowls?" he asked, turning to Sam, who nodded and went off toward the kitchen.

"But the boots!" Maya 'protested,' even as she held on to him like nothing would ever move her from this place, not after the evening had taken all her energy away.

"They will be safe," Lucas assured her, smiling as he felt her burrow her head into his neck. When they reached the top of the stairs and he walked them into their room, he stopped in front of the bed. "Would you like to be set down or dropped down?" he inquired.

"I think you know what I would like right now," she whispered at his ear with a laugh.

"Maya!" Sam's voice was heard then, the call preceding the sound of his steps hurrying up the stairs.

"Put a pin on the 'right now' part," she sighed, as Lucas chuckled and set her on the bed before her brother stopped in the door.

"I'm sorry, I didn't…" he started.

"My boots?" she sat up.

"What?" Sam blinked, then, "No, I left them downstairs. I was in the kitchen though, for the bowls, and the light was on for voicemail, on the phone, so I heard before you…"

"What are you talking about?" Maya frowned, not following.

"The school, they called, about the job," Sam explained, and Maya turned to Lucas for a moment. He was looking at her like he was ready to pick her back up again and bring her down the stairs so she could listen. Her look said to hold on.

"Did you hear the part where they said if I got it or not?"

"I did," Sam slowly replied.

"Well?" Maya asked, at the same time Lucas did. Sam pointed over his shoulder in what they took to mean 'don't you want to hear it for yourself?' "That can wait," Maya waved it off. "Just tell me," she asked, caught somewhere between the exhaustion of the night and a surge of new energy. Sam breathed out, like he'd been stuck minding a balloon in his chest.

"You got it, you got the job," he blurted out, with the expediency of one who knew he would have very little times to get any words in before meaning would lock into place and then everything else would be lost in a burst of reaction, of cheer.

As soon as they had both heard it, and indeed processed it in a heartbeat, Maya and Lucas both reacted the only way they could. For Lucas, the response could only be to catch up his fiancée and sweep her right back into his arms, hugging her this time rather than carrying her like a backpack. Meanwhile, Maya felt the words hit her like a tornado, carrying her away much as Lucas did now, when he picked her up. Her brain was in overload. It was real, it was happening, finally… and as much as she'd been telling herself that she'd made it through the days of waiting with confidence and calm, now that she knew she was in, she could just about confess her truth back to herself, which was that she'd been more terrified of not getting it than anything else.

She had the job… She would be the new art teacher for her old high school, in just a few months… Two years of… not waiting, no, two years of learning, of growing, and now at last she would get to take that next step and get to be this person she'd dreamed herself to be.

She had absolutely no control over her tears, and she didn't care. These were the good kind, and they felt oddly amazing.

None of them could say what time they had ended up going to bed or how long they slept. Morning just sort of happened to them, as they opened their eyes again to daylight and, somewhere below, a doorbell. Lucas was the first to wake, or at least the first to lift his head up and look at the time. It was eleven in the morning, which meant…

"Maya, hey, they're here," he spoke quietly, leaning in again to hold his fiancée close, pressing a kiss to her shoulder as she stirred.

"What?" she mumbled.

"Your family's here, remember? Betsy and the girls…" After a moment, she shifted to sit up, so he did the same. As they both stood, and stretched, and yawned, Lucas went down the hall to see if Sam was still asleep – he was – while Maya went down the stairs to answer the door.

"Did we miss the after after-show?" Regan Clutterbucket asked, sandwiched between Betsy Young and Kyleigh Hinton. Maya ran a hand through her hair, imagining what she must have looked like, a minute out of bed after a show and a near sleepless night.

"Sort of," she shook her head to herself before stepping back to let them in. They were soon accosted by the trio of curious pups, who came sniffing at the strangers and found them agreeable, especially as they received hearty scratches and greetings.

"Were you still asleep?" Betsy wondered.

"Just barely awake," Maya confessed, even as the reason for their late waking came back to her. Her mind was just now turning on the lights again, and it reminded her of the message which had been waiting in their voicemail after coming back from the show. It didn't seem possible that she would forget, but for a moment she had. Now, she remembered, and it inhabited the whole of her mind for a second or two. You got the job. It manifested in a flash of a smile on her face, and when Kyleigh asked what this was about, she told them, about the job offer and the fact that she'd just heard back that she'd gotten the job, that she would be starting her first year at the school in the fall.

It might have been that she would have felt bad that her mother wasn't the first to hear the news, with how much it had meant to her to be able to say it, but then she had said it, here, and the first person outside of Lucas and Sam who had gotten to react was her godmother, and that was a fair compromise. Betsy had given her a great big hug, which was near as good as getting one from her own mother.

The visiting trio had taken it upon themselves to go away and pick up a bit of a brunch instead of the lunch they were meant to be having, the better to give a chance to the trio to get dressed in their own time. They were directed to Ma Maggie's, and off they went.

"That is a lot of hair, my dear Sammy," Maya chuckled when she returned upstairs to find that Lucas had finally coaxed him out of bed and out into the hall to drag his feet about. Maya and Lucas would joke sometimes that the reason Sam was usually the first one up every morning was so that, by the time they joined him downstairs and found him making breakfast, he would have had time to do something about the mass of bed hair sprouting from his head. "You are cutting some of it off before the wedding, right?" she teased, reaching up to try and tame it.

"I am, I am," he promised, dodging away.

With the promise of food, they had retreated to start and get dressed before Betsy and the cousins returned. Maya found herself distracted as she looked through the closet, the thought of that voicemail alive in her mind now, with some sleep to lift her back into a more clear headed reflection. Lucas could see it, too, looking at her, and he stepped up behind her, slipping his arms around to hold her. She leaned in to the embrace with a smile, locking his arms in place with her own.

"Here I was, thinking this summer wouldn't get any better," he told her, which made her laugh.

"And for all that, the main event is still the same," she declared. He showed his agreement with a kiss to the side of her face. The wedding and the honeymoon, the band anniversary, the summer camp, the run-up to her start as a teacher… How could she do anything but smile, again and again? "How mad do you think they'd be if we just up and eloped?"

"Sophie would lose her mind," Lucas pointed out, which made her laugh. "I would be the opposite of mad," Lucas countered, and Maya turned about in his arms so she could look up at him. "All I want is to be married to you." She was all smiles, stretching on her toes to kiss him.

"Almost there," she promised. "I guess we waited this long, we can wait a few more weeks and not have Sophie rage eating the food she ordered for the wedding."

"She is not getting our cake," Lucas whispered conspiratorially, causing Maya to have the inverse reaction as she burst out into laughter. Now they really needed to get ready before the others returned.

"Uh, guys?" Sam called from below, sometime later. Maya and Lucas had gone up into the attic when they'd been dressed, as all the wedding talk had reminded Maya she was still working on finishing touches for their thank you cards.

"What?" Maya shouted back.

"We've got company!"

They went up to the attic window looking out from the front of the house and, as Sam had put it, they definitely had company. Several cars were in the process of pulling in from the lane, parking where they could. From above, they could identify them easily enough. There was the rental, which would be Betsy, Kyleigh, and Regan, There was the Hunter Hart minivan, and Tom Friar's car, and Dylan's car, and the Matthews', and Zay's, and the Cassidys', and Ramona's, and Kayla's…

"I was really kidding about the eloping, what is going on? Did you do this?" Maya turned to Lucas, blinking back surprise.

"I didn't, no," Lucas shook his head. By the surprise on his face, too, she had to believe it.

"What are they all doing here?"

There was the doorbell from below, and then voices, as Sam must have opened the door. Maya and Lucas hurried down from the attic, making it to the stairs leading to the ground floor just as Regan and Kyleigh were coming up toward them. They had a look about them like they were excited about something.

"Right, so we didn't know there'd be that many people…" Regan stated at once.

"What did you do?" Maya asked.

"Well, we were in the car, and us and Betsy got to talking, about you and the job," Kyleigh explained, lowering her voice to a whisper on the last part.

"You told them?" Lucas blinked.

"No, no," both girls spoke as one.

"Betsy called your mom," Regan told Maya. "And she said how she really wanted to sort of get to know your people while we were in town, you know? So your mom said she'd make some calls, and next thing you know…" she gestured behind them, where the many passengers of the just arrived cars were making their way into the house. "I think some of them called other people, too."

"I think there's more people coming, too," Kyleigh told Maya and Lucas, who looked to one another with a shared thought: Houston.

They would be proven correct, sometime later, when Sophie, Chiara, Asher, Ray, Pappy Joe, Patty, and the Hillards landed to join the spontaneous party. Maya's godmother had done so much with so very little, like a showing of her promise to make up for all those missed years. She had allowed her goddaughter to share this little bit of news that might not have seemed like such a big deal to some people but was absolutely one to her. And these people here would know it. She would get to tell them all at once, and share in that happiness with all of them at once.

She didn't want to have to make a big announcement out of it, so she'd just gone ahead and cut to the chase, moving to be near her parents at least before trying to get everyone's attention. There were too many of them though, all of them talking in small groups. Lucas came up with the solution, crouching to whisper at Nellie Hunter's ear and, once the girl had nodded with a grin, hoisting her overhead, cutting through the crowded house.

"Excuse me!" she shouted, and the noise died down. She looked very proud of herself as Lucas set her back on her feet next to her twin.

"Thanks, Sunny," Maya smiled at her. "Well, since you guys are all here, I might as well let you know that, as of this fall, I will be a shiny new art teacher," she revealed to the collected guests, who forgot their vows of silence at once, sweeping in little by little to congratulate her and talk a while. It took long enough that, as the summoned guests of Houston arrived, they were soon looped in and added to the roster swarming around Maya.

The impromptu party ran well through the afternoon and into evening, at which point some of the guests had to leave, either to drive back to Houston, or because they had work in the morning, or because they had to get back to their hotel to pack and fly home.

"I'm so glad you got to be here for all of this," Maya told Betsy as they embraced by the door.

"I could say the same to you," Betsy smiled, pulling back to look at her. "Next time I see you…" she let the sentence trail on, the end of it easy to find, and still Maya couldn't help but make a joke.

"… I won't be coming around in my PJs," she told her godmother, who snickered and hugged her once more.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners