July 13th 2020

Chapter 195
Their Circle Around Happiness

"Rosa, come on, time to go!" Maya called down the basement stairs.

"One minute!" Rosa called back. "You guys come down when I say so!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Hey!"

"Yes, oh Great Decorator!"

"Better!" Rosa replied, and Maya started to move away, until… "Okay, done!" She moved back to the door. "You guys can come now!"

"I will let the menfolk know!"

After having given the walls a day to dry, Rosa had been working to put the finishing touches to the basement, first the night before, in very carefully moving the furniture in its 'final position,' and now this morning in finishing up the rest of the room. They'd been hearing her working away down there since the rest of them had been having breakfast. The benefit of their location, as Sam would tell it, was that the noise could only bother the three of them at the table, which had made Lucas laugh.

Sam had already taken off to meet Cecilia and Dora, so he would have to see later on. For now, Maya went and found Lucas, bringing him to the basement door to find Rosa waited midway up the stairs, phone in hand. As expected, she'd taken the chance to grab some photos of her finished project.

"So, you wanted something not too out there, something that would feel like home but also welcoming to any guests you might have, which, being one of those right now, I have to say, I feel pretty welcome," Rosa smiled up at them. "Welcome to Hotel Friar."

She had accomplished exactly what she'd promised. They'd had no doubts of her abilities, having seen her at work, with the apartment she'd shared with Riley and Dylan the past two years, and then even back in Houston, in her room, at the bookstore… The basement here had the benefit of her growing experience and knowledge, and really she deserved to be proud.

"Thank you so much for this," Lucas told her, and oh how happy she looked. It wasn't as though she didn't know that they had asked her to do this in part to help her deal with the sudden disruption to her living situation, but it didn't mean she wasn't grateful.

"I think the poster really brought it together," she nodded, turning to Maya.

"I'm pretty sure that was you, but I'll take it," Maya grinned, side-hugging her bandmate.

"We really need to get going," Lucas looked to his watch. "According to Sophie, Asher is turning into a bit of an intense groom."

"One of us was bound to crack at one of these," Maya sighed as they left the basement.

Lucas drove, allowing Maya and Rosa in the back to work away the two-hour drive into a song the band was putting together for 'the Messrs. Garcia-Choi.' All throughout there was the occasional call or text or video call to one or another of their bandmates, all of them also on their way to Houston by their own means. Dylan and Riley were coming up along with Asher's parents, while Zay and Nadine were driving in with Kayla, and with Ray's cousin, Min, the great rescuer of his remaining mementos.

"No one else from Ray's family is coming then?" Rosa asked, after they'd come off from a call with the Babineaux car.

They didn't know for sure. To be honest, they'd sort of been tiptoeing around the subject all along, not wanting to open up any old wounds for their friend. He'd been out of touch with his family since he was eighteen, in the middle of his senior year of high school. Seven years later, all he had to show for it, other than a renewed – if covert – connection with his younger cousin, herself all of seventeen, were a handful of awkward run-ins and confirmations that he had been and remained a branch lopped off from the family tree, tossed on to a flame and turned to ash.

"Asher is only really inviting his parents, and his brother, his aunts and uncles and some cousins, his grandparents…" Maya told her. "So, we decided that the rest of us would sit on Ray's side. His blood family may not want him, but he's got another one. He's got us, whole bunch of brothers and sisters." Rosa smiled at this, easily on board.

For what was shaping up to be a small affair, they arrived at the grooms' new home to find what felt like the preparations for a gala with a guest list six or seven times larger than the Garcia-Choi wedding. As much as they would tease Asher for his borderline 'groomzilla' tendencies flaring up, they understood where it came from. He had been blessed with a family who had accepted him from day one upon learning that he was gay, but Ray was not. He'd been kicked out, shunned, and they all knew that it affected him more than he let on at times. So, Asher wanted this day, their day, to be the best that it could be, the most wonderful celebration of the love that brought them together. As the day was drawing nearer however, it really only served to make him more stressed, and thus…

"No, no, listen, they need to be here in three days! Three! Where is your warehouse, I will come and get them myself if I have to! I will pay you to borrow your truck!"

"When he goes off in Spanish like that, he reminds me so much of Isabel when the restaurant was packed," Maya whispered to Lucas.

"Hey, come on, I've got you set up," Ray appeared on the steps, motioning for the trio to follow him upstairs, leaving Asher to his 'negotiation.'

"What's he trying to get?" Lucas asked.

"I have no idea, he's on the phone so much that every time I go and see what he's doing it's another thing," Ray shook his head, giving the impression that he'd gone ahead and decided to just go with the flow. "He's promised to take a break for lunch."

With only a few days to go, and still so much to do – according to Asher – it had been decided that it would be better for those of them intent on helping through that last sprint to just stay in Houston. It would save them so many hours on the road, also saving on gas, and buying more time for them to work. Not all of them had that option, like Nadine, who could not so easily get away from the hospital, so she would have to go back and come over when possible. After a sort of rock paper scissors decision, Maya, Lucas, and Rosa had been drafted to stay with the guys, while Dylan and Riley would be back at the house across the street, with Sophie and Chiara.

"Four years we stayed out there and it never dawned on me how our house and the Shaws' was built the same," Maya remarked, as though she had been in her friends' new home for the first time that day, which was not so.

"It's those giant bushes they had out front," Ray pointed out. "And they had the roof redone the year before you all moved in over there. Otherwise, yeah, it's the same model. Ash and I were thinking of getting one wall taken out downstairs, we still need to look into it.

After they'd dropped off their bags, they'd gone back down the stairs, just as Sophie, Chiara, Riley, and Dylan came through the door, likely having just done the same thing they'd done. The Garcias had come here straightaway upon arrival and were now showing something to their son which looked to be a family heirloom. When Riley looked to Maya and Rosa, they could practically see 'I had an idea about the song' written on her face, and they shushed her as discreetly as they could. The song was meant to be a surprise.

"Has he eaten at all?" Chiara asked Ray, as though this had been a constant thing between the girls and him in the last few days. "I will go and make him something," she decided before getting an answer, and she was soon off to the kitchen. Rosa dashed after her, eager to assist as she did when they all lived together.

"That's two helpers gone," Sophie turned to Ray. "Where do you need us?"

They worked for a while at figuring out the setup in the backyard. Though she had 'retired' from party planning, Sophie continued to be a strong asset all around. Maya and Lucas asked how things were going for her, being back at work. It was a common question, and one they'd asked even before the incident and her extended leave, but since she'd gone back, first at a desk and now back on the streets, it felt as though they wanted to know more than ever that she was safe.

"Hey, look who it is, it's a groom! He looks familiar, but he usually has a phone stuck to his face, hello…" Maya smirked, hugging Asher when he stepped out to join them. He smiled, hugging her back. "Please come and sit for a while? We will all work extra hard to compensate for you taking five whole minutes to breathe."

"I'm not that bad, am I?" Asher asked as he followed her, only to be bombarded with various confirmations from the others in the yard. "Wow… Fine, okay, I'll take a break."

"You're about to get food shoved in your face when Chiara gets out here," Sophie laughed.

"I can do the shoving by myself, thanks," Asher gave a sufficiently sheepish smile, recognizing his having gone just a bit off the rails. He passed this smile toward his husband to be, and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that for all his running around, the one thing that truly mattered in the end was that the two of them would be married, on their way to spending the rest of their lives together.

The aforementioned food was brought along, and as usual Chiara displayed this ability she had of putting together sufficient amounts for all of them to dig in, though she did make them wait until Asher had served himself first, as he'd been the one going around without eating all morning.

"The night before the wedding, they want one of us to go stay with them," Ray informed their guests, nodding over to Sophie and Chiara.

"It's tradition," Sophie insisted, in what they swore was a perfect imitation of her mother. It certainly made them laugh.

"I said we could take flashlights and send each other messages in Morse code," Asher revealed.

"How do you know Morse code?" Dylan asked, baffled. "Who even knows Morse code?"

"That was kind of the point," Ray smiled, recounting how they'd just sort picked it up, when they wanted to be sort of discreet about their communications.

"That's why you kept tapping your foot under the table in the cafeteria?" Riley recalled now, and all of them who'd been in high school with him at the time remembered all at once how Riley would sometimes yelp and Asher would apologize, taking a look around.

"No flashlights, or else we're sending one of you to Austin and then you'll be late to your own wedding," Sophie pointed to the grooms.

"Like we would let that happen," Lucas shook his head.

"Fine, fine, we'll behave, we promise," Ray told Sophie, stealing a look to his husband to be, who responded by tapping his finger against his cup.

"What did he say? What did that mean?" Rosa pointed at him. Asher only shrugged innocently, leaving the others to ponder his answer, with only Ray able to know what he'd said.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners