November 1st 2020

Chapter 306
Their Hope to Imagine

Sundays at the bookstore were generally busy, that much Lucas knew to expect. Still, some weeks were less busy than expected, while others were just non-stop, all day long. Today was one of the latter. Even before the store actually opened, there was just a feeling in the air like it would be 'one of those.' He didn't know where it came from, or what defined it, but he had it, and he wasn't the only one. He'd shown up, and Maeve definitely walked around with a business-sort of attitude about her. She might not have been as out there as she used to be, back when he'd started working here, but she was still one hundred percent in her element when she walked through the store, like no one else he'd ever known. He had a feeling that he could walk in here, thirty years from now, and she'd still be here, and she'd still love every second of it.

"Red alert… battle stations…" she muttered at him when the clock struck ten and from above they saw Ted go and open the doors. The first customers of the day entered, and they were off. It wasn't as though they had hundreds upon hundreds of people coming in, no. But then people would come along, and they'd need something, and helping them and seeing them off on their merry way could take anywhere from one minute to ten, and as soon as they'd be done with one person, there would be one, sometimes more than one other waiting to start them all up again. And it never stopped. By the time Maeve tapped him out to go and have his lunch, Lucas was more than happy to go and have some quiet time to himself.

It would have seemed as though he'd prefer to just sit and eat and do nothing else, but instead he'd brought one of his textbooks, in order to get ahead on his readings for class. For a while, he sat there, in the crowded food court, the noise of people talking falling to something like a drone he could ignore. He ate his sandwich, and he read, and it was peaceful. And then, somewhere nearby, his attention was pulled away from the text by the sound of a baby crying.

Lucas looked up, soon finding the origin of the cry, just a few tables away. An old man sat with a wailing baby in his arms, no more than weeks old for how small it was, while a younger woman dug through a bag in search of some object or another for her child. The old man looked so happy in trying to calm the little one, probably his grandchild. Finally, the woman had found what she was looking for, and as she moved around the table, Lucas turned his head back down to his tray and his book, not wanting to come off like he was spying on them.

Maya used to tease him, saying he had baby fever. That was long before they were actively trying to make one, so now that they had reached this point, oh… the fever had spiked. It got to the point now where it felt as though his entire brain was wired on to that frequency alone sometimes. Even now, though he wasn't staring at the trio nearby, he could still hear the child, heard how its cries eventually tapered down, and stopped, and turned to gurgles and generally happy noises, and then he just had to close his textbook. He was not going to get anywhere. So, he just went on eating, his mind wandering off.

The whole waiting game could really be stressful at times, in ways he could not have anticipated before. He'd heard it from Zay, from Farkle, even his own father, and Shawn, too. They'd told him about their own experiences of this moment, whether successful or not. Even so, it hadn't come and contextualized itself, not until this time, through the month of November as it advanced nearer and nearer to December. He tried not to put too much of it on himself, knowing that for as stressful as it was for him, it could never possibly compare to what Maya had to be experiencing. She was the one who would be carrying and giving birth to this human they were attempting to create. She'd be the one who'd have all these things happening to her body, all the while doing her very best to give this baby the best chances of coming into the world.

Maybe that was the root of his own stress though. What could he do? Once they actually got pregnant, sure, he'd be there to support her, to help her, but it would be next to nothing by comparison to what she had to do. And he just wished he could do so much more.

What he was also realizing was that, for as much as they had gotten to a place in their lives where they were both generally successful and balanced adults, somewhere inside them there still lived those two kids they used to be. Those kids had all these insecurities within their hearts and minds, and they could be so much more debilitating than they looked. He knew Maya could get so wrapped up in those thoughts, until she could barely move, and then him… She would see right through him, seeing when he would allow himself to ignore his own feelings, his own concerns, because his instincts were always to think of others' first, hers especially. Eventually he had been able to recognize it in himself, too, and he worked hard to be honest with himself, to not push it all down, because he knew it didn't do any good, not to him, not to anyone.

But here he was again, caught between what he might have been feeling and whether or not he should give it any sort of thought, especially over what his wife would be experiencing. In this case, it did feel more warranted than usual, but then what would Maya say if she knew? She'd tell me to speak up, be honest with her. She'd want to back me up, too, same as I do for her.

He'd known he wanted kids for a long time, maybe longer than most people would tend to even consider it. And all this time, the thought had been there, and it made him happy, especially when he added Maya into the picture. And now that it was more than a thought, now that it was a plan, he was forced to consider what it would be like, for this child to exist and to have him as a father. He would be a good one, wouldn't he? What if he wasn't? What if all this time they had been so focused on having this child, and in the meantime they had not considered that the child would be having them in return? Maya as a mother, that wasn't even a question, not to him anyway. Was it one to her? Him as a father… Everyone who had expressed their opinion on this matter, directly or not, would tell him he would be a great father, but he wasn't one yet, was he? How did they know? How did anyone know?

Having finished his lunch, mostly eating by reflex while his mind was far away, Lucas made his way back to the store, so he could take Maeve's place while she went and had her own break. When he arrived up on their floor, he found his friend and co-worker had visitors, specifically Ramona and niece Erin. Maeve was showing some books which he'd seen stowed away under their counter that morning. He'd wondered how they'd gotten there, since they were clearly kids' books, baby and toddler ones specifically, and those were not on their floor. She'd told him to leave them there anyway, and now he understood.

"Hey," he walked up, greeting his other friend and classmate. Ramona turned and echoed his greeting, smiling warmly.

In her arms, little Erin looked up and raised a small hand and smaller fingers. The more she grew, the more of Maeve they saw in her, enough to think that she'd grow up to look an awful lot like her birth mother, which was bound to raise questions if she continued to be in her life.

"Can I?" Lucas pointed to the girl, and Ramona passed her over into his arms. "You two keep looking at those. We are going to take a tour, yeah?" he looked to the one-year-old.

"Yee," she declared, making Lucas smile.

"Alright then, off we go. Now, what are you looking for today, miss?" he asked as he took her along on a leisurely stroll around the floor.

It was impossible not to be cheerful around the small girl, but then wasn't that always the way with small children? Alright, he guessed that not everyone felt that way, that some people were visibly, knowingly uncomfortable around children, but that had never been him. Between his cousins, and his friends' siblings, especially Maya's brothers and sisters, a lot of them since they had been newborns… he had always had an ease with them, always felt happy to be near them, just as they responded in kind.

A customer approached him while he walked with Erin, looking unsure whether he was available, but he assured her that he was, and so he went, with the child balanced in one arm, careful to keep those small fingers of hers from ending up anywhere they shouldn't. She mostly saw it as a funny game. When he found what the woman had been looking for and was thanked, the usual sign that he was no longer needed and could carry on, the customer commented on how good he was with Erin, believing her to be his daughter. He thanked her even as he corrected her, and she gave a quick apology.

"Don't worry about it," he told her, turning a smile back to the girl. "It meant more than you know that you thought she was."

More often than not, when those worries and insecurities would come at him, even if they came and went more than once, when they did go away, they usually left him wondering why he'd been worried in the first place. He looked to Erin as they went on walking, back to find Ramona and Maeve. She may not have been his, but she was still a small child, and he had been around those enough to know that if they felt in any way displeased with their situation they would make it known. Erin, their mini-Maeve, was the picture of total contentment here in his arms, as many others had been before. If that was the case, then what did he have to worry himself over, as though his own child would somehow be the exception to the rule.

"Did you two have fun out there?" Ramona asked, taking Erin back.

"I think she has potential as a book seller," Lucas nodded.

"That might just be the baby thing, they're very agreeable," Maeve pointed out, picking up the books Ramona had selected. "I'll be back after lunch, left you a few notes back there."

"Got it," he nodded.

"Say bye, Erin," Ramona told the girl in her arms, showing the motion with her own hand, soon imitated to the best of the one-year-old's abilities.

"Bye, Erin, thanks for the help," Lucas waved back. Erin kept waving, and he did, too, until she was out of sight, on her way down the escalator with her aunt and birth mother. After they were gone, he just had to take a deep breath, let it out. That baby fever really was no joke, was it?

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners