June 29th 2020

Chapter 181
Their Joy in Dancing

"Am I hearing this right that you designed your dress?"

Maya turned around to find a beaming Ree Forster standing behind her. She barely had time to nod that the woman was reaching out to embrace her, pulling back to kiss her on one cheek and the other. It was the first chance they had gotten to really talk all day, though Maya had of course seen her, here and there since she'd come out from her hiding spot to walk down the aisle. Somehow, she had gone from being just a bit startled the first time, to now just seeing this as reality. Of course Ree was here… They were colleagues. She might go so far as to think they were friends. That felt like something too massive to even consider, but then sooner or later she'd have to stop and recognize that it might be true. Here she was, telling her sisters that Ree Forster was a human being like all of them and she couldn't even follow her own rules. Well, she was starting now. She was a friend, a… very revered friend treated with the utmost respect.

"Now, ready to go out there?" Ree asked.

Maya looked to the stage, to where the rest of the band was getting ready to go on, to play her through her first few dances. It wasn't until now that she noticed they looked just a bit giddier than she would have expected them to be. What was so exciting about going on to perform what they had clearly been practicing the day before while Maya and Lucas had been at the Sanderson farm with the puppies? And then it clicked…

She didn't know when it had happened, because not one of them had known Ree would be here today until… well, today. As good as their fangirls were, they wouldn't have known. The last time, their show, Maya had figured out in time that it was no coincidence Kayla had pieced together the chance that Ree would be in town that night. The singer had gone and put out the word, knowing it was likely to get back to them and they might put two and two together. This time, she was entirely incognito up until she showed up here. Even then, her guests had been very respectful, hadn't swarmed her, and for this Maya was thankful.

Ree Forster was about to take the stage, with TXNY backing her up, to accompany the newlyweds' first dance.

"Yeah, just missing one tall husband," Maya turned, even as Lucas walked up to them. "Oh, there he is," she smiled, seeing his puzzled 'did I walk into the middle of a joke?' face.

"Right then, best get my stage face on," Ree pressed her hands together, taking a good centering breath before moving to join the band. As they watched her talk quietly with the six of them up there, Maya and Lucas were hit with a very similar thought.

"You know, she kind of reminds me of you when you're about to go up," Lucas said it aloud. Maya smiled back at him.

"Yeah, it's almost like she's one of us. I used to look at the liner on her old albums all the time, still know all those pictures enough to draw them from memory. She was a teenager in the beginning, clearly she's aged since then, but… I look at her, and that's still her. She's still that girl in there." That's what I want to be… The thought kept her smile stoked, even as Ree finally turned and came to stand at the microphone.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ree Forster," she introduced herself, as though anyone – except maybe a handful of people in the Clutterbucket crew – wouldn't already know. She hadn't even needed to call them to attention. The moment she'd stepped up on that stage, the eyes had started to turn and stay on her. "Tonight, I have the privilege of joining the ladies of TXNY," she indicated the band at her back, "And we all of us together are about to bring out a pair of very special people on their first dance as husband and wife. You know them, you love them, now help me welcome the newlyweds," she invited the guests, in a welcoming tone, when she could have just as easily roused them into a rock frenzy with the same words.

Under the cheers of their gathered guests, Lucas turned to Maya, holding his hand to her and receiving hers with a matched smile. They walked out on to the dance floor, and she just had to look him in the eye to know he was about to give her a twirl, knowing without her having to say it that she had been very eager to get to make that skirt spin. It did not disappoint. She finished her rotation even as the music started, and she landed back in his arms. And they were just dancing.

Picking their first song had been easy. Eight grade… spring time… the school dance… They hadn't been together yet, though they would be by the following fall. They had danced the night away inside the gym, hopping and laughing, and then they had gone out for some air. They'd sat a while, listening to the distant music floating out from inside the school. After a while, a new song had started, slower, and he had asked her for another dance. They'd had that song together, standing out there, and it had been one of those moments where, given just the slightest nudge, they might have started out together right then and there. To this day, ten years on, they could not hear so much as the title without being taken back to that moment. So, of course it would be their first dance. It had been their first dance, their first romantic-without-knowing-it dance.

It would have been so easy for them to slip into their usual back and forth, coming so easily as it always did, but they did not say a word through the whole of the song. They were too caught up in one another, once again left to remember, as though anything about their location and their attire could let them forget, that they were now married. It wasn't just that they remembered it, of course. It was the knowledge of it, of everything it meant, the culmination of twelve years of friendship, and love, of growth and support, the two of them out in the world, inseparable. And it was the look out to the future ahead of them, as though the doors had been unlocked with this moment. It had always been there, yes, and it wasn't a couple of rings that would have changed it, but here they were, and they had made their vows to one another, like they had always been looking to the future, but now they were looking at it and they were grasping one another's hand as they marched into it. Standing here, it was as good as saying 'I will be there,' loud enough for all to hear.

The song, the dance, ended as it had begun, with a twirl and a return, and the butterflies were not the kind that sat heavy in the stomach but rather fluttered about the heart, kept it feeling like it would take flight as well.

"Wasn't sure I had that timed out right," Lucas grinned after Maya had stretched up and kissed him.

"You, Dancing Shoes Friar? I wasn't concerned," she told him, making him laugh. "That was very good," she complimented, and he tipped his head to her, invisible hat and all. "Oh look, it's the comedy husband."

"You never get tired of saying that, huh?" he smiled, like every time she said it his heart would leap. She shook her head; she did not get tired at all. "My wife is such a weirdo," he shook his head, kissing her once more. "I kind of don't want to let you go right now."

"That makes two of us. Don't worry, we'll find our way back. This might be our night, but that just means we're really popular and everyone wants to dance with us," she smirked, holding to his arms to lift herself up and whisper at his ear. When she stepped back, she chuckled at the look on his face. "Just to make sure," she coyly shrugged, just as she could see Shawn on the sidelines. She smiled at him and he stepped on to the dance floor to join her, while Lucas moved to find his mother.

"Hey, Mom," he held his hand out to her. "Can I borrow you for a dance?" Melinda Friar set her hand in her son's, looking like she had some heart butterflies of her own, following her baby boy on to the dance floor on his wedding day.

"It feels like I was just here a minute ago, dancing with your father for the first time, our own day," she told Lucas, and he smiled. "And I look at you now… You're so much like him," Melinda went on, her voice adding so much meaning to this statement, telling him how proud it made her.

"I like to think I'm a lot like the both of you," Lucas told his mother as they danced, just as quickly knowing he'd just made her start to tear up again. It would not have taken very much to get her started today. It was the truth though. It was easy for people to say he was a lot like his father, because of the way he looked, and because most people saw his mother and immediately saw her more… exuberant traits. If they knew her the way he knew her, they would see that, as good of a man as his father was, Lucas had gotten the bulk of his own brand of kind and nurturing nature from his mother, and for this he was eternally grateful.

As mother and son danced here, there danced father and daughter, as Shawn had come along on the dance floor, looking very much like he was finding his own emotional trigger under assault. Maya could not even begin to express how much this man had meant to her, in all the years he'd been part of their lives. She had become his daughter with great ease, like she'd always just fit this space in his heart which had remained unoccupied, unused until she came along. He never had to tell her that she mattered to him equally as much as her Hunter siblings, whether or not they shared DNA. She could always see it in his eyes, and she saw it now as he stood before her, a nervous father taking his daughter's hand and leading her into a dance as she stood a newly married woman.

"You're a lot more serious than the first time we ever danced you and I," Maya recalled as they came into a hold and moved along to the band's music, to Ree's voice. Shawn looked like he couldn't remember for a moment, and then it came back to him and he laughed. It hadn't been any special occasion except that she'd been watching a movie when he'd come over on one of his many visits, and she'd been singing along, hamming it up with the best of them and, amused by the whole display, he'd just started this weird little dance that sent her rolling with giggles. Rather than to have her laugh 'at him,' he'd pulled her from the couch so she'd show him what she had. It was the kind of silly moment neither of them would have seen coming, and yet it had been one more signal of their growing connection as an eventual father and daughter.

"It's the clothes, definitely the clothes," he assured her. "And these shoes. They're serious dancing shoes," he informed her, and she managed to get a look down at his feet.

"Very serious, of course, yes," she nodded, turning her head back up with a laugh. "Don't I look very serious, too?"

"I was going to go with beautiful, but hey, to each their own," he told her, and she could have rolled her eyes at him if her face didn't look so just plain happy as it did.

"I'm just saying, I'm not getting tired of this whole… crying Olympics thing we've got going," Maya informed him, and he laughed.

"Is that right?"

"It is," she nodded. He looked at her like he was going to challenge this notion, but in the end he just kept looking at her, smiling as they danced.

"I could get used to this," he finally told her. "Maybe we should take lessons together," he suggested, in that way he had where she wasn't entirely sure if he was joking or not.

"Hey, all you'd have to do would be to show up at Stage Ready some time. We have some great teachers."

"That's what I've been hearing," Shawn nodded. "I might just take you up on that." Maybe he was serious, maybe he wasn't… But he made her laugh, and that was real enough.

As the two pairs on the dance floor began to be joined by others, Maya and Lucas found themselves with new partners with barely a moment in between the previous and the next. As they found themselves parted from their father and mother respectively, they were quickly matched once again with a father and a mother, this time one another's. Shawn Hunter had stepped back and there stood Thomas Friar, ready to take his daughter-in-law for a turn. The two men exchanged a nod before Lucas' father offered a hand to his bride. Maya gladly took it.

"You know, I don't think I ever told you how glad I was to have you and Mrs. Friar there all this time," Maya told him, caught for a moment just as Thomas was in recalling that she was now a Mrs. Friar herself, even if the name thing remained as yet undecided.

"Were you now?" Thomas smiled, looking very much like his son.

"Very much," Maya nodded. "I always felt so welcome in your home, and that meant a lot to me, especially when I'd just gotten here and I was kind of… off balance. It was like a second home… and the two of you, you took me in."

"Well," Thomas breathed in. His emotions manifested differently than his son's might have done, but they were there nonetheless and she could see them very well, like she had cheat codes. It meant so much to him, what she was telling him here. "We might not have had the chance to raise a daughter of our own, but we did pretty good when you came along, I think. I wouldn't trade a single day… except maybe that one," he added after a beat, and Maya agreed with a silent nod. "Now, about this Mr. Friar business…" he gave a smile, and she matched it gladly.

"It's like I told Lucas earlier. I suddenly find myself with seven parents. Pretty good deal, huh?"

"Happy to be counted," Thomas Friar nodded.

Not so far away, Lucas was leading his mother-in-law in their own dance. Katy had always treated him well, and if she ever turned him away, it was never for any reason Lucas himself wouldn't have backed up himself. Even when she had turned him away though, he'd always gotten the sense that she was doing it because she had to and not because she wanted to. In hindsight, he could see how much she understood of the bond between her daughter and the boy she'd met at school. She would always choose the path of patience over condemnation, and in the end she would generally be proven correct. When there had been the ski trip incident and Maya had been so deeply upset with them for not saying they were leaving, she had refused him admittance, and after the accident and the ban, well…

Now that they knew more of her story, her past, how she'd run away from home as a teenager, Lucas could piece together how she might have done her best to show herself to be on her daughter's side, to keep her from doing the same thing she'd done, especially after the time she nearly had… with him, with Zay.

After those two incidents though, it was like she's accepted, once and for all, that the two of them were both on Maya's team in the same way: forever and always, through thick and thin. And she needed nothing more from him than that. The fact that he had become part of her family, in so many ways, well that was what made it even better.

"I have trouble believing how long it's been sometimes," Katy shook her head in wonder. "I still remember the first time you all came over for the first time." Lucas laughed.

"You wanted Zay to be an actor," he recalled.

"I stand by that, he could be great," Katy laughed along with him.

"To me, it feels more like I have trouble believing we weren't all together from the beginning." There were still more years in the 'before Maya' column than the 'since Maya' one, but they almost felt like a dream, not as real in some places.

"I'm going to have a grumpy one on my hands tonight," Katy told him, turning to look over where Shawn was showing himself the master juggler that he was, holding little Haley in one arm, balancing MJ on his back, and dancing to the very best of his abilities with the twins, releasing his hold on his son's leg now and then to twirl either Nellie or Gracie. Haley wasn't giving this much attention, instead using this vantage point to look for her Lucky friend.

"I think I owe her a dance," Lucas smiled. The night may not have been long enough for the amount of dances he had ahead of him. And oh how many more he wanted to share with his wife… But first… As he and Katy completed their turn, Ree had ceded the microphone back to the band, and Rosa had taken up the vocals. Reaching the outskirts of the dance floor, Lucas came to his father-in-law's side, that he may address the girl who had briefly looked ready to doze off on her father's shoulder until she'd spotted her mother and her new brother, and then her head was back up and following his advance. "Miss Hunter," he tipped his head to Haley. "May I?"

"Have her back before midnight?" Shawn teased.

"I'll do my best," Lucas smiled, lifting the eager girl into his arms and taking her off for a twirl.

As Lucas was off with her little sister, Maya was called on for a new dance, this time from the imposing figure of her grandfather. Tanner Clutterbucket may have looked like the bearded version of his older brother Walter, but put in his best suit he still looked very distinct from the businessman. Far from looking out of place, he was just very… distinguished. Maybe it was that he wasn't most likely to be found in this kind of attire.

"Would you like to…" he asked, his shyness in complete contrast to his stature but on the whole leaving him as someone endearing despite his stoic tendencies.

"Very much so," Maya smiled up at him, taking the hand offered to her. Hers looked like a small child's compared to his, but it didn't matter to either of them. For a guy that tall and quiet, he moved a lot better than she might have expected. He wasn't much of a talker, especially in a situation like this, but even without words Maya only needed to look into his eyes to know how happy it made him to be here with her.

As he relinquished the Hunter girl in the care of her five-year-old brother, who tried to imitate the tall people's dancing with her, Lucas turned to find possibly his second most anticipated dance partner after his wife. One of the promises they had made themselves in delaying the wedding by a year was that, at this reception they would get to do what they would not have been able to do one year ago. To look at her, Lucas knew it meant as much to Sophie as it did to him, likely even more so, that the two of them would go out there and have themselves a dance.

"Feels weird to say it, but this definitely takes me back," Sophie laughed, after Lucas had given her a spin. "That whole ballroom block," she recalled, and Lucas instantly reset his frame, stoking her laughter.

"We were totally the best ones in that one," he affirmed with confidence.

"Oh, yeah," Sophie echoed the feeling. "Zay though…" she trailed on, and he had to bite back his own laughter, thinking of him in that sort of contraption their teacher had brought in to make him hold himself the right way. "He looked so mad the whole time…"

"It's not right, it's just not right," Lucas recalled his best man's words, imitating him as best he could, which was very well, going by Sophie's reaction. After a beat of silent dancing, it was easy for the two of them to just look at each other with the memory of the promise they'd made, not a promise kept. It wasn't just the promise itself, of course, but also the recovery she had undergone to even get here.

"It still makes me feel just so… You put this all off for a year, because of me…"

"For you. And we would do it again," Lucas vowed. "And hey, you came through very well with all this," he looked around.

"I think I might retire with my own success," Sophie nodded. "All this planning, it's a lot of work."

"You get to go down a legend," Lucas smirked, especially at the happy look of triumph on his friend's face.

As happy as they both were to dance with friends and family members, when Maya and Lucas found their way back to one another, they reached for the other's hand in a decisive sort of 'our turn now' gesture, and Lucas gently pulled her into his arms again as the music kicked up around them.

"Missed you," Maya looked up, and Lucas expressed this reciprocated feeling with a kiss at her forehead.

"Better stay with me a while then," he suggested, and she smiled, resting her head to his shoulder as they swayed.

"That's the plan," she breathed. If she closed her eyes, it was as though they were the only ones here, almost like they were back at his grandmother's old house, recharging from the whirlwind of the day. They stayed like this, in their sort of cocoon, for the remainder of the song, until the next one made Maya look back up. "I almost fell asleep there," she admitted, which made Lucas smile. "I can't help it, I missed you last night."

"Hey, you don't have to convince me," he promised.

"No more couches for you," she laughed. He tipped his head. "Alright, no more couches unless I'm there, too."

"Good," he smiled, stealing a look over to the stage. "You know what we need right now?"

"Big, bouncing around music?" Maya suggested, and Lucas nodded at once. "Yeah, come on. I did not build that removable layer into my dress for nothing," she laughed, as they went to put in their request to the band. Sooner or later, they'd have to switch things up, to get their own turn on the dance floor. It was time to kick it up a notch or five.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners