February 10th 2023

Chapter 41
We Greet One Another

It was not the easiest thing to navigate getting ready to leave the house for any event where they would leave their daughters behind, but date nights were a category all their own, the lowercase or the capital ones. Most of them didn't seem to understand the purpose of it. Their parents were leaving to go have dinner at a restaurant, well, why couldn't they go, too? They loved eating at restaurants. Going to see a movie? They loved that even more! Whatever the activity was, according to the Friar girls, it was something where they should all have been present, so they didn't get why all of them should be excluded. They would try and explain it to them, as would Marianne, to the best of her abilities, but there would still be this sentiment in them like they were being excluded from something fun. The feeling generally wouldn't last too long before being forgotten, so they didn't worry so much.

Besides, if there was one part the girls loved about their parents' date nights, it would be the one where they got to watch them get ready, get transformed, and for that there was nothing better than a capital D Date night, as they were to have on this night. Lucas had taken his things down to the basement, the better to leave Maya the bathroom up on the first floor and their room to get ready in. While she'd been in the shower, the girls had been down below, watching as their father shaved. It was a wonder that he didn't cut himself more than once, what with the view of the six of them stuck in the doorway reflected in the mirror. When he had cut himself, there'd been a big rush of small girl hands wanting to reach and tend to him, and he'd assured them that he was fine, only letting them touch his face once he was done. Oh, they loved this part, when his cheeks would be all smooth and he'd 'smell all nice' the way he did…

The moment they'd heard sounds to suggest that their mother was out of the shower upstairs and probably in the process of getting herself ready, the girls had scurried out of the basement and up to find her, with Marianne carrying her baby sister to prevent her rushing to keep up with the others and getting hurt. As fascinated as they were with their father's shaving, they just loved watching as their mother fixed her hair, did her makeup… They wanted to touch everything, and there'd be some things kept out of their reach, but not all of them. If they held very still, she might apply a bit of color to their faces and they'd be in awe of the results, turning their faces this way and that in the mirror like they'd seen her and others do… They watched her slip on her chosen dress, sometimes providing input on her choice, and then there'd be the jewelry to look through and wasn't that just wonderful?

"Okay, come on, come on, Lucky, right here," Marianne motioned for the others to follow her out once Maya was ready. The next part was her personal favorite, and they needed to be downstairs for it. They'd get to stand by and see when their father and mother would discover the results of their respective preparations, and to them there wouldn't even be the full notion of how they still looked to each other the way they'd done way back when they'd first been dating, long before any of them were born.

"Mommy, I wanna take pictures," Lucy declared.

"Pictures of us?" Maya asked, chuckling as she nodded. "Sure, alright, here," she passed her phone over, unlocking it first. The four-year-old knew what to do from there, even as the others worked to direct their mother and father to stand together. Later, the two of them would confirm they'd both had the same thought of prom night as they'd stood there, and they'd come this close to bursting into laughter.

They'd been rescued there by the arrival of the night's sitters, Pappy Tom and Granny Mel. Wyatt was working on a paper that evening or else he would have happily looked after his nieces. Oh, but Lucas' parents had been more than happy to step in, and the same went with their granddaughters when they received them. From there, Lucas and Maya were completely free to take off for their Date, and so they went after a round of hugs and kisses and good night wishes. If all went as it should, the girls would be asleep in their beds by the time their parents returned.

They tried to make a point of it to go out, just the two of them, at least once a month, two or three times if they managed it, but it wasn't so easy with six young daughters to look after at home, with careers that kept them as busy as they did. Oh, they did pretty well with compensating in small moments, and either way neither one of them had ever felt shortchanged. Their lives were just as they had set out to have them, and that was where and how their happiness shone the brightest. Nights like these… They were bonus, they were rewards, cherished, too, especially once they'd gotten to a place where they were able to 'clock out' of parent mode and actually focus on one another without thinking 'oh, what about the girls' at every turn.

"Hey, so, your project for the afterschool," Maya sat back, after they'd ordered their dinner, as she remembered what had led to his asking her out for this night to begin with. It had been just long enough since the last time they'd spoken about it that she could have been forgiven for forgetting it all. They'd already had to cancel and reschedule twice before finally making it, and the subject had never come up again, like they'd both put it in limbo because they'd agreed that they'd talk about it on this one night. When she brought it up, Lucas looked lost for a moment before he remembered and smiled.

"I haven't really…"

"I want to hear about it, please?" she insisted, giving him her best 'you have my whole attention, I'm listening' face. "I know you've been thinking about it."

"Yeah, well, that's what I get for being married to you. I think I've absorbed some of your… project brain," he told her, and she nodded like that was definitely a thing.

"You're welcome," she whispered, tacked a grin on after a beat and made him laugh. "So, you wanted to have arts and crafts with the groups…"

"I do," Lucas nodded. "And I've been thinking about how to get it started, too," he went on. She nodded for him to go on. "It didn't feel right to go and just make them do something for Valentine's Day."

"Oh, no, I'm with you there," Maya nodded. It always sounded cute in theory, but sometimes it all got to feel like too much, especially with the kids being as small as they were.

"But spring's coming up, so I was thinking we could have something like… like a spring festival, at Sullivan Stables." She knew just what he had in mind when he said the words. She saw a mirror to the long-loved fall festivals, which they had visited together for about as long as they'd known each other, and that in itself made it the perfect implementation of this new arts and crafts project of his. It was kind of perfect already.

They talked about it as they waited for their food and after they received it and ate. It all started with these art projects, sure, but it would go beyond that, had to, across so much of what made Sullivan Stables what it was. The ranch was 'so very lucky' to book the talents of local bands like TXNY and the Hexes as entertainment for this festival.

Of all the thoughts to come and find her as she stopped by the restaurant's bathrooms for a quick touch up, Maya got to thinking of… babies… It was probably all this talk of the spring festival, of rebirth, nature, all of that… Just now, they had Rosa about to deliver their friends' baby, and Cara and Mateo's second due not too long after, the same for Phoebe and Khalil, and then of course Wyatt and Alicia… however that was going to turn out…but then there was her and Lucas, too.

Oh, she wasn't pregnant, and there'd been no instance where she'd come to think that she might be, not since the days of Aubrey. And it wasn't as though she and Lucas were actively and determinedly attempting to get pregnant, but they had at least opened the door, hadn't they, when he had gone and gotten his procedure reversed. They had decided to move away from that reaction following Aubrey's birth, to allow chance, if it so chose, to grant them another child. They weren't trying, but if she was honest with herself, she would have to say that some part of her at least had started almost hoping, waiting to see what would happen every month. And sometimes, whether she admitted it or not, she was… kind of disappointed when nothing happened. It was mad, wasn't it? They had seven daughters, most of them still so small. And they wanted to add a baby on top of that? Yeah, we do…

Maybe it wouldn't happen, maybe too much had happened after last time, and that was how it needed to be. This was never about lack, only ever about having more power for love in them. Just now, this was all such a strange train of thought for her to follow, and once she'd recognized this, she could stop, and collect herself, and head back to find her husband.

"Everything alright?" Lucas asked when she returned. Leave it to him to pick up on this vibe in her, huh? It wasn't a fix, nor was she looking for one, but she responded by embracing him, and he returned the gesture, kissed the side of her head before pulling back to look at her.

"I can see that smile of yours, just sitting back there on standby," she pointed out with a smirk, the better to get said expression to emerge again; it appeared, and she slowly nodded. "There it is." That was the look he got, looking at her, the one that made it clear, no matter the years, how much he loved her; she had one just like it. They may not have walked around with those very bright smiles on display every moment of their lives, but it was like she'd said, wasn't it? They always had that smile in them, sitting back until it could be given the space to emerge again, and then there'd be no holding it back.

"Hey, so, I know we had a good idea of where we wanted to go after this, but I had a thought, relating to… everything else we were talking about before, the spring fest?"

"Oh, yeah?" she asked, intrigued once more.

"Would you like to head to the art store for some supplies?" Oh, those were magic words for her if there ever were any… Naturally, she would love to go there.

"We're going to be the most overdressed people in there, you do know that?" she asked as they walked to the car. "We better be careful not to spill anything on ourselves," she teased him. "Maybe we should change first…" she suggested, knowing, and hoping she knew how he would react. He looked at her, at the dress she was wearing that night, and his eyes read as someone who would have been very disappointed if he no longer got to see her in it. "Or we can just be careful." She swore he sighed in relief.

"We can definitely do that."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners