August 25th 2020

Chapter 238
Their Record of Healing

As devoted as they had been to their plan to play through the night and the wait for Farkle's call, by just after four in the morning, they were all tapped out with the music. So, they walked out of the Hex, locking up and heading back into the house, where the group piled in on and around the couch with coffee and food and a movie guaranteed to keep them in a wakeful mood. It was not entirely successful. Will soon dozed off, Kayla holding him and doing nothing to potentially wake him, as 'some of us might as well get some rest.' This had been stated by Rosa, when they'd found both Riley and Zay had also fallen asleep, after fighting a losing battle against keeping their eyes open.

The rest of them were faring much better, if slipping on the side of loopy. Nadine had decided to commit entirely to her preferring one of the items in the bowl of mixed snacks and was nudging and burrowing her way through like she was on some archaeological dig in order to find and consume all the bits she was after. Dylan had started to make small braids out of his girlfriend's long hair, despite the fact that he had no elastics to bind any of it. On the ground together, Rosa and Jenna were about the only ones really paying attention to the movie anymore, and they did so with laughter, whispering to one another every so often. Up on the couch, both Maya and Lucas would see them down there, so happily caught up with each other, and they would smile, finding their long-time friend and their new friend's budding relationship to be one of the sweetest things they had ever seen. Both girls had clearly never had anyone in their lives who made them feel half as much as what they both made one another feel. Now they had it, and it was all shiny and new and wonderful.

When they weren't 'spying' on their friends, Maya and Lucas were caught up in a very tricky – due to the hour and the level of their exhaustion – game of 'how many peanuts can we line up on Lucas' arm before they fall.' Specifically, Maya would be playing at this, and Lucas would let her do it. Whenever one, or two, or all of the peanuts would roll his arm, they would land in her lap, where they would quickly be returned to their post… or consumed, by one or the other of them. When they had reached their new record of ten, only to have the lot spill over a second later, Lucas declared the game over, locking his arms around his wife as she laughed.

"Maybe you should try and get a couple hours of sleep," Maya turned her head about until she could see his face. "Wouldn't like the idea of you driving to school after being up all night."

"I'm not going to risk missing it now," Lucas told her. "Anyway, I can get Ramona to pick me up. What about you? What are you doing with the kids today?" He could just hear her muttering 'today' under her breath, like she still had to remind herself that it was officially Monday now, no longer 'tomorrow.'

"Well…" Maya started, flexing the fingers on his left hand like a posable model for drawing. "I gave them all an assignment on Friday, and today I get the pleasure and privilege to listen to them all present their creations."

"What's that going to look like on no sleep?" Lucas wondered.

"Oh, not good," Maya shook her head at once, smiling as he pulled her closer and kissed the side of her head. "I'll figure it out. It's all about stacking it right, I know which ones are good to boost the energy in the room. Then again, might now be so bad. Remember what it was like when we were the students, on Valentine's Day?"

"I don't know what you mean, I was always well-behaved," Lucas declared, getting a laugh not only out of his wife but also two more of his oldest friends, as both Dylan and Nadine looked over at him.

"That's not well-behaved, that's just the Lucas Friar special," Nadine pointed out, to the amusement of Maya and Dylan.

"You're making it sound like I was boring," Lucas 'complained.'

"No, not boring," Dylan insisted. "Just… big-brother-in-charge version of messing around."

"Enjoying yourself there, Teach?" Lucas asked, looking to Maya, who was turning pink and climbing toward red from laughing.

"Hey, clearly that all worked for me or I wouldn't have married you, so…" she patted his arm.

"Uh huh, okay," he gave her a look to show he both appreciated the statement but also was not letting her off the hook for the laughing part. She countered this with big 'I love you' doe eyes. He just did not have the power in him to resist those.

"You know, I'm just now realizing that this means Baby Minkus will be born on Valentine's Day…" Maya pointed out now, easing them back from their bit of roasting.

"That kid is going to get so much chocolate for his or her birthday growing up," Dylan shook his head, the tone of his voice suggesting that a lot of said chocolate would be courtesy of good Uncle Dylan far off in Austin, Texas.

"It's really hard sometimes to think about how little we'll get to see those kids grow up," Maya went on, slightly more subdued now as she reflected on her friends back in New York. "The most we've see of Ada is on a screen, and it's great, she's the best, but it's not the same as when she's actually here, you know?"

"I do, yeah," Lucas assured her.

"Riley always says the same thing," Dylan chimed in, looking to his sleeping girlfriend, curled up with her head in his lap now. "Ever since Isadora told us about this baby, it's almost worse for her, because now there's two. Sometimes she starts saying how she wants us to go back there, but she never means it for real," he shook his head, looking up and over to Maya a moment later like he realized maybe he shouldn't have said this. "Really, she doesn't want to go for real," he promised.

"No, I get it," Maya promised back. "I get those thoughts sometimes, too," she told him, all the while turning a look to Lucas, confirming that he was aware of it and she didn't keep it from him in any way. "It's like even after all those years, a part of us is still back there, and Farkle, and Isadora… they're holding on to those for us so they don't get lost. Every once in a while, we just feel it all again. Me, I'll start thinking about how much I miss them, back there, and I miss the city, but then at the same time it's just like… I could never go, not to stay. I was thirteen when we moved. Whatever I left back there, it can't even begin to compare to what I'd be leaving here if I went and followed that whim."

"Yeah, that's kind of her thing, too," Dylan nodded, brushing at Riley's hair, loosening the untied braids until they became a dark brown curtain all over again.

"You know, the two of us have been talking about spending our summers out there, maybe, in a few years," Lucas shared. "Maybe… you guys would like to come, too," he suggested. Maya looked instantly on board with this plan, looking from Lucas to Dylan.

"Oh, she would love that," Dylan smiled. He almost woke Riley to run it by her before choosing to let her sleep a while more. "Maybe we could take August with us, if he's up to it."

"Yeah, that might be good for him, too," Maya smiled at the thought. He had still been a little kid when the Matthews family had moved out here, but he still had some distinct memories of his time in New York. Much as he had acclimated to his Texan life to an even larger degree than either his big sister or his art teacher, he had those roots in him. "You could take him out there this summer, just you three."

"Why not you guys, too?" Nadine asked the obvious question.

"I just figure it would be a good thing for the three of them to have, family and all…" Maya shrugged. Dylan looked at her a moment, at Lucas, at Nadine, before checking that Riley was genuinely still asleep. Taking even more chance on his side, he signed rather than spoke.

"I might need your help soon. I haven't worked out the whole plan yet and I really want to get it right." The quiet trio shared a look. Was this what they thought it was? Was he finally looking to make his proposal? Dylan saw these looks and pleaded with his eyes: don't wake her up, let her be surprised.

"Don't worry, we're great with secrets," Maya signed with a barely contained smile. Knowing how much it would mean to her oldest friend, she would never dream of taking the slightest bit of that surprise from her.

Almost to challenge this, Riley woke with a start, not a minute later. She was worried that she might have missed the call from Farkle about the baby, and they had to reassure her, over and over again, that she had not in fact missed a thing.

"Okay, I think we need to get some air to wake us up," Maya moved to rise from the couch, pulling Riley to join her first, and then Lucas, and Dylan, and Nadine, who made the call to wake Zay, too.

One by one, the group was recruited into this waking exercise, and they went walking around the house, past the Hex and toward the lake shore, all of them ensuring that their phones were in working order so they would not miss the call.

"I really love it out here, when it's this early…" Maya hummed, looping her arm with her best friend from New York. "Almost like when I used to go to your house in the morning before school," she went on, then, after a beat, "Looking back on it now, it's a wonder I'm still around today." Riley laughed, but at the same time she had to nod and agree. "Hey, so how are things with August and your parents these days?" Maya asked.

"Really good, actually," Riley smiled. "None of them can believe it, I think. Like, they feel as though they should be mad about what he did, but then they're just happy that he's better now than he was all that time so they can't be upset."

"Yeah, I can picture that," Maya nodded. She would tell herself that the entire ordeal was behind them now, and the more time went by the truer it would become. At the same time, she couldn't shake the thought that there were still missing parts to the story, and they all existed out there, like a second shoe waiting to drop. And as the days went on, Maya was growing more and more certain that the person holding that second shoe was Milena Janacek. Some things still didn't add up, and every time she tried to piece together that equation, it came back to her.

They had just made it to the lake when the silence of the very early morning was broken with a ringtone. On reflex, several phones were pulled from pockets, or lifted when they had just been kept in hand, even though the ringtone had already identified it as being Maya's phone. Just as she answered, the others started to crowd around her so they might see her screen when Farkle's tired but elated face appeared on it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners