June 11th 2020

Chapter 163
Their Choice of Assistance

In her early years in Texas, Maya's bedroom walls had been plastered all around with her drawings as they came into existence, like capsules of the good things in her life in the form of a page, set in place to comfort her if ever her displacement from New York and her old life got to be too hard. In time, it had become a wall in her basement room, and by the time she'd ended up in Houston, sharing her space with Lucas, it was just a few select pieces. It wasn't about needing that blanket anymore.

Here in Austin again, in their house, there were again a selection of drawings either on the walls or on a surface, all of them framed. One of those, sitting on the dresser, was an old favorite, showing Maya, Lucas, Zay, Nadine, Asher, and Dylan, laid out on the grass, the night of their first sleepover. It was just a perfect representation of who they had been to each other back then. Maya had still been relatively new to Austin and to these other kids, but you would hardly know it by looking at them here.

The first thing that might have come to be noted could have been how much her art had developed in the past twelve years, but that wasn't it. If anything, Maya and Lucas both knew to appreciate that this was a perfect representation of 'the artist at thirteen,' and this showed a girl who had very much wanted to put to paper every little detail of this moment, to capture it in the way only she could, in a different way than a camera might have done.

Looking at it that night, after they'd seen their friends off and said good night to Sam, Maya would zone in on 'Tall Z and Little Z.' They were just friends at the time, of course, and whatever feelings they might have had already that went beyond this line were for the most part subconscious at best or they were new and hardly contextualized. But for all that, there was something about them, even then as the young Maya had put pencil to paper, that felt bonded in a deeper way.

"I still remember that day like it just happened," Lucas commented as he watched her stand there.

"Me, too," Maya smiled, turning back to look at him. "But then I know it was a really long time ago, too. We've all grown up so much, not just physically. Back then, all that really mattered was school, and sports, and playing with our friends… Now, it's…"

"All of that and more?" Lucas offered, which made her chuckle.

"Yeah. Marriage, and careers, and babies… It's everywhere, and it's not even scary, it's just where we all are now, in some way or another. Those two here…" she turned back to the drawing. "They have no idea what's ahead for them. But them…" she turned to another frame, this one with a picture, a couple years old but showing the expansion of their group of six. There were Zay and Nadine again, only this time as newlyweds, with his arms around her. They had gone through many ups and downs already, the biggest being the break of several months, which took Zay to live in New York while Nadine remained in Boston, and they had gone through deeper downs still in recent months…

"Those two," Lucas nodded to the sketch, "I would have said Nadine is very capable to look after a baby, a child, and Zay… Well, he's got her." Maya tried not to laugh. "I've known him nearly my whole life though," Lucas went on, more serious now. "And I've seen him grow from a weird kid to a… less weird adult, but I've always known him as someone kind, down to his soul. It makes it so that it's not so weird now to imagine him as a father."

"And isn't that the weird part?" Maya smiled at him and he laughed. They were silent for a moment now, and in that beat of silence it suddenly felt like a question had laid itself within their universe, and one or the other of them had to pick it up and give it voice.

"So, what about us?" Lucas picked it up, taking a few steps nearer to her. Maya smiled at the thought, knowing he would say it.

"Yeah, what about us?" she innocently replied.

It seemed as though the question was constantly floating in their periphery, triggered by anything from eager family members, to seeing friends of theirs having children of their own… They had dipped their toes in that question not quite two years ago, but there had been so much going on at the time, and the wedding – back when it was meant to happen a year ago – had been imminent. It had been one thing after another, and neither one of them had brought it up again. But now…

"I was ready before, now I'm just whatever comes after ready," Lucas declared, locking his arms around her waist. "I think about it more times than I can say." She could believe that. She could believe it, and really the idea of Lucas as a dad was the easiest image for her to conjure up. She had known this for a long time, of course. The two of them had been headed this way for a while already.

"That makes two of us," she told him, smiling.

"Then maybe it's time we gave it a shot?" he tentatively suggested, and with him standing this close, looking at her with those eyes of his, she could practically see the two of them 'giving it a shot' that very night.

"It definitely wouldn't have time to interfere with the wedding anymore," she slowly pointed out.

"Twenty-three days…" he whispered. She laughed, paused, let out a breath.

"I'm going to be starting at school this fall. My first year teaching," she had to remind him.

"True…" he had to admit he heard what she was saying, knew what she meant. Suppose they started trying now, and they managed to succeed almost right away… She wouldn't get to finish that first year before having to go on leave… Now he looked like he felt bad for not even considering it in that way, and she really didn't want him to have to feel that way.

"Maybe instead of trying, for now, we can just say… if it happens, it happens, and we'll just go from there," she suggested. Lucas smiled, and to Maya it felt as though they were both just vibrating for this potential between them. Nothing had happened yet, and they hadn't made any commitment to any solid attempts either, but they were taking steps in their lives, in this shared life, and how could they feel anything but completely and vibrantly alive and in love? "We really need to focus on Nadine and Zay right now," Maya finally had to tap Lucas' chest, feeling that they might have been tempting the fates if they let the silence trail on too long.

"You're right, yes," he nodded, and Maya couldn't help but be amused as she noted the fact that he was still holding on to her. "What?" Lucas asked, borrowing her occasional innocent look.

"Wow," Maya laughed. "You talk about baby making long enough and this is what you get, huh?" she asked, looping her arms around his neck.

"You tell me," Lucas shrugged, smiling down at her.

"I really do have to get up early though…" she reminded him, sounding like she really wished she didn't have to. "And you know I'll be awake a while if we go down that road."

"You might end up writing another big summer hit," he countered, even as he finally went ahead and let her go so that they might get off to bed to sleep.

"Who says I don't already have that one in the bag?" she replied with confidence.

On most nights, it had become like a familiar dance between them. She'd deal with the curtains, he'd turn down the covers, she'd check the alarm on her phone, he'd turn off the lights… When he turned back around in the dark, he found a bloom of light and his fiancée sat cross-legged on the bed, scribbling in the notepad she kept in her night stand drawer while holding her phone to create light.

"What are you doing?" Lucas asked, moving to sit next to her.

"Just thought of a few things and I wanted to make sure I wouldn't forget, for the letter," Maya explained, still writing.

"Your ideas kind of look like paragraphs, how are you writing so fast?"

"Faster I write, sooner I can leave it alone," she shrugged. "If you hear me mumbling in my sleep and it sounds like it's for this…"

"I will try and remember," he assured her.

"I really don't want to be the reason that they don't get a kid," Maya finally set pad, pen, and phone aside before dropping to her pillow with a sigh. Lucas slipped under the covers with her even as she moved to turn into spoon position. She scooted closer as he put his arm around her, which made him smile, leaning in to kiss her shoulder.

"I really don't see that happening."

"Well, you know how I get, it's like the path to the other end of an idea is stuck passing through Pessimist Village."

"That doesn't sound like a fun place," Lucas decided.

"They don't even have a gift shop," Maya shook her head.

"Well that's just not right."

Lucas ended up being so focused in ensuring that Maya fell asleep and stayed that way that it took him a while to fall asleep, too. In the meantime, he thought about his friends, and what he might say about them… took a brief detour into the happy world of Maya and him being just on the verge of starting their family, too… The two sort of mixed together in the end, as thinking about how eager he was about being a dad someday left him to feel for his friends, for his oldest friend, as they had no doubt experienced that very same eagerness and found it dashed, once, twice… He was only thinking about it, hadn't lived through it as they'd done, and it was tearing into him with so much anxiety. No one deserved something like that, but these were some of his closest friends, which only made it hurt more.

When Maya's alarm sounded, the following morning, she stretched her arm over to make it stop. Turning over, she found Lucas sitting up next to her, already awake and taking some notes of his own, on a sheet he appeared to have taken from her notepad.

"Woke up with ideas, huh?" she asked, leaning her chin on his shoulder.

"Just a bit, yeah," he told her. "We should read each other's letters when we're done, yeah? Just to make sure there's not too much overlap."

"Good plan, yeah," Maya smiled before getting herself out of bed. "Is Sam up yet?"

"Ten minutes ago, probably downstairs already."

"Knowing him, I have a feeling he already has his letter started," she came to pull him out of bed and downstairs with her. "I'd call him a show off, but I just think it's really sweet that he wants to write one for them, too."

"Classic Sam, right?" Lucas smiled. She laughed.

"Yeah, definitely."

They came into the kitchen to find their plates already served and their young chef already sitting at the table, eating and reading from a textbook rather than working on his letter, though there was an open notebook underneath, which Maya spent most of the meal attempting to see.

"Off!" Sam nudged her away repeatedly.

"I just want to see what you wrote for them. I'll let you read mine when it's done," she promised.

"This isn't their letter, okay?" he shook his head, and after a moment she understood. He was working on his toast, for the wedding. Maya peacefully retreated at this, nudging one of her pieces of bacon over to his plate for thanks.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners