Chapter 27
For Beginners

The more they'd gotten to spend weekends at the house, the closer they'd get to the move, Lucas came to find how much he just enjoyed waking up here, just him and Maya together. As the renovations advanced each week, it would feel as though they were already living here, sharing their time between one home and the other. And whenever they'd be on this side… It was the goal, it was what they had been working for all this time, and he wanted it so much.

It was Saturday morning now, which meant they were at the house again, only when he opened his eyes, all he saw was the giant pillow and no Maya. After remembering that they were not in a house of six here, that he wouldn't wake up anyone for making a noise, he called out her name.

"Present!" her voice came from somewhere beyond their room.

"Bathroom?"

"Nope."

"What are you doing then?" he asked, climbing out of bed, running a hand through his hair.

"Waiting for you to get up," she reported with that chipper sort of voice where he could picture her face, smiling innocently.

"Well, I'm up now," he moved out into the hall in search of her.

"Good, because I need a hand."

"With what?" He looked into the nursery, across from their room, and here she was, sitting on the floor next to the crib with her baby sketchbook and some pencils.

"No, I literally need a hand, I can't get up from here," she admitted with a frown as she gave him a demonstration of her inability before giving up and looking up again. "Please, before I really do have to go?" He smiled and moved up to her, helping her back to her feet.

"How long have you been out here?"

"No idea, a while? Woke up from this dream, and it gave me an idea for the mural, so I got up and came in here to draw it," she explained, opening up the book and showing it to him. He would look from the page to the walls, feeling the images easily transferred from one surface to the other.

"I think this is one of my favorite things you've done," he nodded appreciatively.

"Just wait until it's up there," she smiled. It had been so important to her that this would be something to sort of evolve with their son, from a baby to little boy, growing and growing… Someday he might grow out of it, might have to share the space with a sibling, and they would have to paint right over it, but that was a distant future for all of them and nothing she needed to worry herself over.

After breakfast, Lucas drove Maya off to the pool for water aerobics. She'd been going every weekend for four weeks now, and on Wednesdays back in Houston, too. Between this, and the yoga, and the fact that she wasn't working at the restaurant anymore, she had to say that she felt in much better shape than she'd done for a while, not so long ago. This was saying something, seeing as she was so much further along now than she'd been then, with all the 'perks' of that progress.

Much as some of the credit went to the shift in her routine, as far as she was concerned a portion of that credit also went to the anticipation of those weeks going by, coupled with the way their life in Austin expanding as it had done in the last four weeks. They may not have been starting completely from scratch, with their families being out here with them, the whole reason for their move, but they were leaving their whole community of friends and acquaintances behind, which couldn't help but be unnerving, especially with a baby on the way.

"I don't see you for a week, and it looks like it's been closer to two," Billie chuckled when she walked into the locker room and found Maya pulling her shirt off, her swimsuit already underneath.

"You're one to talk," she smirked. She wasn't so far off though, was she? She'd been growing steadily over the past months, but lately it did feel like everything was starting to move faster. It was a wonder her skin could keep up.

"And happy to show it," Billie twisted sideways for a profile.

"Oh, show it," Maya laughed with a nod. Billie bowed her head and spread her arms in what might have been taken for a curtsey, though Maya swore there was something in her eyes like an unspoken thought at the same time. But then it didn't remain that way for long.

As they finished getting ready, Billie recounted the day she'd realized she might be pregnant. She'd been right here, at the pool, assisting Etta with the class, and they'd been doing counts, which had led to her starting a count of her own: a count of days, which all added up to one glaringly missed period. She hadn't thought too much of it at first, or at least she hadn't come around to the possibility of her being pregnant immediately. She was regular now, but there had been a time where she could go months without. It went back to the time in her life when she'd been a competitive swimmer, the same time where she'd struggled with eating properly… or at all.

"When it got as bad as it ever got, when I started to make a change, I gave it all up, the swimming, even for fun. Just the smell of chlorine would take me back. After a while, I started to miss it, started to attend competitions. Etta spotted me, remembered me from some of her niece's competitions. She got me back in the water, got me the job… Anyway…" she breathed, shaking her head like she hadn't meant to divert so far but didn't exactly regret it either. "That day," she reminded herself of what she'd been saying before. "We talked after class, and she started asking questions, let me connect the dots on my own. Never felt so happy when I did, not even the biggest competition win."

Maya felt privileged to have been told about all this, to get to know this new friend so much more. She responded by sharing the story of how she had discovered that she was having a baby. It made Billie chuckle to hear about all their running around and the missed chances for getting to look at those tests and, much as she hadn't found it funny at the time, looking back on it now Maya was definitely laughing along with her. She went on to tell her about how she and Lucas had found their happiness in this news, despite the changes it had already required in their lives, such as this move back to Austin, necessary sacrifices like school, and friends, and for Maya the band.

But they'd been lucky, too, and she acknowledged this, too. The house was easily the biggest check in that column. She'd mentioned it in passing before, but today when she brought it up she ended up with an invitation to her new friend, for her to drop by after their class was over that day. After Billie had happily accepted, they had both made the next leap together: they had to invite Ainsley and Cameron to come along, too.

The four of them had been picked up from the pool by Tom Friar, who'd been at the house working when Lucas had brought Maya here earlier. He'd left to go pick up something, which now landed him with the task of playing chauffeur to his future daughter-in-law and her friends, which he happily did. He also suggested the stop they made to grab take-out they would bring back to the house for lunch.

"One day, Jonah and I want a house like that," Billie looked on after the car had pulled to a stop and she'd climbed out. "We're much too far from land like this."

Cameron quickly found himself in the arms of a beaming Tom Friar, leaving the trio to move into the house at leisure. Maya would playfully tease and call this his 'grandpa training,' but really to know just how much the man looked forward to being her boy's grandfather would only ever make her heart swell with joy. The man was just so ready for that kid…

They could hear hammering happening upstairs, so they decided to wait until Lucas would come down to make the introductions between him and Billie. Until then, they got settled around the kitchen table with their lunch, making plates for themselves and a smaller one for Cameron, once he'd be returned to his mother. Tom would eventually go back to bring his son and the others currently helping him the items he'd gone to get before stopping by the pool.

"Sooner or later, the smell of food will get them here," Maya promised with confidence.

Midway through the meal, which got lost in a conversation of foods they'd either stopped or started to eat in the midst of their pregnancies, Maya heard her phone give a chime and reached to see who had written to her. When she did, she sat up and then stood.

"Be right back. Don't eat that," she pointed to her plate before moving off into the living room.

Two days ago, she'd had another appointment with Dr. Tanaka. Much as he would have done it if she asked him to, Maya didn't want Lucas to have to miss another afternoon of work at his aunt's clinic. Instead, she'd asked Willow if she might be able and willing to drive her to Austin and back, and her friend accepted at once. They'd taken off, leaving baby Zola to her great-grandparents, who were more than happy to look after her for a while. When they'd reached the clinic, Maya had insisted that Willow didn't need to tag along if she felt like wandering around for a while. After receiving a few suggestions, Willow had driven off, leaving Maya to go in on her own.

She had been sitting there a few minutes, trying to explore a bit of melody which had been running through her mind for half the drive into the city, when she heard a voice she recognized and looked up to confirm it was just who she'd thought it would be. Brianna was at the receptionist's desk, checking in for her own appointment. When she moved toward the waiting area and spotted Maya there, she stopped in surprise, but then she smiled, hesitantly moving toward her. Maya tipped her head to the empty seat at her side and the girl came forward with assurance now.

"I wanted to talk to you again after my appointment two weeks ago, but you were gone and I never got the chance. How are you?" Maya asked, even as her own eyes showed her a notable change in the young mother to be. She wasn't so awkward anymore, still shy, but less prone to try and make herself small.

"I'm okay… mostly… Everything's normal though, I think, so I have to get used to it," she shrugged. Realizing that this 'mostly' had to do with symptoms of the pregnancy, Maya leaned into the possibility that overall this was her biggest issue. The change in her demeanor suggested there was cause for optimism that other things were going better than two weeks before.

"Unfortunately, yeah," she smiled and nodded.

"The doctor said I was due in October. I don't know what I'm going to do about school, maybe I can study from home," Brianna went on. At this, Maya was struck with a thought she couldn't believe she hadn't had the last time. She asked Brianna what school she went to. When the girl replied, Maya smiled. "Why?"

"I went there, too," Maya told her. "Do you have Mr. Matthews in history by any chance?" Brianna nodded. "You should talk to him about this. Tell him you're a friend of mine, he'll help you figure out a plan. He and I go way back."

"You do?" Brianna asked, surprised.

"His daughter and I have been best friends since I was six," Maya revealed. Brianna took this in like it reminded her of something.

"He said his daughter was in college out of town…"

"That's Riley," Maya smiled. Brianna promised she would talk to him. "How's it going with… everything else?" Maya went on to ask. She didn't have to say much more for Brianna to know what she was getting at.

"I told my parents," she nodded. "My mom cried at first… My dad yelled at first…"

"And then?" Maya slowly prompted.

"Well, we talked. It was so awkward, but I had no choice. I had to be honest," Brianna explained, sounding much more like this honesty had been for her sake more than anyone else. She couldn't have dealt with lying. "I told them that… I wasn't sure about keeping the baby. We talked some more, and that helped a lot, for all of us. I just wanted to say thanks, for last time, when you came and pretended you needed a pen to talk to me." Maya bit back a smile, busted.

"Anytime. So… did you decide?"

"Not yet," Brianna admitted. "I still haven't told…" She stalled here, like she wasn't sure she should say. So, Maya gave the girl her number, telling her to call or write if she needed to talk.

And now, two days later, she had just written: I need to talk.

"Hey, are you okay?" Maya asked when she picked up.

"Yeah," Brianna replied, though her tone told a different story. "I'm not bothering you, am I?"

"No, it's fine, I was just… Actually, you want to come meet me? I'll give you the address."

By the time they spotted the girl coming along down the road, Maya had given Ainsley and Billie a quick rundown of her first encounter with Brianna, without going into too much detail, so not to say anything the girl may not have wanted shared. When she came close enough now to see them there, Maya and Billie with their bellies in full force, and Ainsley with her son perched in her arms, Brianna looked like she was taking it all in. She was walking into a group, whether she'd become part of it or not.

"You hungry?" Maya asked as they went in.

"Yeah," Brianna replied so fast as to be on reflex, which showed with the surge of shyness. They returned to the kitchen and Maya brought her a plate. Billie and Ainsley both looked like they weren't sure if they should stay or step aside and let them talk, but Brianna caught on to this and shrugged at them. They could stay.

"So, what's going on?" Maya asked. Brianna took a few moments before she started to speak. She hid this with taking a few bites before finally saying what she'd needed to say.

"No one at school knows about me… except Mr. Matthews," she started, sparing a look to Maya, who nodded. "Just my parents, and the people at the clinic, and you all here, I guess. Not my friends, and not…" she stalled, but 'the father' seemed like a safe bet. "Dr. Tanaka told me when it would have been… conceived… and I just… I don't know… which of the two…" her voice grew quieter and quieter the more she advanced in this statement, but not so quiet that they didn't catch it.

"Oh, dear…" Billie blurted out, getting looks from Maya and Ainsley and responding with a mouthed 'sorry.' "Well, now, are you sure both times were… well…"

"There's only been the two times ever, but yeah," Brianna looked at her.

"Okay, okay, it's fine," Maya assured her. "Look, these guys, you… well, you know them from school or…" She was growing sympathetic to Billie for her outburst now.

"Yeah, well… one of them's in my class, the other's a year older."

"Are you afraid of what they'll say?" Ainsley asked.

"Considering one of them is my boyfriend and the other isn't?" Brianna looked up at her. No one replied. "Maybe I shouldn't have said it like that, we weren't dating at the time, that happened sort of… in between the two…" she gestured an invisible timeline with her hands to try and explain, though she set them down again with a sigh soon after; it wasn't making things that much better. "So, it could be his, but it also could be the other guy…"

"The boyfriend one, what's he like?" Maya asked her, her tone suggesting 'what will he think of you being pregnant?'

"Jay? He's kind of the best… I don't want him to get hurt because of this…"

"You might not have a choice," Maya gave her an apologetic look. "One way or the other, this is happening to you," she nodded to her little belly, hidden as it was. "And it might not show on them, but it's happening to one of them, too, or it will, if this baby's born." Brianna nodded. She couldn't help but agree, but it still upset her visibly. Maya and Ainsley, sitting on either side of her, reached to touch one of her arms in reassurance, while Billie reached as far across the table as she could.

It was at this point that Lucas came into the kitchen, with hunger and the promise of food having finally drawn him away from his work upstairs. He stopped here, coming upon the scene, and the quartet around the table looked at him.

"Hey…" he spoke uncertainly.

"Brianna, you remember my fiancé, Lucas? Billie, Lucas. Lucas, Billie," Maya rattled off introductions. While Billie stood to shake his hand and chatter, as she would, Maya looked to Brianna.

"Maybe I should go," the girl spoke quietly.

"If that's what you want," Maya whispered back. "But you don't have to, really. You're welcome here as long as you like," she smiled. Brianna smiled back, just barely.

"Your friends are nice," she declared.

"Yeah, they are," Maya agreed. This gave her a thought. "You want to stick around for the afternoon, dinner?" She nodded. "I need to make a call."

Forty minutes later, as the four of them sat out front, watching Cameron teeter his way along on his baby legs, a car pulled up. Maya and Lucas had yet to encounter Aaron and Marius at the same time, only meeting them twice each, always with Samantha, as they accompanied their surrogate in prenatal classes. Now, the three of them came along. Aaron carried flowers.

"We would have brought wine, but we figured this might not be the crowd for it," he joked, presenting them to Maya, who laughed.

"Imagine if we could, bunch of pregnant women rolling around drunk… I start losing my balance fully sober these days," she nodded to herself.

They spent some time going around the house, looking at all the work which had been done over the past weeks and months, and the things that still needed to be done… Looking at it now, Maya felt for the first time like they were actually close enough to done that, if they kept this up, they really would be done in time. They only had one more weekend like this and then on the next one they'd be coming to stay. By the looks of things, she'd say one more week, a full one, now that they'd be living here, and then the house would be as ready as it could get, without going into additional projects, external things…

After the tour, Maya and her guests ended up sitting outside again, now with Aaron, Marius, and Samantha. Whenever he'd take a break, Lucas would come and join them, as would his father, and Bishop and Dylan, who were helping today. The afternoon went by in conversation, and while it could have been easy for topics to end up revolving around pregnancy anecdotes – with so many of them being or having been pregnant recently, or even just around children, with all of them becoming parents for the first time – it wasn't so. They did talk about it, a little. In particular, Aaron and Marius had talked about how deeply they'd wanted this child they were having, the two of them and Samantha recounting the process of going from a choice, to a plan, to enacting the plan and hoping beyond hope that it would actually work.

"We were calling and writing so many times," Marius recalled, looking just a bit embarrassed, though Samantha just smiled.

"When I thought it might have worked and I took the test, I rushed over to their house to show them. I couldn't wait to see the look on their faces," she went on. Aaron gave a dramatic re-enactment, making the others laugh.

"Many tears," he revealed.

"So many," Marius agreed with a smile, to both his surrogate and his husband, to him especially. He was so serious looking, composed and precise, where Aaron was loose and lively, they might not have seemed like they'd go together, but you only had to see them together, around each other, to know they couldn't have ever belonged with anyone else.

They had all really gotten to know one another as a group that day, and by the time they'd leave, after dinner, Maya and Lucas both would truly feel that this group as they'd had it would be one they'd see many times again. There were variables still. They didn't know what would happen after Samantha had the baby and gave him or her over to their fathers, if she would still hang around with them, with this child that was both hers and not hers. And there was Brianna, too, the question of whether she'd keep her baby or not, in every sense of the word. For now, the only thing they knew was that these were their friends.

With their guests and their helpers gone for the night – except for Bishop, who had nowhere else to go and would still be helping the next day – Maya and Lucas had gone off to bed after spending some time sitting outside again.

"I know you've been working so hard all this time, but I think this might be my favorite part…" she'd told him as they sat gazing at the stars.

"I thought it might be. It's kind of mine, too."

The next morning, Lucas didn't wake up alone, although Maya had managed to prop herself up as she continued to add details to her sketch of their boy's nursery walls. She had the sketchbook sort of held in mid-air with one hand as she drew with the other.

"Are you trying to visualize?" Lucas asked, amused.

"No, just trying to draw a straight line, and if I set it here," Maya demonstrated, putting the book on top of her bump. Two seconds later, it started to wobble, like the surface underneath was moving. "Looks like he's got the hiccups," she reported, removing the book again. Lucas laughed, running his hand over her belly, moving over to kiss it, like their son would understand.

"I should get you one of those breakfast trays."

"It better have tall legs to deal with all this," she joined her hand to his. For a little while they just lay/sat there, looking at her, thinking about the baby, just weeks from being out of her and in their arms. Much as the whole experience had not all been sunshine and flowers, the thought they shared was how they would sort of miss… this, the closeness and the wonder brought on as they watched her belly grow, as they would just hold to one another, feeling their love expand along with her, with their sprout. Soon, they would have him with them, and from that point, there were other things on their mind, no more avoidable…

"I don't want to mess this up…" Lucas heard himself say. Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, until he felt her hand lay gently at the back of his head, running through his hair. He turned his eyes up at her, found her staring back.

"You're not going to," she promised. She knew what he was talking about, of course she would. At the same time, he felt he could see this thought play out behind her eyes. 'If anyone's going to, it won't be you,' it seemed to suggest, and he moved up to be able and look at her eye to eye.

"Can we make a deal right now?" he asked.

"What kind of deal?" she asked back, smiling.

"I know we both feel things about ourselves, whether we're able to admit them or not, as much as I know we feel things about each other that would say the opposite. So let's just… aspire… I will aspire to be as good as I know you'll be…" he told her, letting her complete the statement in her head.

"I'm still scared," she had to admit, closing her arms around him.

"I know," he promised. "So am I."

They had stayed here, holding to one another, for a minute more, until Maya's phone rang. She frowned, looking over to see who it was, which would decide whether she picked it up or not. She saw it was her father and sighed.

"Can you just…" she pointed, and Lucas carefully reached over her and handed the phone to her. "I appreciate," she touched his cheek before answering. "Hey, Dad."

"Hey, you're going to your aerobics thing today, yeah?"

"Yup, leaving in like… an hour," she told him after pulling the phone back to see the time again. "Why? You want to come splash around with us?" she asked, trying not to laugh at the image of her father in there with the rest of them.

"I'm afraid I'll have to pass. And you might not get to go either."

"Why?" she asked, frowning. "Is Mom okay?" Lucas looked back at her.

"She is, for now. She doesn't know what to make of this any more than I do. Your grandparents are here." Maya's eyes bugged out, enough that Lucas sat up, trying to get an answer out of her as to what was happening.

"My what now?"

"Kermit's parents, both of them. They're sitting in our living room right now."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners