August 2nd 2020

Chapter 215
Their Surprise From Secrets

"Hey!" Sophie lit up as she first reached the Austin couple and effectively pulled them into a group hug. Maya and Lucas both returned the gesture at once.

Some days, that distance between their home and their friends' felt completely manageable, but some others, especially if they didn't get the chance to see one another for weeks... Whenever they would end up uniting again, for a little while, it would be as though the clocks had been reset and they were kids again and not a trio of married couples in their mid-twenties.

"Sorry it took so long, there was a call right when we were about to leave," Sophie explained as she pulled back and Chiara stepped up to take her place.

"Was it the..." Ray asked, making a gesture neither Maya nor Lucas understood, which likely meant it was something only those four living across from one another were aware of.

"Yeah, yeah," Sophie replied, and between the nod and the rapidity with which she replied, almost like she meant to prevent Ray from saying the words out loud, the uninformed pair was left to wonder what they were all caught up in together that they wouldn't tell their friends.

"Maya was just telling us about the basketball tryouts," Asher spoke up, himself sounding like he was providing an alternate topic of conversation that would take them away from this mysterious phone call.

"What? Without us?" Sophie turned back to her former teammate, who pointed to Asher at once. "Did he say how he's bitter about his gym team?" Sophie asked now as though everything had started to make more sense again.

As they had made their way into the kitchen, with Asher and Ray working together to get the last of dinner ready and on to plates, the tale of basketball tryouts, and the videos, had been given again, this time for Sophie and Chiara's benefit. They were both just as surprised to hear August had both tried out and made the team.

"I thought he and Riley were both more watchers than players," Chiara commented.

"Guess you can only watch for so long before some people want to give it a shot for real," Lucas shrugged.

As surprised as everyone was, he personally couldn't say that he felt the same. Sure, it was like Chiara said, he kept more to the sidelines, but it wasn't like he never played with them. Lucas had personally helped him with his shots from way back when he'd been about nine or ten. And he was agile on his feet, anyone could see that. He was observant, some might call it sneaky. Put all that together, along with his years of watching the game, and then it really was plain to see.

Sophie and Chiara both cringed when they saw the video of Phoebe Munroe's fall, though for having heard of the girl's accident prone tendencies, it was less of a surprise and more 'oh so that's her.'

"Is she alright?" Chiara asked, pointing in the general direction of her face.

"Oh, yeah, bounced right back. She can't wait to start practicing with me. I told her she had to wait until her face was all the same color again."

"Good plan," Sophie nodded, making Maya laugh. "How are you supposed to keep her from hurting herself like that though?"

"I have been asking myself the same thing," Maya admitted, turning a smirk to Lucas as she recalled the two of them being collectively confused the night she'd come home from school after making the arrangement with the coach.

"If it's a lack of coordination or attention, you can work on that," Ray pointed out as he and Asher sat down and everyone picked up their utensils.

"True, yeah," Maya considered this. "She's good out there, could be great, you saw it on the video right before..." she mimed falling.

"So more the attention span then," Lucas nodded.

"She can focus fine, I mean she's all As and one or two Bs, I saw her records," Maya went on. "It's when she moves, like she gets ahead of herself and then out come the band-aids." At this, Lucas and Sophie both looked to one another at the same time. "What?" Maya asked, noticing.

"Samantha Stone," Lucas turned back to his wife who, like Asher, had a look of 'I have heard this name somewhere before.' "She graduated with us?"

"Oh, yeah, Mandy..." Asher recalled.

"What about her?" Maya asked, still not following.

"She was in dance class with us, remember?" Sophie asked back.

"Well, yeah, so?"

"So, you weren't in there with us in the beginning," Lucas told her. "By the time you saw her, she was great, but when we all started, I mean..." he hesitated, like a good guy too ill at ease with speaking the truth.

"She was a clumsy mess," Sophie saved him. Maya blinked now, seeing what they were suggesting.

"Your girl looked like she could move out there, that might actually work," Ray added.

"You could get her signed up at the theater, Stage Ready," Chiara chimed in next.

"Hey, I'll try it," Maya nodded, trying at the same time to ignore the images playing in her head of about all the ways Phoebe could get hurt. At the same time, she thought about Stella, and whether she might follow her friend in this, draw some benefits of her own...

"So, when do you guys play?" Lucas turned to Asher and Ray. They didn't follow. "Basketball? At the gym," he clarified, taking them back to their previous conversation, before Sophie and Chiara had arrived.

"Oh, yeah," Asher shook his head, recalling. "Uh, you know, it moves around sometimes. We'll do one day for a few weeks, and then it'll change. If you ask me, that's part of the problem, they're committed but not really?" Lucas wasn't sure how to respond, especially as he hadn't gotten an entire answer. Asher seemed to catch this, as he finally added. "Until further notice, we're on Thursdays, six o'clock?"

"Are you?" Sophie asked, and there was the weirdest sort of look passed between the two of them, as hard to decipher as the signal earlier, about the call. Either way, it translated as far as Asher was concerned, because he turned back to Lucas. "But it might change again. I'll definitely let you know ahead of time, yeah?"

"Sure, okay," Lucas told him, clearly perplexed.

"Hey, be right back, sorry," Maya stood up, looking to Lucas before making her way out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the bathroom. She shut the door, then opened it again as silently as possible. Now, she waited, peering out the crack she'd left open. Two minutes went by before she spotted her husband and let him into the room, shutting the door again. "Wasn't sure you got that."

"No, I did, I was just trying to be sort of discreet, you know?" Lucas told her. "What's going on?"

"I don't know, that's kind of what I'm trying to find out, keep your voice down," she whispered.

"Maya, what are you..."

"Oh, come on, don't tell me you haven't picked up on how weird they're all being down there?"

"No, I caught that, too," he confessed. "I don't know what it is though."

"They're not that good at hiding things, are they?" Maya shook her head. "I mean... I don't know what it is that they're hiding, but there's something, it's right there."

"I mean, it's not like you and I don't keep secrets, too, it's not a big deal, it's their thing," Lucas shrugged.

"No, I know, I do, I'm just not good with those, my brain just sees a puzzle," she sighed.

"I've helped you sort the pieces a few times," he smiled, which got one out of her in return.

"You're always so good about that," she stated, and without either of them needing to say it, they knew this was going to be the thing for today, her reason for loving him. Already they had Sam with his basketball chart, but they also had Lucas doing some chronicling of his own.

He'd started to write down all of Maya's daily reasons. He hadn't planned it out that way, that was just how it had happened, when one night, working a quiet floor at the bookstore, he'd spent his break browsing downstairs. Next thing he knew, he was buying this notebook he had seen, immediately thinking how it reminded him of his wife. He'd gone back upstairs and, upon looking at that first blank page, he had started writing it all down. First the date, then the reason. He remembered them all, there hadn't been so many yet at the time. And then from there, day to day, he had been adding to the list.

Maya had not seen it or known about it until about two weeks in. She'd spotted the book, thought the cover looked beautiful, and then she'd opened it, just sort of without thinking, the way one might if they spotted it in a store and wanted to see the inside, the quality of the paper, the spacing of the lines... What she had found had been a neatly written list in her husband's hand, dates and reasons, familiar ones. She'd been unable to stop smiling, even as Lucas came and found her there with the book.

"Okay, so... Wait, what do they think you're doing up here?" Maya asked, thinking now how they had pulled this move more than once in the past.

"Didn't say anything," Lucas shrugged. "Didn't think I had to explain myself. Besides, they would have come up with their own anyway." On consideration, he was probably right.

"Alright, so what are we thinking here?"

"That we should just go back down there and, whatever this secret is, if it exists, they will tell us when it's time," Lucas told her, and she wished his whole sage thing didn't make so much sense.

"Or, we go now, quietly, and we can hear what they're saying," she whispered. He gave her a look, and a moment later she grinned. "I was kidding, relax," she tapped his arm as they left the bathroom and went down to rejoin their friends in the kitchen.

They did not in fact come quiet to spy, though they could almost have done it, for how they found the other four in hushed conversation. The moment Lucas and Maya were spotted, everyone had been way too obvious in how they settled back to their plates and glasses. Once everyone was seated again, it felt like the six of them were playing a game of chicken, waiting to see who would break first.

"You know, with the guys being all about their team and the gym, I think we should get a girls' game going, too," Maya spoke up. "Might have to be in Austin, my schedule is a bit crazy as it is, but I always want to make time for you and the others, and it might be fun. Some of the girls from the team are back in town now, so we could really..."

"Okay, alright, I see what you're doing," Sophie cut her off, stuck between a smile and a roll of the eyes.

"I'm doing something?" Maya innocently asked. Lucas had to rein in his smirk. Meanwhile, Sophie, Chiara, Asher, and Ray were all looking to one another, speaking without words.

"Beware the cherub face," Asher intoned dramatically, and Maya replied with a devilish grin. "Yeah, there she is."

"So, what's up?" Lucas asked, looking to one friend and then another.

"Right, well, it's kind of a long story," Ray stated.

"Good thing we're having dinner, best place for those," Maya nodded. "We'd love to hear it."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners