Work Text:
We used to be friends;
We used to be inner circle.
I don't understand,
What I have become to you?
1998, CHET FAKER
Well, this dark-haired girl and this blonde girl both like the same boy, and they all stay best friends. Could that really happen?
No.
Okay.
GIRL MEETS NEW TEACHER
Maya is a jerk.
No, Maya is being a jerk.
No, Maya is acting like a jerk.
And not in the 'aww, she's my jerk,' kind of way, but in the 'she said took my English worksheet and copied all my answers without asking, showed up two hours late to our sleepover without explanation, and keeps blowing me off to hang out with her new artsy fartsy friends, rude, selfish, inconsiderate, jerky jerk,' way.
It's really starting to tick Riley off. Maya is her best friend, and her best friend doesn't act this way. Riley keeps thinking she wouldn't want to be friends with someone who acts this way. But when she tried bringing it up, Maya waved her off like she was overreacting: "Come on, Riles. It's fine. You're fine. I'm fine. Everybody is fine."
"I don't think you know what that word means." Riley narrowed her eyes.
Maya laughed. "I have to go meet my mom. She's off tonight and trying to implement family dinners." Eye roll. "Talk to you later." She rested a hand on Riley's shoulder, brushed her lips against Riley's cheek, and said, "Relax a little."
Riley stiffened and took a deep breath, watching Maya's hair sway behind her as she sauntered off, as though it wasn't a big deal that she was being -- no, acting like a jerk.
Maya inhales. She holds the smoke in her lungs and counts to three, closes her eyes and exhales. The smell lingers even though she opened the window -- she's still smoking, her exhale right in front of her nose, and she recognizes this but doesn't quite process it. The weed is mediocre, but she's vaguely light-headed and the world has taken on a different hue. Maya likes being high because she likes to draw and paint when she's high. Maya likes to be high because she likes herself a bit more when she is, like her own neuron receptors have shifted slightly and her thoughts make more sense. Her art takes on a loopier, crisper, more surreal quality that she likes.
She takes another hit, counts to three, rinse and repeat as the joint melts away between her stained fingers: green. Like trees, the color of eyes, guilt.
Guilt. Maya is supposed to be saving her spare cash for a dinner-and-Broadway date with Riley. Riley likes Broadway. She goes a handful of times a year with her mom, dad and sometimes Auggie. Maya doesn't mind it, the seats and the squinting, not being able to make out the actors' faces but hearing the emotion boom and whisper through the theater, ring in her chest. She used to not mind tagging along, the Matthews paying her way. A couple of years ago, Riley would've asked for Broadway tickets for her birthday, and she and Maya would have gone together, no guilt.
Now Maya knows "the value of a dollar," Mr. Matthew's voice ringing, nasally and annoying, in her head. She knows it's not pity or charity, but it feels a little like the latter when she's lying in bed at night, the fan whirring so loudly she can't drown it out, and it feels a little like the former now, as she watches the smoke float away and disappear like it never existed in the first place. Poof.
So, she insists on saving up for her own ticket, for enough money to buy her own meal at whatever expensive restaurant Riley decides to try this year. But she spent her extra cash from her job at the coffee shop (Not Topanga's. Not with her mom. Working with her mom is too lame and embarrassing for Maya to begin contemplating) on weed that Riley doesn't know she smokes.
There is guilt, but she doesn't know what it's for, and she doesn't know if she should feel it. She doesn't know if it's Riley's guilt embedded in her brain, whispering black and white morality lessons Maya doesn't even know if she believes. She doesn't know if it's her own emotion or her best friend's.
Her head hurts, and she takes one last pull from the joint before reaching for a scrap of notebook paper, doodling the backs of two girls looking at the dark figure of something vague, grey and menacing. They're holding hands, but they're sad. Maya doesn't understand how she knows they're sad; she doesn't draw their faces. But they're sad, and she feels it pressing against her chest.
Riley taps her fingers against Maya's wrist. "Hey. You never called me back."
"Sorry," Maya says. She frowns and shuts her locker. "I was studying for my history test and didn't want to lose focus, you know? And then it was late, so ..." The explanation trails off lamely, and Maya blinks, pulls her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment and looks past Riley. Riley turns her head, sees the nothing that Maya is pretending to look at, and recognizes the half-truth of it.
She sighs. "Are you sure?"
She hopes Maya will clarify. She believes Maya's a good person, and when given the choice to lie or tell the truth, she'll choose the truth. Riley doesn't know what her own face looks like, obviously, but she hopes it's open and supportive and says: 'I am your best friend, and whatever it is that is wrong, I will help you. I will understand. I will love you.' Apparently, it does not convey those ideas well enough. "Yes. I was studying," Maya drawls, eyebrows raising. "What?"
"Nothing," Riley concedes. It's early, and she's sleepy, and as she's gotten older, she has learned that sometimes Maya needs space. Maya will learn her lessons in her own time, and those lessons are often ones Riley has already learned or always known -- and vice versa. Riley has her own learning experiences, and often she's growing in ways Maya already has. She likes that about them. Like two halves of a whole. Two people becoming more like each other but still staying themselves. "So, did you think about it?"
"A double date?" Maya asks, and her eyebrows shoot even higher.
"Yeah." Riley shrugs. "It could be fun."
"Do you even like Alex?"
Riley prickles. Because Alex is cute, and he's part of the school's spirit club with her, and they sit next to each other in biology, but she knows, deep down, that she doesn't like him as a boyfriend. "He's really nice," she offers, right side of her mouth pulling up.
"Riley," Maya scolds. "You can't go on a date with someone you don't even like."
"I like him." And she does. Just. Well. "Please. He asked me, but his best friend who moved to Kansas is coming to visit this weekend, and he didn't know until he already asked, and I sent you the pictures. Jimmy is cute!"
Maya rolls her eyes and scoffs. "He does have nice hair."
"Please, Maya, please." Riley bounces on her toes. She can see Maya's resolve softening in the way her eyes do. And her eyebrows have returned to their original residence, which can only be a good sign. "Please, please, please."
"Please what?" Lucas asks, and Riley feels something in her stomach deflate.
"Riley wants to double date with Alex and his best friend Jimmy," Maya says, fake enthusiasm dripping from her mouth, her smile wicked.
"Oh." Lucas looks at Riley, then at Maya, and then his eyebrows furrow. "Are you going to?"
Maya looks at Riley, smile drooping a little, and then she looks at Lucas. The moment stretches a beat too long, and then Maya clears her throat. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to go."
Riley knows she's being overdramatic, but she literally wants to die. She plasters the sunniest smile she can muster onto her face. "Oh my god! Thank you! You're the best."
"And don't you forget it," Maya deadpans when Riley pulls her into a hug.
Riley sees Lucas shake his head, that fond smile on his face, the one he saves for Maya when Maya can't see him. His shoulders slump in resignation. Riley believes the resignation is for her, but she fears maybe it isn't. She's not trying to make Lucas jealous, because that's mean and childish. They're sophomores in high school now, not children, and Riley cares about Lucas too much to play games like that. But even though she thought, for an entire summer, that maybe their friendship was worth sacrificing a relationship for, she feels like maybe it isn't. She's trying not to want him anymore. And she's trying to like someone new. She's trying so hard to move on from a middle school crush that has accidentally invaded her bloodstream and won't leave her alone.
It's not working.
Not even the teeniest tiniest bit.
"Thank you," Riley repeats as she lets go of Maya. Maya's got a fond tilt to her mouth that's so familiar Riley aches with the realization that she hasn't seen it all too often lately. She hasn't seen her best friend enough. "And at least this way we can spend time together."
"Yeah." Maya's eyes glaze over, a little sad. "I've missed you, Riles."
"Don't you have three classes together?" Lucas asks, amused confusion wrinkling his forehead.
Riley narrows her eyes at him, and Maya shoots a "Be quiet, Huckleberry" in his direction. Farkle's got chemistry club this morning, so they head to the cafeteria to socialize (Riley and Lucas), eat breakfast (Maya), and catch up on homework they didn't do the night before (also Maya) before the warning bell rings.
Maya's jaw hurts from the way she's been clenching it all night. And it sucks, because Riley's sitting across from her in the booth, nodding her head enthusiastically and acting like if she just keeps smiling with her teeth, it'll suddenly dawn on Maya that this night is a success. She'll realize she's not actually wasting her Saturday on a date with a boy who, granted, does have nice hair -- the picture didn't do it justice -- but is about as boring as watching paint dry. He opened with a "fun" antidote about mowing the lawn and a stick and blah blah blah.
"Maya," Riley says.
"What?" Maya blinks.
"Jimmy asked you a question." Her eyes are pleading. Her fingers grip the table, her shoulders inch toward her ears, and Maya wants to tell her she'd be having more fun if she wasn't trying to force Maya into having fun, too.
Maya spares him a glance. "What?"
"Um, Riley said you're an artist? What's your favorite color?"
"Oh my god." It takes a herculean effort not to roll her eyes. She looks at Riley. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
"Maya!" Riley's eyes are dark slits now, still pleading but with a hint of demand. She hates that, how it feels like Riley is telling her how she should act and what she should do. "Be nice."
"It's a stupid question."
"No, it isn't." Riley shakes her head. Her face softens and she sits up straight, confident and certain in a way she is when she think she's figured something out. "My favorite color is purple because it's bright and dark and the color of flowers. It makes me smile, and it reminds me of how my mom's hair smells. You were wearing a purple jacket the first time I met you. It's not a stupid question."
Maya slumps a little lower in her seat.
Goddamn Riley. Goddamn her for being so smart. "Yeah. I guess."
"So ..." Riley prompts. Her smile has calmed, and she manages to look at Maya without trying to bore holes into her head for the first time all night. "What's your favorite color."
"I don't know." Maya shrugs. "Gold, I guess."
"Cool," Alex says, curt and clipped. Maya doesn't blame him. Riley has spent their entire date not paying him any attention.
"Why?" Jimmy asks, reminding Maya that he has no inflection in his voice.
She turns her body to look at him for the first time in over an hour. "You don't care. You don't like me. You're--
"I like--"
"No," Maya says slowly, like she's talking to a child. "You don't. You're only here because Alex over there," Maya pauses to wave her hand in Alex's general direction, "really wanted to go out with Riley. And I'm here because Riley it too chicken to tell someone she doesn't like them."
"Maya," Riley says, voice lower and angrier than she's ever heard it.
"I'm just doing what you can't, Pumpkin."
"If you were going to be a jerk all night, you didn't have to come. You should've just said 'no.'" Riley's face is red and her knuckles pop from how tightly she's clutching the table. She leans forward, almost hissing.
"You begged me, Riley. You knew I'd agree."
"I didn't know you could be such an inconsiderate person, though."
Maya rolls her eyes. "At least I'm not a liar."
Riley balks. "What?"
"I'm leaving." And because this situation could not be any worse, she's trapped between Jiminy Cricket and the wall. This is why she never wants to sit in booths. She spends a minute staring at him, and because apparently he's not only the most boring 16-year-old boy alive, but also the dumbest, he just sits there. "Move."
Jimmy scrambles out of the booth, hits his elbow on the back of it, and Maya slides out, legs sticking to the leather because she shaved her legs and wore a dress. She tried. She really did, but she doesn't want to be here. From the minute she asked, Riley knew Maya didn't want to be here, but Maya tried anyway. She hates that Riley doesn't see that. She swings her purse over her shoulder and says: "It wasn't a pleasure."
She hears Riley call her name, but Maya ignores her.
For the first time Maya can remember -- even when Maya's been angry with Riley before, even when they've had arguments, she's never felt her stomach coil like this, her eyes burn with something other than hurt and sadness, something that's just anger and self-righteousness, building and building and building -- she wants Riley to feel bad.
Riley shuts her bedroom door softly. Her eyes feel sore the way they do after she's spent a few hours crying, but she hasn't cried. Yet. She's embarrassed. She's embarrassed that she'd called after Maya, causing the people sitting around them to look at her, one old lady sending a particularly harsh glare that made Riley blanch. So many people turned to look at her with curious, judgmental eyes, but Maya didn't. She didn't even slow down or hesitate. She walked out.
She left.
She left Riley alone to apologize to Alex and Jimmy about Maya's behavior. She had to make up an excuse about how Maya was having a bad day because of her home life, and Alex had nodded like he understood. He spoke quietly to Jimmy, authority in his voice: "Her Dad left her."
Riley cringed.
The worst part was Alex leaning in to kiss her goodnight when he dropped her off outside her apartment. Riley turned her head away reflexively. He didn't even get her cheek, but her ear, and she'd laughed this fake, tinkling laugh. "Oops."
"Maya was right, wasn't she? You don't like me, do you?" he asked, eyes downcast.
"Yeah," Riley sighed, reaching up to wipe at her ear. "Sorry."
She's embarrassed, and she hates that Maya walked out. Maya, who knows how much it sucks when people walk out, got up and left.
Riley sighs and flops down onto her bed. There's a headache pounding away behind her forehead, and she rubs at her face. She wants to talk to someone -- no, she wants to talk to Maya. She leans over the side of her bed, reaching for her purse and pulling her phone out, almost tumbling to her doom but catching herself in time. When she's sitting upright again, safe and sound, she dials. Maya's number is in her contacts: 'Maya [pink sparkling heart emoji, peach emoji, paint mixing plate emoji]' but Riley likes having her number memorized. She likes knowing that if she forgot her phone or if it died, and for some reason she cannot fathom Maya wasn't with her to help, she'd still know how to contact her. Having Maya's number seared into Riley's brain makes her feel safe and less alone.
Listening to the phone ring twists Riley's stomach, and she focuses on her breathing until it goes to voicemail: "It's Maya. Don't bother leaving a message, because I probably won't call you back."
Riley's stomach loosens, but her brain throbs particularly hard. She wants to cry, but she refuses. Instead, she calls Farkle ([moneybag emoji, thumbs up emoji, blue heart emoji]') and feels a sense of relief when he picks up after the second ring. "Hey," she says, voice cracking.
"Riley? What's wrong?" His concern fortifies her.
"Maya was so rude at dinner tonight, and then she walked out, and she left me alone with Alex and Jimmy. She left me alone."
"With Alex and Jimmy," Farkle finishes.
Riley groans. "Yes! She was being so disrespectful, and she told Alex that I didn't like him. And it was awkward."
"Riley?"
"Yes, Farkle." She wants to scream over the phone about how embarrassed and awkward she feels. She wants to yell that Maya was not just acting like a jerk but being one, but Riley reminds herself that Farkle doesn't deserve to be on the receiving end of her anger.
"I'm not saying Maya should have just left, and I'm not saying that Maya should have told Alex how you feel instead of letting you tell him yourself."
"But," Riley says, edge to her voice. She knows it's coming. She expects it from pretty much everyone, but she didn't expect it from Farkle.
"You shouldn't really be going on dates with boys you don't like. It's not fair to them." He sounds small and almost like he's breaking bad news to a child already throwing a temper tantrum.
Tears prick in Riley's eyes. "You know what's not fair, Farkle? Maya not giving me a chance to see if I even like someone before deciding that I don't, because I don't think I do. Maya telling me how I feel isn't fair." There's a beat of silence, and Riley breathes heavy.
"You're right, Riley," Farkle says.
"Thank you." She wipes under her nose with the back of her hand and grimaces when it comes away sticky. "It's just hard, you know? The whole feelings thing."
Farkle chuckles. "I know a thing or two about that."
Farkle tells her about the boy he met at the latest scholastic trivia bowl. He tells her he has thick black glasses and thick brown hair, that he's a couple of inches taller than Farkle but even skinnier, and that his area of expertise is history. Riley closes her eyes, stretches out on her bed so her heels dangle just over the edge, and lets the cadence of Farkle's voice wash over her. She notes how different it sounds when he's talking about a boy he likes versus when he's teaching her about chemical bonds and the reign of terror.
"You feeling better?" he asks after finishing, after letting the silence stretch for a minute like he was giving himself time to process, or Riley time to jump in.
"Yeah. The distraction always helps."
And it does. It gives her time to calm down, to think about her feelings and Maya's feelings. Distance is something Riley isn't very good at, stepping back, examining her emotions and letting them breathe. She tends to feel things intensely, in her gut and in her heart. She likes that about herself, how happiness bubbles in her blood and pours out of her skin. But when she's sad or angry or hurt, the same thing happens. It's all or nothing with her, and mostly, it's all.
But Farkle is always there to read aloud the essay he's proofreading, to excuse himself from his date for a minute to tell her about the appetizers, to run lines for the new play. Farkle's always there to give her time and distance. More so lately, when Maya's not around, or, like now, when Maya's the problem.
"You good?" Farkle asks.
"I'm good." Riley smiles. Barely, but it's there. "Tired, but good."
The sun has almost set, the sky an inky blue, the lights of the neighborhood white and red against it like a police siren. Maya stares, sitting on the edge of her bed, unlit joint between her fingers, phone on the nightstand. She's waiting for Riley to try and contact her again. Riley called once, but Maya was still viscerally angry then, and Riley's usually the kind of person who sends you ten follow up messages when you don't reply within ten minutes. So, if she thinks the ball is in Maya's court, Maya doesn't accept.
She reaches for her lighter, clicks it open and watches the lick of flame against the skyline. The heat of it is small, but she holds it close to her face, eyes crossing to follow it. She watches the way it blurs and bends and turns blue and yellow and orange. She feels something hard like fear sitting in her stomach, but she's too stubborn to do anything about it.
Maya lets the flame go out, and she swipes at her phone. No new calls, no new texts, certainly nothing from Riley. She looks at the clock and tells herself if Riley doesn't make an effort in the next ten minutes, she's going to get high as fuck and not care.
She waits seven minutes before lighting the joint and taking a drag.
Twenty-two minutes after that, Lucas is outside her window.
"Huckleberry," she says in the best Southern accent she can muster.
"Oh, so I'm British, now?" He raises an eyebrow, that taunting look he gets sometimes when he thinks he's won a battle. Whatever. He always loses the war. Maya mostly likes that sometimes it feels like he lets her win.
She shoots him an unimpressed look. "You planning on standing out there all night?"
"I think I'll sit for a while, too." Lucas shrugs, his mouth pulling up.
"You're not a vampire. You don't need me to invite you in."
"But if I was," he says, finally crawling through her window. "I still wouldn't need you to invite me in, because you've already done that. Several times. I'm just being a gentleman."
Maya snorts. "Your mother would be so proud."
Lucas shakes his head, sits next to her on the bed and pries the joint from her fingers. "I hope that wasn't a jab at my mama."
Maya scooches on the bed until her back hits the wall, the sheets wrinkling underneath her. She watches the curve of Lucas' back as he leans forward, his forearm resting against his knee. He twirls the joint and looks at it, his profile cast in shadow because Maya never bothered to turn on the light. "You gonna smoke that or just let it burn out?" she asks.
"What would you do to me?" he chuckles, glancing back at her over his shoulder.
"They'd never find the body." Maya smirks, kicks at his thigh with her foot. The pink nail polish she borrowed from Riley is chipping, and she'd make a mental note to fix it, but she knows she won't remember. "Come on, I payed for that."
"Not a thief, then." He moves back so they're side-by-side and hands Maya the joint without taking a hit. "That'll ease Mama's worries."
Maya giggles before inhaling, letting the smoke swirl around her lungs longer than usual.
Lucas' mother doesn't hate her, per se, and she's always been very friendly the few times Maya's been over to his apartment -- for class projects, mostly. But Maya can tell she ruffles the woman's feathers. Mrs. Friar likes to lecture her on things like the length of the shorts she wears, explaining that when she puts her arms down straight, the material should at least rich her middle fingertip. "At least," she had stressed with raised eyebrows.
And there was the time they tried to study for Maya's French final freshman year in Lucas' room, and she kept pushing the door open farther every few minutes -- it was never closed to begin with -- walking by and sticking her head in, asking questions about snacks and how it was going and if they wanted any help.
The worst was when the woman roped -- roped, ha -- Maya into staying over for dinner only to go on and on and on about the merits of religion and "Do you believe in God, Maya?" and how, if she doesn't, she knows what's right and wrong?
"You're right, Mrs. Friar," she'd said, stabbing a glazed carrot with her fork. "If I don't believe in an all-powerful ghost and the threat of burning in hell, how will I ever know not to kill a person?"
So, no, the woman doesn't hate her, but Maya is fairly certain she fears Maya is corrupting her son in no good, very bad, sinful ways.
She takes another drag.
Fair enough, she guesses.
"Hey," Lucas nudges her with his elbow. "How was the date?"
Maya frowns. She'd forgotten for a moment, about Riley, and suddenly she's itching to check her phone. But it doesn't matter. She won't talk to Riley when she's high. "Stupid. Riley and I got into a fight."
"About what?"
She can feel him looking at her, and she can picture the wrinkle in his forehead, his eyebrows not quite coming together. She exhales, pinches the end of the joint between her thumb and forefinger. "I don't know. The whole double date thing."
"Oh." Lucas shifts and Maya's knee presses against his thigh. She's acutely aware of it. "I'm sorry."
He offers nothing else. No advice, no platitudes meant to ease her mind, no assurance that he's sure she is right. Maya doesn't know how he does it, how he can tell when she wants to be comforted and when she doesn't. She stubs the joint out to save for later, setting it next to her phone on the nightstand. She checks her messages just in case, but there's still nothing.
"My dad goes back to Texas tomorrow," Lucas offers.
Maya watches Lucas twist his hands before she reaches over, settling her hand on top of his to still him. "That's good, right?"
"Yeah, that's good," he repeats back.
When he looks at her, his eyes are dark and angry. Maya swallows. "Let's listen to music."
She's learned that sometimes Lucas needs to be angry, especially when it comes to his father. She thinks it's better this way, if he can sit next to her on her bed, fists clenched, his breathing going shallow and ragged as he thinks -- sometimes he talks about it, rarely, but sometimes. Mostly he just thinks -- her head on his shoulder. Maya thinks feeling it and then moving on is better than not letting himself feel it at all. So she grabs her ipod, puts on her "I hate the world" playlist, and hands Lucas the left earbud, watching the anger in his eyes cool a little as the drums of the first song start up, quick, short, insistent.
Monday morning rolls around, and Riley decides to be the bigger person and apologize, taking blame for any pressure Maya felt and forgiving her for being rude and leaving the date early. She knows there are more problems here. She knows she's upset about Maya's general behavior lately, but one step at a time. Riley's never going to get Maya to talk to her about that if she won't talk to her about this.
Except before school starts Lucas finds Riley waiting by Maya's locker, arms crossed over her chest and eyes narrowed as she scans the crowd for her best friend. "Hey," she greets, careening around him in case he's blocking her view of Maya with all his height and broad shoulders.
"Maya's not coming," he says.
"What?" Riley takes a step back and looks up at him. "Why not?"
"She said she's working on some stuff in the art room." He shrugs like it's no big deal.
Riley tells herself that it probably isn't. Not really. Maya hangs out in the art room some days to finish assignments that she's behind on, or to practice something she's learned the day or week before, or to hang out with her artsy fartsy friends who wear way too much black for people who are supposed to be into things like color. But there's something gnawing at Riley's insides like maybe Maya is purposefully trying to avoid her. "I think I'll stop by," she decides, nodding her head definitively, but when she goes to step around Lucas, he stops her with a hand on her shoulder.
"C'mon, Riley. She seemed really focused."
Riley frowns. "I'm not distracting. It'll just take a quick second to--"
"Riley." His fingers dig into her shoulder. His voice is soft and low, and when Riley makes eye contact, her throat goes dry. It almost reminds her of middle school. "You're definitely distracting."
"But just one minute is all I need."
"You can talk to her later," he says. "Besides, you promised to edit my history essay."
Riley shakes her head and tries to stare him down without thinking about how his hand is warm where is presses against her shirt, without thinking about the butterflies hatching from their cocoons in her stomach. "Fine," she relents. "I'll talk to her later."
Except they have a test in English, and Maya shows up a few minutes late with a note from the nurse (she doesn't look sick, though, which is a relief) and then stays back so long after the bell rings that Riley has to leave, or else she'll be late to advanced algebra. Maya bails on lunch to do more "work" in the art room, and the teacher won't let Riley in because she's not an "art student" with a "project" and should be in the cafeteria with all the other untalented hacks. She sits in the hallway with her PB&J sandwich and bag of carrots until a teacher walks by and tells her she's not allowed to eat there.
Riley halfheartedly apologizes and says she didn't know (she totally did) before shuffling back to the cafeteria to eat with Smackle.
Maya skips P.E. all together. Riley asks the coach if she brought him a note from the nurse, but he says, "No." He eyes her, mouth pursed and elbows akimbo. "You telling me Hart is truant?"
Riley laughs awkwardly, promises Maya is really, very ill, mentioning something about "that time of the month" and "diarrhea" before tugging awkwardly on her gym shirt and going back to her spot by the volleyball net. She tries, semi-successfully, not to get hit with the ball or the floor or her teammates' elbows.
Riley isn't prone to giving up, even though now she's positive Maya is actively avoiding her, so she heads over to the coffee shop after spirit club ends, practicing her speech as she sits on the subway. It's a long speech, but she's got it near memorized by the time she arrives at the cozy little store.
Maya's blonde head peaks out behind the register as she talks to a customer, and Riley watches from the outside, hands stuffed in the pockets of her skirt -- a skirt with pockets! -- until the customer takes their coffee and Maya turns around. She's stocking the pastry case when Riley leans on the counter. "Hey."
Maya glances up from the box of scones she's holding. "Hey," she sighs. "I'm kind of busy."
"I'm kind of a customer!" Riley smiles.
"Fine." Maya sets the scones down, peels off the pastry glove and throws it into the trash behind her. "I have a till, so I can't use my discount on the hot chocolate." There's an edge to her voice, and the coworker who's wiping down the bar glances up.
"You can use mine," she offers.
"Thank you. A small one please, extra whip," Riley says.
"No problem," the girl says. She's got her hair knotted on top of her head, and Riley isn't sure, but she think her name is Sydney or Cynthia or something.
"She's nice," Riley whispers conspiratorially.
Maya rolls her eyes, punching the order into the machine. When Maya isn't actively avoiding Riley, she usually skips this part, just makes Riley her hot chocolate and hands it to her. Maya calls to the girl, Stef, as it turns out, asking for her numbers, and punches those in, too. Riley sees her total drop by 30% and unzips her backpack to pull out her spending money.
"I'm sorry," she starts. Maya doesn't look at her. She counts the dollar bills. "I didn't mean to pressure you into doing something you didn't want to do. Like, you know, "Just say, 'No.'" Peer pressure is bad. You're Maya. I'm Riley. I thought it was fine, and you should have told me it wasn't, but. I'm sorry anyway."
"Your change is 73 cents," Maya says, dropping it into Riley's hand.
Riley lets it rain into the tip jar. "Please don't avoid me."
Maya sighs in the same exasperated way she did when she first saw Riley. "It's okay, Riley. I'm sorry, too."
Riley reaches across the counter to hug her. The edge digs into her abdomen and she's on her tiptoes, but it's worth the feeling of unease, because it's much better than the feeling that maybe Maya hates her. She holds on until Maya laughs, a quiet, genuine sound that makes Riley's heart slow down.
Stef hands her the hot chocolate, and Riley thanks her before turning to Maya. "Mind if I sit down and do some homework?"
"It's a free country."
Riley makes herself at home in the corner and reads the science chapter she was assigned, taking meticulous notes she can highlight later. She eats the oatmeal cookie Maya sneaks her, even though it might ruin her appetite for dinner, and Maya tells her about the painting she was working on all day during her break. When Riley leaves, she feels so much better that she doesn't even care about the two chapters of A Separate Peace she has to read for English and the set of math problems burning a hole into her brain. She ignores the anxiety nibbling at her heels, the way Maya's apology had sounded tired but not quite sorry. She ignores how she wishes Maya would have said what she was sorry for, and she ignores the feeling that maybe she didn't even mean her own.
Fake it until you make it. That's a thing.
She waves goodbye, thanks Stef again for her drink, and pushes the door open into the night, the bell chiming bright and cheery.
Maya sets her lunch tray down with a clatter. Her pudding cup falls sideways and some of her Coke spills over the side of her glass. "You will not believe who your stupid father paired me with for my history midterm."
Riley opens her mouth to smile, but there's no tilt to it, just a straight row of teeth framed by lips. "I think you're mistaken. My father doesn't work here."
Maya sits down on the bench and wrinkles her nose. She's disgusted. "Missy."
"Ew." Riley's not-smile turns into a grimace. "You must've really done something to make him angry."
"Stealing all the dry erase markers so he couldn't write on the board? Big deal," Maya scoffs. "He writes like one word and then doesn't even teach us about it, anyway." She scoops some potatoes onto her fork and shoves them into her mouth. "You're so lucky the principal won't let you be in his class."
Riley frowns. "It's weird. I thought I'd love it, but I miss it. I have to take notes in history now."
Maya swallows and shrugs. "Whatever. But if he thinks I'm going to do any work, he's sorely mistaken. Missy is enough of a control freak as it is, and I'm not going to stop her."
"Maybe it was a gift," Riley offers. She opens her milk carton, breaking the straw off the side and pushing it through the plastic. "Maybe he's being nice." Maya arches an eyebrow. "No, you're right. He's the worst not-Dad I have." She takes a long, audible slurp of her chocolate milk. "But you know what's cool?"
"What?"
"I'm planning all these college visits for the next few months. He's even agreed to fly us to two different places." Riley wiggles her eyebrows, stabs a a piece of overcooked broccoli and waves it in Maya's face. "Twoooooo ciiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiesssssssssssss," she sings, eyes bright and dancing with possibility.
Maya feels her appetite disappear. "Us?"
"Duh." Riley sticks the broccoli into her mouth, her eyebrows still moving.
"Oh. I mean, I really can't miss work." She leans her elbow on the table, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. Maya's already thinking of excuses, but she knows Riley won't passively accept them. She'll have to talk to Mr. Matthews.
The problem is Riley's got this fantasy. She thinks, somehow and someway, they'll end up at the same university. Despite Maya's GPA, despite the money she doesn't have, Riley is convinced they'll spend those four college years in the same place. Maya's pretty sure Riley's already started planning color schemes and decorations for the dorm room they're never going to share. Lots of purple.
It's never going to happen. Maya won't let it. Riley is smart. She's got all A's and B's, and lately she tends mostly toward the former. She's set to be president of spirit club her senior year, she does model UN, and she's definitely going to make National Honor Society. She volunteers at the library every weekend, and during the summer she does the reading buddies program. Maya has spent a lot of time trying to avoid Riley reading children's book to her as "practice" -- "But look at all the cute pictures, Maya!" "I'm not five." Riley's practically got her pick of the university litter, and Maya told her guidance counselor she's thinking about community college. She won't let Riley sacrifice her future for herself.
Maya knows she has to tell her eventually. It's just. It'll break her heart, and she wants Riley to have the fantasy for a little while longer.
"You can get the time off, though, right?" Riley asks.
"I need the money," Maya counters.
Riley twists her mouth, and Maya can practically see her flipping through possible solutions in her head. "We'll figure it out later," she decides. "Bay window."
"Yeah." Maya takes the foil off her cheeseburger but doesn't take a bite. "Where were you thinking of visiting?"
"Oh my gosh, so many places!" Riley's face clears, and it reminds Maya of clouds moving out of the sun's way. "Because I was thinking, I've always felt like a New York girl, but maybe that's only because I've lived here my whole life. Maybe I'm a Philadelphia girl. My parents went there. Shawn went there," she emphasizes. Maya tries her very best to smile. "So maybe. Or, maybe I'm a Chicago girl. I've always liked the wind. Or Austin. You know, Lucas might want to go back to Texas for college."
Maya listens, nodding along and laughing at Riley's assertion that Berkeley may be too hip for her. She kicks Riley's shin gently under the table and tells her that maybe that's true, but if she wants to, she should visit anyway. She suggests Riley steer clear of the middle of the country, because Maya doesn't trust it. Riley agrees: "Where's the water come from, you know?" And Maya's stomach uncoils enough for her to eat most of her lunch, because Riley's future is so bright it's blinding, and even though she won't be right there next to her, she knows she'll be there. Somehow and some way.
Riley jumps when Maya slams her books on the table. Maya has been slamming a lot of things, lately. It's probably her way of making an entrance, and Riley knows she just had a unit on performance in art class.
Riley's trying to get in some last minute studying for her advanced algebra test, even though she feels pretty prepared. Her parents promised she could get driving lessons if she gets all A's, so she's working extra hard. Because what if she and Maya end up at a college that's not in a major metropolitan area? Her then-to-be-new skills will come in very handy.
"Riley." Maya's got a wild look in her eyes. It reminds Riley of when Maya used to absolutely lose herself over Uncle Josh.
"Maya," she says, mimicking tone.
"Lucas," Lucas adds, looking up from his phone with a grin.
Maya raises her eyebrows and slides into the seat next to Lucas. "Riley," Maya repeats. She spreads her hands over her textbook and leans forward. Riley shifts toward her instantly and instinctively. She can feel her heart beating against her rib cage in excitement. She thinks: Maya aced her history midterm with Missy! She thinks: Maya sold the painting of the crumbling building in her neighborhood, the one where the paint clumps toward the bottom of the canvas. Riley touched it once, and it made her want to cry. She thinks: Maya got off work and can fly to Texas!
"Tell me," Riley screeches, reaching across the table and grabbing Maya's hands in her own.
"Kira gave me her tickets to see Sinner's Silhouette!"
"Ahhhhhhh!" Riley shakes her and Maya's hands. Her elbow hits the table and it hurts, but she keeps half-screaming in triumph. Her hair gets in her face, and then she processes what Maya said. "Wait, what?"
"The band she got me into? She broke up with her boyfriend and doesn't want to go anymore because like, he introduced them to her and -- whatever." Maya squeezes Riley's fingers. "She gave me the tickets."
Riley shakes her head, mouth slightly parted. "Sinner's Silhouette?" she repeats. She's trying to remember, but she has no idea what Maya is talking about. She's not good with band names.
"You know," Lucas offers, "The song about the rain and the Cadillac?" Riley blinks. "The one about burning love to the ground?" Riley blinks again, and Lucas' mouth quirks up.
"Anyway," Maya drawls. "It's Sunday night. Wanna go?"
Well, not really, no.
Maya knows that on Sundays she finishes her homework in the afternoon, takes a bath after dinner, and then hangs out with Auggie. They play card games, or watch a movie, or bake cookies. Carving out brother/sister time has been difficult, and Riley doesn't want to miss it to see a band she can't remember play a handful of songs she doesn't know. She won't even be able to sing along, which is the best part of concerts.
"What time is it?" Riley asks.
Maya's face falls. "It starts at ten."
"P.M.?" Riley balks.
"Yes."
"If it was Saturday, you know I would. But I don't think my parents will let me stay out that late on a school night." Maya drops her hands, and Riley guiltily moves hers back and places them in her lap.
"You're not even gonna ask?"
"Well, I mean, I don't really even know the band, so ..." Riley shrugs. She wants to say this is what Maya should have done about the double date, but she keeps her mouth shut. Maya looks at her like she just discovered something she doesn't like, and it makes Riley bristle and fold her hands primly. They don't have to like all of the same things.
"I'll go," Lucas offers.
"What?" Maya and Riley say simultaneously.
"I remember a few of the songs you've shown me. They're good. If you looking for someone to go with, I'll go." Lucas has his Maya face on, the one that's half-amused and half-endeared, but Riley doesn't think Maya did anything worthy of amusement and endearment this time. She's confused. "If you want to ask someone else, that's fine, too."
Riley watches Maya inhale, sitting up straighter with the breath. "You know no one's going to wear cowboy boots? No songs about cheating in the backseats of trucks while Daddy gets the gun? Nobody plays the fiddle."
Lucas laughs, quiet and soft. "I can't promise I won't yell "Free Bird" at them."
Maya presses her mouth together, but Riley can tell she's holding back a smile. "I guess that's a risk I'll just have to take."
"All right, then." Lucas has still got his Maya face on, and Maya's still clamping down around a smile, and they're still looking at each other.
Riley clears her throat. "You'll tell me how it is, though, right?"
Maya shifts so she's looking at Riley again. "Of course, Riles. I'm gonna send you all the bad videos I take."
Here's the thing: Riley has eyes, and ears, and a functioning brain, and while she knows she has her head in the clouds sometimes, she's a logical person. And she knows that Lucas likes Maya. It's all there in his very cute, but sometimes very annoying, Maya face. And maybe it's Riley penchant toward optimism, but she doesn't think Maya likes Lucas. Sometimes, when she can't sleep, she overthinks things. It's a bad habit. And sometimes, she thinks that Maya likes Lucas back. But, no. That's ridiculous. Because Maya is Riley's best friend in the whole entire, scary, exciting world, and if Maya liked Lucas back, she'd tell Riley.
Riley watches Maya lean over to look at something on Lucas' phone, and her fingers brush against his wrist.
Riley chews on the inside of her cheek, repeats she'd tell me in her head, and ignores the anxious way her stomach knots.
When Maya emerges from the subway entrance, Lucas is already waiting. It took a lot of convincing that he didn't need to pick her up at her apartment: "You're not herding sheep, Hop-A-Long, I think I can handle it." Too much convincing, really. But the quickest way to the venue from Maya's apartment was different from Lucas', and there was no reason for him to waste his time coming to pick her up like he isn't just doing her a favor.
"Hey." She pokes at his arm.
"Hey." His hands are stuffed inside the pockets of his jacket, and his hair is styled in the same way it is when he goes on dates -- there was Shiloh, the cheerleader, and Megan, the girl in Maya's French class, and Veronica, who Farkle met at one of his scholastic bowls. Lucas only went on one date with each of them. He's like Riley that way: one and done. "You look nice."
Maya holds her hands out by her sides. "You sure? My shorts don't reach my fingertips."
"Yeah." Lucas makes a sound that's almost like a laugh, but rougher, aborted somewhere in his throat. "I won't tell on you."
"Thanks." She almost rolls her eyes. She likes these shorts. They're black and glittery, and they remind her of something she would've worn before her wardrobe overhaul.
They make their way a couple blocks down the street to the concert venue. It's a small theater, and Maya's been here a few times, a handful of shows with Kira and one with Riley over the summer. There's a small line outside, and Maya unzips her bag, pulling the tickets out. "A few rules," she starts."Don't try to do-si-do with anyone, don't sing along if you don't know the words. It's embarrassing, and you're not that cute."
"Are you say--"
Maya reaches up and presses a finger against his mouth. "I'm not finished. Do not complain because you blew an eardrum. Do push people out of the way so we can get closer to the stage. And feel free to use your weird height and strength to lift me up so I can see better. Got it?"
"Abandon you for the first cute girl I see?" There's a glint in his eyes that makes Maya groan.
"You're insufferable," she tells him. She thinks he ought to know. "Thanks for coming. I don't think they're the type of band to tell you to like, hug the person next to you, but it's always awkward when that kind of stuff happens and you're alone."
They shuffle inside before Maya starts to get really cold -- she should've worn a jacket, but holding it throughout the entire concert would've ruined the experience. When Riley attends things like this, she likes to bring sweatshirts she can tie around her waist like a 90s mom. The place is full but not packed, and there are older people with orange wristbands, sipping on drinks by the bar and mocking Maya with their legality on the floor. She can't wait to be old enough to drink. She thinks, when she graduates, she'll get a fake.
Lucas follows her as she pushes her way through the crowd. By the time Sinner's Silhouette takes the stage, Maya has vaguely enjoyed the opening act and successfully elbowed her way to the middle-left of the stage, and if she stands on her tiptoes, she has a mostly unobstructed view. She screams, jumps up and down, and yells along. Lucas hovers behind her instead of next to her, and every so often she can feel his hand press against the small of her back, every so often she can hear him singing parts of the songs he knows, voice off-key and slightly off rhythm.
Maya has to try harder than she thinks should not to think about, especially the hand thing.
Especially the way she totally, accidentally, leans back against it during one of the slower songs.
Jesus.
She's been making a conscious effort not to think about Riley. She loves Riley. Riley is the best person she knows and her favorite person in the whole world. But she's been trying to distance herself, figure out what she wants separate from that. Riley has shaped her, will continue to shape her, but Maya thinks, maybe, it wouldn't hurt to make decisions about herself and her life by herself, decisions that have nothing to do with Riley.
She's been making a conscious effort not to think about Riley, generally, but she's trying really hard right now. Because if she thinks about Riley, she'll think about how much Riley likes Lucas. And then she'll feel guilty.
For so many things. For that time Lucas crawled through her window and she accidentally fell asleep only to wake up with his hand in her hair. For that dream she had last week where Lucas pushed her against that tree outside school and pressed his body against hers. For the way she sometimes thinks she likes him. More than the boy she dated for two months freshman year, more than the boy she made out with at the party three months ago, more even than the first boy she let touch her last summer when she was high and horny and the humidity made her feel sticky all over.
And so Maya pushes down thoughts of Riley as the song flows into something new without pause. The drums kick up and Maya can feel the beat of them in her chest, like they're dictating the rhythm of her heart. It's almost painful, but she loves it. She shimmies, and there's something wicked about this one, heady and slow despite the way the drum moves it forward. There's an inexplicable push from somewhere behind them, and Lucas ends up next to her.
When Maya looks up at him, his eyes are dark. There's sweat on his forehead, and he's still wearing his jacket, the sleeves pushed up just below his elbows. He smiles, but there's nothing jovial about it. And Maya pushes down before reaching up, wrapping her hands around his neck and pushing her body closer, closing her eyes and swaying with the way the guitar thrums and the keyboard resonates. Lucas is so warm and solid against her, and when his hands find their way to her hips, she doesn't think about how easy it would be for him to push his thumb up under her top and brush it against her skin. Maya tilts her head back, presses her hips forward and pushes down, pushes down, pushes down.
The concert lets out a few minutes after midnight, and Maya's skin radiates so much heat that the chill of the air doesn't register right away. Her heart starts to slow, and the adrenaline starts to wear off, and Lucas has taken off his jacket, carrying it awkwardly.
"That was amazing," Maya says for about the tenth time in the last five minutes.
Lucas offered to take her home, and she rolled her eyes, but couldn't find it in herself to protest, especially when he agreed to skip a subway stop and keep walking just a little longer. And like, even if she's only going to say the same general phrase over and over, it's nice to know someone is listening. "I know," he agrees. "Thanks again."
"It's not like I bought your ticket."
"Still. I had fun." He knocks their elbows together.
"Well, you're welcome." Maya hits his elbow back.
She's wired, but she can feel exhaustion creeping behind her eyelids, so she lets a vibrating silence bounce between them. It's not exactly charged, but it's not exactly not charged, either. Maya thinks it has something to do with her desire to inanely say, "That was amazing," again.
They're a few feet away from the subway entrance, and despite her desire to skip this one, too, she knows that's a bad idea. Her feet hurt, and goosebumps begin cropping up on her arms and legs. If she doesn't get to bed soon, Maya knows she won't wake up for school tomorrow. She'll sleep through her alarm, and if she's late to homeroom one more time, she'll end up in detention.
Lucas stops, nudging her elbow again and saying her name in this way she can't quite place.
"Yeah?" She looks up at him and rubs her hands over her arms.
She can't quite place the way he's looking at her, either.
His jacket rustles between his hands as he starts to move it, lifting it around her shoulders and letting it settle there. It's warm and soft and smells like him. Maya tugs on it a little to hold it in place, almost missing the way Lucas is leaning down, hovering. Almost.
He waits a second before closing the gap, pressing his mouth against hers. Maya freezes and clutches the jacket tighter between her fingers.
Lucas pulls back, abashed look in his eyes. "Oh. I guess, I--"
Maya pushes onto her tiptoes, splays her hands over his chest and uses him as leverage as she kisses him back, again, whatever. He smells sweaty, and that's gross, but she doesn't entirely hate it. His hands find her hips like they had at the show, pressing warm against her body. And Maya doesn't think about anything but the way she's dreamt -- literally, she doesn't daydream -- about this more times than she'll ever admit. Lucas says her name, low and hoarse, against her mouth, and Maya groans, opening up.
And then she pushes him away. "Fuck," she says.
"I know."
"No." Maya shakes her head. "Not like -- like -- Fuck. Riley."
"Oh." Lucas' face falls. "Yeah, right, of course." He runs a hand through his hair. "Right."
"Come on, Lucas. We don't want to miss the next train."
He follows her down into the subway, a gap between them that wouldn't mean anything if they hadn't kissed earlier. She sits. He stands, trying and failing to look at her stealthily while she looks down at her hands, chipping the nail polish on her fingers. He tells her he'll see her tomorrow when they get off at her stop, and Maya watches him switch lines, watches his train speed away. He doesn't walk her to her apartment, and Maya feels the weight of that heavy on her shoulders, and then she realizes maybe it's just his jacket.
Maya thinks she's gotten too good at not thinking about Riley.
Something isn't right.
Riley knows Lucas and Maya got into some sort of fight the night of the concert by the way they act around each other. They're clearly trying to pretend everything is fine, but Maya hardly looks at him anymore, and Lucas' brow keeps wrinkling in this confused and frustrated way. But when Riley asks about it, Maya shrugs. "It's nothing." And when Riley pushes, Maya says: "Stop trying to create problems for yourself to fix where there aren't any."
That one stings a little, but Riley tells herself Maya's just touchy about the fight, and she works very hard not to take it personally. She still finds herself asking her dad if she puts herself in the middle of other people's business too much. The verdict is yes, but her heart is in the right place. Her dad hugs her and kisses the crown of her head, and Riley is okay being a meddler if all it says about her is that she cares a lot.
And besides, Maya is her best friend. Maya's business is Riley's business.
Despite whatever fight they're in, Lucas still shows up at school for the art show Thursday night. Riley doesn't know why that surprises her.
"Lucas! Zay!" she calls. She and Farkle are looking at a series of black and white self-portraits a senior did. There's something eerie about how different they look, yet they're all of the artist. It's more than just a change in light or angle, it's almost like the artist is multiple, separate people. Riley doesn't like the way her stomach turns when she looks at them all lined up next to each other, but they're perfectly fine if she looks at them individually. Boring, but fine.
"Hey Riley." Lucas hugs her halfheartedly before fistbumping Farkle.
She hugs Zay, and when he lets go, he's smirking. "I thought I wasn't supposed to touch the masterpieces?"
It's not an original joke, but she feels herself smile and flush anyway. "Thanks."
The group makes their way around the room slowly, doubling back so Lucas and Zay can see the pieces they missed. Farkle has a lot of interesting things to say; he explains historical context and how it influenced art styles and techniques, and he points out how it's being utilized in the students' works. Zay keeps trying to engage the artists when he can, except his comments tend to be things like: "Wow, you really think you're that ugly, huh?" or "What's so special about a blue triangle? I could've done that." Most of them just roll their eyes or ignore him, but Kira tells him to do something not very nice to himself.
Riley doesn't miss the way Lucas keeps glancing at Maya on the other side of the room where she's speaking with parents and other students. While Farkle talks Zay's ear off about the Pre-Raphaelites' connecting ideas about freedom and responsibility and how he should probably think about that before he opens his mouth, Riley looks at Lucas. He's jittery. "Just apologize," she advises.
"What?" The jitters are replaced with something akin to hurt.
"Look. Maya won't tell me what happened..." She trails off, giving Lucas the opportunity to jump in and explain, but all he does is swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. "But, you should just apologize. I know it's probably partly her fault, but she's not very good at saying she's sorry, and it's easier if you just go first. It's nothing personal, trust me."
Lucas looks at Maya and sighs. "Thanks, but I'm not going to apologize to her."
"Okay." Riley shrugs. The longer this goes on, the more Riley wants to know what the fight was about. She's not much of a gossip, and she's a big proponent of privacy, but again, Maya is her best friend, and Lucas is her friend, and she just wants to help. She's curious, too, but she really, really does want to help. "I mean, if you want to tell me what happened, maybe I can talk to her for you?"
"No." Lucas smiles small, but it's a sad smile. "I think if anyone should tell you, it should be her."
"Please." Riley pouts, sticking out her bottom lip as far as she can.
"No." His smile ticks up a bit, happier. And then: "I'm sorry, Riley."
The weird thing is that he sounds like he means it, but he didn't actually do anything to her. She frowns. "It's okay. I'm sure she'll get over it eventually."
When they get to Maya's painting, Riley feels her breath catch in her throat. It's of two girls. They're reaching for each other's hands, and looking up at some kind of storm. It's dark, and it makes Riley feel inexplicably sad. "It's beautiful, Maya," she says. She doesn't like it, but it's beautiful.
"Thanks." Maya pulls her sleeves down over her palms and bites her lip.
"Depressing," Zay says.
Lucas hits him upside the head.
"I'll take that as a compliment." Maya smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes.
Farkle skims over it carefully, and Riley watches him look. After a minute, he turns and rereads the plaque about whatever unit Maya did this painting for. He looks back at the piece and his mouth presses into a thin line. He's developed more tact as he's aged, but something seems to click, like he sees something Riley doesn't. "Oh," he says. He looks at Maya, and Riley knows this painting makes him sad, too. "It really is beautiful."
Riley reads the plaque. It's about shadow. She looks at the painting again, moves forward until her nose is almost touching it. "What are you doing?" Maya asks, laugher coloring the words.
"Appreciating art," she says. But really, she's trying to see what Farkle sees. But all she sees is two sad girls and a sad storm cloud. "What do you think, Lucas?"
Lucas looks at Maya like he's begging her for something, but she crosses her arms over her chest, scuffs her shoe against the linoleum and looks at the black mark it leaves. "You're right, Riley. It's beautiful."
Riley promised to take Maya out for ice cream after the art show, her treat, and Maya had agreed. She doesn't really regret it because she's got a small bowl of coffee ice cream with brownies in front of her, but she regrets the way Lucas hasn't looked at her since they left school.
She knew they weren't fine.
He came by her room last night, but she had locked her window and told him to go away. And he did. And she was glad. Kind of.
There are some things that are about Riley as much as they are about Maya, and Lucas is one of those things. She can't act like what she did doesn't affect Riley. She can't act like Riley won't hate her if she finds out. Because she knows Riley likes Lucas. She tried to pretend Riley didn't, and when she realized she was wrong, she didn't ask herself why she wanted so badly for Riley to see Lucas platonically.
Well, it's pretty clear to her now.
Maya knows this is about Riley. Riley is the best person she knows. Riley didn't just pay for her own ice cream and Maya's, she paid for everyone's, even Zay's large banana split. Riley deserves a fairy tale romance, and she doesn't deserve to have her best friend kiss the guy she's liked since middle school. Maya knows, in the grand scheme of things, Riley doesn't deserve this, and she knows she's an awful person.
But Lucas is on the other side of the table next to Zay, mashing his ice cream with his spoon and refusing to look at her. And it's confusing because it hurts. A lot.
She doesn't think she's a catch, exactly, not like Riley is, but she thought it'd take him at least a week to get over her. Or maybe he wasn't really that into her to begin with: it was the night, and the music, and her stupid shorts. Maybe.
She hopes not, even though that would solve a good chunk of her problems. That would be the right thing to hope for, but Maya has always been bad at hoping.
"Sprinkle for your thoughts?" Riley asks, holding out a spoonful of her birthday cake ice cream.
"I love you," Maya says, nudging Riley's knee with her own under the table.
"I love you, too." Riley grins and presses the spoon against Maya's mouth. Maya lets Riley feed her the ice cream reluctantly. "Is the painting you displayed tonight for sale?"
Maya snorts. "No."
"Oh. Why not?" Riley's got this look in her eye, probing. She leans in close. "Is it because you think it's too sad?"
Maya's shoulders stiffen. "No. I just. I don't want to."
"You sure?" Riley narrows her eyes. "Is this about your fight with Lucas? Because I asked him, and he won't tell me, either. And honestly, I get it, if he called you short again, that's disrespectful." Riley nods empathetically, but Maya knows she's not. "You already told him you hated that. But sometimes you have to forgive people. Sometimes they don't know they said something wrong because it's a tiny, little true thing."
"Riley. Stop." Maya carves around a brownie chunk, digging it out from the ice cream and popping it into her mouth. She chews and chews, and Riley stares and stares, and eventually Zay and Farkle shut up, and everyone -- besides Lucas -- is looking at her. She swallows. "Take a picture. You know the rest."
"Zay," Riley says, turning her attention away from Maya. Maya lets her shoulders sag. "You've noticed how weird Maya and Lucas have been acting, right?"
Maya shoots a glare at Zay. She knows Zay and Lucas go way back, but she honestly has no idea if Lucas would have told him what happened, and if he did, she has no idea if Zay'll spill right now. "Indeed I have, Miss Matthews."
"I told you to drop it," Maya grits out, looking over at Lucas. His ice cream is melting, and she doesn't think he's even taken a bite.
Riley waves her hand like it's nothing. "And, as their friends, we should try to mediate a discussion, don't you think?"
"Brilliant idea!" He claps his hands together once, sitting up straight. "I'll be Judge."
"Wait, why do you get to be the judge?" Farkle asks, mouth stuffed with Neapolitan.
"I do mock trial."
"I'm on debate team," Farkle fires back, wiping at this face with a napkin. "This is about a fight, not the law. I have a better understanding of how to put an argument together."
"Nerd," Zay coughs into his fist.
"Don't," Lucas says. "Leave Farkle alone."
Zay makes a face, but Riley's grin widens. "Lucas! You're willing to participate, right?"
Maya doesn't say anything, she just watches Lucas' hand clench into a fist, his jaw popping. There's something dangerous about the set of his shoulders, and she feels her stomach drop. When he looks at Riley, his eyes are dark and Riley curls back toward Maya, smile fading from her face slowly, like she's afraid to make any sudden movements. His eyes shift to Maya, and she holds his gaze, psychically tell him to relax. When she blinks, his fist loosens and his body deflates. He stands up.
"Lucas," Farkle says, soft and kind.
Lucas doesn't look away from Maya. "Thanks for the ice cream, Riley. Go easy on her."
He leaves.
Maya itches to follow, her leg shaking underneath the table, foot tapping restlessly against the floor. She looks down at her own bowl of melting ice cream and tries to breathe around the lump in her throat.
"Go easy on you? What did you do to him?" Riley asks, genuine confusion in her voice.
"Riley, please," Maya whispers before stabbing a brownie with her spoon in an attempt to cut it in half. She's not hungry anymore. "Please just be my friend and drop it, okay?"
She doesn't dare look up, and the silence seems to stretch on and on. And then she feels Riley's arms wrapping around her. "I can do that," Riley says. "I'm sorry I ruined your big night."
Maya blinks when her vision swims.
Lucas agrees to stay after school on Friday and help Riley and the spirit club paint and hang up signs for spring turnabout. Maya's mom has the day off, and they're having a "bonding night." Maya says it like it should be in quotes, eyes widening and expression reading: "Cruel and unusual punishment." Farkle has a debate, and Zay is doing ... something. Riley isn't sure what, but his eyes shifted when he told her he was busy, and it made her not want to pry further.
Turnabout is Riley's favorite dance. She likes seeing boys spend all day dragging bouquets of flowers and balloons from class to class. She knows, technically, that she could ask someone to any dance, and Maya always makes sure to remind her when she's freaking out because homecoming is in a month and nobody has asked her yet! Because homecoming is in two weeks and nobody has asked her yet! But there's something nice about the responsibility sitting firmly on her own shoulders. She likes being the one to go to the store, asking the florist what different flowers and colors mean: a pink carnation for gratitude and a mother's love, a yellow tulip for hopeless love or cheerfulness, a red rose for passionate and romantic love. She likes picking out balloons shaped like hearts and sunflowers and party hats. She likes painting giant signs to drape across the hallway by a boy's locker: Will you got to the dance with me? Riley used to shrink away from the asking, but she's learned to like it.
"Aren't you excited?" she asks, dipping her brush in blue paint before squiggling a border around her poster's edge.
She's thinking about asking him. She avoided it last year and went with Farkle instead. But Farkle is planning to ask Patrick, and any other boys she thinks might be fun are boys she accidentally dated while trying not to like Lucas. It's a pickle. She's going to ask Maya for advice before she makes a decision, because duh. Maya would never steer her wrong. She thinks Maya will tell her to assure Lucas it's strictly platonic, as to not jeopardize their friendship. Riley doesn't want that, though. Riley wants more than that. She'll tell Maya that, too, and she hopes Maya will say, "Carpe diem," or, "I think Lucas likes you, too."
"Not really," Lucas answers.
Riley frowns, disheartened. Then it occurs to her that maybe he's not looking forward to turnabout because he thinks there's no chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks Riley will ask him. "Why not?"
Lucas shrugs and retraces the 'A' Riley sketched in on his poster with yellow paint. "I don't know," he says, sounding exactly like he knows.
"But anything could happen. Anyone could ask you. The possibilities are endless."
He looks at Riley, left side of his mouth tilted up in a weak smile. "There's an end to them."
"Come on, be optimistic. Last year you got to turn Missy down and you went with Stacey Steadman."
"I felt really awful telling Missy I didn't want to go with her."
"I know." Riley smiles. It's one of the reasons she likes him so much: he cares about people's feelings, even very mean people like Missy. "You know, I don't know who I'm asking yet."
It's an opening, and Riley blushes all the way to ears, looking down at her poster. She's finished with this one, but she needs to get more paper to start another.
"You could ask Zay," Lucas says.
"Maybe." Riley bites her lip. "He's not hoping anyone special asks him?"
Lucas snorts. "No. No, he is not."
"Maybe," she repeats. She fiddles with the edge of the poster-paper and accidentally creases it. She tries to smooth it out, pressing against it with her palm. It flattens a little, but the line she left is still there. "What about you?"
"What about me what?"
"Are you hoping someone special asks you?"
His hand slips, and the nine he's painting over gets a tail. He rolls his shoulders back. "No."
"Yes, you are." Riley's eyes widen and her heart jumps in her chest.
"What about you?" Lucas asks.
Her heart stills. "I already told you I don't know who I'm asking."
"Oh." He blinks a few times, shaking his head. "I forgot. I'm gonna get a new poster since I messed this one up."
"Grab me one, too," Riley says. The inescapable feeling of rejection claws at her rib cage, and she bites back a frown.
"Come with me," Maya says, not bothering to pause as she heads down the hallway. Except she gets to the elbow and realizes Lucas is not actually following her. She turns back around, and he's still standing by his locker, looking at her with knitted brow. It's the first time he's looked at her since the disaster at the ice cream shop a week ago. Her stomach flips, but this is better. She's not used to being the one who doesn't get looked at. She's used to being the one who doesn't look. "Let's go, Huckleberry."
"I didn't realize you were talking to me," he says.
"What? Did you think I was talking to your invisible pony friend?"
He shoots her a look, but he takes a few steps forward. "Fine."
Maya doesn't have a plan, but she keeps thinking about something her mom mentioned on Friday, between shopping at thrift stores, takeout she put on plates, and Mean Girls. She'd been talking about her decision to forego college. Her parents wanted her to be nurse, but her mom faints at the sight of blood. "Baby girl, sometimes you just have to do what you want to do," she said.
Granted, Maya doesn't know how solid that advice is when her mother is a waitress who hasn't booked a gig in over a year, and the last gig involved her lying dead on the pavement for half a second. But still. The words rattle around her brain. She isn't quite sure what they mean, or if they mean anything to her, but she knows that she and Lucas can't keep not talking about this. She knows that him not looking at her hurts in that vague way feelings do, almost physical.
The art room is empty, and Maya can't tell if she's grateful or not.
She leans back against a table and sets her mouth. Lucas eyes her warily. "Okay, cowboy."
"Okay."
Silence.
Maya narrows her eyes, waiting for him to say something. She already feels like she broke first. She doesn't like the vulnerability that aches in her chest, and she doesn't like how he's looking at her like he's waiting to be let down. Beginnings of sentences roll through her brain. She's confused. She knows what she should do, because she knows what Riley would do. If the roles were reversed, Riley would stop this. If the roles were reversed, Riley wouldn't be in this position. Riley wouldn't let the guy her best friend likes kiss her.
She knows what she should do, but she doesn't know if that's enough. She doesn't know what she wants.
"I'll just go," Lucas says.
"Don't be a baby."
He scoffs. "You're the one who refuses to talk about it."
"What's there to say?" Maya grips the edge of the table and grimaces when one of her fingers hits dried gum.
"Anything! Whatever you feel. I like you, Maya. I've always liked you. It's okay if you don't like me. But it sucks to have you kiss me back and then not even tell me you don't want to be friends anymore."
"I don't," Maya starts. The words cause that phantom hurt in her chest to pulsate, and she makes a conscious decision to plant herself. She can't move, and she can't run away. Because then she showed her cards for nothing. "I don't not want to be friends anymore."
"Could've fooled me." He shakes his head, looking at her like ... warmly? It's weird. He's weird.
"I don't know what to do," she admits.
Lucas sighs and takes a step forward. Maya's back presses into the table. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" she repeats back like she can't comprehend the words. She doesn't know. She's been thinking about it since Friday night, and she doesn't have an answer. It's too complicated. She's messed up too much. She's gone too far. "I want Riley not to hate me."
"Is that what this is about?" he asks, eyebrows going up and arms dropping to his sides. "Riley?
"Duh." She rolls her eyes, but her voice is thick.
"She could never hate you, Maya. She loves you."
He says it so simply. So confident. Maya wants to believe him, but she doesn't. He doesn't know Riley like she does. He doesn't know about the sleepover they had at the beginning of eighth grade where she only put his name down during M.A.S.H. He doesn't know that six months ago, when Riley got a little tipsy off hard lemonade because Maya told her it wasn't a big deal, she admitted that she still has this fantasy that she's going to marry the first boy she ever liked -- the first boy she ever kissed. Riley hadn't said his name, but Maya knows she was talking about Lucas. And even though Riley had said it like it was ridiculous, like she wanted Maya to agree that it would never happen, Maya knew she meant it. And Maya had said: "You never know."
Riley's a forgiving person, but there's a line. There's always a line.
"Forget about Riley for a second," he says.
"That's what got me into this mess." Maya frowns. He doesn't get it.
"I like you. Do you like me?" Lucas hesitates before taking another step forward, his eyes darting uncertainly around her face before settling.
She knows the answer to this one. It's why this is so hard. "Yes," she whispers, looking at the floor, at the paint splatters that are leaked into the linoleum, permanent stains.
"I care about Riley. She's a good friend. I don't want to hurt her, Maya. But I like you." Maya catches his eye. She feels hot all over. "And I think, if you like me, too, we own it to ourselves to try."
Baby girl, she hears, her mother's voice warm and nostalgic, like no matter how she ended up, no matter that she's never gotten a part that's more than a few lines, she doesn't regret her decision. Like she'd make it again in a heartbeat.
Maybe Lucas is right.
"Yeah." The word cracks. "Maybe."
His face morphs in surprise. "Really?"
"Yeah," she says, almost a question. She can't quite believe it herself. She'll have to tell Riley. She'll have to explain. If that god that Lucas and his mother believe in is there, if the god the Matthews visit every Sunday is there, she prays to it that Riley will understand. She prays that Riley will be more forgiving than Maya deserves. "Do it again."
"What?"
Maya bites her lip and looks up at him, waiting.
His hands are soft and warm, the edges of his fingers carding through the fine hairs by her neck. When he kisses her, she clutches the table, pushes up onto her tiptoes. "Lucas," she says against his mouth. She pushes herself up so she's sitting, moves her hands to his shoulders. Her fingers are stiff, and her heart thuds in her chest. This hurts, too, but it's different. It's good. She's never been kissed like this before, like it means something real.
She presses her knees into his waist, and she lets herself have this. Just for a moment. She just wants to have a moment.
The universe gives her this kindness.
And then it decides she's had enough.
Riley's English conference ends earlier than she expects. Mrs. Moore gives her a few notes, but mostly she's on the right track, and she thinks it'll only take a couple of hours to work into an A paper. Besides, conferencing with teachers always makes them grade easier. Her dad won't admit it, but Riley knows it's true. It shows initiative and effort, and teachers like that.
So, Riley's feeling pretty confident, but when she gets to the lunch room, she finds Farkle and Smackle fighting about an answer on their APUSH homework; Lucas and Maya nowhere to be found. Riley doesn't think too much about it, but she also doesn't want to listen to Farkle and Smackle. She just wants to track Maya or Lucas down and talk about anything not school related. She's got 15 minutes before the warning bell. Neither of them are by their lockers, and Maya isn't in either of the girls' bathrooms on the first floor. Riley debates checking the library: the computer lab is right off it, and Lucas could be there. But the art room is down the hall, and Maya is either there, or Riley will have to send out a search party for her best friend.
The door is closed, which is unusual before school. There aren't any rules about untalented hacks hanging out in the art room before 7: 45.
When Riley peaks inside the window, her entire body goes cold. She hallucinates. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to settle down. She knew she shouldn't have stayed up until 11 working on her rough draft.
But when she blinks, the picture is the same. Maya and Lucas kissing.
She still doesn't think she's processing this correctly. Her brain is broken. She moves without thinking about it, and then she's inside. "Maya?" she asks, hearing the door click into the jamb behind her.
Maya and Lucas jump apart like they've been burned, Maya half-falling off the table she's sitting on, heels clacking against the floor like a gunshot. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips are wet, and she hangs her head, sheepish.
"What's going on?" Riley hugs her books to her chest like a shield.
Maya looks up at her, opening her mouth like she's going to explain, but Lucas is the one who speaks. "We were going to--"
"Maya," Riley cuts him off with a glare. "What is going on?"
"I was going to tell you," she says, words barely audible.
Riley feels anger rising in her chest, and she takes another deep breath, trying to quell it. She tries to listen. "Tell me what?"
"I, I--" Maya looks at Lucas, wringing her hands in front of her.
"We like each other," Lucas offers. Unlike Maya, he doesn't look guilty. There's embarrassment, and there's sympathy, but there's not guilt. And Riley knows that sympathy is different from empathy.
"Please leave," she says. The words sound eerily calm, even to herself, and Riley almost doesn't feel like she's the one who said them.
"Maya?"
"It's okay," Maya assures.
She nods, and Lucas sighs, but goes to leave. He pauses in front of Riley and frowns. "Go easy on her, okay?"
Riley narrows her eyes and hugs her books tighter. She doesn't turn to watch him leave, but Maya does. She knows he's gone when Maya looks back at her, mouth pressed into a tight, thin line, eyes wide and glassy. She looks scared, and Riley almost doesn't recognize it on her face. Riley reminds herself that she needs to listen, she needs to hear what Maya has to say, and she wants to know how Maya is going to explain kissing Lucas. She counts in intervals of three and imagines Maya making a crack about practicing for a play, or saying Lucas tripped and his mouth fell on hers. But she gets to 33, and Maya is silent.
Riley's resolve breaks.
"How could you do this to me?" She's not yelling, but it's a near thing. "How could you do this to me? I thought you were my best friend?"
"I, I am. Riley, I--"
"Shut up!" Riley shakes her head. "Just shut up! You knew I liked him. You had to know I still liked him, Maya. I know I stopped talking about it like I did in middle school, but you knew. And you didn't. You didn't like him. And now -- you. You're a terrible person." Maya's eyes are wet now. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and her arms hang limp by her sides. Riley exhales, loud and shaky. "How did this even happen? You two don't -- you never talk, Maya. You never."
"Riley," Maya rasps.
And Riley knows Maya's been lying to her for longer than she even thought.
"You're a jerk. I can't believe you--"
"Riley," Maya cuts her off, and there's an edge to her voice that makes Riley stop. "I was going to tell you. I was confused. I was so -- I'm sorry. I know I should have told you. And I know I fucked up. I'll apologize for not telling you. I'll apologize for hurting you. But I'm not going to apologize for the way I feel."
Riley gapes, and she feels her eyes widen impossibly. "The way you feel? Is this a joke to you? How can you not understand--" The warning bell rings, loudly and rudely catching the words in her throat. Riley blinks and turns sharply on her heel. Tears spill over, tracking down her face, and instead of going to homeroom, she heads toward her dad's classroom.
She can't be here. She needs to go home.
Riley never misses school. When she got the flu in sixth grade, her parents had to block the door so she didn't try to sneak out. She told Maya once, that if she misses class, time squeaks by slowly, and she worries about getting the notes. Maya doesn't take notes, and Farkle's are half-scribbles. He records the teacher, and the information sticks in his brain in a way it doesn't in Riley's or anyone else's. But Riley isn't in English, and Maya knows this is bad. She's not at Lunch, and she's not in P.E. And this is bad.
Maya thought she was confused before, but she's more confused now.
Lucas texted her once before first period: is Riley okay?, and when she didn't respond, once before second period: are we okay?, and once before third period: did Johnson take your phone again?. And when she saw him before fourth, she told him that they were fine, she's still got her cell, and Riley's not even on the same planet as okay.
But Maya is nothing if not stubborn, and it took her a while, but she made her decision. And she's not going to change her mind just because Riley called her an asshole. She doesn't think Riley is wrong, but the damage is done, and Maya decides to take a little of what she's learned from her best friend about fixing things.
When she arrives at the Matthews' after school, she looks up at the bay window, wiping her hands on her jeans. She walked as slow as humanly possibly, people bumping into her on the street, mumbling swear words under their breath. She even purposely missed the subway stop the first time. Maya knows there aren't any magical words that are going to make everything okay, but she needs something. Crawling through the window and staring at Riley isn't going to get her anywhere.
She decides on: "You missed a pop quiz in English."
"What?" Riley asks, bolting upright from where she's lying on her bed in her pajamas. Her eyes are bloodshot and puffy, and her lip is chewed raw. Her laptop is open on the floor, the screensaver shuffling through Riley's pictures.
"Not really," Maya confesses. She sits down at the bay window, drops her backpack onto the floor, and pats the spot next to her.
Riley rolls her eyes. "No thanks. I'm good here."
"Come on, Riles. The bay window is where we do our best thinking. If you just get your ass over here, I'm sure we can work this out."
"The bay window," she says, "is ruined."
Maya frowns. "Don't say that."
"It's true, though." Riley pulls her legs up onto her bed and crosses them. She starts picking at the hem of her pants, right where the frosting of a cupcake gets cut off. "The bay window is where we tell the truth, but you've been lying to me for..." She exhales. "A long time."
"I know. I'm sorry."
Riley twists her mouth and looks up. "How long?"
"How long what?" Maya asks.
"All of it." Riley is pale, and she looks thinner, fragile and bony. The set of determination in her face is familiar except for the meanness in it. It looks out of place. "How long have you liked him? How long have you been talking to him? How long have you been kissing him behind my back? Did you think pretending to fight would throw me off? 'Oh, poor Riley, she won't suspect a thing if we pretend to hate each other.'"
Maya should have come over the moment Riley wasn't in English. Riley's exacerbated the problem, made up things in her head the way she fantasizes about magic being real and Maya getting into NYU. "It's not that simple."
"I'm smart enough to understand," Riley bites.
Maya puts her hands over her face, closes her eyes and presses as hard as she can into her brow bone. "The summer before freshman year," she mumbles before scrubbing her hands over her face, pushing up and over her hair.
"What?" Somehow, Riley looks even more distressed. Fuck.
"The night you dragged us to Shakespeare in the Park. You and Farkle both went home, and Lucas was just going to drop me off, you know, on his way. But I wasn't tired, and he wasn't either, so we went to my room--"
"Your room?" Riley says, like it's some tawdry, scandalous thing. Like Maya hasn't been innocently crawling through Riley's window since she was ten.
"We just put on a movie and talked." Maya shrugs. "I guess that's when it started."
"Unbelievable," Riley sighs. "Why didn't you tell me you and Lucas hang out? Why did you let me go on and on every time I hung out with him, just the two of us, when you were doing the exact same thing behind my back?"
"I don't know. I didn't want to hurt you."
Riley swallows. "You knew he liked you, and you just--"
"What?" Maya bites at her tongue. "What do you mean I knew he liked me?"
"Oh, come on," Riley scoffs. "It's so obvious."
"Not to me."
"I don't believe that."
"I didn't know he liked me, not until last week," Maya affirms. She sits up straighter. "You knew he liked me?"
"Everyone knows, Maya." Riley's voice wavers. "Why would I even have to bring it up? You didn't like him back. I thought -- You let me think you didn't like him back."
"This is not my fault." Maya feels her stomach turn. "Yeah, I guess, once or twice I thought, maybe. Maybe, you know? But then it was like. You're Riley. You're cute, and you get good grades. You have a mom and a dad, and you're nice. Everyone likes you. If Lucas was going to like either of us, I thought it was going to be you. And it sucks, Riley, but the boy I like likes me back. And you know that's not always true." Maya thinks of Josh, with his swagger and his beanies and his Matthews blood. She thinks of Josh and his steady girlfriend. "And I want to be happy, because the boy I like finally likes me back. But the one person I want to talk about it with is you, and I can't. Because you're not happy. Because I hurt you. And it sucks, Riley. It sucks, don't you get that?"
"You know how it feels when the boy you like doesn't like you back?"
"Yes," Maya says.
"The boy I like doesn't like me back, Maya." Riley's bites her lip and her eyes well up.
God, Maya feels so stupid.
"I get that it sucks for you. I want to be happy for you. You're Maya. I want you to be happy. I want the boy you like to like you back. But it sucks for me, too. Because I can't be happy for you. Because the boy I like doesn't like me back. The boy I like likes you. It sucks for me. You don't get to pretend you drew the short end of the sick on this one."
"Riley," Maya whispers. She doesn't know what to say to that. She doesn't think there's anything she can say.
"Please, just leave me alone."
"We'll talk later?" Maya asks, reaching down and grabbing the strap of her backpack.
"I don't know."
"Okay."
Maya's standing on the fire escape when she thinks of it, the window halfway closed. Stupidly and selfishly, she hunches over and sticks her head back in. She says: "I would've been happy for you. Even if Lucas liked you back and not me. I would've been happy for you, Riley."
Maya's not being fair.
Riley has to sit with the knowledge that Lucas and Maya are dating, lodged heavy between her ribs like a tumor, making it hard to breathe. She can't figure out how to rip it out, wrapped up in all the things she didn't know and still doesn't know. Questions zip through her head, and she provides her own answers because it's easier than not knowing, and it's easier than knowing the truth.
She opens a word document, thinks about not titling it because she's not going to save it. She's going to delete it. But she can't stare at the blinking cursor and 'Document1' much longer. She renames it: I'm so alone.
And then she makes a list.
1. Why doesn't Lucas like me?
Because I am too happy all the time.
2. Why does Lucas like Maya?
Because she sneaks him into her room.
3. Why does Maya like Lucas?
Because he is very tall.
4. What do Lucas and Maya talk about without me?
Maya makes cowboy jokes, and he laughs.
5. What else?
Not me.
She can't picture their conversations. She closes her eyes and tries to see it: Lucas in Maya's room, sitting at her desk chair or on the floor, legs crossed pretzel-style. He's too big, he takes up too much space, and he doesn't fit. She imagines them talking about -- Maya's French class. He helps her with her pronunciations and corrects the conjugations on her homework. His Maya face a permanent fixture, rubbery and unappealing. She knows they could talk about Maya's latest art project, but Maya doesn't even like to tell Riley while she's still in the process of creating. Riley doesn't understand. Anything substantial, she thinks Maya would talk to her first.
6. Why didn't Maya tell me?
Because she doesn't think I care about her feelings.
7. Why?
Because I expect her to be the best person she can be.
8. What else doesn't Maya tell me?
The cursor blinks ominously, and Riley stutters, trying to breathe. There's pressure in her lungs, and she feels like she's going to start crying again, but she doesn't think she can. Her eyes hurt, and she's tired. She hasn't eaten since breakfast. She has a headache.
The Lucas thing hurts, and she won't pretend it doesn't. But Riley knows it's more than that. She feels betrayed, and it feels bigger than a boy. It's about so many things, and it's about Maya. Maya who doesn't consistently text her back anymore. Maya who doesn't ask for her advice all that often, but keeps skipping class and not finishing her homework, reverting back to habits Riley thought were broken in middle school. Maya who disappeared at a party and shrugged it off when Riley asked where she went. Maya who called her a liar, but has been lying to her for months.
Riley's door creaks open and she slams her laptop shut. Her mother's looking at her with worry and fear in her eyes. "Honey? Your dad told me you came to him crying this morning?" Her mother still has her court jacket on, and she hasn't taken her heels off yet. "Are you feeling okay?" She approaches slowly, like Riley's a wounded animal, and lifts the back of her hand to Riley's forehead. "You don't feel sick."
"Not physically," Riley says morosely. "Emotionally."
Her mom tilts her head, pressing her mouth together like Riley is being cute. Sitting down on the bed, she brushes Riley's hair back and tucks a piece behind her ear. "I see. Do you want to tell me why?"
No. Riley doesn't. But she knows she has to. Her dad knows, or he will know if he doesn't already. Maya may not be "popular," but she's not exactly invisible. And Lucas plays sports. People will talk, and her dad's a teacher who listens to gossip more closely than he should, because he thinks it helps him help his students. If she doesn't tell her mom, her mom will find out.
Riley looks down at her stupid, smiling cupcake pajama pants. "Maya and Lucas are dating."
"Oh, honey," her mom says, wrapping her arm around Riley and pulling her into a sideways hug. She doesn't sound surprised. "I'm sorry."
There are so many things Riley wants to ask her mom. She wants to open up her laptop and point at every single question she wrote out and answered herself, and she wants her mom to tell her the truth. She thinks her mom would know the hows and the whats and the whys. Her mom is the smartest person she knows. But then she's crying again, except it's not the quiet crying she feels sore and itchy in her throat, it's the sobbing that makes her shoulders shake as she leans on her mother, mouth open and embarrassing. The kind of crying she's only ever done in front of her parents and Maya.
"Why doesn't he like me?" she asks. "Why doesn't he like me?"
It's the easy question. The one that hurts the least to ask.
"I don't know, sweetheart," her mom says, rubbing Riley's shoulder and pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. "Anyone would be lucky to have you."
It's the easy question. It's the question where her mom's cliche answers make her feel better.
She's not ready for the hard questions. Not yet.
On the weekends, Maya works mids at the coffee shop. The weekends are weird. Traffic comes and goes, and for 30 minutes they're slammed before the store is packed and no one new is coming in. During the lulls, they wipe everything down, empty the round pucks of espresso from the machines, and hastily brew coffee they ignored when there was a line curling to the door. Maya likes the feeling of being occupied, thinking about what she still has to do. Her mom told her once that she likes being busy but hates the feeling of being behind. Maya never gets like that. She has a list of things that need to get done, sure: refill the ice bucket, change the sanitizer, wash the dishes. But it never stresses her out.
So what if she's currently wiping down the counter with a rag that's been sitting in three-hour-old sanitizer with flecks of coffee grounds in it? No one is going to lick the counter. She'll get to it when she gets to it.
"Hey," Farkle says.
Maya doesn't look up. She bends over further, putting more elbow into trying to scrub nothing off the counter. "Farkle."
"Aren't you supposed to serve the customers?" She can hear the eyebrow raise.
"Seth is on register." She points Farkle in the right direction with her rag before glancing at the bucket on the floor, tossing it in with a satisfying plunk.
"I need to talk to you." Her pulls at his beanie and sighs.
"What? Do you want advice on how to seduce a boy? On how to ruin a friendship? Or do you just really not understand your math homework? Because I hate to break it to you, but I'm not a secret genius."
Farkle shakes his head, any residual and instinctual amusement sliding into annoyance. "You weren't going to tell me, either?"
"What?" Maya groans. She is so tired of talking to people. "You have a crush on Lucas now, too?"
"Touchy," he comments, leaning his forearms against the counter. "She's not upset about Lucas."
"She definitely is upset about Lucas."
Maya broke the cardinal rule of girl code. She broke the cardinal rule of friendship because she liked a boy too much to not kiss him. But Riley broke the cardinal rule of what it means to be Riley and Maya, when Maya sent a ring power text and she didn't respond. The stupid little 'read at 9:24' checkmark making Maya angry more than anything else. The guilt is still there, an itch she can't scratch, but it's diluted down by anger and self-righteousness. She's getting better and better at convincing herself she didn't do anything wrong, and that even if she did, so did Riley.
"Have you even talked to her about it?"
"She won't talk to me." For someone who is supposed to be as smart as Farkle is, he sure is asking a lot of really dumb questions.
"Today, Maya. Have you talked to her today?" His posture is relaxed, but his face keeps pinching, getting tighter, twisting in on itself the way it does when he gets a headache.
"Um," she gestures around the store. "I've been a little busy."
"You know better than anyone how Riley reacts to bad news." He taps against the counter, apparently finding a sticky spot and rubbing at it with his thumb. "She's doing better today. She talked to me, at least." He pauses and looks up at her. He looks wiser than he has any right to. She thinks it's the beanie. "You really hurt her."
"I know that. Thank you very much." She leans her hip against the counter and crosses her arms. "But you know what, Farkle? Ever since I met Riley, I've been working my ass off to make sure she doesn't get hurt. I let her think Pluto was a planet when it wasn't. I let her think I really loved that ugly sweater she knitted me for my birthday. I let her think that rude gesture that man made at me on the subway was as accident because he was trying to do the peace sign. I let her think Lucas liked her when I knew he didn't. And it's exhausting."
His face softens. "Maya. Be reasonable."
"No! I'm tired of being reasonable. I'm tired of being the girl who can't dance with the captain of the football team because Riley feels uncomfortable. I'm tired of being the reasonable one while she gets to live in la la land. I don't care that she's hurt. She has to get hurt sometimes. That's life. She'll get over it."
"You don't mean that." He pushes himself up to full height; Farkle is lanky, but he shot up like a bean sprout. It'd be intimidating if his disappointment wasn't mixed with resignation. "You're better than that."
It's something Riley has said to her over and over again. For as long as they've been best friends, Riley has been telling her she's better than that. She's better than purposely tripping Missy on the playground. She's better than throwing her mom's latest boyfriend's shoe out the window. She's better than skipping class and not doing her homework. She's better than her refusal to believe good things can work out for her.
She's tired of that, too. She knows Riley loves her -- loved her? -- but she thinks sometimes Riley should just let her be her.
"Fine," Maya says, bitter and grumpy. "Take her side. I have to get back to work before the manager yells at me."
Farkle gives her look. "There aren't sides, Maya. And that's something you're both wrong about."
Riley walks into school like she expects cold water to be dumped onto her head or a pie in the face. She averts her eyes and strains her ears, like she expects the entire student body knows and cares about her problems. Her hands feel sweaty and her heart thumps in her chest. She stayed off social media all weekend, but this morning she scrolled through everything. Maya was silent, and Lucas just had a conversation with a few of his friends from Texas about the next time he'll be able to visit. No change in relationship status, not Instagram selfies, no tweets about hanging out.
But Riley can't believe people don't know.
When she sees Missy holding court by the stairs, Riley turns around and takes the long way to her locker. Other people would whisper, avert their gaze when she glanced at them to see if they were talking about her, but Missy would draw attention to it. She can imagine Missy's voice floating through the hallway: "Oh, look, it's Riley. How does it feel to know your best friend stole Lucas from you? To know he didn't want you because you're a prude?" Ladylike snort, hair flip, pointed crossing of her legs. "You should've grown up when you had the chance."
Riley knows she might be blowing the situation out of proportion.
No, she's definitely blowing the situation out of proportion.
But she can't help it. It's not her fault that her imagination is so ... imaginative.
She spends extra time at her locker, hanging her thin jacket on the hook, arranging her textbooks, and re-taping the picture of her family at their reunion last summer in Philadelphia. There's a picture of her and Maya, and there's a picture of her and Farkle, and there's a picture of the five of them: Farkle, Lucas, Maya, Riley, Zay, in that order, hanging out at Riley's house. She doesn't let herself look at it long enough to analyze. She takes it down carefully, working her thumb around the edges and peeling it off the door. Riley sticks it in her history folder, in the back behind all her old tests and quizzes.
She leaves the picture of herself and Maya posing by the fountain in the park. With their arms looped together and their hips popped out, they look ridiculous. But Maya's smile is bright and genuine, and Riley's laughing at something she said. You can see the flecks of water on their jackets.
It softens her enough to check by Maya's locker, her feet taking her there on instinct.
Riley thinks if she's lucky, she'll find Maya there alone, and if she's really lucky, Maya won't be anywhere in sight.
What she finds is Maya holding her books low in front her and talking to Lucas. Riley blinks and walks backwards before peaking her head around the corner like a spy. She mostly just wants to see what they look like together. Because she has, before. Many times. She has seen Maya and Lucas talking, and she has walked up to them and babbled about nothing of significance without feeling like a third wheel. She's felt tension sometimes, but it's always been from her end. It's always been annoyance at the way Lucas' eyes sparkle when Maya makes a particularly clever comment.
She just wants to see. She just wants to understand.
Maya's face scrunches up the way it does when she makes a joke, mocking but not sour, and a smile flirts across Lucas' mouth. He leans over her, or maybe it just looks that way from this distance and angle. Riley watches as Maya shoves her books toward him, her grin growing as he rolls his eyes. He takes them though, adds them to the one he's already carrying and holds it by his side the way boys do that makes Riley nervous, too easy to drop.
Lucas presses a quick kiss to Maya's temple, like maybe he was just trying to smell her hair or something, and Maya pretends to gag, and then they're turning and walking the other way down the hall toward the art room. Probably to make out, Riley thinks bitterly. Probably because they expect her to head to the cafeteria like she usually does, sit with Farkle and Smackle, and pretend she isn't crushed.
Maybe it is an act of kindness, she thinks. Because she is not good at seeing anything other than the best in people.
Even Lucas, who she isn't angry at the way she's angry at Maya. She didn't expect Lucas to confide in her. He has Farkle and Zay for that, and besides, his feelings were always written all over his face. But it hurts that he hasn't tried to talk with her. It hurts that he didn't bother to let her down easy before going after her best friend. And there's a nasty, insecure thought probing at the back of her mind: Maybe he never cared about me at all. Maybe he just used me to get to Maya.
Riley closes her eyes and exhales.
She doesn't want to believe that. She wants to believe he is the good, kindhearted boy who got her a white horse and who asked her father's permission to be her first date. She's known for a long time, honestly, that he isn't that person. But she still hoped. And now she doesn't even know how good she thinks he is. Everything is different. Maya is different. Lucas is different.
Riley is different, too. She knows it. She can already feel the scar tissue as it burns around her heart.
She opts for the library, reads her favorite Judy Blume novel, and tries not to cry.
"You know," Maya starts, twisting the key in the lock. "You should go back outside and climb up the fire escape."
Lucas' brow furrows. "Why?"
"It's a lot hotter when I'm sneaking my boyfriend into my room." Maya runs her tongue over her teeth. She knows she's failing to clamp down around a smile, but she doesn't mind so much when Lucas groans and scrubs a hand over his flushing face.
"I am using the door from now on."
"Even when my mom's here?" Maya pushes it open and drops her backpack by the kitchen table. There's not a lot of food around the house. There's more snack food than anything else, actually. Either she's working, or her mom's working, or she's at the Matthews, so snack food works best. Her mom does make sure to keep baby carrots in the vegetable drawer of the fridge. Maya considers them for a moment before looking in the cabinet.
"Your mom likes me."
"Not when she finds out you're screwing her only child," Maya says into the pantry, pulling out a crumpled bag of crumbled potato chips.
"I'm not screwing her only child," Lucas says. It takes him a beat, and Maya's a little pissed she missed his immediate reaction, because when she turns around he's sitting at the kitchen table, smug as anything.
"Oh." Maya shrugs, throwing the bag onto the table. "I think we should break up." She pulls out the chair across from him and mimics his posture: leaning back, arms crossed over her chest.
Lucas raises his eyebrows. "I knew you were only in this for my body."
"Well, it certainly wasn't for your personality, Cowboy." She kicks her foot out under the table and presses against his ankle with her shoes. She'd have to slide down further in her chair to really reach anywhere else, so she just smirks.
"Well, we had a good run." He sits there with a pleasant smile on his face.
Maya tilts her head. "Shouldn't you be leaving?"
"If that's what you want." His smile turns into a gloating smirk, and Maya presses the front of her boot harder into his ankle.
She hates how much she likes him.
Using the leverage of his leg, she pushes herself upright in her chair. "Come on, Huckleberry. Let's go eat chips while I watch you do your homework."
Maya gets through half of the assigned math problems before she starts feeling restless. She stayed after school on her day off to paint and wait for Lucas to get out of baseball practice, and she feels like she's been focusing too long. Which okay, they had to take the subway to her house and stuff, but school is a lot of hours in a row. Maya's brain is exhausted, and she always gets her best work done at 10 P.M. anyway.
"Huckleberry," she whines, looking up from her spot on her bedroom floor and dropping down from where her elbows were holding her up. Her notebook crinkles against her cheek.
Lucas pushes the chair back from her desk -- he's using her desk like a real nerd. "Yeah?"
"I'm bored." She digs her fingers into the carpet. It's soft, but she thinks it'd be softer if she vacuumed like her mom told her to do a week ago. That would require picking up, though. Which is two chores instead of one. Math.
He rolls his eyes but there's no annoyance in the lines creasing on his forehead. "Do your homework."
"Thanks Mom," she drawls.
Lucas usually doesn't hang out after school. This is new. Not bad new, but Maya can't help but think that if he wasn't here right now, Riley might be. Her breath stutters and she closes her eyes. Or maybe she'd still be with Kira in the art room, talking about Roy Lichtenstein and pop art. Or maybe she'd be here by herself, taking a nap on her floor, because her boyfriend is ignoring her and didn't even bother to come over after school when no parental units are around.
She's halfway between awake and asleep, brainspace lodged in that place where everything is nice and hazy. The setting sun feels warm where it hits through her window, and Maya's body feels boneless. And then Lucas is next to her, arm thrown over the small of her back and face nuzzling into her neck. "Oh," she groans. "Now you want to hang out."
"I finished reading the history chapter," he gloats.
"I don't read." Maya opens her eyes, blinking to orient herself to the changing light in the room, to how close Lucas' body is to hers.
"I know." His eyes are focused, and there's something unsettling about how seriously he's looking at her. "You're not--" he cuts himself off, pressing his arm tighter against her back. "You're okay, right?"
Maya kisses him, soft and slow. "I'd be better if you screwed me," she smirks against his mouth."
"Maya," he says, in that serious voice of his. She sits up, running a hand through her hair, pulling too hard when she hits a snag. Lucas rolls over onto his back. "I know things with Riley are bad right now. I just want to make sure you still want to do this." He gestures between them, and Maya feels affection crawling up her throat, too sweet. "I didn't think it'd go down this way."
"Yeah, well." Maya shrugs. "I've made my bed." She moves, hitching a leg over his waist so she's straddling him, and leans down, resting her forearms on either side of his head. Her hair falls around them like a curtain that blocks them from the rest of the world. Maya presses their foreheads together. "Now just let me lie in it."
Lucas blinks, and it's hard for Maya to make out what he could be thinking from this close, but she doesn't close her eyes. "But really," he says at last. "You're not just doing this because you want to piss Riley off?"
Sitting back up, Maya rests her hands on his shirt, fiddling with the collar. She likes the way his body feels underneath her fingertips. "You are like, one of the only things getting me through this thing with Riley right now," she says. The honesty makes her skin feel tight, and Maya can't look him in the eye. "You understand, right? I -- I would never." She's trying to get the words out, but her throat feels dry. Her defense mechanisms are working against her. "I like you." It's not what she means to say, but it feels close enough.
Lucas reaches out and grabs her hand. "You're gonna stretch out my shirt, Casanova."
Maya smiles. "Forget all the shit I'm dealing with for a second. Can't a girl just wanna make out with a cute boy in her bedroom?"
"There's a cute boy in your bedroom?!" Lucas widens his eyes, making a scene of pushing up onto his elbows and turning his head left and right and left and right.
"You're such a loser," she laughs, rolling her eyes.
And then he finally, finally, finally lets her kiss him. And she's not using him, and she thinks he'd never really believe that she would. He thinks too highly of her to think that, and for a second, she forgets all the drama with Riley. His thumb presses against the indent at the base of her skull, his teeth scrape over her bottom lip, and Maya likes the warm feeling in her belly.
"See?" she mumbles against his mouth. "Totally hot."
Maya swallows his returning laughter.
Riley waits a week. She ignores Maya, and she ignores Lucas. She attends her regular after school activities, finishes all her homework early enough to watch the news with her parents at 10, and goes to sleep without late night texts buzzing through on her nightstand. She doesn't cry at all on Wednesday, but she does on Thursday. It's quieter though, leaves her feeling tired but content instead of exhausted and restless.
She has Farkle and Smackle every morning before school, and even Smackle lays off the studying a bit to braid Riley's hair one day. She lets Riley return the favor by giving her the most complicated updo she can think of. Zay sticks balloons to her locker as though it's her birthday: one reads Happy 4th Birthday! It's nice, all and all. She stills finds it in herself to smile and laugh and raise her hand in class.
It's scary, how it takes her a week to calm down. The anger turns to something more complicated than that, but the hurt remains, diffusing into her bloodstream.
She misses Lucas.
She misses the things about him that she shouldn't: his cologne mingling with the smell of his shampoo, his arm muscles flexing when he opens doors for her, the still present surprise and awe on his face when she talks about sports.
But she also just misses her friend.
And Maya, well, Riley is pretty sure she missed Maya before this entire thing even happened.
She takes a deep breath and tells herself sooner is better than later. "Hey."
Maya looks at her without turning her head at all. "Hey."
"Oh, good," Riley says. "I completely understand and respect if you need more time or space. But I was hoping after school we could talk? Maybe?" Her words come out in a whoosh, too fast. Her heart hammers in her chest like it's trying to break her ribs, and she attempts to steel herself for a rejection she didn't think would ever be a possibility.
Maya swallows, still staring into the abyss of her locker. "I close tonight."
"But it's Friday? You're always off on Friday." Maya's work schedule is always the same, and Riley memorized it the moment it settled. Maya is unavailable to work on Fridays. She says she needs the night to unwind from an entire week of torture.
Maya bites her lip and looks at Riley. The corners of her mouth tip down, and she genuinely looks sorry. "I switched with Greg. He took my Sunday."
"Oh, okay." Riley twists her mouth and turns to leave.
"After?" Maya calls, voice steady and verging on hopeful. "I can stop by after."
Riley looks at Maya, and it feels so different. Her hair is curled the same way it always is on mornings when she's running late. Her head tilts, and her gaze sparks under Riley's skin. She just wants to hug her, but she can't. She can't. Because she can't just sweep this one under the rug and pretend nothing is wrong. Everything is wrong. "Sure." She smiles and it feels wrong.
It feels wrong when Maya buzzes up to the apartment a quarter after 11. Auggie and her parents are asleep, and Riley's back from a movie with Farkle, picking at the last of the popcorn. She spills it when she scrambles to the door. "Maya?"
"It's me."
Maya comes in, and Riley almost suggests they go to the bay window. Almost. Instead, she grabs the bowl of popcorn and holds it out like a peace offering. "Want some?"
"No thanks." Maya gives a tight-lipped smile and shifts her weight onto her heels, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
"Sit." Riley gives a sweeping motion toward the sofa, popcorn bowl awkwardly still in hand. She sets it down on the coffee table and sits herself. The space between them looms large, and Riley looks at it instead of at Maya. It would be so easy to scoot over and wrap her up in a hug and say that she's sorry and she forgives her. Riley wants things to be simple, but this time she's not willing to settle.
"Riley, I don't want to sound like a bitch, but if you expect me to apologize because Lucas likes me, I might as well just leave." She doesn't say it in a mean way. Her voice is soft and thick, and her hand shakes when she reaches up and smooths back her work ponytail.
"No." Riley shakes her head and rubs her palms against her knees, flexing her fingers and keeping herself from reaching out. "I don't. It hurt a lot, but I get it. And that's what hurt the most. Everyone likes you best, even Lucas." She laughs but it's not funny. "Especially Lucas."
"People don't like me more than you, Riley. Everyone likes you. You're approachable and nice and helpful."
"I don't mean people don't like me." Riley hates this. Inadequacy burns like acid in her throat, bubbling up from her stomach. She's jealous of her best friend, and she knows it. "I mean they like you more. People want you to like them because you don't like everyone. People want to be you. I spent so long wanting to be you and being forced to accept, over and over again, that I just don't have it in me."
The crease in Maya's forehead deepens and her mouth tips down. "Riley, come on."
"No." She needs Maya to understand, even if Maya thinks it's silly. "And I was getting over it, you know? Because it didn't matter that everyone always chose you, even that one time we had detention and Farkle and Lucas both went with you -- our two other best friends both went with you -- because I always knew you'd choose me."
"Nothing's changed," Maya says.
"Everything's changed. You stopped telling me things."
Maya's eyes are wider than Riley has ever seen them. "I didn't tell you about Lucas," she pauses and swallows. She traces shapes into the cushion between them, but she's looking at Riley. "I didn't tell you because I knew it would hurt you. I wanted to protect you."
"You don't have to do that. I never asked you to do that."
"I wanted to." She sighs and closes her eyes. "And I wanted to keep it for myself. Because it has never made sense to me that when given the choice, someone would choose me over you. I still don't fucking get it. I didn't think that was happening. I still don't think that was happening."
"It did happen," Riley bites, too harsh and loud in the quiet of the apartment.
"Come on, Riley. Alex liked you. And Ryan and Brad and Charlie and Zach and Ben and Bryan."
"This isn't about boys!" Maya is missing the entire point, and Riley's starting to feel hot all over. "You chose Lucas over me."
"No, I didn't." Maya rolls her eyes and pushes off the sofa. "For the first time in a long time, I chose myself over you. And you can't stand it because you're too busy feeling sorry for yourself when your life is perfect."
"Oh, because your life sucks so much." Riley stands up, too. She pops her hip and rests her hand there, elbow out. "Poor Maya is the best painter in the school. Poor Maya has a mom who loves her. Poor Maya is dating the captain of the baseball team. Boo-freaking-hoo. Have you ever thought you're the one too busy feeling sorry for yourself."
"Fuck you."
"Very eloquent."
Maya grits her teeth. "You've got a fancy apartment. Your parents are freakishly in love. You're on honor roll and you don't have to work a part-time job just to pay for community college. Sure does sound like a hard-knock life."
"You could get a scholarship if you bothered to try," Riley says. "It's not my fault you're lazy." She can tell she hit a nerve because Maya flinches.
She sets her jaw: "Fuck you."
Riley rolls her eyes. "You know, I thought we could have a civil, adult conversation about our feelings. But I guess not."
"Yeah." Maya heads straight for the door. "It's all my fault. Always is." She swings the door open, pauses, her hand on the knob. Her face calms, but her eyes are cold. "Maybe Lucas would like you better if you weren't such a judgmental bitch."
When Maya slams the door shut behind her, Riley stares at it, her mouth gone slack. Her dad comes out, rubbing at his forehead and asking what the ruckus was. Riley tells him it was nothing.
She resolves not to cry this time, and she doesn't.
Maya knows she gets frustrated too easily. If she's stuck on a problem or question for more than a minute, she gives up. And when her homework is only half-finished, she pretends she didn't do any of it and doesn't turn it in. Pretending she didn't even try because she doesn't care seems better than the alternative: everyone thinking she's stupid. But the week after her fight with Riley, she deals with the headaches and the clenching in her stomach making it hard to breathe, and completes every assignment. She stops after that, because her teachers start looking at her like she's grown another head by day three, and only getting four to six hours of sleep a night really does not agree with Maya. She snaps at her friends quicker than usual and starts falling asleep during lunch. Which is honestly just embarrassing.
She feels bad about the things she said to Riley. Maya had cried on her way home, feeling Riley's words like a slap, sharp and stinging against her skin. And she thinks, for the first time, maybe they'll never be friends again.
It sucks.
She's tired and irritable and lets Lucas swing his arm over her shoulders as he walks her to history. He's solid, and she feels safe cocooned into his body. Maya almost asks if they can just ditch class so she can take a nap. But she'd rather not see his smile quirk up softly as he tells her no, they can't. Even though she absolutely could if she really wanted to and he'd never have to find out. He squeezes her shoulder, leans over to kiss her temple. "Later Shortstack," he says, letting go and continuing his trek down the hall and around the corner.
Maya is used to blocking out Missy and her groupies, so she's not prepared for Missy to push toward her with a snicker on her face. "I'm really proud of you, Maya."
She blames the heaviness of her exhausted limbs for responding. "Sure, I'll bite. Why?"
"You finally got up the nerve to take him away from Princess Riley. I mean," Missy pauses, looks back at the small congregation behind her with venomous mirth. She always did like an audience. "It probably wasn't that hard. I'm sure you're a lot easier, and eventually the chase just isn't worth it anymore."
Maya cocks her head. "Is that why you're so easy? Nobody cares enough about you to chase you at all?"
"Oh," Missy croons. "Feisty. Actually, I just prefer to do the chasing myself."
"I'll make sure to congratulate you if you ever catch any rats." Maya readjusts her books against her hip and smirks. "It wasn't a pleasure."
"But really, Maya." Missy flips her hair. "You've got a lot more street cred now that you've grown up and ditched the baby. Good for you."
Maya clenches her jaw and walks toward Missy, relishing the way her posse parts and scampers off until her back's against the lockers. "Don't ever say anything about Riley again, or I'll rip those extensions out of your head myself."
Fear sparks in Missy's eyes, but she licks her lips and smiles hollowly. "You suck his dick with that mouth?"
"Yeah." Maya shoves Missy the last inch of space and into the lockers. They rattle. "I do."
She doesn't. Hasn't. Not yet, anyway.
"Maybe Riley's the one I should be congratulating. She may be immature, but at least she didn't steal her best friend's boyfriend with her cooch. She's got some self-respect."
"You're right, Missy. Riley is better than me. But at least I'm not you. It must haunt you to know that Lucas would rather fuck a poor girl from a broken home than your rich, snobby ass, even after after you kept throwing yourself at him. And now, if he ever does want you to suck his dick, you'll know you'll just be getting Riley's sloppy thirds and my sloppy seconds." Maya shoves Missy one more time. "And I meant what I said about Riley. If you so much as say her name in that nasally, judgmental voice of yours, I will end you."
Maya reaches the classroom a second before the bell rings. Mr. Matthews looks at her funny. "Maya, you feeling okay?"
She slides into her seat. "Great."
She feels even better when Missy walks in two minutes later and gets in trouble for being tardy.
The Texas heat is dry when Riley arrives at the college. She's happy to be here and away from New York for the weekend, even if the relief is only temporary. She'd be lying if she said she didn't want to come here partly because of Lucas. And she'd be lying if she said she wasn't a little terrified. She thought Maya would be here with her. Maya would introduce them to people, cut any awkwardness with a joke, put Riley out there when Riley is too nervous to do it herself. Maya is like a security blanket, and it's weird doing this without her.
But she knows she can.
She has to.
Riley sits quietly next to her dad during orientation, picking at the eggs on her plate and downing two glasses of orange juice so she doesn't get dehydrated. The president of the university talks about their mission to create independent yet cooperative learners and adults. She talks about professors who care about their students, and the university's growing relationship with many businesses, allowing them to provide internship opportunities and practical job training. Riley picks up her phone to text Maya when she see's an art gallery listed as one of the internship options on the powerpoint behind the president, but she stops short.
She visits the marketing and PR professors, taking a list of what classes the majors and minors require, different jobs graduates of the programs have obtained, and general life skills that prove useful in multiple fields. Her dad makes her go to the education department, too. Riley really doesn't want to teach, but she foams at the mouth at the idea of getting actual college credit for playing with professors' children at the school's daycare across the street.
The tour around the sprawling campus is nice. One freshman dorm is relatively new, and while her father balks at the idea of boys and girls in the same building --"All they have to do is walk up or down the stairs and then they're in your daughter's room!" -- Riley likes it. The idea of it makes her feel grown up. The rooms are tiny and cramped, but all the students who have their doors open to let the prospective student see in are friendly. Riley asks one girl how the communal bathrooms are ("Honestly, though."), and she smiles warmly before saying they're not that bad. And if Riley worries about it too much, she can find out when they're cleaned and shower right after.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" her dad asks, apprehension in the arch of his eyebrows. Riley can tell he's hoping she'll change her mind.
"It's just one night. I'll be fine." Riley rests her hands on her dad's shoulders, looking him in the eye. "Go back to the hotel."
"Shouldn't I wait until Alana shows up?"
"Please don't." Riley just wants to spend the night with an actual college freshman without her dad embarrassing her. "Shoo."
He sighs before wrapping her up in a tight hug. "Okay. Be safe. I love you."
"Love you, too." The words muffle in his shoulder.
Her nerves get the best of her the minute he's gone, and Riley chews on her lower lip, tapping her foot against the tile outside the cafeteria. Riley looks at the name tag still stuck to her jumper. It's stupid. Maybe Alana saw it, the stupid flower border she'd doodled around her name, and left. No one wants to be responsible for the stupid high schooler who poorly draws flowers on her name tag.
Riley pretends to be fascinated by her phone, but really she's just watching the minutes tick by, hearing the doors slide open and closed. She tries not to panic as more and more students gets picked up by the person they're staying with for the night.
Then, there are shoes in front of her shoes. "Riley?"
Riley looks up. "Hi."
"I'm Alana." She's got long blonde hair that hits around her waist and wide, brown eyes. Her smile is easy.
Riley returns it, pointing to her stupid name tag. "Riley. It's nice to meet you."
Alana is sweet and bubbly. She fills the silences with rambles about everything. She tells Riley to avoid the stroganoff in the main dinner line and gives advice about stealing bagels from the cafeteria -- "They're not like, New York bagels. They kind of suck, actually. But I like them." Riley listens as Alana and her friends talk about the politics of the tennis team and the trick questions on their philosophy exam. They ask her about New York. Alana's eyes goes impossibly wider. "Isn't it scary?"
"No." Riley shrugs. "I mean, some parts of the city you learn to avoid, and my best -- er, my friend lives in a neighborhood that used to scare me at night. But it's not so bad."
Alana leans in conspiratorially. "I've never ridden on any public transportation."
Riley laughs. "You get used to it. I've never driven a car."
"Do you want to drive around the parking lot?" Alana's friend Erica asks.
"Oh." Riley's face goes warm. All the girls are looking at her, eyes eager. She wants to wave her hand and say no. They have better things to do. Erica wants to go to a party at one of the sorority houses. Riley likes sororities. She thinks about what Maya would do: "Sure."
Riley doesn't like how the car moves on its own, even if she's not pressing on the gas pedal. Her grip on the steering wheel is firm, and her knuckles go pale with the effort. She's hunching over the wheel, headlights not bright enough in the almost empty parking lot behind the health sciences building. "I hate this," Riley says.
"You're doing so good." Alana's voice is encouraging, but Riley can see her hand on her armrest, ready to clutch it tightly at any sign that Riley might accidentally kill her."
"You don't have to lie to me." She turns the wheel to the right when she gets to the end of the parking lot and steps on the break, even though the speedometer hasn't gone above seven the entire time she's been in the driver's seat.
"It's better to be a cautious driver. Trust me. The first time I drove, I convinced my dad to let me onto the street, and then I crashed the car into a tree."
"Oh my god," Erica says from the backseat. "I am never letting you drive my car again."
"Shut up," Alana laughs.
Riley shakily finishes her turn, the car jerking as she starts and stops, and then she's going in a straight line back up the parking lot. She lets herself breathe. The tension in her neck and back is starting to hurt. "How much longer do I have to do this?"
"You can stop any time you want. I'm just saying, sometimes it's good to be cautious."
Riley doesn't hit any trees, and they go back to Alana's room to get ready. Alana lets her borrow a little black dress, and they head out to the sorority party. Riley refuses the alcohol offered, but she dances anyway. Alana and her friends laugh when she does the sprinkler, but not in a mean way, and it makes Riley feel warm all over. She talks with a girl in the sorority named Madeline who tells her she "absolutely has to go here and pledge" before entering her name in Riley's phone: Madeline [bow emoji, kissy face emoji, ladybug emoji].
When the night's closing out, Riley pulls up the blanket Alana lent her as she lies on the futon in her room. It's a little after two in the morning, and she's tired yet awake, replaying the night in her head like a movie. Riley feels ready for college. If it's anything like tonight, she thinks there might be something to that saying about it being the best four years of your life. It's the first time she's been able to imagine a future without Lucas as her boyfriend. It's easy. It's the first time she can picture college without Maya at her elbow to lead her around.
She could have a happy life without them.
She doesn't want to, though. Especially when it comes to Maya. She wants to call her and tell her about the driving, because she'd be so proud of Riley for doing something illegal. She wants to tell her about the party, even though she'd laugh because Riley refused free alcohol. The knowledge that she could do it without Maya is enough, and she doesn't think there is weakness is not wanting to do it without her.
Maya's her best friend. Still.
Riley might not be like her parents. She might not marry her first crush. But she thinks she's got a shot at her first friend always being her best friend.
Maya picks at a pepperoni on her pizza, peeling it off and watching the cheese stretch and break. She chews on it, only half-listening as Lucas talks about yesterday's baseball game. She didn't attend because she'd been working, but Farkle sent her a few update texts, and Zay snapchatted basically the entire thing. "Glad all your rodeo training came in handy." She half-smiles.
"Yeah, bull riding and running the bases are exactly the same." He reaches across the table to pick at the last remaining pepperoni on her slice.
"Not a chance." She slaps his hand away.
"So selfish." The fluorescence from the cheap pizzeria glint off his jaw and cheekbones, and it's really disgusting how he doesn't look faded or washed out or bad, like ever. Maya can feel a pimple forming at the end of her eyebrow.
"It's not my fault you scarfed down more than half the pizza in five minutes." Maya rolls her eyes.
Lucas laughs. "Good point."
She rubs at her eyebrow. She doesn't care what Missy thinks. Missy is awful. She hates Missy. But Maya's been irritable today. Both her weekend shifts have been awful, the store bustling and busy with no room to breathe. Her feet hurt in her shoes, and she drank too much coffee. Maya's fairly certain caffeine overdoses cause headaches. And she probably destroyed her stomach lining as a bonus. And one of Zay's snapchats had been of some girl trying to chat Lucas up or something. The caption: Watch out Maya!!! ;).
She's not angry about any one of those things, specifically, but they've all contributed to her foul mood. And Lucas just keeps smiling at her, trying to steal various parts of her pizza, laughing at how she pulls all the toppings off slowly and systematically. She really doesn't think it's that weird.
"You wanna do something after?" he asks. It's only 7:30, but Lucas knows sometimes Maya still hasn't started her homework on Sunday nights. He knows that sometimes she just wants to be alone.
"Why do you like me?" she asks before biting the last pepperoni in half. She knows she sounds like she's ready to bite his head off, too, but she doesn't care. Maya knows there's dried milk in her hair, and she smells like stale coffee, and she was running late this morning and forgot to shower. Today sucks.
"What?" Lucas laughs like she's joking. She glares and the sound cuts off abruptly. "What's wrong?"
She doesn't know. "I don't get it."
"You don't get why I like you?" His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.
"What's so special about me? I mean, you could have anyone." Maya clenches her jaw to keep from blushing. She knows she sounds like every other girl on the planet, and whatever, that's fine, but every other girl on the planet doesn't come with a crapload of baggage and an eyebrow pimple. She's not special. She's just difficult.
The problem is she knows the answer to her question: Nothing.
Lucas frowns, but he doesn't reach across the table to touch her. "You done?" He nods toward the pizza on her plate. She's finished the toppings but hasn't touched the crust or the cheese.
"Yeah," she says.
The chairs scrape against the floor, and she almost offers to pay him back for her portion of dinner. She thinks he's probably going to break up with her. She doesn't know why. It's just swimming in her gut. Or maybe it's the grease and three hours of sleep she's running on, because she chose to stay up with Kira smoking and watching American Horror Story. Maya could suck it up and pretend to be happy. But she doesn't want to. She wants to stew in irrational irritability.
The night air is cool, and it makes her feel marginally better. Lucas walks her the couple blocks to her apartment in silence, and Maya stops outside the building, looking at him and waiting for him to say something. He's so tall. She hates that right now.
"Cat got your tongue?" she asks, tone nowhere near affectionate.
"No," he replies, calm as anything.
She huffs and puffs and lets him follow her up to her apartment. Her mom's on a date that just started and won't be home until at least ten. A few days ago, the knowledge might have excited Maya, but between Missy and Zay and work, it just serves to make her skin crawl.
"I'm taking a shower," she announces, hand on the doorjamb.
"Okay." Lucas says. She watches him sit in the living room and scroll through his phone.
Maya is pretty sure he can sense her mood and is just being super irritating on purpose. Whatever. She locks the bathroom door and scrubs the smell of stale coffee and bleach off her skin and out of her hair. She brushes her teeth, rinses her mouth out with her mom's minty, gross mouthwash, and twists her hair up onto her head. Maya sits on the toilet seat for a few minutes, trying to figure out what she's going to do about Lucas. She thinks she should just politely ask him to leave.
She stands in front of him on the sofa and exhales. She plans on saying, "Lucas, get the hell out of my apartment." That's not what happens. She crawls onto his lap and kisses him hard. He reacts enthusiastically, and she sweeps into his mouth, threads her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck before letting her hands trail over his shoulders and down his chest. When she starts at the buckle of his belt, he opens his mouth but grabs her hands and pulls them away.
"What?" she asks. It's so goddamn stupid. He's a teenage boy.
"You wanna know why I like you, Maya?" he answers, clearly amused.
"No."
"Well." He's still got both her hands in one of his, and he presses a quick kiss against her neck. "I'm going to tell you anyway."
"I can't believe it took you his long to think of something." The intended bite falls flat and Maya swallows.
"When I liked Riley," he begins, and Maya stiffens. He's looking at her with open sincerity, and she hates the way she feels exposed, like a livewire, even though she's not the one doing the talking. "I felt like I had to be someone I wasn't. I tried so hard to the perfect, nice guy. And that wasn't bad, wanting to be better, but I wasn't me. When I'm with you," he pauses, reaches up and cradles her cheek in his hand. His palm is hot against her skin. "I feel like I can be me, but like I can be better, too, you know? And not even for you just, better."
"Okay," Maya whispers. She still doesn't get it. But she's not sure it matters right now, when his eyes are bright and he's looking at her like she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He's so weird and she likes him so much.
He smiles. "And you're annoying, and always making fun of me, and you get moody for no real reason, and you get moody for very real reasons. And it just makes me like you even more."
"You're annoying," she responds. And she kisses him again, soft and slow. "Let's just watch a movie, okay?"
He agrees easily and lets her curl up into his side as they watch Mean Girls, because it's comfortable and familiar and Maya doesn't want to think.
She likes him so much. She maybe more than likes him so much.
"Zay!" Riley calls when she spots him by the front door. "Hey, wait up."
"Sure, sugar." He grins and readjusts the strap of his backpack on his shoulder. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
Riley flushes and twirls a ring around her finger. She likes Zay. His particular brand of forward is blunt but not unfriendly, even if it takes a bit to get used to. Sometimes it's uncomfortable, but she's learned he'll stop if she just tells him. He's known Lucas longer than any of them, and even though Farkle is probably Lucas' best friend now, she doesn't want to ask Farkle. Asking Farkle makes her feeling like she's stepping on toes. "Do you want to study for Spanish this weekend?"
"I don't really study," he replies, mouth tilting up. "But I could make an exception for you."
"Cool." Riley prefers studying alone, but she knows Zay needs the help.
"Out with it." He pauses at the street corner.
Riley sighs. "Is Lucas mad at me?"
She doesn't understand why he hasn't talked to her in weeks. She thought they were legitimately friends, and even though sometimes she still thinks maybe that was never the case, maybe he just put up with her because Maya was worth it, she hopes not. Riley is good at hoping.
"No." Zay frowns and his eyebrows wrinkle. "He hasn't said anything to me."
"It's just that he never talks to me anymore. He hasn't said anything to me since--" She cuts herself off, makes a vague gesture trying to encompass everything that's happened since Maya and Lucas started dating. "And I don't know why."
Zay scratches the top of his head and hums, watching carefully as the light changes and everyone makes there way across the street toward the subway station. He follows, and Riley can tell he's walking slower than his usual pace to accommodate her. "Have you tried talking to him?"
"Well, no, but--"
"I see." He shoots her a look that makes her feel guilty.
Riley knows he's right. Friendship is a two-way street. And she's been neglecting it just as much as Lucas has, but she's the one who's been hurting. She's the one who's had to deal with his rejection. And she thinks he should try to understand that and reach out first. Riley is tired of always being the one who has to reach out first.
"Look," he begins, pausing at the bottom of the subway steps. Riley knows they need to go in opposite directions from here. "This situation is hard on everybody, most of all you and Maya. Farkle's saying there aren't sides. Lucas is his best friend, and he still talks to Maya, but he sits with you in the morning. It's easier for Smackle, because Maya's never been that nice to her."
That's true. Maya's form of mocking has never been the type Smackle's been able to reconcile as anything other than mocking, even if Maya doesn't (always) mean for it to be harsh.
"And I know you guys are my friends, but." Zay shrugs. "I've found other friends, too. Lucas, though? Lucas is dating Maya. And he likes you Riley. He's only ever had nice things to say about you, but he's dating Maya. And I think, for him, that's a pretty big line in the sand, you know? He doesn't want to get in the middle of this thing. He doesn't want to make it harder on either of you."
Riley twists her mouth. "But doesn't he already feel like he's in the middle of it?"
"Maybe he's taking himself out of it."
"Maybe he's choosing Maya over me," she counters.
"Yeah. Maybe he is."
Riley frowns, but she's glad someone's finally said it. Farkle refuses to, repeats there are no sides like a mantra he's using to hold himself together. Maya's only ever used it to hurt her. But Zay's just stating a fact. Lucas wants to date Maya, and if that's more important than a friendship with Riley, so be it. And it hurts. She curls her hands inside her jacket pockets, the cotton soft between her palms and sharp nails. She lets it hurt without allowing it to take over her entire body.
"Thank you," she says, pulling Zay into a quick hug.
"For what?"
"For being the only person brave enough to be honest with me, even if it's going to hurt my feelings."
Zay smiles and pats Riley on the back. "You're gonna be okay, kid."
"Yeah," she says, smiling back. "I am." She's going to be okay. She thinks she knew that, but it takes on a different, tangible shape to have someone else believe it, too. "And Zay? I'm sorry this entire thing has been difficult for you, too. I never thought about that."
He shrugs. "It's not about me. It's about you and Maya."
"I'm still sorry," she offers, waving as she runs down the steps to catch the train she hears arriving.
Maya tries her very best to keep the hope swirling around her stomach down when she climbs through Riley's window. Riley is already sitting there and fiddling with her thumbs. Because Maya had, for a moment during the last time in Riley's living room, let herself think maybe it'd be okay. But it hadn't been then. It had been awful. She reminds herself of that as she settles in, crossing her ankles. "You rang?"
"Ring power," Riley says sheepishly, holding her hand up for Maya to see. "I stopped wearing it. I put it in my jewelry box and pretended it didn't exist. I wanted to pretend you didn't exist."
Maya holds up her own hand, ring in place. "I never took mine off."
"I know." Riley smiles. "It was weird. I kept going to touch it, but it wasn't there. It was ... weird." She shakes her head. "I was upset Lucas chose you."
"He didn't," Maya says on instinct. She wishes Riley would stop saying things like that.
"It's okay." Riley reaches over and grabs Maya's hand. Maya squeezes and feels it against her heart. "I think maybe you needed someone to pick you, and I'm sorry it wasn't me. I should've. I know that. I was just jealous." Riley grimaces like it hurts for her to say, the words laced with guilt and embarrassment. "And then it wasn't -- It was about Lucas, yeah. But it wasn't."
"I know," Maya assures. She squeezes Riley's hand and Riley squeezes back. "I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you I liked him."
"I need you to tell me things." Riley looks at Maya, eyes vulnerable in the way only Riley knows how to be. Maya has always thought Riley is brave because of it, because of the way she puts herself out there, heart on her sleeve, tempting the world to hurt her. Maya has always thrown herself between Riley and the world to stop it, but they're here now. Riley is hurt, and she's still open and vulnerable, ready to hurt some more. She is the bravest person Maya knows. "Why did you stopped telling me things? Not just Lucas. I can't fix anything if I don't know what I need to fix."
Maya exhales, long and slow. "You said you wanted to be me, but I wanted to be you. And I couldn't be. I thought maybe I could, for a long time. I tried. I tried really hard sometimes. But then I didn't want to be you, Riley. I love you more than anything. But you're the best you." She smiles a shaky smile. She feels scared. Even after everything, Maya doesn't know if she can handle Riley rejecting her again. "And I decided to be me. And then I thought about all of these things I like, and I thought, I don't know, you'd see me differently. You won't like me trying to be me. You won't approve."
"Give me a chance." Riley nods in that encouraging way of hers. "I'll try not to be a judgment witch with a B."
"I didn't mean that."
"I believe you," Riley says.
Maya tries to find the lie on her face, but she can't. She shrugs. "I meant it a little."
Riley frowns. "Keep going."
"It's just. I -- I smoke pot." Riley's eyes go wide. "I like to drink at parties. When I told you I made out with that one guy at that party, I wasn't lying, but. I didn't just make out with him. And I don't think those things are bad. I just -- I know they're wrong, but they're me."
"Okay." Riley swallows and her hand goes slack in Maya's. "I get it. Everyone drinks at parties. I don't ever want to try marijuana because it smells gross. And even though my mom keeps telling us she's 'so glad' she waited until marriage and that it was 'so worth it,'" Riley pauses to make a face. "I don't think it's wrong that you didn't. I don't even know that I'll want to wait, either. I don't -- I'm surprised, Maya. I'm not angry. I don't think those things are bad or wrong. Illegal, maybe."
"You don't think I'm a juvenile delinquent?" It's a joke. Kind of.
Riley smiles so wide it would look awkward on anyone else, but on her it looks natural. "No."
"I'm sorry I used protecting you as an excuse to lie to you," Maya says. "I resented you for it, but you didn't ask me to do it, and it wasn't fair."
"I used to like it." Riley shrugs. "I know I like my happy bubble, and I know I let things get to me too much. But you don't have to keep me from getting hurt, Maya. Everyone gets hurt sometimes. That's life. I just wish you wouldn't be the one to do the hurting."
"I know. I just -- I love you so much, and I wanted to keep you innocent and happy. And then I kept doing it even when it was hurting me. Like a habit I couldn't break. I blamed you for it. I'm sorry."
"Thank you," Riley says. "I forgive you." Riley bridges the gap between them enough to wrap her arms around Maya and give her a hug. It's short, and she scoots back right after, but it's genuine and makes Maya feel a little bit lighter, especially when Riley still laces their fingers together.
"Do I--" Maya bites her lip, weighing the pros and cons of saying what she's thinking. She knows how easily this conversation can turn. "What happens now? Do I tell you about Lucas or not?"
Riley takes her hand back, and Maya wishes she hadn't said anything. Riley curls her knees to her chest and rests her chin there, wrapped in a tiny little ball. "Not now. I think I still need more time. It still hurts." Her voice is small and cracked. Maya rubs at her eyes. "Someday it won't. And when that happens, I want you to tell me every little thing in annoying detail. Even the gross sex stuff." Riley's nose scrunches up and Maya laughs a whisper of a sound.
"I think I need a little more time to just be Maya," she says.
"And I need a little more time to just be Riley," Riley answers. "But we're gonna be okay. We're best friend."
"Yeah." Maya feels herself smile, and she likes the way she sees it reflected on Riley's face, bright and hopeful. "Always."
"So." Riley bites her lip, still curled in on herself. "See you around?"
"Yeah." Maya rests her hand against the windowpane. "See you around."
It takes all day for Riley to work up the courage. It's distracting, really, because she can't stop thinking about what she's going to say when she finally does get the opportunity. The first time Riley's presented with a chance, she panics, feels almost nauseous with the way her stomach clenches and her heart pounds. She keeps her head down and walks to algebra without doing anything at all. And then she feels stupid, because what if she doesn't see Lucas again today?
But she does, right when she thinks she's about to get out it. He's coming in from baseball practice when she's heading out from model UN. Riley almost ignores him again. It's easier, and she's used to it now. She fights every instinct in her body and waves. "Hey, Lucas!"
He stops and looks at her funny, eyebrows lifting. He whispers something to the guys he's walking with and then heads over. "Hi."
She makes a point to keep breathing. "I've missed you."
"I've missed you, too," he says. He sounds sincere, but the words are laced with something else. His mouth twists in confusion.
"I'm sorry if I've hurt you," Riley offers.
"You didn't." He runs a hand through his hair and it sticks a little with sweat. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Riley. But I didn't do anything wrong."
She sours, presses her mouth together and flexes her hands to keep from curling them into fists and wrapping her arms around herself. "I know." She clears her throat. "I knew you liked Maya. I just didn't know that meant you didn't like me."
"I like you, Riley," he sighs. "You're my friend."
"Am I?" She doesn't flinch, but her shoulders are tight, inching toward her ears.
"I don't know." Lucas shakes his head and looks at her seriously. "I want us to be friends. But I knew that you'd be okay if we ... I knew you'd be okay."
"I am okay. But it still sucks." Riley looks down and kicks at the cement. "I thought you'd at least give me an explanation. That's what friends do, right? Talk to each other."
"Yeah. They do." Lucas sits down on the sidewalk and wipes at his forehead. Riley looks around. A little further out, people are walking, but it's not that busy around here after school lets out. She looks up at the sky. It's so light it only looks almost-blue. She sits next to Lucas. "Maya was just easy to talk to."
Riley swallows down the urge to say she's easy to talk to, but it doesn't sound ridiculous to her anymore: Maya and Lucas talk. Riley is hard to talk to. She's learning to accept this and trying to fix it. She wants to be easy to talk to.
"And I don't know what to say to you. Because I'm not sorry that I like her. And I'm not sorry that she likes me. I don't know how to make it better, Riley."
"You don't have to make it better," Riley says. She taps the toes of her boots against the pavement and listens for the clicking sound.
"She misses you. She doesn't talk about it, really. But I know she does."
"I know." Riley smiles. This ridge between them all used to feel like an impasse, but she can sense it getting smaller every day. "I miss her, too." Riley breathes and slots her fingers together, resting them over her knees. "You two didn't go to turnabout."
"Yeah." Lucas shrugs. "She uh," he reaches up and rubs at the back of his head. "She drew a picture of me as a buffalo that said turnabout? on the top. We thought about going, but she didn't want to pay for the tickets, so, uh, she agreed to go to the comic book store with me instead. And then we went to that diner that serves southern comfort food." He looks at Riley like he's trying to gauge her reaction, and Riley does her best to school her face into a picture of calm composure. "Maya said it was only fair that turnabout is the one day we do the stupid, Texas things I want to do."
When Riley smiles, it's close-lipped and small, but she finds she means it. "She's great that way, huh?"
"She is," he says, his Maya face sliding into place. It's different now. He looks happier somehow.
Riley feels her heart skip a beat, and she doesn't know if it's because she's sad, or because she's glad Maya has someone who loves her that much.
"I think she also didn't want to go because she didn't want to rub it in your face or anything."
"Yeah." Riley nods and presses her hands down against her legs. "Let's just. If you want to, can we start being real friends again?"
Lucas' eyes are bright, and he smiles at her. It's not his Maya face, and Riley starts to wonder if maybe she's been blind to his Riley face this whole time. "I'd like that."
"Me too." She pulls her fingers apart, pushes off the ground and stands up.
Lucas follows suit. "I'd give you a hug, but."
"I know." She doesn't want to be covered in his sweat, anyway.
Riley holds out her hand. It feels ridiculous when he shakes it, but his grip is firm, and she starts to feel her life slotting back into place. The gap closing itself. Making the first move all the time can be tiring, and it's made her feel unimportant before, but Lucas looks grateful when he heads inside the school.
Riley thinks even though it's hard, maybe it's a good thing that she's willing to do it. Not all the time. She has to learn to pick her battles so she doesn't get worn out, but maybe it's something to admire about herself. Maybe trying too hard isn't always a bad thing.
Maya isn't supposed to be at the Friar's right now.
Actually, Lucas' mom banned her from the premises for the night. She's on a trip to Atlantic City with her girlfriends, and his dad is in Texas. Lucas told Maya that his mom encouraged him to invite Farkle over for a sleepover ("A sleepover?" Maya had snorted. "What, like you're twelve?"). But Farkle has a date, and Zay is busy, and there's a note taped to the fridge reminding Lucas that Maya is under no circumstances to step foot in their apartment because there is no parental supervision. As though they don't already spend hours upon hours at Maya's place with no parental supervision.
Parents are funny.
"You know," Lucas mumbles against Maya's neck. "I'm risking my livelihood by letting you be here right now."
"You know," Maya responds, trailing her fingers over the strip of skin just above Lucas' jeans and feeling his sharp intake of breath. "I'm not convinced your mama wouldn't kill me if she came home right now."
"So basically," he begins, pausing to nip at her collarbone. His hands are spread over her ribs over her shirt, but when he shifts it bunches up and his pinky presses against flesh. "We're either going to spend eternity in Hell later, or my parents are going to kill us, and we'll spend eternity in Hell now?"
"You're an idiot." She rolls her eyes, but the sarcasm gets lost in the slip of his hand under her shirt and the scrape of his teeth over her jaw.
"Mhm." The rumble is low against her ear, and she hates how she shivers with it.
"Do you believe that?"
"What?" he pulls back, catching her eye.
"I don't know. That this is a way to stick it to your father." She tries not to look away, but she lets her eyes drift to the coffee table, the remains of his mom's lasagna staining their plates, the half-empty coke bottle she brought with her because his family only keeps water and things like grapefruit juice in the fridge.
His hands slide out from under her shirt and he places them over her thighs. "No."
"Because it is," Maya says. She rests her arms over his shoulders and clasps her hands together over the back of the sofa. "Your father hates me."
"He doesn't know you," Lucas says. He leans up and kisses her, a quick little peck. "Mama hates you, though."
Maya laughs despite herself. "Kinda hot, isn't it?" She wiggles her eyebrows.
"Are you trying to kill the mood?"
"I'm trying to enhance the mood, Huckleberry." Maya leans in close, whispers against his ear. "You're a bad, bad boy."
She can feel his groan, and it's not the sexy kind. He pokes at her stomach. "Get off me."
"Get you off?" She grins, feels it cracking all over her face.
"You're the worst."
"You love it."
Maya kisses him again, soft and slow, kisses him until the smile wipes itself off her face. She kisses him, tongue pushing against his teeth and the roof of his mouth like she wants him to hurt her. But his hands are warm and solid and soft and comforting. It's not so much that she feels fragile, but like he thinks she's something worth taking care with. Maya gets that warm feeling in her stomach and toes when his thumb swipes against the underside of her bra. "Lucas," she breathes against his mouth, open and vulnerable.
It's not that she hasn't done this before, or that she hasn't done this with Lucas before. It's not even the first time she wants more -- he always leaves her wanting more, but it never feels like he's doing it on purpose. It never feels like part of a game, which is funny, considering how this entire thing started. It's the way the sun sets through the window, casting an orange glow around the room. It's the feeling of Lucas through his jeans, the way the denim itches against her thighs. It's the way he says her name, broken and scrambled, like maybe she means just as much to him as he does to her. She wants more. She wants.
Her eyelashes are sticky when she comes, but she's not crying. Lucas has a thumb on her clit and two fingers in her. Her underwear is on the floor of the living room, and she leans on him. Everything is dark and shadowy now, and Maya's mouth is wet against his shoulder. "Lucas," she says. "Not half bad."
He laughs, a quiet reverberating thing she feels as he pulls his fingers out of her. Maya knows he's still hard in his jeans. "Romantic."
"Thanks." Her heart hammers in her chest. "Not for -- I mean, for that, too. But, you know, for everything else."
She can feel his hand in her hair. "Thanks for letting me."
It's harder being without Maya now, knowing they're going to come back together again.
The shifts are small but they feel monumental. The first day Lucas joins them in the lunchroom before school, or being able to say hello to Maya in the classes they have together. Riley still has to remind herself not to shoot Maya a look when Maya doesn't turn in her homework, but she lets herself worry when Maya doesn't show up for class at all. It's a balancing act. She is always going to care, but she has to let Maya be Maya, even if she disagrees sometimes.
She has to believe that Maya will learn when she needs to, and sometimes lessons Riley believes in aren't ones that Maya even wants.
Riley does little things like force herself not to look away when Maya and Lucas are walking the other direction down the hallway. She smiles, waves and lets herself get used to it. She thinks of it as exposure therapy, even though mostly they're just walking next to each other, talking about whatever it is they're talking about. Riley lets herself be proud anyway. Baby steps.
Her dad takes her on her second out-of-state college visit to Berkeley. It's chilly there, and she wears a jacket the entire trip, especially when they take a detour into San Francisco to see Fisherman's Wharf. It's touristy, bright orange and cool blue, and Riley loves it. She buys a shot glass with the golden gate bridge at one of the little shops. "For Maya," she says."
Her dad raises an eyebrow.
"I don't think she'll use it," she lies. Maya will totally use it.
"I didn't think you two were still ... you two," he pries gently, fingers grazing the back of her arm.
Riley has spoken a little bit about it to her mom, but she hasn't really said much at all, and even less to her dad. It's not because she doesn't love them. She just wanted to fix this one herself. She smiles. "We'll always be us, even when we're not."
She falls in love with the church they attend before their flight back on Sunday, especially when a woman prays for acceptance of all people and all loves. Riley still feels like a New York girl, but the sun is brighter and warmer in California, and it appeals to her. She thinks she could belong here. She tells Farkle, and he buys her a collection of essays about the state. She reads them slowly, letting the words ink into her skin and her veins, copying a list of quotes she likes into the back of her English notebook. Many of them are sad, and she can feel an ache for something lost and fractured within herself. When she tells Farkle, he looks at her the same way he looked at Maya's painting all those weeks ago. Then he tells her to lay off the Didion.
Riley cuts her hair. It curls around her collarbones, and Smackle says it makes her look like she could run for president. It feels weird when she washes it, tries to run her fingers through something that is no longer there. It's lighter, and she likes it. She thinks about loss.
Riley goes on dates. She asks out the cute boy in her Spanish class. They share gelato in the park, and when he holds her hand, his thumb brushes over the back of her knuckles. Riley kisses him outside her apartment, quick and easy. She attends a Knicks game with a boy she did a group project with last year. He doesn't look at her the way Lucas does when she get over-excited about sports. He flicks her hat and buys her a hot dog. She thanks him at the end of the night, and her "I had a lot of fun" is honest, but only because she really likes basketball. Riley decides to see a movie with Julia from history, and Farkle doesn't react when she mentions it. Julia's hands are smaller than Riley is used to on her cheek. She kisses softly, and she tastes like chocolate and lipgloss. It's nice.
Riley goes on dates, and none of them stick, but it feels good, like she's narrowing in on what she wants outside of fantasy. Riley wants to be ready when it happens, wants to be comfortable in her own skin.
"How do you know it'll happen?" Smackle asks. She isn't looking at Riley but her brow is furrowed, corner of her mouth caught in her bottom lip as she erases something in her notebook.
"I don't know," Riley says. "I just have hope."
It took a lot of convincing, but Lucas eventually left a hickey just above her hip. Maya likes to press against it with her thumb, the pain low and dull and probably not quite real. She presses against it while she sits in the art room, staring at a painting that isn't coming out right. She presses against it while taking a math quiz, grip too tight on the pencil in her other hand because the question looks like gibberish. She presses against it while Kira tells her about blowing her ex at a party last weekend. Maya likes the physical reminder, and she likes the way it feels underneath her thumb, a stain she thinks she'll make him bite against her skin again.
Maya spends a lot of time the next week pressing against the mark.
She spends a lot of time doing a lot of things. Without her energy going toward being angry with Riley or aggressively not thinking about Riley, time seems to slow down. She goes to work, like usual, pulls shots, steams milk, cleans the bathrooms at the end of the night because the shift refuses to do it. Ever. One Monday, she scrubs and scrubs until the toilets are actually clean instead of just wiping everything down with cleaner and bleach. Maya thinks it may have given her a contact high, and her arms are tired, but accomplishment rests in her bones. She goes home and falls asleep without doing any of her homework. You win some, you lose some.
The money in her bank account starts to pile up, even though she insists on paying for her share of the things she and Lucas do, even though she still buys weed and smokes it when she can't sleep or doesn't want to sleep or just feels like it. It's weird. She tries to give some of the excess cash to her mom to help with things like rent or groceries, but her mom shrugs her off. "You're saving for college," she says, voice more hopeful than anything else. "I got it covered."
Her mom has dark circles under her eyes, and Maya knows she doesn't always get enough sleep. "Are you sure?"
"You're gonna have to go to college if you want more than this." She gestures around the small apartment. Her hip rests against the kitchen counter and she sighs, thumbing through the mail.
"It's not so bad." Maya smiles when her mom looks up with a frown, worry lines etching around her eyes. "I'm going to college, Mom. Relax. You'll give yourself wrinkles."
She doesn't hug her, because she thinks it would be awkward, but she does pick up the newest romance novel in the series her mom really likes from the store the next week, along with expensive chocolates from Belgium, apparently. She tries her best to say thank you.
Maya gets really into cubism, learns what Guernica is actually about, and spends too many mornings in the art room trying to create something that doesn't feel like a knockoff. She tries to paint as though she's Picasso: the city, that large photo of horses that hangs in the hallway of Lucas' apartment, the picture of her and Riley on top of the Empire State Building. It all feels fake, like she's forcing something she shouldn't. The art teacher tells her it's good to try new things: "It's better to try and fail than not try at all." Maya rolls her eyes so hard it hurts.
She gets roped into going on a double date -- ugh -- with Farkle and his new boyfriend Mitchell. Mitchell goes to a different school and is a scholastic bowl nerd like Farkle, but he splits a chocolate lava cake with Maya, so Maya gives him her seal of approval. She watches Farkle hesitantly take his hand as they walk down the street. The weather's turned warm. Everything's in bloom, and Maya feels it all over. She wants to paint it. She tries her best to memorize the hunch of Farkle's shoulders, the odd way Mitchell's hair frizzes, and the too full feeling of chocolate and happiness in her stomach.
"Wanna hold my hand, Ranger Rick?" she asks, clasping them behind her back.
He smiles down at her. "Not really."
Maya snorts. "You're a liar."
"Maybe." He shrugs, reaches out and ruffles her hair, which is actually annoying because she spent a long time straightening it this afternoon, and pulls her into his side.
"You ruined my hair." She can hear Farkle's laugh tinkling back toward them in the breeze. It makes her slightly less upset.
"Yeah. You look awful now." The sarcasm in his voice pretty much cancels out any good will Farkle's laughter brought. Maya scowls. "But I love you anyway."
The words rush over her like a wave, cold and hard and nice. She remembers visiting the beach with the Matthews and being knocked over by the force of the water. She'd sputtered and laughed, then. She smiles now, throws her arm around his waist and cuddles closer. "You better."
She realizes that she wants to tell Riley, not because there's guilt tainting the moment, and not because it doesn't feel like her own, but because she's happy. And she wants to be able to share that with her best friend.
Riley tries to be more patient than she is. She expects people to be on time, and she expects people to be ready when she is. Riley's felt an inch under her skin for the past week. She keeps opening up her phone and drafting messages to Maya that she doesn't send. In class, when Maya says, "Hey," Riley says, "Hey" back and swallows down the "How was your weekend?" and "Are those new shoes?" and "Auggie ate the last Greek yogurt even though I wrote my name on it." And she's ready.
It's the week before finals, and Riley lets her brain spin everything further than she should one more time. She tells herself if they don't fix this soon, they won't talk all summer. She'll have to wait until fall. She and Maya won't go to Coney Island or the MET or the ocean. Riley loves her brother, but she needs someone to pinch when she sees a cute boy, someone who will encourage her to buy the grape popsicle even though she had ice cream two hours ago, someone to throw together outfits her parents will never let her wear at Macy's and then tell her she looks good. She needs her best friend.
It's the way her brain spirals that allows her to pluck up the courage to meet Maya and Lucas by Maya's locker before school. "Hey," she says.
"Hi," Maya answers. She looks confused.
Riley regrets her courage, but then Lucas smiles at her. "Hey. I'll see you guys in the lunch room." And then he does this thing where he presses his hand against the small of Maya's back, and then moves past Riley with a hand on her shoulder, and she feels a little bit steadier.
"I was thinking we could see Finding Neverland in July. I found some really great tickets online this weekend. It's supposed to be amaaaaazing." Riley smiles her most winsome smile, careful not to show too much teeth. "My treat."
"Riley," Maya starts, and Riley's stomach drops. "You can't keep buying me things, okay?"
"Oh." Riley likes buying Maya things, but more than that, she likes the thought behind it. The I want to do this with Maya or the These sunglasses would really compliment Maya's face-shape of it all. "Right."
"I'd like to go, though." She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. "Just let me know the price and everything before you buy the tickets."
"Of course."
Riley pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, and geraniums bloom in her belly. "You don't have to come to the cafeteria. You can go to the art room."
Maya rolls her eyes, but it's more fond than anything. "I know that, Riles." Maya nods her head. "Let's go."
It's slightly awkward. Riley doesn't know why she didn't think it would be when she's watching what she says, filter firmly in place as to not disturb the peace. She almost asks about the English reading, but she doesn't want Maya's shoulders to stiffen if she hasn't done it.
"The end-of-the-year art show is on Thursday," Maya offers as they turn the corner. "You could come, if you want. I know Zay's got a group project to work on, but Farkle is going." Maya runs a hand through her hair. "So it won't just be you and Lucas. Or, y'know, you could come alone."
"No," Riley says, too fast. "It's okay. I'm okay. I'll be there."
"Yeah?" Maya's eyes are bright, and Riley knows her well enough to know the way relief looks on her face.
"Not even a question."
Riley steps an inch closer and links her arm through Maya's. Before silence settles over them, she starts rambling: "I was walking through the park the other day, and there was this tiny little squirrel. His tail was as big as his body."
Maya hums along, and when she slides into the empty spot next to Riley at the lunch table -- Farkle throws out a "Hey ladies" before turning back to Lucas, and Smackle waves without looking up from the notes she's scribbling -- Riley feels her heart grow a few sizes. She swears one day it's going to burst right out of her chest. She likes the idea. There are worse problems to have than a heart that's too big, too sensitive, too open.
They exit the theater with a crowd of people pressing around them. The air is thick with humidity, and it's the hottest it's been all summer. The theater was freezing though, and Maya doesn't mind. Riley finds space before the crosswalk and spins around. "Turning in circles, blurring the liiiiines," she sings, off-key. Riley's been listening exclusively to the soundtrack for the past week, and it's seeped into Maya's brain in a vague way. She could recognize melodies, but she couldn't rattle off lyrics the way Riley can -- is -- as she twirls around and around and around.
"Light's green, Pumpkin." Maya smiles when Riley stumbles to a stop, holding onto her elbow to keep herself from tipping over.
Riley's grin reflects the city lights, and Maya lets her talk and talk and talk about the costumes and the stage design and things that Farkle would be much more interested in. She missed so many things about Riley, and she knows Riley thinks Maya's favorite thing about her is the belief she has in things: God, people, Maya. But Maya thinks it's the way she talks, words tumbling out of her mouth casually but filled with the utmost importance. Her life was too quiet without Riley in it.
"Thank you," Riley finally breathes. Her cheeks are flushed, and Maya doesn't know if it's the enthusiasm pouring out of her or the heat. "I had so much fun."
"Me too." Maya looks down, watches her feet against the pavement. Their heels click out-of-sync, and Maya makes sure to step on every crack. "You mind if I sleep over?"
Riley shoots her a look.
"I get it." Maya rolls her eyes.
"You know what?" Riley has a smart glint in her eyes.
"What?"
"If you could convince Lucas to crawl into my window, it'd be like fulfilling a dream of mine. Except in my dream it was more like I was Rapunzel. And he was actually coming to rescue me from a dragon and not see you, but." She shrugs. "People tell me dragons aren't real."
"They could be," Maya offers with a smile.
"Right? The universe is vast." Riley twirls again, hair fanning out around her. "Maybe I could be an astronaut."
"Physics?"
Riley frowns. "I'll think about."
Maya laughs. "You could do it." She means it. Riley can do anything she puts her mind to.
When Maya's lying next to Riley in bed, squinting at her too bright phone and letting Kira's snapchats fade away, she asks: "Hey, if I murdered someone, would you help me hide the body?"
Riley looks at her sideways pretty hard.
"Hypothetically." Maya makes a duh face.
"Well." Riley presses her mouth together and smooths her hands over her sheets. The Matthews can always afford to have the air conditioning on full blast. "I don't condone murder, obviously."
"Obviously."
"But, I hear it's something best friends are supposed to do, so." She tries to shrug, and her mouth pulls up into the most ridiculous smile Maya has ever seen. "Yeah."
"If it was Missy?" Maya asks.
"I'd help." Riley laughs, rolling over. Her breath is warm against Maya's shoulder, and Maya can't help but laugh, too.
"That'd bond us for life," she whispers. "Blood sisters." She wiggles her eyebrows.
"Ew." Riley kicks at her shin, but it doesn't hurt. "Besides, we're already sisters."
"You're never getting rid of me, kid." Maya smiles.
"Never," Riley agrees, holding out her pinky.
"Never."
They shake on it.