A/N: (NOVEMBER 3RD) TAKING A CHANCE THAT THIS WILL WORK: I know that there has been an issue with the latest chapters showing up on the site. If you can get it, they CAN be seen if you have the app. Guest reviewer: Hi! I would have written back to you but I can't because you are not signed in. Anyway, I hope this helps! I'm still going to post today's things later on, no clue if they'll come up on the site, but the app should be good!

October 30th 2020

Chapter 304
Their Hope to Love

"No, yeah, that's fine… Yeah, just get them back here as soon as you can, okay? Great, thanks," Maya hung up, slipping her phone back in her pocket with a breath as she headed back to see how Missy was faring with the printer. "Are they coming out alright?" she asked her neighbor and student.

"Yeah, check it out!" Missy held up one of the prints before herself, pausing for a moment before flipping it over. "Can you see it?"

"I see it," Maya confirmed, smiling, and Missy set the print back along with the others already laid out in wait of their shirts, which would be here as soon as Sam got them and brought them back.

With the very brief time they had between the selection of the team name and their first unofficial match, it had become the teacher and advisor's mission to get her girls their shirts in time. The first thing she had to do then was to come up with a logo, the better to then get it approved and printed off. It wasn't her first go at home made shirts like this, so the actual design was the only part she really needed to focus on. The name had been approved among the team, and in her extended afternoon break, after the freshmen had gone on their way, Maya had gone and sat at her desk to sketch out a few options.

"Ariel, hey, come here," she'd waved the girl over as soon as she came into the room for last period. When she came along, Maya showed her the three designs she'd gotten it down to.

"Wow," Ariel blinked, inspecting each one with great interest. "I think this one," she pointed to the one on the right.

"Do me a favor? Can you send a picture to the others and let me know what they think? Quick, before class starts?"

Ariel had taken a picture and sent it off, fingers flying over her phone keyboard. Soon, replies came in, and while it wasn't a clean sweep, eventually they decided on a final design, adding in their respective sizes. This also came with requests regarding extra shirts for family members who might want them, and Maya promised to get those to them in the next week. For now, the team had to take priority.

As to colors, Maya had taken her cue from having seen how each girl dressed from day to day, from seeing bags, and binders… Each shirt would have the logo on the front, and the members' surnames on the back. The one branded McNEIL would be calm orange over a deep blue. The BUCKLEY print would be white over a violet shirt, while the SU one would be yellow over a turquoise. And the ZIMMERMAN shirt would be a dark red, the print in gray. Along with these four would be two nameless shirts, a black on yellow for herself and a white on dark green for Cory.

"Can I have one, too?" Missy asked, as the last one came from the printer and was laid on the kitchen table with the others. "You know, to support them," she smiled.

"Sure, of course," Maya laughed before considering the girl standing before her. It seemed only a minute ago she'd been so much smaller, back when Lucas and her had moved into the house, but now here she stood, sixteen years old… "I think yellow on… magenta?" Missy beamed at this. "I will mark you down for the next batch." After a beat, she had to ask. "Would you have wanted to be on the team?" She hadn't asked, the lineup having come to her so easily, but then it would not have been a bad idea to cultivate alternates, right?

"Oh, no," Missy shook her head. "I mean, I would have been honored if you asked me, but I wouldn't be good out there."

"Don't sell yourself short, you're doing so well," Maya promised.

"I know that," Missy replied. "It's not about my grades, I just know that I would freeze the second I had to answer anything. I'd forget everything, or I'd get sick… You've never seen me present in front of class, it's a train wreck."

"What about the project last year?" Maya pointed out, trying not to chuckle.

"Total fluke," Missy shook her head with a sheepish grin. "I think it was just that it was your class. Trust me, I can be a great supporter but do not put me on that team."

"Alright, alright, I won't," Maya held up her hands in 'surrender.'

She could have done the shirts on her own, sure, but then she'd seen her neighbor out walking Coraline that morning, so she'd asked her if she wanted to make shirts with her, and that had been that. Truth be told, she was glad for the assistance, for the team up. She was so antsy for the next day's match that she could easily have spiraled into making changes to the design until they ran out of time. It had been a while since she'd had an opportunity like this, where she struggled so keep calm in the face of some event or another. She was sure she'd gotten to a point where she could confidently surge onward, and yet here they were. Maybe it was just that she was nervous for the girls. She so wanted this to be a good start for them.

And okay, sure, she had plenty of things going on right now that would keep her mind overloaded, things that would make this small match feel so much bigger all of a sudden. There was the whole baby thing, of course, which was bound to hold the bulk of her mind if the door was opened even a crack. And then the more she'd think about it, the more she'd start thinking about Nadine, and Zay, how they'd tried, how that had all ended, how now they continued to wait for the day when things would start going their way… It didn't feel right to compare their situations, but how could she not think about it?

Beyond that, maybe it wasn't so much about stress, but then by virtue of their connection to the various parties involved, she and Lucas both would find themselves the unwitting audience to the developments in the story of Sam, and Dora, and Cecilia, and now Tony Janacek…

It had been almost four weeks since Halloween, and it could have felt like the blink of an eye for all of them, except for all that had had time to unfold in that time.

Whatever the two of them had come to decide regarding their relationship, currently oscillating on the edge between friends and more-than, Sam and Dora were both showing ample signs of which side their hearts championed. For one thing, Lucas' young cousin had been becoming more and more of a presence at the house since Halloween. It wasn't as though she had not been a repeated visitor beforehand, but where they might have seen her once every other week before, now it was occasionally every other day, sometimes consecutive days. She would join them for dinner about as frequently as Cecilia once did, and on the nights where she wasn't with them, Sam usually wasn't either, suggesting that they might have been having dinner at her apartment. What else they may or may not have done back there, his sister and brother-in-law could not say for certain, nor did they try to find out. Lucas was of a mind that the reason they were at the house with them more often than not was specifically to act as a safeguard, to keep them both in line when they were trying to advance cautiously into this new reality of theirs. Maya was now having to resist the desire to tell him to just ask her out already, since he clearly wanted to be with her. She knew better than to interfere though, especially as they were figuring things out for themselves. She also knew how sometimes waiting was the best course of action. Wasn't that what she and Lucas had done? And now here they were.

Meanwhile, there was Cecilia. Though they had no genuine proof of it, both Maya and Lucas believed that Sam had spoken with her, in the days after the party. They had kept in touch before this, though they had struggled with it, enough that there would be little more than the occasional, brief text between the two. They had not found the way to actually converse, to do as they had wanted to do and save their friendship. It had been left to flounder for a time, and then the weekend after the party, she'd come over and joined them for dinner and a movie night. There was nothing of lovey-dovey looks and hand holding and kissing between her and Sam, but otherwise it could have been exactly as things had previously been, in the days before the trip to Hawaii and the covert break.

Since then, Cecilia had been coming around the house more often, too, at least more often than she'd been doing since the breakup. It wasn't nearly as often as she used to do, or as Dora now did, but she would be around at least twice a week, some as much as four. Sometimes it would be her and Dora both, sometimes she would come when Sam wasn't around at all, and she and Maya would hang out, happily so. She had found a sister when she had come into Sam Hart-Lane's world, and she was not to lose her.

When she did come around to hang with Maya solo, there had finally been an opportunity for the topic of Cecilia's conversation with Tony Janacek to be addressed. She looked so surprised to realize Maya had seen them that night, but at the same time she was almost relieved. It facilitated her into talking about it with someone.

They hadn't known so much about one another or where they fit into anything on Halloween, when Cecilia had gone to find him again. She hadn't known he was one of Maya's former students, and he didn't know she was his teacher's brother's ex. They were just two people at the party, and after the brief encounter in the living room, they'd ended up sitting in the kitchen and talking until her father had come to pick her up. On a whim, she'd told him how to find her online.

"The whole ride home, I sat there trying not to freak out. Don't know why I did it, but I did, and I wasn't sure I'd ever hear from him again, but when I got home, I had a message waiting," Cecilia revealed with a happy little smile.

"And now?" Maya asked, trying to keep her face from slipping into a total grin.

"We've been writing back and forth a lot," Cecilia revealed. "He's really nice to talk to, you know?"

"I haven't had the chance to talk to him as much as you have, but yes, I think I do." They were forging a friendship, that much was clear. Whether or not they would go any further remained to be seen. As it was, she was seventeen and finishing high school, while he was nineteen and starting college. Friendship was probably as far as it would go, for the time being or beyond. It didn't matter near as much as the fact that they had both found someone they could talk to, be open with, and something like that was precious in and of itself.

By the time Lucas returned home from work that night, six shirts sat neatly folded in a pile on the kitchen table, each branded with the Born Curious logo and ready to be rolled out the following day.

"What, I don't get one?" he asked, smirking.

"I haven't decided on your colors yet," Maya informed him. "Need the right shades."

"You are such a nerd," he shook his head at her, his tone lifting the words like a declaration of love. It made Maya smile. She knew.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners