December 20th 2020

Chapter 355
Their Plans For Circles

The rest of Saturday went by much the way that Sunday morning would go, too. Lucas was back in the attic, studying, while Maya sat in the future nursery, with her sketchbook and an old but relatively pristine box of colored pencils. She'd had them for years, and several of them were much shorter than the rest, showing they had been used more often, but the occasions she had deemed special enough for them to be used had been few and far enough in between that she still had the set. Whenever she'd open the box and look at the pencils, she'd remember how Lucas had given them to her, on her second Christmas in Austin. They'd still been as good as strangers for the first one, but by then they had become such close friends, and somewhere in their hearts… something else.

She sat on the nursery floor, and she worked at her sections of the mural. With how busy she had been this year, with school, with the album and the tour, with the pregnancy, she'd realized how long it had been since she'd gotten to just do… this. Sitting by herself, forgetting the world for a while and drawing. She didn't know how much she'd missed it until she'd stopped for dinner on Saturday night. It wasn't as though she hadn't done anything at all, on any sort of medium where the extension of her art was through her mind's eye, her hand, and not her ear, her voice. But it had not been this, had not been this calm sort of introspection.

"It's really coming together, huh?" Lucas' voice reached her and she looked over as he slid down the wall and sat next to her.

"I think so," she showed him. He smiled, taking in the details on this scaled down version of what she would make of her wall. She would do one, and Sam would do another, trailing off on either end before reaching the door on one side and the windows on the other.

"Troop?" he pointed, and she nodded.

"If I was going to do a horse, who else could I really choose?"

"No question," Lucas agreed, laughing with her. "I figured I'd come and offer my services for a while, dinner prep and all."

"Right," Maya reached for his arm to look at his watch. They weren't running late, but they definitely needed to go.

So, morning turned into afternoon, and the kitchen was filled with activity, and the scent of cooking, and baking. As promised, Lucas helped, and Sam helped, and other times Maya worked on her own. She had learned her lesson about going too fast and now returned to her more laidback approach. She had learned the vast majority of her culinary skills from the four years she'd worked at Isabel Garcia's restaurant in Houston. And while she wasn't about to go and open a place of her own, she had made great strides over the years so that she'd kept learning, and by now she could really hold her ground in her kitchen.

As far as the plan went for this evening, with their friends, there'd been a lot of thought given to how they would go about the big reveal this time around. They were expecting enough people that they had trouble imagining a mass reveal as being anything but so much chaos. So maybe it didn't have to be about telling them all at once. Maybe they could tell them as they arrived, and then every time more of them arrived, those who'd been let into the know would get to experience it, too… and that could be fun.

Truth be told, she had been this close to calling Riley, to ensure she and Dylan would arrive first of all of them. Who else could she want to tell the most after the grandparents?

"Lucas! Pencils down, they're coming!" she called out when the telltale sound of tires on gravel had made her look out the window. He came down fast enough to suggest he'd seen whose car it was out there. "Shoes, shoes!" she quickly tapped at his arm and he kicked off his sneakers, putting them in their place before turning to her, letting out a breath.

"This doesn't look natural, does it?"

"Dude…" she laughed, more so when he went and did a roll over the top of the couch and on to the cushions, grabbing the remote even as inertia brought him down to rest. "You know you're cute, right?" she came to stare down at him and he smiled back at her.

"Just cute?" he asked, 'hurt.'

"Please, you know the answer to that one. If you need a hint," she aimed both of her index fingers at her little belly, once again 'concealed' with strategic shirt placement. Her hands dropped to her side at once when the doorbell rang, bringing the dogs barking along.

Maya went to answer the door, greeting Riley and then Dylan in turn. They hadn't really spoken of the whole Munroe family situation since the day of the girls' final, and though none of them would push, it was hard not to want to know how Dylan was doing as time went on. The rest of the group had been told, by Maya and Lucas, at Dylan's request. He didn't want to have to rehash it over and over, and as far as their group was concerned, they'd known each other long enough to know what was on or off the table and they respected it.

"Shoes off, please," Maya gave a simple smile, and her guests removed theirs at once, bringing them to place neatly along the row of Maya's shoes, and Lucas' shoes, and Sam's, and…

Riley made a noise… Might have been a squeak, even as she turned to her best friend and looked like a rocket waiting to take off. At the same time, Dylan gave out a 'no!' which sounded much more like 'oh hell yes.' All it took was for Maya to smile and nod and then the rocket struck true, taking her in her arms, even as Dylan sought out his old friend, his fellow turtle… Lucas emerged from his 'subtle' waiting place, and then he was getting some hugs of his own. The newly arrived duo wanted to know everything, and they didn't lack for questions.

"Later, when the others are here, okay?" Maya promised. Riley was crying as she nodded, and for how strongly she smiled, it was hard to say if it would have completely left her by the time someone else came along. "I just really wanted you to be the first to come," she admitted, and now she was crying, too. Every milestone in her life was appreciated on its own, but there was something about going through all of those and knowing that Riley was there for all of them, that she had never stopped being as important now as she had been, for over twenty years of her life… Looking back at her right now, she knew her best friend felt the same way. And this milestone here, oh, what a massive one it was…

"Hey, someone else is coming," Lucas turned, hearing the car.

So, they moved into the living room, the scene 'reset,' this time with additional players and also a different greeter. Maya's face had not yet recovered from the first go around.

"Hey, hi," Lucas stepped aside after opening the door, allowing Rosa and Jenna into the house. "If you could just take your shoes off," he indicated the row of shoes as though this was an everyday thing and totally not a 'look at these little baby shoes' tactic.

"Uh, sure," Rosa frowned, like she smelled something suspicious already even as she did what she'd been told to do. Jenna was already doing the same, no questions asked, handing her shoes to Rosa when she offered her hand to take them and place the two pairs together. They slipped from her hands when she spotted the baby shoes, and she stood back up, rod straight as she turned to Lucas. Her index sat fixed in mid-air like she wanted to say 'I knew it!' but it wasn't him she needed to say it to. She turned and searched, not unlike Dylan earlier, and when she spotted Maya and that smirk of hers, the index tap-tap-tapped in her direction. "How long have you known? Because I swear I've been thinking it for like a month, and I didn't want to say anything because if I did and it just turned out you'd put on a little weight…" After a second, she was hugging her bandmate, all the while pointing her index back at Lucas. I knew it! I knew it!

The scene reset again a few minutes later, with the arrival of the Babineaux family. Another sign of their superspeed year, up came Zay and Nadine with six-month-old Mia. They had gone from thriving as best as they could be expected to, going from zero to parenthood the night they'd gotten the call, up to now, looking every bit handling things like… not pros, no, but then what parents could say they had reached the peak even if they did have months to prepare?

Lucas had been eager for this one, as Maya had been with Riley, naturally, and he never had to worry here. Much like his mother, he expected no less than…

"Well it's about time!" Zay had barely seen the shoes that he was taking his best friend for a great big hug, even as Nadine was compelled to pass her daughter to the nearest hands able to take her – here, Dylan's – so she might locate her bandmate and see for herself that this was true.

"Are you okay? Is everything good?" she asked, with a trembling little smile. Maya had meant so much to her, for the support she'd leant her, all through her own journey toward becoming a mother that now, to see their roles reversed… She wanted to be there for her, through more good and happy days than the ones of sadness and longing she herself had gone through.

"Four months, just about," Maya promised, nodding, and Nadine pulled her into her arms.

As big of a group as they might have had, by now they were only missing one more arrival, even if it was to be their biggest. Coming out of Houston, Ray had been at the wheel, Asher at his side, while Sophie and Chiara were in the back with ten-month-old Giulia. She was growing just as fast as Mia Babineaux, by now already giving signs of being very, very close to taking her first steps already.

She might not have been made to surrender her footwear upon arrival, but her mothers and fathers all were made to do so, as their hosts and fellow shoeless guests came along to greet them.

"See, this is all coming off way too suspicious for my liking," Sophie joked, Giulia balanced at her hip, even as Chiara tapped at her shoulder. She turned to her, only to be directed to look at the ground, the lineup, and the one pair of little shoes among the lot. Already, Asher and Ray had seen those, having been the ones to draw Chiara's attention, and so it felt like a line of dominos sent tumbling, as each of the quartet went through a series of reactions which went something like 'Baby shoes? Baby shoes! Baby shoes!' It was the one moment of surprise of the whole dinner group that night which had felt in any way chaotic, and while Lucas and Maya in no way regretted having broken the reveals down in this way, that one of chaos was kind of great, too. It kicked off what was to be one great night among their friends, the family of their own making.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners