September 29th 2020

Chapter 273
Their Party For Summer

"I don't know about you, but this feels like the start of a story that ends with 'broke an arm and a leg, ended up in the hospital,'" Lucas declared as he and Maya stood in front of the trampoline.

"Yeah, but when does it not?" she countered, and he smiled. "Come on, I mean the only reason I even got this thing was because of you and you never even got on it once all night."

"I nearly did, a few times."

"So why didn't you?"

"Honestly? I figured if I tried it once and I liked it, I wouldn't want you to return it," he looked at her, knowing it would make her laugh, which it did.

"I mean, we could," she shrugged. "Not this one, it's still a rental, but we could get one that's for keeps. Clearly, it's a crowd pleaser, everyone wants to try it when they see it. And in a few years, our kids will think we are The Coolest Parents," she intoned, and now he laughed, closing his arms around her and kissing the top of her head for a moment before turning back to the trampoline.

"Fine, alright, I'll go."

It was into the small morning hours by this point, the sky was near pitch black, but the lights from the house and the yard were sufficient to illuminate the structure and not make it entirely into a danger zone. Even so, Lucas was very careful as he climbed on to the surface and felt it dip and rise under his added weight as he moved to the center. Looking through the net, he could see Maya was resisting the urge to holler in encouragement, to the point where she had to hold her two balled-up fists up and ready to cover her mouth.

"I can't do flips," he pointed out, testing out a few small hops.

"Not yet," she declared, ever the encouraging one.

"We're never going to be 'The Coolest Parents' if I get killed out here," he warned with a chuckle before going for a bigger bounce.

Lucas had wanted a trampoline at one of his birthday parties ever since he was seven or eight and one of his classmates had had one at his party. He'd asked his mother and father countless times, sometimes tried to appeal to his grandmothers… But it had never come to pass, and it had remained an unfulfilled wish, turned into a silly promise between Maya and him, until that night. Sure, it had been nearly twenty years since that first experience, and it could be said that he had aged out of that part of his life. If that was the case, well… well, he didn't actually care.

"Getting the hang of it, huh?" Maya almost had to shout to be heard as he started getting confident in his jumps.

"Little bit!" he called back.

"Is it bad that I have to resist distracting you?"

"Don't need to try that hard!" Lucas promised, as Maya had to follow his smile up, and down, and up, and down…

"Even up there, you manage to be so Huckleberry," she laughed. In her mind, she wondered how long she would wait to confess that this wasn't in fact a rental and, having had the forethought that it would be a big hit, she had actually bought it, for him, for them, as an early wedding anniversary present.

"Your turn?" Lucas asked and, when she nodded, he slowed his rise until he was able to stop and climb down, landing on his feet a bit wobbly, which still managed to make her laugh. "Worth the wait," he grinned, pulling her into a steadying kiss before he could receive both his shoes to put back on and then hers to hold on to as she climbed on to the trampoline.

"I tried it earlier, when we brought it out and installed it, me and Dylan and Riley," Maya revealed, finding her balance as she started to jump. "Almost got a flip down."

"Well, you're smaller, so it might be easier," Lucas guessed, watching her.

"I can't even protest that, because it's true," she laughed. Even as she jumped, she was able to pull her hair into a quick bun, tying it off with the elastic around her wrist, before working up her leaps until she felt secure enough to give it a shot.

It was not the most graceful turn, and the landing lasted barely long enough to say she'd been on her feet before she dropped at the heart of the bouncing surface with a laugh and a cheer.

"You okay?" Lucas took her response as a sign that she was, but he still had to hear it.

"I am excellent," Maya breathed, flipping on to her stomach and crawling her way over to the edge, where he came to stand.

"You won't see me arguing," Lucas replied, unable to do anything but smile for the sight of his wife's glowing face full of smiles and happiness.

"Tonight was pretty good, wasn't it? Relaxed, some surprises…" Maya reflected, squeaking when she moved and started to roll, before finally deciding to go with it and turn on to her back. "Hey, come here," she reached blindly for Lucas. He climbed up just enough for her to see his face.

"Why?" he asked with a curious lift of his brow. Maya snorted.

"Please, so not what I had in mind. Just that," she pointed up to the sky, the stars.

"Right, no, that's what I meant, too," Lucas went to lay at her side, setting them both in motion until he could be still and the trampoline became less agitated.

"Uh huh, okay," Maya bit back a smile, reaching blindly for his hand. Once she did, he responded by clasping hers, and they lay in silence for a while, looking to the stars, the bright June moon.

"And it was, yeah," Lucas spoke. Maya turned her head toward him. "Tonight, it was really good." She smiled, nodded. "As short notice as this was, we got them all here, we got… this," he indicated the trampoline. Maya moved, the better to disrupt their stillness. "A lot of that was you," he went on, deferentially, which made her smile. "You know, it's going to be something, topping a trampoline." She looked like she didn't follow for a moment, but then she understood, smiled brighter. Their wedding anniversary, just two weeks away now. Lucas lightly brushed at her hair with his fingers.

There had been some debate about who would do the planning, if this was even something where they should split the planning or instead decide together, as it was supposed to be the anniversary of their union. They both kind of liked the thought of crafting themselves a special night together. But they liked surprises, too, so they came down to a compromise. There would be three parts: his surprise, her surprise, and the thing they had come up with together.

"Oh, I don't know about that. You've planned a lot of anniversaries for us before."

"Well, yeah, that's true," Lucas nodded. "But never anything like this, never a wedding anniversary." She laughed. "What?" he asked, unable to keep from echoing her.

"Do you know what your face looks like when you say those words?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, playing innocent.

"Oh, you know. Come on," she sat up, startled momentarily for the new motion before rethinking this new position and tipping to rest her head on his chest. "Wedding anniversary…" she repeated, doing her best to replicate the look on his face, which was not so difficult, with how her own face looked drawn to do the same. He could see that more than anything, and it got him laughing along with her, wrapping her in his arms so he might pepper her with kisses and hear the bells of her giggles.

"I can't help it. As days go…"

"Yeah, that's fair," Maya had to agree. If she still couldn't think back to that day last July without feeling a bubble of happiness in her chest, then was it any wonder he felt the same thing, that he so looked forward to that day coming again, bringing them to the beginning of their second year as husband and wife? "Anyway… we have a little while to go before then. Right now, we should probably get back inside the house before Sam's senses tingle and he comes to tell us to get out of here."

"Yeah, okay. Anyway, I think I found a good position here, I might end up falling asleep," Lucas hummed as they moved to climb off the trampoline. He got there first and helped her down before leading her toward the back door. "I think anytime I saw him tonight he was talking about the trip."

"Sam?" Maya asked. Lucas nodded. "Oh, did they tell him? I wanted to see the look on his face," she frowned in mild disappointment.

"I'm not sure. I just heard him say he was excited about going, and about Cecilia going, too. I don't know if he actually knows yet. How are we going to know without asking him?"

"Leave that to me, I'll figure it out," Maya nodded, her excitement renewed now that there was a chance her brother didn't yet know that Abigail and James and the kids would be joining them and the Hunters and the Elder Friars on their upcoming trip.

"When you say you'll figure it out, you're not going to wake him up and ask him tonight, are you? Because I'm pretty sure if you do that he'll put it all together," Lucas teased her.

"If I woke him up right now, it would be to mess with him, not to interrogate him," Maya promised, which was either very funny or very unfortunate for poor Sam, Lucas couldn't decide.

Sam was left to go on sleeping in peace, especially as Maya and Lucas walked into the house to find he had clearly done a speed round of picking up after the departed party guests before heading up to his room. They had done the same, getting changed, making a stop in the bathroom to brush their teeth… By the time he came back, which could not have been more than a minute after her, Lucas found Maya in a familiar position, sitting cross-legged on their bed, with her sketchbook on her knees as she let her pencil fly over the paper, back hunched over it and a look of deep concentration in her eyes.

"So we're just not sleeping tonight, huh?" he asked, taking a seat at her side to see what she was working on. There wasn't much of it yet, but something about the little face she'd already drawn, and the hair that went along with it, he could recognize Stella Buckley and guess she would soon be accompanied by a few classmates and friends in this image.

"Oh, you can, please do," she looked up, smiling almost apologetically. "I'm not tired, and I just… I'll go to the attic," she insisted.

"No, no, stay," he stopped her before she could go. "You know I like to watch you work."

"I've heard that, yeah," she laughed. "If you feel like you want to sleep though, I'll stop and turn off the lights." Her compromise was non-negotiable.

"Promise," he raised his hand with a tip of the head while she shook hers with a barely concealed smirk as she got back to her sketch. Maybe she would send this one out to those four sneaky kids of hers. From what Lucas had told her of the walk back to the Sanderson farm, Missy, Kai, Stella, and Phoebe had all been so happy that they had gotten to attend tonight's party, that they'd been allowed to stay and to get a glimpse into their art teacher's world.

After an hour of work had brought together the four figures on to the page, Maya looked over to find Lucas had fallen asleep at her side.

"When we get up, first word out of me is going to be 'toldja,'" she whispered, closing her sketchbook with her pencil holding the page, setting it aside and turning off the light as she lay down and carefully pulled her husband's arm around her, bringing his hand to her lips before settling and shutting her eyes. The sun would be up soon.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners