July 31st 2020

Chapter 213
Their Surprise From Progress

Lucas assumed he would roll up to the house and find Maya and Rosa impatiently waiting for him to arrive so they could take off again. He'd just gotten off from his half day at the bookstore and, as they couldn't say how long this second session with Ree in the Hex would take, he was to drive home to pick them up rather than have the girls join him at the store and leave from there. But they were off to Houston that day for dinner with their friends, and they'd all be anxious to get on the road.

There was no welcoming/rushing comity waiting for him just inside the door though, not unless you counted the dogs, who were always the happiest bunch to see them come along. And after a couple of calls out to his wife, brother, or lodger, he found no takers, so he walked across the house, into the kitchen, so he might look out the window and confirm the Hex lights were on. A recent addition to the decor was a light in the windows, and when it was lit that would mean that recording was happening, and anyone that wasn't inside the studio should stay that way as long as it was like this. It wasn't on now, so he went out the back door and along the path to the Hex door.

He opened it to find Maya sitting in her favorite spot, which was to say the floor, right at the heart of the Hex.

"Been done long?" he asked as he approached her, strumming along at her father's guitar.

"Oh, well we finished with the songs... like two hours ago?" Maya estimated, after checking the time. "She left about twenty minutes ago."

"Right," he smiled. "Where are the others?"

"Sam is hanging out with the girls tonight, over at your aunt's house. And Rosa went to see a show with Jenna. I have to let the others know she's sorry about bailing, but the tickets were kind of last minute."

"So, you and me on our own for that drive to and fro, huh?" he asked, his smile showing how much he kind of preferred that in the end.

"Yup," Maya confirmed, setting the instrument down in her lap. "Sit here first," she instructed with a tap of her foot at the floor. Lucas could have asked if she didn't just want to go already, but it would only lead them back here, so he did as he was told.

Once he did, stepping through the open booth door, he spotted a long thin box on the floor, behind the controls. The size was very reminiscent of another box he had previously seen, from when Charlie had shipped her niece the new guitar made by her father-in-law.

"What's that?" he asked, settling on the ground, even as Maya stretched her arm to pull the box toward them.

"Open it," she instructed, with enough of mischief in her as to suggest this was a gift, and she was eager to see him see what it was. It wouldn't take long for him to get to that part, of course, not when the box had already set one good guess in his head. And when he did open the box and found a guitar case inside it...

"When did you..." he asked.

"Ree and I went shopping yesterday, it was delivered earlier today," she informed him. He looked back down to the case, touched it.

Ever since she had started to teach him to play, he had found a clear, new appreciation for what she did, but also for the instrument itself. He had not expected himself to be that good at it, but now...

"This is... mine?" he blinked.

"No sense having you borrow mine all the time, you're getting too good for that. Besides, all of mine are very... me... You need one that's more yours," she told him, a shy smile about her now, showing how her mind had to be an echo of 'I hope you like it' over and over.

Lucas wasn't sure what would constitute the object itself feeling like it belonged with him, not until he flipped the clasps on the case and pulled the lid open to see the guitar resting inside. He saw it, and right away he wanted to pick it up, to hold it and play it.

"It's... woah..." he blinked, lifting it up with near reverence.

He soon found what must have been the thing to make so that it had to be delivered the next day. Along the side of the body, the one he'd see every time he held it and looked down at it, was engraved an owl. Not just an owl, but the very one that was on both their arms and represented her. Next to it, encircled as it also was on their arms, was the number 366, their shorthand.

"Definitely feels like mine," Lucas looked back to his wife and her glowing smile. She'd done good. Leaning over his guitar and hers as well, he kissed her, and she kissed him back.

"One song before we go?" she asked.

"Do you really think we'll be able to cut ourselves off at just one?" Lucas pointed out, and on that she couldn't argue. One would turn to two, and then there would be a third, and then they wouldn't make it to Houston today.

"Alright then, jam session when we get back?"

"You're on," he promised, and she kissed him once more. "Thank you for this. I love it," he told her," looking down to the guitar, tracing at the owl with his thumb.

"You are so very welcome."

The new guitar returned to its case, they locked up the Hex and headed around to the car to start on their way to Houston. A good twenty minutes was put to the discussion of a name for the instrument before they gave it up, agreeing that maybe it should get to be played first.

The lessons and other instances where the two of them had gotten around to harmonize their music together had really been a highlight, especially since Maya had started at the school. With him off to school or working at the bookstore and her doing all those things she had on her plate, it really just felt nice to have this one peaceful thing, this chance for communing as husband and wife in something that made them both this happy. The guitar she had given him now, to be his very own, represented all that. He might not be hitting any stages any time soon, but he had all the captive audience he could ever want.

Sometimes, he would be sitting in class, and he would feel his fingers move along to some ghost strings, accompanying whatever tune was playing in his head. In those times, it always got to feel like he was getting more and more in touch with that side of Maya, and it genuinely made him smile and feel a burst of happiness.

It wasn't as though his classes were having difficulty holding his attention either.

He'd be heading into finals in a couple weeks, putting one more semester behind him, with only three more ahead of him now before graduation. It felt odd to think about it for some reason. He'd graduated twice in the last few years, first from high school, then from university back in Houston, but this one... This was the big one, the last one. Most of his friends growing up had already finished, had careers slowly coming along. He was still waiting, wouldn't hit that part of his journey until he would be twenty-eight.

At least he knew where he was headed. He was going to work at Sullivan Stables, just like his grandmother had ensured he would before she died. He already did some work out there, the days he could, the better to familiarize himself ahead of time on how things worked on the day to day. He had asked of Juliet to be honest with him, wanted to get to the point where, on the day he had his diploma and was able to come aboard full time, he wouldn't just be handed the job because a paper said to. He wanted to have earned it from his accomplishments. If Juliet didn't feel he was there yet, he would keep at it until he was.

He was also shadowing the ranch's doctor. The man was not yet to the age of retiring, and no one, least of all Lucas, would want to see anyone pushed out to make space for Marianne Sullivan's grandson.

Still, he knew he couldn't wait to get there. Maybe it was for seeing Maya and how much she had been loving her job at the school, how happy she was to have made it to the other side of that dream of hers, but he really wanted to go ahead and reach his own. He was crossing all these points in his life, things which once seemed so far away, and things he had not believed possible from time to time either.

The ones that were left, oh, they were coming closer every day. Once he got there, once he and Maya got there, they'd have new dreams to reach. They never ceased to come.

"Mom said she spoke to Juliet, about Nellie's riding lessons," Maya spoke up as they were nearing their destination.

"Yeah?" Lucas asked. "What'd she say, spring?"

"Spring," Maya confirmed. "Nellie is still just as excited, almost too much. She's still trying to talk Gracie into doing it, too, hasn't figured out there's really no point to it. Gracie still tells her she'll be there, watching her, but she doesn't want to get on a horse herself. Nellie is still pretty stubborn about this one."

"Maybe once she sees Nellie do it, Gracie might change her mind?" Lucas suggested.

"Slim chance, very very small," Maya shook her head.

With the thought of his approaching graduation, and now being here in Houston to visit their friends, he also had to think about his other friends, the ones he was in school with at the moment. They all had these small clusters all over the place now, some in New York, Houston, Austin... High school friends, college friends... They all did well enough in keeping in touch so far, the ones who had already graduated. There were plenty of those they had inevitably drifted away from, amicably so, but then even if they rarely got to see each other, they always kept in touch with those tighter bonds in one way or another.

Lucas didn't know what would become of his group now. Bishop, and Simon, and Robbie and Josie, and Ramona... He could see some of them splitting off, not that he wanted them to, but if he was honest, he knew. Bishop had been his closest friend out there, since day one at university here in Houston, now he was engaged to Leona, and she was friends with both Maya and Riley... And Ramona, well, she had lived with them a while, was like the unofficial - and non-musical - fifth member of TXNY. He didn't see her going anywhere either. What about the others though?

"You have a weird look on your face," Maya declared, pulling him out of his thoughts. He stole a look toward her.

"I was just thinking about school, getting closer to the end," he explained. She smiled, thinking about it now, too, and soon enough...

"That party is going to be so good," she decided with ease, which made him laugh.

"Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. I am getting you that trampoline. And don't you go telling me you'll be too old for it by then," she pointed her finger at him, and he couldn't even go on like he hadn't been about to suggest something to that effect. If anything, being called out on it made him think about it. There was something to be said for how, even though they were fully aware of it, the both of them, it could really knock them for a loop to stop and think how they weren't kids anymore, neither of them.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners