A/N: [December 26th 2024]

December 26th 2023

Chapter 360
We Dance With August Girls

Cheer camp in the summer had really become Betsy's baby, and she ran it so well that Maya rarely ended up out there, though she did check in when the opportunity presented itself. When the girls asked to go and see the cheerleaders, she couldn't very well turn that opportunity away, could she? So, off they went, Maya and her six home girls, Ezra along with them. It gave Lucas an added time to do a bit of editing before their guests came along for the day, and she was nothing if not helpful.

She had been having discussions with Betsy ever since the AP classes had become a thing, trying to figure out the best way to move forward now that her workload was about to change as it was. Much as she hated to think about stepping back from the squad after all they'd done together, she had to think about them, and the fact was that she might not have the same amount of time to dedicate to it as she used to have. She didn't want them to suffer for it. Betsy understood this, and she agreed, but not unlike Lucas she was looking for ways to see it that she didn't have to give up something she wanted. Eventually, they had reached the decision to essentially switch places. Betsy would become head coach, while Maya would assist her, and if it so happened that she was not available, Betsy would be more than up to the task of keeping their cheerleaders at the level they had been raised to in the time they'd all worked together. The part that made her happiest was that the squad fully supported this decision and supported her along with it.

They were a disciplined bunch, both the squad as it remained post-graduation and the hopefuls who'd come to participate ahead of tryouts in the fall, but they quickly moved away from the activity they'd been doing when they spied Maya and the kids coming along. They hurried over, a lot of big smiles, sweaty faces, swinging ponytails… Those who were already on the team knew the kids well, and they were as happy to see them as the kids were to see the cheerleaders. Even those who were brand new though were being warmly greeted by the Friar kids, and they showed the kind of people they were in how they responded. They were as discerning as anyone, and the girls and Ezra all seemed to get along with the hopefuls.

Even though they had not attended a single day of high school as of yet if they were of the incoming freshmen – which not all of the hopefuls were – they would of course have received the letter with regards to the new AP Art classes, to see whether they might land in the regular or advanced classes. For that, they were just as intrigued by this new slate of classes and what they would entail. Maya wasn't about to get into it with them, not even getting at the fact that she hadn't gotten it all sorted out yet, but she promised them all that she would make both the regular and advanced classes into something worthwhile. This didn't stop them all from having a load of questions spinning through their heads, but that was all they were going to get and it would have to do. With that sorted, Maya and the kids got to watch for a while as they got back to what they'd been doing before the interruption.

The whole ride back home, the girls were so happy to talk about what they'd seen and done. They may all have been in different activities, different sports, some more in line with cheer than others, but they had also followed the teachings of one Donna Devereaux before her passing, and they had done the same with her replacement, even though it could never be the same as when they'd had Donna. They could all have gone up there and done the choreography like the cheerleaders and the hopefuls had done it, probably, but only Mackenzie felt prompted to stand and imitate them, much to everyone's amusement. She showed a lot of promise for a six-year-old, and if they didn't know she already had her eye on the basketball team – naturally – they would have put her down as a shoo-in for the squad in roughly nine years' time. Instead, it became a debate of whether she'd want to play or cheer. Knowing her, she might get it in her head to play with the girls but cheer for the boys and any other team than her own.

They knew about the switch between their mother and Betsy, and it was harder for some of them to understand why their mother would go and do something like that, to understand why she would need to. They explained it as best they could as they continued on toward home, but it continued to bug them and not make sense to them. They liked that their mother was the coach, and they wondered if this meant that she didn't want to do it anymore. All she could give them was the promise that she did still want to be involved, and that was why she had to do it.

"Mommy, they're here! They're here!" Aubrey called up as they neared the house, as she was the first of the girls to look outside and be able to spot the familiar car and identify it. Once she called out, her sisters redirected their attention to see what she was seeing, what they would know already to be their older sister, and their brother-in-law, and their three nieces, the middle one being the reason for today's visit, as Miss Sunny Munroe was kicking off the ball for August girls with her second birthday.

They must not have arrived too long ago, as they were still outside and seeing to bringing in Melly's things, while the youngest of the three sisters was in her Pappy Luke's arms. The eldest of the sisters was the first to see the minivan approaching, and she was quick to approach it as it pulled to a stop. Maya rolled down the window, and Tori leaned in, beaming at her Nana who greeted her with a kiss to the cheek.

"You're early," Maya informed her. Tori laughed and shrugged. "You just missed me that much, huh?" Maya whispered, and her granddaughter nodded. "Well, that's fair."

She wasn't long out of the driver's seat that a rocket was running toward her with a bright, bright smile. It hardly seemed possible that their Sunny little granddaughter could already be two years old, but then there she was, and there was no contesting the sight of her or the memories she called up the moment she appeared. Time had flown on, and there was no doubt that she was two, but just in case anyone did forget, she could be counted on to remind them.

"Look at you, Miss Sunny, hey, kiddo!" Maya laughed, catching the small girl on the fly and raising her to sit in her arms. "That's a nice new dress you have, huh? Let me have a look at you," she pulled back to look at her, and Sunny touched at the fabric of her dress, tracing the pattern with her fingers. "I love it!"

"Nana, this Sunny day!" the girl proclaimed, her 'this' pressed heavy on the end to suggest there was an 'is' squeezed in there somewhere.

"It is, isn't it? It's your birthday?" Maya played like she didn't know, and Sunny nodded firmly before holding up two fingers. "That many?"

"Yeah-huh!" Sunny informed her.

"Wow!" Maya gave the appropriate response and got some giggles for it. "You're a big girl now, aren't you, Sunny Munroe?"

"Big! Big big!" she held out her arms to show it.

"Bigger than you were when you were born, that's for sure, but still little enough to fit in Nana's arms. That's a good size," Ella came along with a smile that just managed to hide away any maternal emotions at the fact that her sweet girl was growing up as she was.

"Yeah, I was thinking that, too," Maya smiled at her daughter.

As the family moved into the house, the better for the Friar kids to play with birthday girl Sunny and her sisters, they did not have to wait long for two more of Sunny's grandparents to appear in order to celebrate her birthday. It still felt the tiniest bit strange to think that they should share grandchildren with their friend' own mother, along with two of Maya's students' father, but then here they were. They would never have imagined, years back when they had first started to uncover the secret history of Jo Munroe, formerly Jocelyn Orlando, that they would all find themselves forever linked in this way. But here they all were now, with a history that they could laugh about and a very interesting story to someday pass on to their shared grandchildren. The best way they'd been able to know that they could have this connection with Peter and Jo Munroe was in how they had counted Tori as one of their grandchildren, no specifications as to the how or why, the moment Taylor and Ella had gotten together. She loved them as grandparents, too, as well she should be able to, and nothing else needed to be said.

Next to join them was Sunny's most favorite auntie – a rank no one argued for when they got to see them together – as Phoebe arrived with her sons and daughter and too many presents to be carried along on her own even as the boys helped. That was alright though, because she had help in bringing the pile of colorfully wrapped boxes destined for the birthday girl. There was only just enough time to stop and wonder who this might be, then if it might be who they thought… hoped for it to be… before the presents were lowered enough to reveal the smiling face of Khalil Russell.

No one in the Friar house had known to expect him, and the volume of their surprise proved it. They crowded in around him, and there was a lot of hugging, and talking over one another. The Russell children clearly had not been long reunited with their father, for how they stayed so very close to him, Myles and KJ right behind him and Estelle in his arms as soon as they were free to hold her and keep her from crying at being kept waiting. The one-year-old had not gotten to see so much of him in the thirteen months she'd been alive, but near or far they had always made sure that she knew who her father was and how much he loved her, and to see her with him now, they had achieved their goal.

They might have known he was back just from the smile on Phoebe's face upon arrival. She supported her husband every step of the way in all that he did, but she missed him like there was a vital piece of her missing whenever he was away, and now he was back. Provided that nothing changed – and they knew better than to assume that it wouldn't – then he should be with them all the way into the new year. They wanted to make the best of it for as long as they could, a big part of this being to spend time, the five of them together as a family.

They wanted to go out on a family vacation, the first of its kind in the few short years since they'd started having kids, and they would do so the following week, but in the meantime, under the advice and kindly insistence of Phoebe's parents, and the Friars, too, it was decided that Phoebe and Khalil would get a couple of nights to themselves first. The kids would spend one night at their grandparents' house, and another at their Uncle Taylor's. If they wanted to swing for an extra night or two, they could easily count on both Uncle Dylan and Uncle Kyle to step in and host Myles, KJ, and Estelle.

As for their accommodation, Lucas had insisted on receiving them at Mel's B&B, free of charge. As far as he was concerned, and Maya with him, they were family, and there was no more to it than that. They were humble enough to try and insist that they would pay for their stay at the bed and breakfast, but in the end they accepted the offer with great thanks and gratitude. Taylor whispered something to his sister that made her playfully elbow him in the side and he moved off with a laugh that highlighted how he continued to be a carbon copy of a younger Dylan Orlando. The other adults had a good idea of what he'd told her, and Jo mildly scolded her son before chuckling it off.

It might not have felt like the thing to do, to give away one of the few rooms they currently had that wasn't occupied by packs of teenage campers, but Lucas would not have it any other way. People already thought that it was not the brightest move for them to block off rooms for the campers, or to expect any other guests to have to share the house with all these teenagers, especially in the summer, but the bed and breakfast was operating exactly as they would want it to. That being said, they did occasionally consider the not impossible idea of finding another place to house the campers somewhere on the property. There weren't so many free spaces for them to claim, but it wasn't so out of the question for them to go and add a new building that would be theirs to occupy over the summer months. Lucas had been thinking about it over the last few years, when they'd been in camp season, but never so seriously as to take any steps toward making it happen… not yet. This year was the first time when he felt that they might do it, and wanted to see where it would take him.

They sat for a while and shared stories of past guests at the bed and breakfast, anywhere from the good, to the bad, and even the ugly. They hadn't had so many of those, and they were thankful for it. They were not the kind of stories they would easily forget, so they could count them, and they still fit on just one hand. The one that jumped to mind the fastest had happened not long after the attack on Lucas and Sylvie. Neither of them had been back yet, and it was just as well, as no one would have wanted to see them submitted to the level of voyeurism that this incident had brought on. Those of them who'd held the ranch together in the two victims' absence could hardly believe that people would stoop so low when people could have died. Lucas hadn't even heard about it all until after he'd gone back to work, and it had left him to wonder whether or not he was even surprised. He'd seen other displays of this kind after Bobby Davis had been hit by the bus just outside the ranch, and he would not let himself think of it longer than he had to.

Slightly less memorable and much more… annoying… would be any number of small instances of rudeness, of bad manners… Some of the campers still among them this year would remember the year where they had 'disturbed' some guests to the point of retaliation, and even though they had in many ways been in the right, they hadn't tried it again. In dealing with the bad guests that came through Mel's B&B though, there was no doubt of who was the best to deal with them, and that was Cristina Vega. She was not the tallest out there, and she was as lean and fit as they came while still coming off as meek and unassuming, but if anyone tried to pull a fast one on her or gave her any kind of attitude, they would soon be left to consider just how wise it would be to cross her. The answer was that it was not, especially if they turned this attitude on to any of the campers, or worse yet on Rafa and Evangeline. The B&B was in the best hands it could ever be.

As much as all those stories had the ability to stand out and to stick, they really were in the minority. The vast majority of stories instead could be as funny as they could be heartwarming. For the reunited Russells, the very first one that came to mind was the weekend where coincidence had brought two parties to the bed and breakfast, an old man with his daughter and grandson, and an old woman with her two sisters. Their rooms had been at either end of the first floor, and after not laying eyes on one another on the day they arrived, the following morning had brought them all downstairs to breakfast at the same time, there to find the pair sitting across from one another and eventually recognizing one another. They had been high school sweethearts, decades ago, had been led down different paths in their lives, only to be reunited at a bed and breakfast in Austin. They had returned – together, without company, for a single room – the following year and then this year again, and were expected to do the same for as many more summers as they were lucky to have together.

Lucas would say that he was biased, but as so very sweet as this story of renewed love was, his favorite Sullivan Stables and Mel's B&B love story had to be that of his old college friend, Bishop Nicholas, and the manager of the bed and breakfast, Cristina Vega. He wouldn't have imagined this to be so, especially as this had required the split between Bishop and Leona, which none of them could have believed when it first happened, which also meant that their Evangeline had to share her time between her mother and father, but then he thought about all the steps that had been necessary for them to get to where they were, to find one another. He had seen enough stories in his life to understand that this kind of fate wouldn't be ignored. How many things had needed to happen for him and Maya to find each other?

With Bishop and Cristina, there had been his divorce, which had enabled Lucas, when they'd been readying the dog retreat, to bring him on as their doctor to look after the canine guests. And then there had been the bed and breakfast and the need for a manager, naturally, but before that there had been the afterschool program, and there had been Rafa, about to age out and crossing paths with Lucas, neither of them suspecting at first but eventually discovering that they had at one time been meant to be cousins before the baby boy's mother had reclaimed him. In time she'd found her way into Lucas' consciousness, given the means to take up the post of B&B manager. Finally, they had both been in each other's midst, and after what felt to their friends like an endless bit of dancing around the obvious, they had become a couple, and with their respective children had become a family.

And they really were getting to be a family, which could only have happened thanks to the way Rafa and Evangeline had come to bond as one another's stepsibling. He was seventeen, soon to be a senior. She was ten and about to find herself as one of Zay's fourth graders. They had both of them been only children all their lives, had both for the most part been raised by single parents, whether it was his one and only or her divorced pair. But for as long as they'd known one another they'd clicked, and to see them together now, it really got to feel as though the two of them had always been meant to be brother and sister, and they'd had to wait until their parents got together and made it official. Rafa would always make time for his Evie, and she would speak of him like there had never been a cooler big brother in the entire world. When she would be out staying at her mother's, they would check in with one another, which may or may not have been a preview of what it would be like when he went to college, but there was no telling yet whether or not he'd be local when the time came.

Lucas' one concern in inviting Phoebe and Khalil for a quiet time without their children was one he'd had to deal with whenever there were guests to the bed and breakfast over the summer. Would the presence of all the campers be any problem? They were still with them for a week, after which they would all be headed home. If not for the fact that the two of them were planning to fly off with their sons and daughter at about the same time, he would have suggested that they wait until then, but the Russells didn't mind. The way they saw it, the campers would be in the bed and breakfast itself in the morning, at night, and almost never in between except at lunch time. They didn't mind working around that, and they looked forward to being out on the ranch property, riding horses, maybe visiting the sets if they were allowed to… They were very grateful for this gift they were being given, as grateful as they were to just be back together again. Every moment counted.

"Nana?" Tori approached Maya, and she brightened just to have her there with her.

"What can I do for you?" she asked, sensing a request coming from the way her nine-year-old – soon to be ten-year-old – granddaughter was looking at her.

"Is it okay if I take Sunny and Melly into the Hex to record something?" she asked. Maya was intrigued at once. She motioned for Tori to explain further. "I had this idea of starting a birthday tradition with them, kind of like the way Pappy Luke takes us for ice cream," she went on, smiling at the memory and making her grandmother laugh.

"And that involves the Hex?" she asked. Tori nodded.

"Melly's still little, she's not really talking, but she makes noises, and Sunny's learning new words all the time. I thought we could go and record ourselves together, talking, singing, whatever we want, maybe asking each other questions." Maya appreciated the idea. Did it absolutely have to happen in the Hex? Probably not, but just like with her own children, Maya knew that the place had a sort of mythical appeal for her granddaughters, too, and it would feel more special if they got to do it in there.

As much as Tori would have liked to just go in there with her sisters and no one else, she had to concede to bring her Aunt Annie with her, both to operate the controls and to keep hold of Melly while Tori kept an eye on her birthday girl of a little sister. Maya vowed that she wouldn't listen to what they recorded in there unless she was given permission to, so off the girls went, kicking off their brand-new tradition together. They'd be back in no time if they planned to do it on all their birthdays, and oh, how she had to wonder what kind of questions two-year-old Sunny would end up asking her big sister.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners