Chapter 66
Begin Again

"You know, I'd love to let them have all the time they need right now, but I really need to go to the bathroom right now…" Maya turned to Lucas as they sat in the car still, watching/not watching as Nadine and Zay stood just a few feet ahead of them outside, holding to one another and talking still as though the whole of the world had disappeared other than them. "And Elliott's bound to wake up any second now," Maya looked into the back, reaching her hand as she'd done plenty of times now, to check on their son.

"We could probably walk right by them and they wouldn't notice," Lucas suggested, pointing toward their friends. Maya turned her head again and found the reunited pair were now good and locked in a kiss and not looking to come up for air any time soon.

"Well… good," Maya blinked, trying not to laugh. "You take the baby, and I'll just…" she motioned toward the house so as to say 'I really, really need to go."

"Done and done," Lucas nodded, and they were off. Opening the car doors as quietly as possible, they climbed out, and while Lucas worked to get Elliott out of the back without waking him, Maya kept a wide circle around their friends so as not to disturb them before veering toward the porch steps and climbing as fast and silently as her needs would allow.

As soon as she had the door open, she kicked off her boots and started up the stairs, mentally swearing over how far the bathroom was and distracting herself from this by trying to think how likely and feasible it would be that they could get a third bathroom built on to the house, on the ground floor, so they would not have to go up or down stairs every time. That'd be a reasonable ask, wouldn't it? With two little kids to look after before long, and already one who didn't always 'respect the diaper' when he went… She'd have to run that by Lucas, yeah. They were still thinking about getting an attic on the place, sure, but wouldn't this be important, too?

"Bee, you and I are going to have to have a chat about you taking freedoms with my bladder, huh?" Maya breathed as she finally got up the stairs and down the hall into the bathroom.

Meanwhile, Lucas had gotten Elliott's seat from the car. He still slept, but Lucas had stared at this boy enough times to know he would be coming around very soon, as Maya had said. The car was left turned on for the time being, leaving Zay and Nadine with the lights uninterrupted. Lucas would have to come back out to turn it off and grab the rest of their things once those two snapped out of it. Hopefully, they wouldn't take too long.

Making a wide berth as his wife had done, Lucas brought the car seat into the house, and he'd barely had time to set it down and shut the door that Elliott started to wake up in earnest and started to cry. Lucas unzipped and tossed his jacket before crouching to get him out of his seat.

"Hey now, alright, we're home, it's alright, okay?" Lucas promised, holding the baby close for a moment, casually checking to see if his diaper was in any way to blame for this reaction – it wasn't – before getting his boots off and starting up the stairs, humming under his breath to try and calm his boy. "Christmas is over, huh?" Lucas asked, sensing they might have hit a 'cranky spike,' which would mean a good stretch of holding and rocking and doing about every last thing they could think of that might calm him again. When he got like this, they knew that even those usually sure fire tricks could fall flat. "Okay, let's see," Lucas sighed, walking into the nursery and sitting in the rocking chair. They had two of them now, one in their room and one here, which really was reasonable, all things considered.

After a moment, he started at their top lullaby, the one composed by Elliott's grandfather long ago, and given words by his mother, just months ago. It had the best track record. Lucas would always feel like he had to apologize, as he didn't have the singing down nearly as well as Maya did, who could just inhabit the song like she had the ability to reach into the listener's heart and mind and brush away all the bad bits, until they were good and calm again. Elliott at least did not seem to hear the difference, and when he'd hear the familiar air, more often than not, he'd stop crying. Tonight, it took a good minute or two, but then it took a turn, and Elliott calmed down. Lucas smiled, feeling like his heart was glowing, right there in his chest, for how much he loved this little guy. The more he grew, oh… He looked like him, yes, but he had so much of his mother in him, too, and that was just…

"You know how much I love to hear you sing to him like that?" He looked up to find Maya standing in the nursery's doorway.

"I try not to abuse that power," he let her know, and she held in her laughter as best she could, moving toward the chair. "Feeling better?"

"So much," Maya breathed out. "Now I have only the one… extra load," she gestured at herself. Lucas reached up at this, lightly drumming his fingers at her belly as though greeting their good Bee and seeing if he or she might reward him with motion, contact. "Everything's quiet in there now, too," Maya told him, nodding to Elliott, who was drifting off again in his arms.

"Yeah, what about out there though?" Lucas wondered. In response, Maya snatched up the baby monitor and motioned for him to follow. He set Elliott in his crib before doing so.

"I don't see the car lights," Maya told him as he caught up with her halfway down the stairs. The reason for this became clear, as they got down to find Zay and Nadine bringing in the last of their things from the car, the keys left with Lucas' discarded jacket. "Alright, be honest, are you Santa Claus?" Maya asked Zay with a smile.

"Hey, mama," he came up to her now and embraced her. She returned the gesture, so thrilled to finally have him in person again. "Look at you, wow," he stood back a moment later, setting his hands to her belly as one with free permission might. "You guys aren't messing around, are you?"

"That is… so easy, I can't even say anything," Lucas laughed, getting his turn now at hugging his best friend, clapping him on the back as he did. "I'd ask you what brings you here, but that's pretty clear," he stole a look to Nadine, who had a smile stuck to her face like it would not dislodge so soon. "I still want to hear the story."

"I second that," Maya raised her hand.

"Alright, you got it, but first I have…" Zay moved to the one item he had brought in which had not come from Lucas' car but the rental truck, and that was a small cooler, which he opened before his friends. "I brought back a bit of New York for you, the part you can eat," he revealed. Maya had instant wide eyes.

"Welcome home, Babineaux," she smiled back at him.

Two minutes later, they were sitting around the kitchen table, some of Zay's treats set before them, happily found to have survived the trip. He had made the drive out from New York, just as Maya and her mother had done years before, leaving bright and early on Christmas Eve, after having spent a farewell dawn with the group out there. Some of the things yet to be taken from his truck were presents from all of them, which he had brought along to save them shipping.

"This is why your parents didn't go to New York with the others, isn't it?" Lucas asked, finally understanding after having been surprised to hear they were staying in Austin. He'd hated to think that they might have been having problems as a family, but now…

"Yeah," Zay confirmed with a nod. "My mom wanted me to get here sooner, so I wouldn't miss today, but… I don't know, it felt right this way."

"What made you decide?" Maya asked, stealing a look toward Nadine as Lucas had done before, specifying she was looking for the actual triggering moment, as they already knew who had been at the heart of it.

"I guess it started right after Thanksgiving, after I saw she'd come out here to be with you guys," Zay replied, looking to Nadine, too. "I wasn't happy out there, by myself. I was with friends, but I felt alone. When I saw Nadine on the screen that day, I could just tell, she felt the same way, in Boston. And she didn't even have people the way I did. She had to come all the way back to Austin, couldn't even go to New York because… I was there."

He'd look back at her every so often, like he wanted to make sure he had it right. She wasn't denying it, and that was all they needed to know.

"Then, when I heard she was moving back here, leaving Boston, that's when it all clicked, you know? I didn't belong up there, I wasn't supposed to be there, I was supposed to be here… with Nadine. I didn't know if she'd take me back, but I had to try, I had to make my big move. Told the others, told my parents… I was sure some of them would tell me I was losing my mind, but they didn't. They all looked at me like they'd been waiting for me to come to my senses and do this already. My dad even paid for the truck, and then my mom paid to put me up in a hotel last night just so I wouldn't try and keep driving without stopping. GiGi made me call her every few hours so she could keep me company," he smiled. "It was alright though. Had the radio on, Christmas songs cranked on high… and a goal at the end of all this."

"And I don't know why I even need to ask, when you guys made out so much we had to sneak around you before, but you're… okay now?" Maya asked, motioning between Zay and Nadine. The two looked to one another.

"We sort of went with our emotions a bit back there," Nadine conceded, cheeks turning slightly pink and veering on red. "We still have a lot to talk about, but we want to work things out. Being apart just… It sucked." Zay tapped the table at this, showing his agreement.

"Right, well, Pappy Joe is back at my parents' house tonight, you two should be alright up there?" Lucas offered. "Or one of you can still have the couch, if you're not ready to share…"

"We'll be alright," Nadine assured him.

"Thanks, man," Zay nodded, before a thought came to him and brought a smile along for the ride. "Mind if I look in on my godson up there?"

"You wake him, you have to get him back to sleep," Maya pointed a finger at him.

"Now, what kind of godfather would I be if I left him hanging?"

Uncle Zay's visit with Elliott had gone off without a hitch, and as the friends had gone to their respective rooms, the baby had been brought back to his parents' room, to his old crib. Maya and Lucas had briefly considered leaving him in the nursery, starting off Operation Crib Switch a little early, but then it had been such a long and eventful day, and neither of the young parents could pretend like they wouldn't rather have had their boy in the room with him as they'd done since he was born.

"This is giving me flashbacks to when I was getting close to stopping work at the restaurant back in Houston last year," Maya breathed as she climbed into bed.

"Bad feet?" Lucas guessed.

"Had worse by the end last time, but yeah, no, not a fan of those," she gestured blindly to the ends of her legs, barely visible over Mount Bee with the way she was lying down.

"Want me to do something about it?"

"Nah, just come here and… spoons," she attempted to mime with her hands the big and little spoons, somehow succeeding in creating a little bump for the spoon that represented her.

"I can do that," Lucas smiled, climbing under the covers and helping her get under, too, before they turned to their favored sleep position. "Better?" he asked.

"Mmm, much," Maya hummed, eyes already closing. Lucas kissed her shoulder, his hand set flat against her belly as he settled down. "Today was really good," Maya quietly told him.

"Yeah?" he asked. She nodded. "Good. Hoped you'd think so."

Waking up the next morning, Lucas – with Elliott in his arms – and Maya made their way down the stairs toward the kitchen, where they found Nadine and Zay busying themselves with breakfast and multitasking this along with what they soon discovered to be an apartment search.

"So the talk went well then," Maya stated in greeting, and their friends turned around. Nadine immediately put her phone down on the counter so she might go over and steal Elliott.

"Might want to give him a minute, he's still clingy he won't want to let me go just yet," Lucas told her. "You are first in line once he wakes up more."

"I'm not saying we're encouraging this behavior, but he's tiny and he loves us the most and we support his choices," Maya gave a pleased smile, putting herself in her son's line of sight and sharing this look with him. He reached out his hand to her and she kissed his fingers. "Apartments?" she asked, still holding his hand, as she turned back to Nadine and Zay.

"Right, yeah," Nadine snatched up her phone again. "We found a few we want to look at, good ones, not just whatever was out there. Now that there's the two of us, it'll be different. Got one we really like, and it's not too far from the hospital, we're just waiting until it's not so early before we can put in a call about a visit. Maya gave an instant look which her former bandmate understood. "You can come with us if you want."

"Well… if that's cool with you two," she smiled as though the offer had come out of the blue.

Though the days she'd spent on bed rest had done much to help her recover her strengths, and Christmas had gone as well as she could have hoped it to go, Maya still felt the need not to exert herself too much in those days that followed. With Nadine there at least, she'd started back on her old exercise routine, after it had fallen to the side while she'd been helping her father, and her mother, too. As the days progressed, it did start to feel like she had more energy than she'd done in a while, and she really wanted to keep this up, especially for when Lucas would be starting at school again in the next week.

In the meantime, life carried on, and for the most part it carried on with Zay and Nadine and their search for a home. Stuck in this gap between Christmas and New Year's, they hadn't been sure what to expect as to availabilities. Maybe people would just not want to show apartments that week. The 'dream place' near the hospital had certainly introduced the thought, as the landlady would not see them until the third of January.

"What if we hold on to that one so much without having seen it and we end up letting something pass that would have been just as good?" Nadine had asked Zay as the four of them were driving to their third visit, three days after Zay had arrived.

Elliott was back home with Pappy Joe, the two of them resuming their habitual marathons of the great grandfather's shows. When Lucas had worried that this would be too much television for Elliott, Pappy Joe had reassured him with the fact that he didn't actually have the boy staring at the screen most of the time, and he had to admit he had seen this for himself, as often Elliott would be sat facing Pappy Joe, the better for him to tell him all about this character or that episode.

"We're not going to do that," Zay promised. "If we find something we love, it'll be 'January Who? Sorry, we already found our place."

Nadine laughed, and looking on from the rear-view mirror in the front, both Maya and Lucas loved to see how happy that sound made Zay. As much as they had carried on with their lives after the break up, as much as they could still be themselves, the truth was that, without one another, they just had not been the same. They had been miserable, and everyone who knew them and cared for them could see that there was just something missing, something that made them different people. From the moment Zay had come back to Austin, he and Nadine had been patching up those holes they'd left in one another, and now… now they were themselves again, truly and deeply.

They found their apartment on the thirtieth of December. After several visits over the span of four days, they had come across a number of places that were in their own ways okay, but none of them were really connecting. And then, 'January Who' had called them back, saying she had an opening for a visit, and she was offering it to them. It had been so sudden and Maya and Lucas had told them to go on ahead without them, as Maya was supposed to go and see her father that day, while Lucas had to work.

Lucas had picked his wife up from the Harts' after leaving the bookstore, and when they'd arrived home, he and Maya had found themselves surrounded by a jolly bunch, as Nadine helped Pappy Joe with dinner, while Zay was putting his skills forward as a prime infant entertainer. They couldn't say that they had heard Elliott laugh quite as much as they did in that moment.

"Hey, how did it go today?" Lucas asked, as Zay stood from the ground and picked up Elliott, the better to hand him to his eager mother.

"I have been told that I am not allowed to say anything until dinner," Zay replied, in the monotone voice of someone who had been given strict instructions. This only did so much of course, as even as he said these words, he was giving a slow, emphatic nod, and two thumbs up.

"Isaiah Babineaux, you couldn't even wait!" Nadine called from the kitchen, and he flinched now, looking around for where she might have been.

"She can't even see me," he told his friends before moving toward the kitchen. "I love you, Little Z, couldn't help myself!"

Even though Zay had already confirmed it for them, it was confirmed a second time over dinner that they had gotten the apartment near the hospital. The way they told it – with their words and with the pictures they had taken through their visit – it was even better than they had thought it would be from the listing. The place was already empty, and they would get the keys in just a few days, after which they would see about painting where they wanted to change the walls' colors. It had all been left in such pristine condition that there was nothing for them to fix, and if not for the paint, they could have just moved in the day they got the keys.

Now that Pappy Joe was back, and using his bed, Nadine had returned to the couch, while Zay took up an inflatable mattress which he would lay by her side. They might have decided to go right to the apartment once they had the keys, but then their bed – along with the rest of Nadine's belongings and furniture from the apartment in Boston – was still on its way and would not arrive until after the keys, so they were going to be sticking around with their friends until then.

"You know, I've been thinking about the appointment coming up," Maya told Lucas as she looked down at him, 'in talks' with the Bee on the morning of the thirty-first, the last day of the year. He turned his head to look at her and she smiled. He had heard her, but he didn't know what she'd said. "The appointment, next week, when we're supposed to find out if it's a… he-bee or she-bee," she explained, and oh how he smiled, too.

"What about it?" he asked, sitting back up from his usual belly talking position.

"I don't know, I'm just wondering if maybe we should not find out, if we should let it be a surprise. It's not like either way will be a disappointment."

"Definitely won't," Lucas agreed.

"I just thought about… being at the hospital, giving birth, and then the baby would come out, and they would tell us, and… that'd be a good feeling, wouldn't it?" she asked, with a hopeful little look.

"Yeah, I think it would," Lucas set his hand back to her belly, thinking about their little Bee. "The only reason we might really want to know before is so that we can be prepared, and… we are, aren't we? We have loads of Elliott's things…"

"Which might be too small for him now but are still practically new, thanks to us and our super one-two pregnancy punch," Maya nodded with a sigh.

"And if it's a girl, well, we still have plenty to get us going, and we can catch up very fast, especially with all those grandparents hanging around," he laughed, thinking of all those presents they'd been forced to pile up in the nursery after Christmas. "Pretty sure someone stuck in some very girl-like clothing in there, like they were trying to manifest themselves a granddaughter. I don't even remember who gave what anymore."

"We will figure everything out once the baby's born. Anyway, the whole 'blue is for boys, pink is for girls' thing…" Maya shrugged. "So… surprise?"

"I'm in," Lucas nodded.

"Great," Maya smiled, then after a beat, "Should I let you two get back to your conversation there?" she asked, pointing to her belly.

"Hey, feel free to join in anytime…"

They both froze a moment later. Oh, the baby's movements had definitely started to feel a bit more kick-like in recent days, but whenever she'd try and get anyone to feel it, they would say they got nothing. This time though, Maya only had to have one look at Lucas' face to know that he had felt it, there underneath his palm.

"Alright, Bee, that was a solid hello," Maya felt that familiar tug at her heart, the one she'd had whenever she felt something new, with this baby and last year, too, with Elliott. Each one was taking them a step closer to that little kicker inside her belly being outside of it and in her arms, and Lucas' arms… and it felt like nothing else she'd ever known.

The new year was only a day away, and she knew already that it would be wonderful, despite the fact that, at some point, somewhere, it would be not so wonderful, when Kermit would be lost to them. But then he above any others would want them to focus on the good things, and that was what they would do. Elliott, the Bee… they were and would continue to be those brightest spots on the horizon.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners