August 22nd 2020

Chapter 235
Their Record of Night

It was just as well that Ree had shown up as early as she did. They recorded three songs that day, and it took them until well into the night before they were both satisfied enough to leave the Hex and call it a job well done. On this, their levels of perfectionism were entirely on par with one another. They hugged, and Ree made Maya promise to think about her offer long and hard before giving her an answer.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't rooting for you to accept, but I'll understand if you can't, alright?" she smiled as they walked back to the house.

"I do," Maya assured her. "And I will think about it, I… No matter what, you know how much it means to me that you even asked." Ree gave her a side hug as they went, and Maya was barely keeping the giddy beast in her heart in check, as she continued to try and play it cool. It had been easy enough, once they'd started to work on the songs, for her to set her mind where it had to be, but now…

She walked Ree to her car, watched her get in and drive away. Not until that car was a speck, far up the lane, did Maya's legs give a wobble and she ended up crouched in a ball on the lawn outside her house, hands over her mouth as the rumbles of excitement eased out of their hiding place. It wasn't just excitement, of course. If it had been, she could have said yes right away, but there was so much more to it than that, there were… responsibilities, and possibilities… and she couldn't just say yes.

"Need you, right now," Maya tapped at Lucas' shoulder over the couch as she came back into the house.

"I'm sitting right here!" Sam protested, also on the couch.

"Not like that, also stop it," Maya reached to ruffle her brother's hair, which he evaded by diving into the cushions. Lucas laughed as he got up.

"Want me to hold him down for you?" he joked.

"Considering it now," Maya smiled, and the fact that this smile seemed to get caught up in everything else that she was feeling now got her husband's attention in earnest. He followed her up the stairs, to the second floor and then into the attic, where he guessed she wanted him to pull in the steps and shut the door, so he did.

"What's going on? You look like you're…"

"Losing my mind? Maybe a little," Maya told him, standing like she didn't know how to stand, much less do it without fidgeting or moving around.

"What happened? Did the session with Ree not go alright?" Lucas asked, tracking her movements without intervening just yet.

"What? Oh, no, it was amazing, I mean watching her sing like that, right in front of you, that is just an experience, and she just takes my songs and turns them into something I couldn't even have… Wait until you hear what she did with Unbound…" she paused briefly, as though the memory had returned to her, hearing the last run of it. Then she blinked and she was on the move again. "No, it's not about the session, more what happened right before the session, what Ree asked me, she…" She let out a breath, trying to center herself again so she could speak to him as she needed to. "Ree wants me to tour the album with her when it comes out."

She didn't know why it made her love for him surge the way it did, but to see how the news hit him in what felt like just the way it had hit her, it was as though they'd both landed on the very same wavelength, and now they had two minds facing this offer on equal footing. There was no one in the world who could do that with her, not another soul, just as she was this for him in return. They both knew that when something came along and made them feel like their heads were too crowded to make sense of anything, they had one person who would be able to untangle it all with the most stable hands.

"Woah…" he still had to state.

"I know," Maya breathed out as he came toward her. First things first, because it was something wonderful, he had to hug her, and she folded herself into his arms at once.

"So you'd be going around with her, all the cities, all the shows…"

"Every one," Maya nodded.

"When…"

"There's no dates yet, for any of it. She said if it meant that I'd go, she'd make it all work. But the album should be ready by November, December, and I have my job, my students. And we…" she looked up at him. And we're supposed to be trying for a baby at that time.

"Okay…" Lucas breathed, the main facts now in his grasp. He didn't need to ask her if she wanted to do it. She wouldn't be this frazzled, wouldn't even need to ask him, if she didn't want this. What she needed now was for him to help her figure out if it was possible for her to do it, and if so how, when there were those very important factors. "How long do these tours last?"

"Well, when she was here before, she started and finished in North America, but she did a lot in between overseas," Maya tried to think, pulling out her phone at the same time to look up the dates of her first and final shows. She made a noise more than spoke, and Lucas moved to go and read over her shoulder. He also made a noise, both of them boiling down to 'that long?' Scanning through the rest of the dates, they could see a couple points where three to four weeks had no dates, but otherwise there was no more than four days between each show, the whole tour had run over five months. All of a sudden, it felt like alarms were going off, a direct strike detected, coming right for this chance Maya had been given unless they could deploy some evasive maneuvers and fast.

"Did Ree say how long this one would be?" Lucas wondered.

"She couldn't have, could she? Nothing's been set in stone yet, and I don't know how these things are organized. It would definitely be months though, could be almost half a year like the last one."

"Come here, sit down," Lucas took Maya's hand and brought her to sit with him, her in the bean bag, him on the ground in front of her. She briefly turned her eyes up to the window in the roof, to the stars bright overhead. "Here's what I know… what I think I know, so correct me if I'm wrong." She nodded. "You want to do the tour." True. "This might be the best time for you to do it." Also true. "Once we actually have a child, it will be more complicated for you to do this, not impossible, just… trickier." She let out a breath, nodding still. "Do you want us to push it back again?" he slowly asked. At this, she got hold of his hands and he looked at her.

"Not changing that," she assured him. "The only reason we haven't started yet was so we could both be there, be a part of it. We waited so you could finish school. This tour does not get to take precedence over our family." The words made him smile, and a moment later she had moved from the bean bag and into his lap, where he could put his arms around her. "If I say yes to this, I'll be out of work one way or the other, summer isn't that long."

"Would Ree make it so the tour only lasted as long as the summer? Two months and done?" Lucas wondered.

"I don't know," Maya shrugged. "Maybe yes, maybe no…"

"If she did, you'd be set, yeah? I could go with you, we'd get to travel…" Lucas pointed out.

"True," she hummed, looping her arms around his neck. "Except there's already a little something that's supposed to happen around that time, too, remember?" she whispered.

"A little something, right," he let out a breath. "What are the odds that it'll actually happen that fast?" he wondered.

"I couldn't tell you, we've never actually gotten to that point. A couple times we thought we did, but we didn't, did we? Once we actually try and make it happen, it could be weeks, like it could be months. Would be so much easier if we could predict it for sure, right?"

"Right," he nodded, amused at her sort of pitiful brushing of his hair. "Okay, let's say that you did the tour and you were also pregnant," he suggested, as though he'd turned from their first page full of scribbles over to a blank new page for them to explore a new scenario.

"Let's say…" she nodded, allowing him to continue.

"Wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing. Ree is always either standing or sitting when she performs, most she'll do is walk the stage. Whatever songs you'd be out there singing with her, I'm sure she'd let you sit if you had to. You could rest plenty between shows. And… it would be something we would get to tell the kid about in a few years' time." His smile was impossible to resist.

"And what if I end up out there and…" she made a gesture coupled with a popping sound, which he could only interpret as 'and the baby comes out.' "Don't go and say it'll be a bigger story, because I am telling you right now, I am not interested in giving birth in front of thousands of people," she informed him, the grin on her face showing they were at least both aware this was a joke, and it wouldn't actually happen. "Also, if I go and have this kid that far away from her, your mother will never let us hear the end of it. Do you want that story?"

"No," Lucas laughed. "I really don't." They remained in silence for a few seconds after this. Now what? He looked at her, his beautiful, wonderful, madly talented wife, and the answer was clear. "Maya, you should say yes," he told her, continuing on even as he could see her move to protest, stacking up reasons to keep herself locked in uncertainty when he knew it was all for the sole reason that this was something so monumental that fear was the only place to start. "I'll be right by your side the whole time, and no matter what, we will find a way to make it work, together," he looked to her hand, pulled down to his own now so he might trace her rings with his thumb, calling on the vows they had made to each other seven months ago. "We usually do," he looked back up to her face, holding that tearfully happy gaze of hers. "If you say no, I think you might regret it forever." She let out a breath.

"Okay…" Maya finally spoke, quietly at first. Lucas gave her hand a squeeze. "Okay, I'll do it," she said it louder now, nodding at him, and he laughed, bridging the very small distance between them to kiss her. "Let's keep that between us for now, alright?" she added when they were looking at each other again.

"Sure, yeah, but I am going to need a tour shirt as soon as there's one," he stipulated, making her burst into giggles just as they heard the attic door get pulled open and Sam poked his head in after climbing up.

"Hey, the band's downstairs?" he pointed down.

"What?" Maya blinked, looking to Lucas. "It's like one in the morning…"

"They said they're here for 'Minkus Watch?'" Sam explained. Now, Maya and Lucas gasped, scrambling to stand and follow him down. She must have missed the call, between the session with Ree and then coming up here with Lucas. Back in New York, Isadora was in labor.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners