Chapter 7
The Start of Everything

The night before the roommates were set to drive into Austin, the house was in full activity. Everyone was slowly but surely getting their packing done… most everyone. Lucas had gotten the suitcases down, he's started pulling together the clothes he meant to take along for their extended stay with their families over the holidays. He was also alone, waiting for Maya to get back. All he knew was that she'd texted him a little while ago, letting him know that she'd just thought of something she needed before they went to Austin. She would be home as soon as she got it.

They were going to be headed into full on stealth mode the next day. A whole week of hiding her growing baby bump from their families, from anyone who might blow the secret before the day they finally made their big reveal. There were so many ways this could go wrong. By now, it really felt as though it was all over her face, in all the changes her body was going through. All it would take would be for someone to see something they weren't supposed to see yet and it would all be over. In one house, they had sneaky toddlers, all too prone to tell anything to anyone, and in the other, they had… well, Melinda Friar.

Maya's return was announced by the barking of Trix and Lou downstairs. A minute later, she came walking into the room, the dogs on her heels. She had a shopping bag in her hand, but one look at her told him this bag only carried the clothes she'd been wearing when she left the house that morning. For the most part, she was still able to wear her own clothes, though some of it was already being set aside until after the baby because they had frustrated her for their tightness and she had banished them out of sight.

"If you keep this up, you won't have any clothes left," Lucas had told her a couple days back, after another pair of pants was sent to the land of discarded items. She'd given him a look at this suggestion, and it felt like his ears were on fire.

Now here she came along, with a new jacket she was looking very pleased to be wearing, going by the smile on her face as she turned and showed it to him.

"Did the old one finally reach banishment?" he guessed.

"It was getting there," she tipped her head. "I just saw it and figured if I randomly went and got a new coat while we were in Austin there might be questions…"

"Sounds fair," Lucas smiled, then, deducing that the coat hadn't so much been her intended purchase and more so a last minute addition on top of what she had actually wanted to get. She had also been wearing pants that morning, whereas he could now see stockings and the hem of a skirt peeking out from under the new jacket. "So, what's under there," he pointed to her. She gave an innocent smile, undoing the front of the new jacket and showing the dress underneath.

"For Christmas and all that," she told him. "Once the sprout becomes public knowledge…"

All these weeks, the whole goal had been for her clothes not to show her growing bump, but now suddenly, in this new dress of hers… there it was, in all its glory. Maya did say she was looking forward to flaunting the fact that she was expecting, as soon as she could, which was to say 'as soon as our families know,' and with this dress she could finally do it.

Lucas walked across the room toward her, the smile on his face just… impossible to dislodge. Standing there, her little three-month belly visible beneath the touch of the fabric… All he felt was love, so much of it. He leaned in and kissed her.

"Ready for tomorrow?" he asked, slipping his arms around her waist. She let out a breath, considering the question. What did ready even mean, with this?

"Is that a thing?" she asked back with a side smile. He gave a shrug. "I mean, at least I'm done with the toilet bowl dash every morning, so that's one less chance for them to find out our little secret ahead of time."

"Our lemon-sized secret," he offered, making her laugh.

"It's not the first time I've had to keep things from them," Maya went on. "I seem to recall, after our first time together, you had to climb out the basement window when my parents came home. And did you get murdered?"

"No, no, I lived," he squinted, smiling. "Had a stare down with a cat while I was crouched on the side of the house, waiting for your parents to finish getting the twins into the house," he recalled.

"That poor cat," Maya shook her head. He frowned, not following. "Got hit by a car that summer we were in Europe, remember?"

"Oh…" he did remember, almost feeling bad about bringing up the encounter.

"Anyway," Maya got back on track, "You and I will be fine. We'll go out there, we'll hang with our families. It's just one more week," she tapped his arms. "We've got this," she promised, her voice the definition of chill.

"How do you plan on sidestepping all the hugging that's about to happen?" he asked. "Because I can tell you right now, I can definitely feel it this time," he looked down to where her little belly kept bumping into him.

"I… have not figured that part out," she admitted. "I could walk around with a dog in my arms at all times, or… I could say I've got a cold, real bad, so no one will get close to me. We could both have a cold, it'll sell the story even better."

"We could just tell them tomorrow and be done with it," Lucas offered.

"No, come on," she shook her head. "We have a plan, we stick to the plan. Christmas Eve."

"Christmas Eve," he repeated, agreeing.

They'd been carrying this secret around for a month and a half, they could do this for one more week, right? Sure, they had the security of a two-hour drive to cushion their chances… and their track record for keeping the secret under wraps with their local entourage had been… the opposite of stellar… but they could do this, they could… And if they find out, then they find out.

Bags were packed and left downstairs by the time everyone went to bed. In the morning, Trix and Lou would be brought to Rosa's house, there to stay until they all returned from their time in Austin. The cars would be packed, and then, finally, they would leave Houston for the start of their holidays with their families. Much as the car would soon fill with the usual spirit of that long drive, Lucas could sense Maya was more quiet than usual. One look turned to her whenever he could justify taking his eyes off the road ahead would find her lost in thought. He only had to see the way her hand hovered over the hidden bump to know what she was thinking of.

They'd been reassured by Katy's reaction to the news, they'd become taken with planning their big Christmas reveal to Shawn and the Friars, but there was still that caution in her, the tiniest blip that kept her concerned about what would happen if any of them didn't see the coming of their child as something wonderful. She had already lived a parental rift, most of her life with her birth father, and then something of a whole other nature but still so very painful in the months following the accident after Sophie's party. If it happened again, if it happened over their son or daughter, there was no question as to what either of them would be compelled to do. From the moment they'd flipped those sticks, they'd placed the well-being of their sprout ahead even of their own.

He could try and reassure her all he wanted, she would still hold tight to that bit of uncertainty until the cards fell, one way or the other.

As they reached Austin, they started to make their drop-offs. Sophie and Chiara were left to the Zvolensky home, Dylan to the Orlandos, Riley to Mr. & Mrs. Matthews. Finally, it was just the two of them… three of them… on their way to the Hunter-Hart house. As ever, they would alternate between her parents and his as far as where they stayed, but in order to put chances in their favor, they decided to spend the first week at her parents' and then the second, after they had told their secret, would be spent at his parents' house.

"Are you sure you want to be staying anywhere near my mother right after she finds out you're pregnant? She's going to change your whole diet, she'll pull out books…"

"I don't mind," Maya promised him with a smile. "If she's got anything to share, I want to hear it." Mostly, she wanted, she sought acceptance. She needed to see joy on their faces, so she could let her own flow out.

They got a small break upon their arrival in that Shawn was out with the twins on a 'special errand,' which meant that their welcoming committee was formed of already-aware Katy and still-speechless MJ.

"Let me get a look at you while I can," Katy reached for her daughter's hand and pulled her into a hug for a few seconds before pulling back and looking down at her. Maya opened up her jacket and her mother reached out, laying her hand to that little belly. It made her well up and smile, as Maya could only look on with nothing short of pride. "You're growing so fast, you…"

"Just one baby," Maya told her. "Trust me, I made them check." Lucas bit back a laugh, recalling that appointment, how she kept telling them that there were twins in a few branches of the sprout's family tree. There were Nellie and Gracie, of course, but even her grandmother, Kermit's mother, was a twin, and on Lucas' side he had made her aware of some distant twin cousins, and even a set of triplets, somewhere around Pappy Joe's time, though he didn't know much about them either except that they existed. When he'd told her this, Maya's eyes had gone a bit buggy, no doubt picturing her short-statured frame growing heavy with three babies at once.

"She's right on track," Lucas told Katy, recalling what the doctor had said at their last appointment.

"Look. I haven't managed to send you this one yet," Maya pulled out her phone, where she'd taken a picture of their last ultrasound images. They had the printed ones back home, on her nightstand… She couldn't stop looking at them, looking at how their sprout looked more and more like a person, features more and more defined, as defined as they could get in this medium. She was mesmerized, as was Lucas, as were their friends, and now Katy, too. Whatever question marks would continue to hover overhead until Christmas, Katy Hart was giving them everything they could hope for from an expecting grandmother.

"Oh, now, I think this guy is making the most of his diaper…" Katy remarked soon after, getting a whiff of the one-year-old in her arms.

"Ooh, hand him over," Maya reached out for her brother.

"Practice?" Katy supposed. Maya just gestured again and MJ was handed over.

"Alright, Matty boy, let's do this," Maya moved toward the stairs and climbed up with the fussy boy in her arms. Lucas watched them go before heading to the car to go and get their bags. Katy came and helped him, which he appreciated for more than one reason. He'd been on the lookout for an opportunity to speak with her alone, as soon as possible, and now here it was.

"Uh, can I talk to you about something?" he asked as they stood at the car, grabbing the last of the bags, containing everything they'd need for the next two weeks and presents. When Katy looked back at him, he took a breath, hesitating briefly as he snuck a look back to the house. "I have something that I want to do, but there's… it's complicated."

"You know, there was a time where I would not be the person you came to when the word 'complicated' was involved," Katy remarked to herself. "Now, instead, I get to ask: Complicated how?" Lucas looked at her, at the house again.

"Maybe this is just one more sign of why your daughter has been calling me Huckleberry all these years, but see there's a box in the safe at my bank, and in that box I keep a gift that my grandmother left me before she died. It's never really been mine, I've always been like its… keeper… It's belonged to Maya since before I even knew her, and it would have been hers in a couple of years, but now a lot of plans have changed. Before I can give it to her though… Everything I've been raised to be says I'm supposed to ask her father first," he explained.

He kept Katy's gaze even as she realized what he was getting at. Her breath seemed to get caught in her throat, staring back at him.

"If that's the case," he went on, leaving her to regain her voice on her own time, "Well, I won't be able to do anything until after we've made our big reveal… Then I tell myself that I'd like to do this before the reveal, before it's all out there, but then that'd mean not asking her father, and never mind that my family wouldn't let me hear the end of it, but then what if he took it the wrong way…" He paused, breathed. "But then I realized I was looking at the whole thing the wrong way, and not only would this be the right way, but it would also be… something everyone could agree on."

"What's that?" Katy asked, borrowing his move by sneaking a look back to the house, in case Maya was done upstairs and was now looking for them. When she turned back again, she found a sort of nervous but determined young man staring back at her.

"If you knew the number of stories she's told me over the years, of you and her… You're the one who's been looking out for her, all her life, you… you made the decision that even brought her into my life, so if I am looking for anyone's blessing here about asking Maya to marry me… it's yours."

Inside the house, up in the nursery, Maya had gotten her little brother changed relatively fast, though once she was done, holding the much relieved boy in her arms, she'd found herself looking around the room, thinking of her own days of diapering, just half a year away. She and Lucas were planning to go and have a look at Pappy Joe's house while they were in Austin… Their house, by the end of the next semester, their baby's house…

Back down the stairs she'd gone, with MJ reaching out his little hand to the pictures lining the stairway as they went, the quiet of the house left her searching for both her boyfriend and her mother, only to find them standing outside by the car, deep in conversation. By some chance, she looked down to her brother just in the moment where she might have found a startled look on their faces. Instead, when she looked up again, they were moving back to join her, and that was that.

They were all settled in by the time Shawn returned home with the twins, who spotted Lucas first and rushed him as one, knowing he was good for catching and scooping them up, which he did. This allowed the initial greetings between Maya and the rest of her family to go off without any unintentional revelations. Next thing they knew, day one was behind them. Tomorrow would be harder, they knew, what with MJ's delayed first birthday party bringing so many people together, including his family. It was a good thing they'd have their roommates on hand, too, along with Katy, to cause a diversion or two.

Lying in bed that night, with Maya having gone right to sleep while he remained wide awake, Lucas was left to consider his next move. He'd come seeking a blessing, and now he had it. He'd needed to go and retrieve the rings he'd been given by his grandmother, and earlier that day he'd done it. He wanted to make his proposal before they told their families about the baby, and this was where things got trickier. The when, the where, the how, all of it seemed to get tripped up with their need to keep the sprout hidden until everyone got together on Christmas Eve…

So, just do it on Christmas Eve, too. Same day, just earlier…

All his concerns really hinged on Maya more than anyone else. He wanted this to be a moment they would both remember, a moment they'd recall. He didn't want it to feel like an afterthought. And if he wanted to catch her by surprise, well she'd definitely be focusing on the eve, the sprout reveal… and then he would get his shot at delivering his very own surprise.

The next few days became something like a dance, with strategy and secrets for choreography. Hide the sprout. Get ready to reveal the sprout. Get ready to propose… And all through that, they had their families, they had Christmas drawing nearer… Every night, as they'd get back to Maya's old room and climb into bed, knowing they'd succeeded in what they were aiming to do, they would feel just a bit more of that weight lifted. Getting closer… closer and closer…

Then, finally, they woke up and it was December 24th. As they looked at each other, there was something like a giddy frenzy in them. This was it… This was the day that would change everything.

It was one of those rare days where he woke up before she did. Still, rare or not, they might have been his favorites. There was always something about seeing someone in the midst of sleep, like they either revealed another side of themselves or showed exactly who you knew them to be. When they were little, he remembered waking up in the middle of the night, when he and his friends would be having a sleepover. There'd be Zay, always with a sort of concentrated look on his face like he was having a very intricate sort of dream. And there'd be Asher, curled up so much they could barely see his face. And then of course there would be Dylan, starfished with his sleeping bag tossed open like it had been forcing him to keep his limbs tucked in and he couldn't have it.

When Nadine had come into their group, and then Maya, and Riley, their sleepovers had meant boys in the basement and girls upstairs, so it really wasn't until, oh… two summers ago, in Europe, where he first got a chance to see Maya this way. Most nights, the two of them did sleep spooned together, or still in one another's arms. Even on those nights where they ended up on their own pillows, their own sides, he would find her sort of curled up the way she would be when he'd hold on to her. Her face would be peaceful, devoid of worry, of sarcasm, of mischief. It would seem to him like in that moment she was exactly what she was in her heart, before anything else. Curiosity, life… love…

On those rare days when he woke up before she did, in the weeks since they'd found out they were going to be parents, he had been taken with the reflex to scoot in for a bit of 'sprout time,' whispering to their growing child, even if it was still about the size of a lemon. They were at her parents' house though, and until that night they were still meant to keep things under wraps, he couldn't take the chance that someone might be up and they'd overhear, when they were so close to having made it. The best he could do then was to reach down and lay his hand over Maya's little belly. He mouthed a silent hello, smiling.

When he heard the cautious creak of the door, he froze a moment before realizing who it would be. Still, he was surprised to find only one of the twins peering through the door. Lifting his head, he saw it was Gracie, looking up from under a dishevelled brown fringe with those blue eyes as shy as her twin's were spritely. Lucas waved her over, and the three-year-old didn't have to be told twice. She scurried over, and Lucas turned to pick her up and carry her into the space between Maya and him.

"Don't wake her, okay?" he whispered, and Gracie nodded, looking to her older sister. "Where's Nellie?" he asked. Gracie pointed to the ceiling. Upstairs. "Sleeping?" She nodded. "Not you though?" She just looked to Maya again, and Lucas understood. She missed her, wanted to be with her while she was in town. Lucas smiled. Katy Hart's eldest and youngest daughters had that in common.

After a few seconds, Lucas realized Gracie was staring at something, and he saw how Maya's shirt was still riding up from when he'd set his hand to it, setting that little roundness into view. Gracie was only three, sure, but the way she stared, noting something different about her sister, he had to wonder… Did she understand what it meant? She would have seen her mother's belly growing large the previous year, she would have been told what it meant… Would she be able to put the pieces together?

"Hey… Hey, Gracie?" Lucas whispered, trying at the same time to listen for any signs that the second twin might come seeking anytime soon. The girl turned her head to look at him, and she pointed. Damn… He was trying to think of what to say, but then she looked back down and reached her little fingers to pick up the dangling cord around Maya's pyjama pants.

"Can I tie it? I know laces," she whispered, and Lucas resisted letting out a breath of relief.

"You should wait until she's awake, then you can show her how you do that."

After this minor 'incident,' the day had managed to get started as normally as they could have hoped, with everyone preparing for the day's activities, which would involve the Hunter-Harts heading to the Friar house in mid-afternoon. Lucas had been keeping a casual eye on his girlfriend's preparations as they got ready. The new, more 'bump lining' dress had been carefully packed along with the few presents they would be bringing along to exchange today, with their visiting friends. They would be finding out about the baby, too, and both Maya and Lucas were anxious to see those reactions almost as much as their families'.

"It's about time we get to tell people, I think my mother's finally about to crack," Maya told Lucas as they got in his car. They were travelling on their own because her parents' was already full with things they had to bring, along with the twins and MJ, and also to leave them free to stick around longer if they so chose, when they'd be returning home. That was what she was told at least, and Katy was the picture of convincing, so Maya rolled with it, while Lucas snuck a look of gratitude Katy's way. For that, he also knew that what Maya interpreted as her mother's wanting to burst with the news of their coming baby was in fact her wanting to burst with some other news about to come live…

"So, when are we telling them?" Lucas asked once they were in the car.

They could never seem to make up their minds on how they wanted to do it. It seemed like something easy, just to say the words, but this was about so much more than words, it was the biggest event in their lives as of yet, and it wouldn't just change the two of them, it was their whole families. And there was also… that lingering worry. What if they got upset?

Maya had fallen into a deep hole of watching pregnancy reveal compilations, like she was fishing for inspiration. She would show them to him, and Lucas would happily watch along, but at the same time he guessed he did share her concerns, or, more to the point, he was aware of her concerns and he worried about what it could do to her to continue watching all those happy families screaming with surprise and crying and hugging.

Of the variety of plans they'd made, all of them seemed to hold to a similar nature in that it fell somewhere in the middle between something overly showy and something very understated. That way, no matter what happened, no matter how everyone reacted, they would make it clear that they were very happy, and they would be able to feel the room for the rest of it.

"I think… at dinner?" Maya frowned, unsure. He could practically hear her think 'but I don't want to ruin the meal.'

"Dinner sounds good," he nodded confidently. "Then you get to go and put on the new dress for after," he smiled. As he'd hoped, she was unable to think of that new dress again without smiling, too.

"Okay, dinner then," she agreed, letting out a breath.

As they drove on, she was still inevitably drawn to think about the approaching reveal, which worked in his favor in that it took her enough time to realize they weren't coming anywhere near his parents' house. In fact, they were driving up and stopping somewhere familiar, yes, but a good several minutes in the wrong direction from where they were supposed to be. She turned to him, confused.

"Uh, Lucas? I am liking the initiative here, but I'm pretty sure we're a good twelve-ish years early for this. Also, it's Christmas Eve, I think they're closed."

"I know," he laughed. "It's just… being back here the last few days made me think of this place a lot, and I felt like stopping by for a minute, show the sprout where we met. Come on," he got out of the car, walking around to her side to open the door for her. By the time she climbed out to join him, she looked like she'd come around to the idea, which was what he'd been going for. He didn't want her to see it coming, and they'd both sort of been playing around at this 'showing the sprout around' gag, always ignoring the fact that he or she couldn't see a thing at all.

So, with that, they climbed up the steps of the middle school, just up to where they would usually sit, him and her, alone or with their friends.

"It's too quiet like this," Maya declared, looking around as they sat. "No kids anywhere, barely any cars on the street…"

"No Zay and Dylan arguing about who could run the fence the fastest…" he added, making her laugh. "But there's you, up here on this step. Most days that was the first thing I'd see coming up here." She adopted a pose at this, presenting herself something like a statue, a warrior goddess welcoming him to another day of academia. "Hold on," he laughed, taking out his phone and standing up, climbing down a couple steps, the better to get the whole effect captured. The camera clicked a few times, as he moved around for varied angles.

"Let me see," she gestured for the phone when he was done. He handed it over and watched her grin and laugh as she swiped through the different images. "I think this one is my favorite," she decided, returning the phone. He nodded approvingly; it was his favorite, too, straight on, staring right through him with her all-seeing statue eyes. As he put his phone back in his pocket, his fingers grazed the small box and he could feel his heart thudding heavily in his chest. When he looked back to Maya, he could see her drifting into her head again.

"Hey, hey," he came up one step.

"I'm fine," she shook her head. "Really, I am overflowing with confidence here, you know…" she adopted her pose again and he grinned. "It's just… one last deep breath."

He took one of those himself right in that moment, he had to. Without meaning to, obviously, she'd sort of given him cause to stand up and face her as he spoke, and now she'd also enabled him to say the things he needed to say. One last deep breath…

"Look, I get that you're scared, I'm right there with you. All we want is for people to be as excited as we are and…" he let out another breath, knowing it wouldn't do either of them good to pretend like this wasn't a possibility. "And maybe some of them will need time to come around to the idea of us having a baby right now instead of a few years down the road. If that's what happens, then we'll deal with it. All that matters is you, me, and the sprout," he told her, coming to sit on the step just below hers, turning around to face her at the same time. "It is happening faster than we anticipated, but that's not the important part here. The important part is that this was always going to happen for us, yeah? That's what we wanted, to spend our lives together, to make a family."

"Yeah," she smiled, letting some of those worries ebb out. He took her hand, a calculated misdirection to keep her from seeing him reach into his pocket again.

"Some things are going to happen differently for us because of this, but we'll get through it, because in the end all we're doing is exactly what we were going to do, just earlier. The house, the baby…" he nodded to each, then, after a beat, he finally brought up the little box for her to see. Her breath caught, and he smiled, knowing he'd pulled off his surprise. "After all that, it wouldn't seem right to keep this locked away. All this time, I've known, we've known, I think… And we've just been waiting, because that was what we figured we were supposed to do. But everything's starting now, Maya, not in two years, three years, so…"

He pulled the box open, showing the engagement ring even as he shifted from being seated on the step to kneeling on it. He was sure the hormones were responsible for some of her tears, but then he was feeling his eyes water, too, so some of those had to be hers alone.

"My grandmother gave it to me shortly before she passed. You never met her, she was my mom's mom, Marianne," he explained. The second ring, the wedding band, was back at the house, still hidden, waiting to be reunited with this one. "She told me that when I met the person who was meant to have it, I would know. I wish… I wish I could tell her how right she was, because I knew… I really did… before I even knew what it was that I knew." She beamed, pointing toward herself in a silent indication that the feeling was mutual, and that just lit his face up that much further. "So, all this to say… Maya, it would be the… best Christmas present to finally hear you answer this question… Will you marry me?"

"What do you think?" she laughed, nodding, almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He laughed back, rising forward to kiss her even as she leaned in to do the same. When they pulled back, he picked the ring from the box, breathing as he slid it on to her finger and it fit. "I'll have to put it on a chain pretty soon, if my fingers start to…" Without a word, he pulled back the setting from the box, showing a golden chain hidden underneath, cushioned with cotton. "Thought of everything, huh?"

"I figured, this way, it won't be all in the open, depending on when we end up telling everyone," he explained as he helped her get the ring on the chain and the chain around her neck.

"Yeah, that's gonna be a one-two punch right there," she realized. Despite all that though, her smile was going strong, looking at him with her eyes still brimmed with those happy tears. "I never actually gave you a proper answer, did I?" she asked, and he smiled. "Yes," she held his gaze, and he kissed her again. "I love you…"

"I love you," he echoed. One more deep breath, as he looked to his g… to his fiancée… Now they really had to go. Their big day was only beginning.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners