Chapter 30
Finals and Boxes and Last Days

Monday

It would always be the case that, as nervous as they'd all be going into finals, once they had gotten through one things would get to feel just a bit easier. They weren't suddenly worry free, but it would be progress, and they could work with that.

Maya had just the one final today, while Lucas had two. When she was done with hers, she'd gone over to Professor Robinson's office and settled on to the couch. It had become a habit of hers, as the weeks had gone by and she and the baby had been getting bigger. If not for her being in school, she would have been at home by now, taking it easy until the day came where she went into labor, and now with just a few days to go before that happened, all she had to do was hold on a while longer. The professor's couch was her place to sit and relax, if for a little while. She wasn't out of the woods yet.

Before she could convince herself to grab her bag and start reviewing for tomorrow's final, she reached for her phone and called back to Austin to check on her mother. It had been about five weeks since that day in the doctor's office, and so far everything was still going well, but Maya couldn't help wanting to make sure anyway.

"Hey, baby girl, how was it this morning?" Katy asked after she'd picked up.

"First half went by without a hitch," Maya told her. "Then I got stuck on one question and my mind started to wander. I thought about what might happen if I just up and went into labor right there in the middle of taking my test. What would they do with that?" Her mother laughed.

"But you didn't," she reminded her.

"Well, no, but I've still got like five more of these, that's five more chances of it happening. You know, final exams, not the most relaxed of times."

"You are my smart, beautiful daughter," Katy declared. "You will get through this week and show them what's what."

"Are you trying to make me cry right now, you know I start easy," Maya smiled.

"You think that's bad, I can do you one better," Katy chuckled. There was silence as seconds went by. Maya was about to ask where she'd gone when she heard a chime from her phone. "Use your computer to open that?"

"Uh, okay, hold on," Maya told her, trying not to look like she was pouting at the thought of getting up off the couch, even if her mother couldn't see her. She walked to her desk. Walked… Waddled, more like. "E-mail… e-mail…" she mumbled to herself as she opened her laptop and went to find the new message, which contained an attachment, a video.

"Sound on," her mother added, just as she had the mouse hovering over the video file. Maya's finger paused for a moment. She knew what would be in there now, and it made her nervous and excited all at once. Finally, she clicked, and the video screen popped up while she was pushing for the volume to go up. In what felt like a repeat of months ago, the rapid little drum of a fetal heartbeat flooded her ears. It wasn't her own baby's heart this time around. On the screen, she could see the image captured along with this sound, of her new baby brother or sister.

"Okay, that's not fair," Maya reached for one and then two tissues from her desk, eyes blurring with tears at the sight of that little human. Much as she knew that any number of things could still go wrong for her mother and this baby, she had been going on the side of cautious optimism for all these weeks. And this? This tiny shadow of a person with a strong, beating heart… That was someone who was fighting to live, and she believed in them. "I kind of needed that today," she admitted.

"Happy to help," her mother told her, sounding like she was crying, too. "Shawn says he doesn't want to know if it's a boy or a girl when the time comes, doesn't even want to make any wagers on it. He just wants a healthy baby in his arms when this is all over, and I'm with him on that."

"That makes three of us," Maya nodded.

When Lucas would walk out of his second final of the day, he would look up and spot a familiar figure waiting for him on a nearby bench, reading through her notes. The moment he came to sit next to her, she reached at her other side and produced a paper bag containing a donut.

"Read my mind," he hummed, digging in at once. As he ate, she casually reached into her bag, pulling out her earbuds, connecting them, and reaching out to put them carefully in his ears. He just let her do it, gladly. As he went on eating, she held up her phone and a video started. The sound that played in his ears was a familiar one, though he would swear he could tell just from hearing it that this wasn't their son's heartbeat. With the video, he soon guessed who it belonged to.

"I kind of want to put that in my ears tonight," she told him.

"I had a movie picked out and everything," he 'complained,' making her laugh. "Still feels like that day just happened," he shook his head, looking at the video.

"Yeah, a lot of things do," she pointed out, running a hand over her belly.

"Home or library?" he asked, before she could sink into those thoughts that threatened to keep her up the night before. He held out the bag to her, offering a bit or all of what remained of his donut. She declined, assuring him she'd already had her treat.

"Home, please."

X

Tuesday

"The woman just kept hovering by my desk the whole time, like she wanted to be right there in case I was going to go and start to have the baby," Maya recounted to Lucas as the two of them were driving home that afternoon.

They'd each only had one final today, both just after lunch, which had allowed them a fairly easy morning, waking up on their own time, starting their review just after breakfast, until the time had come to head to the university. There, they'd shared their lunch before splitting off to take their respective tests. This time around Lucas was the one to finish first, so he was there outside the class when Maya emerged, giving him the same sort of 'yes, one more down!' smile.

"Well, that's… nice?" Lucas asked.

"Oh, at heart, sure, but how would you feel if the whole time you were taking your test, all you could see in your periphery is the same swishing skirt walking the same six feet the whole time?"

"Okay… yeah…" he tried not to laugh, because it did sound kind of bad.

"I swear, by the end of that test, I could draw the pattern on it with my eyes closed. Because it's imprinted on the back of my eyelids," she pointed to her face. "If they didn't all know I was pregnant in that room, it would have looked like she thought I was cheating and she had to keep an eye on me."

"Think any of the others did cheat while she was busy with you?" Lucas suggested. She groaned.

"You know what, probably."

"Hey… One more down," he reminded her.

"You're already halfway through yours, how did that happen?" she sighed.

"I have all the rest of mine on Friday, it's a good thing I have two days free to prepare." That meant the next time they drove back home on a day when he had finals, too… they would be done. And they'd be moving back to Austin two days later.

Before she could let her mind go to the sad place, Maya was brought back to reality by the sound of her phone ringing with a Skype call. She looked at the screen and saw it was Brianna.

"Hey," she answered, finding the girl sitting – she guessed – in her bedroom, at her desk.

"Hey, I'm not bothering you, am I?" Brianna asked. She always did, and Maya wished she could get to the point where she'd understand that she was her friend, and she was not a bother.

"You're not," she still assured her. "We're just driving home from university. Say hi, Lucas."

"Hi, Brianna," he called out.

"Hey, Lucas," Brianna replied.

"So, what's up?" Maya asked her. Brianna turned her head to look somewhere off screen, motioning for someone to come forward. A moment later, a boy came into view, crouching until his face could be seen. Just by the way they behaved, being near one another, Maya could guess who this was. Jay, the boyfriend and potential baby daddy number two. "Hey, I'm Maya," she introduced herself.

"Sanjay Khatri," he tipped his head with a shy smile. Maya wasn't sure how to telegraph to Brianna 'did you tell him yet?' so she'd know what she could or couldn't say. Last she'd heard from her young new friend, she was still not 'out' at her school for being pregnant, and more importantly she wasn't out with either of the boys who could be the father of her unborn child. If she was calling her now though, she had to hope it meant something had changed on that front, but she had to make sure anyway.

"He knows," Brianna thankfully caught on. "I told him… everything." Maya breathed out, at once relieved but also left to wonder…

"Are you okay?" she asked them both, though a bit more to Jay, who was just now finding out he may or may not have gotten Brianna pregnant.

"I'm getting used to knowing, I guess," the boy told her, sounding very much his age at this point. Maya and Lucas were lucky enough that, even though by many people's standards they were still kind of young to be having their first child, twenty-one and twenty-two, it was nothing compared to Brianna and Jay, who were both sixteen and still in high school. At the same time, even if he looked just a bit scared, reasonably so, Maya could see something like resolve in him.

"And what about the other guy?" she asked. There was no point being coy about it.

"Told him, too," Brianna confirmed, stealing a look to Jay as she did. She looked entirely more uncomfortable over this than he ever did. It wasn't as though she'd cheated on him. She'd gotten together with this first guy, her first time and their only time, and shortly thereafter Jay had gotten up the courage to confess his feelings to best friend Brianna. They'd gone on a date, and one thing had led to another… Afterward, they'd decided maybe it had been rushing into things, and they would 'do things properly' for a while. Except then a few weeks later Brianna had found out she was pregnant, and now here they were.

"How'd that go?" Maya had to ask. Brianna had never spoken too much about him, which left her to fear if he might have been more the kind of Cameron Ellis' father, who'd told Ainsley to 'take care of it.'

"He doesn't want people knowing he might be the father," Brianna replied. "But he swears that, if it is his baby, he'll be involved." She said this in such a way that suggested she was confident this was the truth. For her sake, if it turned out this was her baby's father, Maya hoped it was true. Her gaze moved back to the other boy in this equation though. Jay. The boyfriend. She wouldn't ask, but going by the way he looked at her, she would wager that, whoever was this baby's biological father, if he and Brianna stayed together then that baby would have him as a father, too.

"Does that mean you've decided what you're going to do?" That much she had to ask. The whole time she'd known her, Brianna had stated that she didn't know if she would keep this baby, whether that meant giving it away or not having it at all or…

"I… We… We're going to keep it," Brianna told her, looking to Jay, who nodded back at her with a smile.

X

Wednesday

Maya had two finals today, one in the morning, and the other shortly after lunch time. She had gotten through that first one by now, and she was back in Professor Robinson's office to review for the second one, though her head was still caught up in the frustration of her morning's 'adventures,' which made it hard to concentrate on what she was supposed to be reading.

"Damn it…" she groaned, sitting back and taking a deep breath after she realized she'd been rereading the same paragraph for a while now.

Being at school all through her pregnancy hadn't come without the occasional problem, much as the majority of her professors had been very understanding. She hadn't gone to the trouble of telling any of them in the very beginning, as they were well into the fall semester by then and no one would even notice unless she said something. Seeing as they were still looking to keep things quiet at this point, that almost went without saying.

Then, after they'd come back from break, in January, and she'd been dressing to let her little belly be noticeable, there'd been the parade of going from professor to professor and 'revealing' what they could all see with their own two eyes. She had always done her best to schedule doctor's appointments where she didn't have class, but there had been times where she didn't have a choice to either be late or leave early or not show up at all. She had never missed an assignment, and her work had not suffered, and so on that front there'd been no reproach whatsoever.

The man who watched over this morning's exam did not know her, nor had he been around pregnant women all that much, by the looks of things. Naturally, this was the time her sprout of a child had decided to put on a show, and he'd gone straight for the bladder… a few times. When she'd had to excuse herself the first time, just a few minutes into the allotted time, he'd given her a disapproving 'you should have gone before' look and let her go. When she'd had to go a second time, it didn't get any better. By the third time, she genuinely tried to hold it in, or to tell herself it was gonna be one of those times where she didn't need to go after all, but there was nothing to do for it, so she'd had to get up again. The supervisor had made his assistant follow her.

After three interruptions, she was already starting to feel like she was losing grasp of what she needed to put down for her actual exam, and she was worried that she'd run out of time. She was nearly done, and so was their time, and she could feel the urge rising again, but all she'd had to do was to look up and see the supervisor look back at her and she knew if she went up there he would make a fuss. He'd either refuse outright, wasting what little time she had left, or he'd take her test away and wouldn't give it back. So, she'd mustered up every ounce of concentration she had left in her, and she'd finished the test. The moment she'd been done, she'd gotten up, feeling like she had a ticking clock over her head, and now the numbers were flashing red. She'd moved up to the desk, her willpower now concentrated on restraint, and she'd dropped the booklet in front of the man, keeping his gaze the whole time. Then she was out of there as fast as she could manage.

She was so mad, and more than that, now she was concerned about what would happen if she got another one of those in another of her finals. That wasn't how she wanted her time at this university to end, and if it affected her performance…

There was a knock at the office door, and she startled, turning toward the sound. The professor wasn't here, was one of her students looking for her?

"Delivery!" a voice announced from the other side, and she smiled.

"It's open!" she called back, and Lucas walked in, carrying a bag and a tray. Even across the room, she recognized the overall scent: fare from the Nook. "Oh, I love you, let me have your baby…" she hummed dramatically. "Right, already doing that," she smiled as he shut the door and came over to the couch, leaning forward to kiss her.

"Lunch break?"

"So much," she nodded, setting her notes aside and rising to join him at her desk. He set out the pair of containers, utensils and all, and then they sat together and started to eat. For a little while, she could forget about her crappy morning and just enjoy good food with the one she loved. Her life was slowly turning into a non-stop attack of 'look at all the things you're doing for the last time,' and this was probably going to be one of if not the last time she would have breakfast from the Nook in a long time… She wouldn't let it add to her mountain of woes.

"How was it this morning?" Lucas asked, and she was glad for the bite she was currently chewing, as it provided her with cause to take her time and sound truthful when she said…

"Fine, good," she nodded casually. "Some parts were giving me trouble, but I got through."

"That's great," Lucas smiled, which made her smile. He would look at her so often with this underlying expression on his face, like he was always so proud of her. When he was actually, actively encouraging her, the whole effect was as powerful as could be. She'd look at that face, telling her that he believed she could do anything, and she'd be taken with this feeling that… yeah… she could do anything. "Want me to quiz you for the next one?"

"Yeah," she chuckled. "Go for it."

X

Thursday

Lucas woke up this morning, and in the quiet of that May morning, his mind started to pile up with a few facts. One: this was day two of his hyper review for the next day's triple finals day (or as Maya would insist on calling it, his final finals final day). Two: this was the last slow day he'd spend in Houston, with finals the next day, work the day after that, and the move back to Austin the day after that. Three: he was twenty-two years old, today.

He had insisted on there not being a fuss made over it, as he'd done the previous year. His birthday always landed in the middle of finals week, and everyone – including himself – needed to focus. This year, he suspected, they would be bending around that rule, the following evening, for instance, when they were throwing their going away party for him. Maya wasn't aware of this party's existence, of course, so though she still slept now, he knew it was only a matter of time before she did… something festive.

"Hey, kiddo," he whispered, taking this time for some one-on-one time with the sprout. He set his hand lightly to her belly, closing his eyes like he could just see that little boy in there… their son… Waiting these last few weeks to meet him was really just getting to make him feel like a little kid, waiting for Christmas, when the best, greatest present he could have ever asked for was just there, wrapped up in a box that couldn't be opened yet… "We're almost home, the three of us," he told him. "Three more sleeps."

"That's a lot of threes," a sleepy voice told him. He turned his eyes up to find Maya was staring back at him with a smile.

"Lucky number," he declared, moving up to kiss her, even as his hand stayed where he'd set it. "Morning."

"Happy birthday," she replied, reaching to hold his face in her hand. "I was going to do so much this morning, you know?" He nodded. Of course, he knew. As they'd grown closer to one another, in the years they had known one another and especially in the years they had been a couple, it was a certainty in his life that when his birthday rolled around, Maya would go and make sure his day was memorable. This usually involved a fair number of things which would be extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve in her current state. He didn't mind it, he never would, not when this was the reason, but he knew Maya would definitely mind. She wanted to do what she always did, but now she couldn't.

"What if next year you just sort of… doubled up?" he offered.

"What, like this?" she held her hand several inches above her belly, making him laugh. "But yeah… I guess that might work," she brought her hand back down, laying it on top of his. Bringing up the next year's birthday meant conjuring up an image in which their son was nearly a year old already, which was astounding to consider.

For now, all they could do was get out of bed and get on with their day, which would involve a lot of studying for the both of them. No tests for either of them today, but then tomorrow she'd have her last two, and he'd have his last three… They had debated going to the library, like some kind of last hurray for their soon to be former university, but then Maya didn't do so well with the library these days, so instead they decided to stay here, where they could be dressed as comfortably as they wanted, sit wherever they wanted, could talk, and eat, and drink, and put on music if they so chose. It was his birthday, and he decided to make it his birthday wish. Maya was all too happy to grant it.

X

Friday

They woke up even as the sun was starting to show itself. This was it, one last day at the university and it would be over. They'd only have one more full day to spend here, in Houston, before they packed up the rest of their belongings – by now fitting in Lucas' car and Hank's truck, which would follow them into Austin. They didn't have time to think about it though, not now. Right now, it was finals upon finals, and neither of them would have time to think about much anything else until the end of the day.

With Lucas' first test starting at eight, he and Maya had not wasted any time in getting ready and leaving the house, setting any thoughts aside of nostalgia and bittersweet moments. As her own first test wasn't until nine, Maya had accompanied Lucas up to where his first test would take place, leaving him a three good luck kisses, one for each of those finals he'd be sitting that day, as in all likelihood their schedules would not permit them to meet again until the end of the day. That was alright though. That meant that the next time they did see each other this day would be good and done.

When Maya stepped out of her first test, she looked to her phone and discovered messages waiting.

Lucas: One down! I think it went well.

This was accompanied by a picture of him giving his best impression of her celebratory expression. She chuckled, with half a mind to show him how it was really done. The next message, by the time stamp, had been sent all of a minute ago.

Lucas: Heading into number two soon, let me know how it went this morning? I'll see it on my way to the last one. 366

She'd known they would miss each other this way, but it still made her sigh as she typed out her reply.

Maya: First one went well. Baby slept through it I think, I think he absorbed my boredom with this class. Off to grab lunch now. You ate, right?

Lunch was bought and taken back to Professor Robinson's office where she would spend the next near on two hours buckling down for her final final, which so happened to be for the woman in question's class. It felt borderline inappropriate for her to be there, so close to this test, but no doubts were going to keep her from taking a breather on that couch… one last time.

"I had a feeling I'd be seeing you," the professor declared, as Maya opened the door to the office and found the woman sitting at her desk. "I came prepared," she indicated her own lunch already waiting.

"It's okay, right?" Maya smiled, shutting the door and moving up to join her.

"Of course! Please, have a seat," Patty Robinson stood and moved around so she might sit on one of the receiving chairs along with her student, rather than to hold her position across the desk. "My goodness, I still find myself almost surprised when I see you," she laughed lightly, indicating the great bump of thirty-five weeks' growth.

"Do you know, I don't usually have that problem myself," Maya joked. "It kind of follows me around…"

"Oh, not for much longer now," the woman beamed, though just as soon pulling it back, noting that flicker in the mom-to-be's face. "But after that, it'll be even better," she course-corrected, and Maya nodded.

"It will be," she agreed. "I'm sorry, my head just likes to go places these days, whether I want it to or not."

"That tends to be the case, yes. Well, now, let's dig in, I am all ears on any subject you might wish to discuss."

"Except this final of yours," Maya guessed.

"Yes, that would be the exception," Patty chuckled.

Lucas had made it through his second final in a very satisfactory time, which was what he had hoped for as much as what he had expected. This had been one of his easier classes, not because the subject matter was overly simple but because he understood it very well and thrived in it. It afforded him one last push for review, for his last test. He had been studying so hard the past two days, and he didn't see himself being able to take in much more than he already had, but then with only one subject left to focus on, the path was just a bit more open.

Once his last test – his final final – had started, he was focused on that alone, even as he thought about how close he was to everything falling into place. He'd go and find Maya – or more likely she'd be outside the room waiting for him, as she'd be done before him – and they would go home. There'd be the party with their friends, and it would be good times for all. Tomorrow, he'd be working at Coleman's one last time. And Sunday they would leave Houston and move into their house in Austin. If he'd ever needed anything to motivate him, he had more than enough here.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners