September 25th 2020

Chapter 269
Their Party For Memories

All Maya had said was that she needed to go and find something for the party, and if she had any hopes of getting this thing in time for that evening, she would have to go right in that moment. And so, it would fall on Lucas and Sam to go and do the food and supply run. This was not too big of an ask. Any reason for the brothers to tackle any task together was deemed to be reasonable.

"What do you think she's up to?" Sam asked as they headed toward the car.

"Honestly, with your sister, there are too many options for me to even try to guess," Lucas informed him, and Sam could not deny it.

"Hey!" a voice drew their attention, and they looked to find Missy Sanderson rolling by on her bike. "Where are you guys going?"

"Got some errands to run, why?" Lucas asked their neighbor from up the lane.

"Are you going to the mall?" she asked.

"We are, yeah. You need something out there?" Lucas guessed, and the girl nodded. "Alright, hop in," he tapped the car's hood. Missy grinned, hurrying to stash her bike near the house before moving to climb into the backseat.

It didn't take long, once they took off, for the subject of the party to come up. Missy received this information by sharing how she had just been to a party of her own, a couple days back, when she'd accompanied Kai to the Shelby house for the basketball teams' end of year party.

"They let you go?" Lucas laughed when he heard this, and Missy and Sam looked at him, confused. "When Maya and I were on the teams, the only reason we got to go together was because we were both players. No one got to go unless they were, no boyfriends, no girlfriends, no dates, just the twenty-four of us who were on one team or the other."

"Maya told me about those," Sam recalled. "She said Riley was there, too. She wasn't on the team, was she?"

"Well, no, but they made an exception for her… I don't actually remember why," Lucas admitted. "But she was the only one. How did you get to go?"

"Well…" Missy trailed off, with a look on her face like she was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth, which only served to put her on the spot. "The captain, Tony, I guess he thought that Kai and I were… together, like dating… so he said I could come, and Kai… didn't correct him?"

"Wait, wait, so you two are pretending to be dating now?" Sam asked, turning in his seat to look at her.

"Uh huh," Missy nodded. Sam made a noise, which Lucas interpreted as a mix between 'you see the irony, right?' and 'this will get weird real quick.' "Stop that," Missy rolled her eyes, making Sam laugh as he turned to face forward again.

It had taken Lucas a while to see it, but then moments like these would come, and it would be so clear, the way that Sam had sort of adopted Missy like an extra little sister. In return, only-child Missy had gone and taken him into her life like the big brother she'd never had. The teasing was always the easiest part to see, but they also could easily imagine how Sam would be prone to step in, if anyone ever dared hurt her in any way.

As Missy went on to tell them about some of what this year's team party had been like, Lucas paid attention, although for the most part his mind would wander back to the days when he and Maya would be in attendance. Even when the teams had been disbanded by the school, the teams would gather at the end of the school year, at the Shelby house. That handful of nights stood easily among his top high school memories. Dancing, swimming, lounging with friends and teammates, and of course the inevitable shoot off competitions that would happen because you couldn't put that many players in one place without someone picking up a ball…

They still saw a lot of their teammates, the ones who were still in Austin at least. Even those who were out of state, out of the country, would be heard from sooner or later, especially that lot of them forever branded as having fought on for the return of the teams… It would never matter how many years went by, all it would take would be the smallest reminder of those old days, and it would be as though no time had passed.

Once they arrived at the mall, Missy went off to get the thing she'd needed, after which she would rejoin Lucas and Sam on their party supply run.

"Do you ever wish you could have gone to those parties when you were in high school?" Lucas asked Sam as they marched off toward the store.

"All the time," Sam nodded. "It was bad enough that I was basically a kid to all of them, but then whenever there'd be a party, I wouldn't be allowed to go because I was only thirteen, fourteen… So then everyone would be excited about the party and then they'd look at me like 'sucks to be you.' I tried to sneak out to one of them a bunch of times, but I either got busted, or I busted myself when I changed my mind and went back." Lucas laughed and, off Sam's look, revealed how his mother had told Maya and him all about their future lodger's attempts at 'rebellion.' "Figures she did," Sam sighed.

"We were being put in charge of a fifteen-year-old," Lucas reasoned.

"In charge of a giant dork," Sam amended.

"Maya would say 'no one gets to talk down to my little brother, and that includes my little brother,' and I'd say the same," Lucas shook his head.

"Not being down on myself," Sam raised his hands with a smile. "Just sort of… looking back from the other side."

"Alright, fair," Lucas agreed. "But we're not on the other side, not just yet. One more year."

"Yeah, one more…" Sam's voice drifted, following the pull of his thoughts. It wasn't the first time Lucas had seen that turn in his brother's expression in recent weeks. As much as Lucas and Maya both were on pins and needles to know what would happen with Sam after this next year, clearly he was thinking about it the most. Whatever he did or didn't think about it, he was keeping it to himself so far, but every now and then he would drop that mask just a bit, enough for Lucas at least to see that bit of uncertainty in him.

"Hey," he tapped his younger brother's arm and Sam looked over. "All good?"

"Yeah, fine," Sam shrugged, pulling a basket to start them down the aisles. "It's just like… so close but so far, you know?"

"You're getting really good at deflecting, you know that?" Lucas pointed out, to which Sam nodded. "If you want to say something to me and not your sister…"

"I know that," Sam insisted. "This one I need to figure out on my own though… and with Cecilia, too," he added.

"Everything alright with you two?"

"What? Yeah, of course, why… why wouldn't it be?" Sam asked, blinking.

"No reason, really," Lucas reassured him at once. "Look, when Maya and I were finishing up high school and we applied for college, we went through that same thing any couple would in that situation, you know? I knew what I wanted, and she knew what she wanted, and eventually we had to realize that… there was a possibility those things wouldn't line up."

"But I'm not going to be in school anymore," Sam cut in.

"That doesn't mean you don't have plans, or desires, for what you want to do with that new degree of yours," Lucas countered, and Sam tipped back into reflection. "What I think I'm seeing here, and don't feel like you have to confirm or deny, is that maybe for as much as you think you'll be happy wherever you go, so long as she's there with you, you're still not sure that there won't be things closer to here you'll regret leaving, and you're worried about what it'll do to you, to Cecilia."

Sam was saved from having to respond – which he did not look eager to do anyway – by Missy's return. She brandished a bag which told them she'd been to the bookstore.

"Did you run?" Sam asked her, eyebrow raised.

"No," Missy squinted at him.

"You are winded."

"Am not," she breathed deep before turning to Lucas. "What's next?"

The errands were a bit more erratic with Missy in tow, but they also probably took less time than without her, so they made good time to then return home and get everything ready for the party. Once they arrived, Missy grabbed her bike, thanked them for the lift, and started back up the lane toward the Sanderson farm.

"What's that noise?" Sam asked. Lucas looked at him for a beat before he started hearing it, too. It was hard to explain or even try and identify, but it definitely came from somewhere behind the house, so the two of them went around until they could find the source of… "What the…" Sam blurted out, while Lucas' shock lasted no more than two seconds before he just had to laugh.

Sitting about twenty feet from either the house or the Hex, surrounded by netting, was a trampoline. Presently, it was being used by Dylan, while both Maya and Riley looked on.

"Hey!" Dylan waved, mid-leap. "Check it out!" he called on the next leap. The girls turned around now, and Lucas and Sam could see Maya's amused face along with Riley's amused/terrified one, as she quickly looked back to her fiancé while her best friend jogged off to meet her husband and her brother.

"It's a rental, I promise," Maya told them. "I figured we've been talking about it long enough, it had to happen sooner or later, and this way it was a surprise." She looked so proud of herself for pulling this off, and Lucas felt that heart swoop as he held his wife in his arms.

"It was definitely that," he agreed.

"What's Missy's bike doing out front, by the way?" Maya asked, following Lucas' line of sight to find he was watching Dylan's journey up and down and up and down again. "Did she go with you two or…"

"Yeah, she had to go to the bookstore," Sam provided. "We told her she could come over tonight, that's okay, right?"

"Oh, of course, yeah," Maya blinked, smiled. Sometimes it would get hard to draw the line, especially where anyone like Missy, or Kai, or August were concerned. Yes, they were her students – or had been, now, with August – but they were also neighbors, and family friends, so she would interact them socially, too. It was in those times more than any others, where she would start thinking about how she was now in the position where Cory Matthews had been, being her teacher but also her best friend's father.

"Do you guys need me?" Sam asked when Dylan finally came down from the trampoline.

"Uh, no, I think we've got it, you… Okay," Maya nodded, as her brother had already taken off at a run, the better to get his turn on the trampoline. "Riley keeps giving me eyes like 'you know how accident prone he is, and we're getting married next month!'" Maya turned back to Lucas, who could only chuckle. It was a reasonable concern. "You guys were fast coming back."

"Yeah, Missy helped with that," Lucas told her. He might have told her about the rest, the part with Sam, and his concerned, but he had promised his brother not to say anything if he didn't want him to. There had not been one clear answer, but for now Lucas had no choice but to assume he had to keep quiet. Whichever way it went, Sam would make the right call in the end, he believed it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners