August 1st 2020

Chapter 214
Their Surprise From Houston

"So, what are the teams looking like this year?" Asher asked, as the four of them stood in his and Ray's living room. Maya and Lucas had just barely come through the door and exchanged their greetings when the question was asked. They were waiting on Sophie and Chiara before moving over to the table to eat. They'd be over in just a few minutes.

Lucas could see Ray, as he hung up his guests' coats, privately smirking to himself for the promptness of his husband's curiosities. He'd probably been talking about it as they waited for their friends to arrive.

"Uh, they're good, I mean they haven't done a whole lot just yet, you know?" Maya slowly replied, like she'd been blindsided by the question.

"You saw them at tryouts, you said you would tell me all about it when we'd see each other next, I'm just saying," Asher gestured between the two of them. Maya couldn't keep from laughing for very long.

"Missing the court, aren't you?" she reached over and tapped his arm.

"Think he's got team envy," Ray clarified. "The guys from the gym, they're okay, they're just..."

"Oh, no, I could work with 'okay,' they are not okay, they are terrible," Asher shook his head.

"And you can't whip them into shape? You know, you put on some motivating music in the background, like in a movie, turn it into a montage..." Maya suggested.

"I'm pretty sure if he does that he'll just end up getting us tossed out of the gym. And it's a really good one, too," Ray shook his head.

"Alright, alright, I'll tell you about the tryouts," Maya finally agreed.

She hadn't really meant to sit in on those, really, she hadn't. But then on that day, after having heard from several of her kids about how they were going for the teams, the subject was there on her mind, unavoidable. They all knew she had been on the girls' team years ago, and most of those who'd tried out from her classes had wanted her to tell them about it, to give them tips...

But then classes had ended that day, and packing up her things to head home, she could just hear people in the hallway, and she would catch snippets of conversation that told her they were headed to the gym, for tryouts. It had become like something stuck at the back of her mind, and eventually she just could not ignore it anymore. Curiosity had won.

Peering through the gym doors, it was like she'd been shot right back to the past. The people were different, but it was the same as before, when she had been at tryouts. The faces may have been new, but they were hardly unknown. About every other one she saw was one of her students, and those who were not were still familiar enough from being around the school that they might as well have been. And then there were the coaches, too.

Sandra Whitman, the girls' coach, had spotted her and waved at her. Maya had waved back, briefly thinking whether or not she should go over to see her, when she'd spotted a strange little figure up on the stands.

"Are you trying out?" she asked Stella, trying not to sound like she found this to be the most outlandish idea. She had heard the girl speak more than once about how her very least favorite subject was gym. It wasn't that she despised physical activity by any lengths, but between the clothes, the t-shirt and shorts making her feel very exposed, and the fact that she really could not sit quietly by the way she did in her other classes... Even now, she was sitting there and Maya could just see her fingertips poking out the ends of her sleeves, twisted around her hands as they were.

"What? No, no, I just..." she pointed out to one side of the gym, where Maya saw an eager looking Phoebe, hugging a ball close as she watched some of the other girls run along.

"Oh... Oh boy..." she tried to sound unconcerned, not as though she was picturing any number of ways her accident prone student might come to harm. She turned back to Stella, who was watching her new friend with much the same concerns, and the bonus of Phoebe's trusty first aid kit on standby.

Maya had watched the whole of the tryouts sitting at Stella's side. A lot of it had been standard fare for these things, though as ever there would be the occasional standout. As was to be expected, Tony Janacek was one of those. The captain of the boys' team for the last two years was looking to carry on this way in his senior year. Meanwhile, Kai Avelino showed himself to be as great as his older siblings, if not better. On the girls' side, Maya was surprised by Ariel Su. The girl never gave the impression of being interested by the sport before, but here she was now, and she was phenomenal. As for Phoebe, well, right up until she'd slipped and fallen on her face, she'd been doing very well for herself. But then her nose had started gushing blood, too much for the likes of that first aid kit. Maya had stepped in to look after her, allowing the coaches to carry on.

"I bas goo, uh?" she asked, as her art teacher instructed her to follow.

"No idea what that was, let's just worry about getting you patched up, yeah?"

Phoebe had not made the team, not entirely. Maya had taken what could only be called a leap of faith, talking Coach Whitman into taking her on as an alternate. The trade off was that Maya herself would have to try and rein in those accident prone tendencies of hers. She accepted gladly.

Aside from Phoebe the alternate, a number of Maya's students had made the teams, including Ariel and Daphne for the girls, and then for the boys, Tony, Kai, Derek... and August.

When she'd spotted him in the gym along with the others, Maya had been almost startled. He had never been on the team, not in middle school or high school up to this point. Why he'd decided to go for it now, in his last year, she had no idea. Maybe it was this new friendship he was developing with Tony Janacek. Certainly, Maya herself might never have joined any team if not for Nadine and the boys, and it had all turned out pretty good, no?

For having played around with him at her house or his over the years, she had never seen his skills in this way. He was actually really good. He lacked a bit of drive, but he made up for it in other ways, and Maya swore she had not seen that tiny little bit of glimmer in him within these walls before. This right here, it could be the answer she had been hoping for, for his sake.

"August Matthews, you're serious?" Asher asked, about as surprised as she had been, as surprised as Lucas when she'd told him.

"Dead serious," Maya nodded, pulling out her phone.

"You have videos and you didn't say?" Ray asked, translating his husband's dropped jaw. Soon, they were all huddled around the screen, watching highlights from the tryouts, including Phoebe Munroe's spectacular faceplant, which caused a collective cry of 'woah!' from the guys. If Maya didn't know that Phoebe herself was showing that same footage around, and wearing her broken nose like something of a badge of honor, she would have deleted the file a long time ago.

"We really need to play more often, like we used to," Lucas declared, as Maya's phone returned to her pocket.

"You're always welcome at the gym for our games," Asher told him.

"He really means that," Ray chimed in with an amused smirk.

"I'll see what I can do," Lucas told the guys, and Asher looked ready to hug him for a solid few minutes. "But I mean also just our group, the way we used to, at Dylan's house, or mine, or someone else's..."

"Between the four of us at the house right now, it's getting pretty brutal," Maya revealed to the guys, who grinned at once. "Didn't really start as anything, we were just playing one day, me and Sam versus him and Rosa," she explained, nodding toward Lucas, who was unable to keep from smiling at the memories.

"Rosa wanted a rematch, and then when we won, she wanted one, too," Lucas turned to his wife.

"Technicality, man, we had dogs underfoot," Maya told him, sounding like they had been rehashing this many times over. Lucas looked to Asher and Ray as though she had just proved his point. "Anyway," Maya squinted before looking back to their hosts as well, "It's been going along like that ever since Sam started keeping score. He's got a chart and everything."

"Rosa keeps trying to get it away from him," Lucas added. "Now he hides it, we don't know where, updates it after every game."

"Oh, I totally know where he hides it," Maya declared with a grin, more so at the look Lucas gave her, showing he'd had no idea, especially as he became convinced she was genuinely telling the truth about this. "Not telling you," she shook her head at him with a laugh.

These 'heated games' had really just become a way for them all to spend time together that wasn't just dinners or sitting around the couch to watch television, once they all came home from school, or work, or school that was actually work, as Rosa would say. The teams had come up as they did on account that both Sam and Rosa had deemed it potentially unfair for the two team players among them to be on the same side, especially since they were married. So, it became that they had one Friar to each side, one collecting her brother and the other his former co-worker.

Maya was telling the truth, she did know where Sam hid his chart... her brother did not know that she did. It so happened that one night, as she'd gone into the Hex in search of her 'unused bits and pieces' song book, she'd accidentally dislodged the folded page from its place. Unfolding it, she'd smiled to herself. Her brother had such a distinctive way of writing, always did. It reminded her of their father's hand in some elements, and that hadn't always been the same. Somehow, he'd adjusted his own, integrated a few things, as a way to remember him.

Later on, without telling him that she had seen the chart now returned to its place, Maya had asked Sam why it mattered so much to keep it going. None of them but him were really keeping score, and much as she complained, they knew Rosa wouldn't actually take it from him.

"It's a reminder, I guess," Sam had told her. Of the score? "No, just all of this, for as long as it lasts, I guess." She had still not been following, so he'd explained further. "I've been starting to think how close I'm getting to finishing college, and what's going to happen after that, when I move away and I'm not living with you guys anymore." They hadn't brought it up yet, and even if she had always known they'd be headed that way, it had not been without effect on big sister Maya. "So, the chart is just so I can remember, in my own way."

He was back in Austin with the girls tonight. Dora, and Cecilia... Who knew what would happen, when Sam did graduate. He would want to be wherever Cecilia was, provided they were still together by then, which seemed fairly likely. She would be finishing high school just as Sam did college. Maybe she would end up going to some school across the country, even overseas... and Sam would follow...

They weren't there yet. Tonight was about Houston, and their friends. Maya reminded herself of that as the girls arrived from across the street.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners