A/N - First Part of my Vegas Fic, I usually post my fics on WattPad and on Tumblr but I thought that I should start posting it on here as well. This chapter starts it off, so I hope you like the story.

Chapter 0.5 – Maya and Josh's Story

Maya could always remember the first time she met her best friend's Uncle, the memory was imprinted on her mind because it was at that moment when she knew the he was going to change her life. They were seven years old at the time, they were camping out in Riley's living room watching cartoons after a sleepover when Riley's grandparents walked in with this brown hair little boy who smiled when he walked through the door and brought the earth to a standstill. At seven she thought it was just a childhood crush, as she watched him jump on top of Riley, as he picked up his nephew and made baby faces at the newborn. His parents were there to tell them that they were moving to the city, his father had been offered the chance at making his outdoor goods store into a franchise and they decided to move to New York because they would be closer to their children, and grandchildren. Josh would be starting at their school that fall, he was nine at the time and he wasn't happy about losing his friends but he loved his older brother so he was alright with the move as long as he got to see him more often.

Maya never told him that she liked him when she was only seven, at the time he thought kissing girls was gross, and would often throw worms in their hair laughing about it as he ran away from them. Josh lived down the street from Riley on the same block of brownstones, his room had a bay window just like his best friend but his window wasn't purple with butterflies, it was blue and white and filled with his skateboard or whatever he threw on there when he got home. She knew this because they would go home together the three of them and Josh would invite them over only to make them watch horror movies. He didn't know those were her favorite kind of movies but she tried to act like Riley who normally hid under his bed right after the first jump scare, but instead she would snuggle up close to him trying to act disinterested and scared.

Maya remembered the first time she confessed her feelings to him, she was thirteen and it was raining outside as they were walking home. Riley had stayed behind helping her father while Josh walked her home. They were under the awing of a nearby store waiting out the downpour, it was the first day of summer and school would be over in a week, but it was scorching hot outside and the rain was making her hair stand on end. Josh was smiling because he loved running, he was on the track team at the high school but he often went to the middle school to visit his brother. They barely saw one another since he moved up to high school but she liked it when she saw him because it just made the feeling sweeter. He had looked down at her, she was soaked from the rain, and smiled and she blurted out the feeling she had been holding in since she was seven years old.

"Josh I like you," she said hopeful.

He had smiled, "I like you too kiddo."

She knew he meant that he liked her because she was Riley's best friend but at that moment Maya knew that she needed to say what she really felt, but instead of saying the words again she stood on her toes and kissed him on the lips.

"That how I like you Josh," she said before running away. She didn't look back to see what his face looked like, she just kept running. Even after all of those years she would remember the day she first told him her feelings and how she gave him her first kiss. Whenever a thunderstorm comes to the city and the rain pours down on the heated cement she remembers that moment.

When she started High School the next year, it would be the first time she looked at Josh since that day. He hadn't said anything to Riley about it and neither did she, it was a fleeting moment in time and she didn't know if it had meant as much to him as it did to her. At that moment she was a freshman, and he was a junior, they were on opposite ends of the social ladder, and they hadn't spoken to one another in a whole year. She stopped going to Matthews family holidays because she didn't want him to reject her, and when she did go to their house she would hide every time he walked in through the door. She was brave all of the time but when it came to Josh she would cower under Riley's bed, or in his closet. Riley had figured out that something was up but like the friend she was she helped Maya every time, until the day before school started when she said she wasn't going to be her buffer anymore. Her best friend wanted her to grab on to her feelings and do something about the girlhood crush that had followed her into her teen years.

It was that first day of high school, when she was dressed in black skinny jeans and a yellow top where Josh had called her his sunshine. He had pulled her away from a smiling Riley after school and dragged her to a nearby park. To him she looked like the sun, with her halo of soft blonde curls and her beautiful smile. He hadn't been able to get her out of his head since that rainy summer day but every time he tried to talk to her about it she wasn't around. He had liked her since they first met, but because he had been a stupid boy he reacted the only way he could, he called her names and told her about cooties. He liked when she would cling to him during a horror movie but noticed that she was into the movie as much as he was. She had been trying to act like a scared little girl, but he knew better it was the reason they always watched horror movies even though his niece didn't like them. He wanted those stolen moments with Maya even if it traumatized his niece.

The park was across the street from his sister-in-law's bakery so that if everything went wrong he would be able to confide in his family about his heartbreak. At sixteen he had already known that Maya was to him what Topanga was to his brother Cory, but telling her was harder for him than he thought. He didn't want her to stay away from him and he would do anything to see her even when she was hiding from him under Riley's bed.

"Maya," he said but the words were lost to him. He had rehearsed this moment in his mind every day since she had kissed him but at that moment he didn't know what to say.

"Josh," she said looking up at him. He knew that he could drown in her blue eyes, as though they were the ocean slowly drowning him, she took his breath away.

"Okay I need to say this and I don't know if I can get the words out, or even if they did come out if they were the right words to say," he started babbling. "Last year you told me you liked me, you kissed me and afterwards you left me without letting me say a word. At the time I was still a stupid boy, because I held back. I didn't know if you were ready for these feelings so of course I treated you with kid gloves even though I wanted to tell you the truth. And I know we're still kids but my brother always told me that I would find my soul mate, my Topanga, and I would know that I shouldn't let her go."

Maya took a deep breath and looked up at him, "Josh what are you trying to say?"

"I'm trying to say that I've liked you, ever since we were just little kids chasing each other in the park, while I threw worms at you because I let me friends tell me that girls were gross. I've liked you since we watched horror movies in my room and I knew you liked them as much as I did but I didn't say anything because I didn't want you to let go of my arm, even though Riley hated every moment of the movie and I knew we were supposed to watch Disney movies but I didn't do as I was told."

Maya had looked at him that day as though the world had opened its doors to the possibility of them being together but Josh wanted forever with her even when he was just sixteen years old. Instead of letting her say anything he pulled her close and kissed her lips, relishing in the tenderness of the moment in a way that he hadn't been able too when she had kissed him and ran away right after. It was a moment that he wanted to remember, she had been his first crush, his first kiss, his first moment under the bright sun that was Maya Hart.

That moment led to a million others for the two of them, they fought, and cried, they kissed and made up, they were stuck to each other from that moment forwards so many years later, at her college graduation he knew that the best present for all of her accomplishments would be the gift of himself. He proposed to her at that moment, her hair shining in the sun as the black cap and gown covered her up and she fanned herself in the summer heat. They walked together towards the graduation party at Topanga's but were stuck when the sky opened up and poured water on their heads. Underneath the same awing where she had first kissed him and confessed her feelings, he got down on one knee and smiled up at the woman she had become, and the man he hoped he would be for her. At twenty-two, and twenty-four, with the whole world in front of them Josh proposed to the girl who had been a part of his life since he was a child. She had his heart from the first moment they had met and he didn't want to let her go.

Although they wouldn't get married for another couple of years they worked hard to create a life for each other. Josh went on to get his master's degree in Engineering, Maya worked on her master's in Art History, she worked in a gallery, he worked for the city. They lived in the apartment above the place where they had their first kiss, where he had proposed, only because he wanted their moments in the sun to be where everything first started.

Now she was twenty-six and he was twenty-eight, and he said to her that they should get married now because their lives had finally settled down, they were both in a good place with their careers, and Josh had his alone time with the woman he loved but he wanted a family with her now. So they planned their wedding and their joint bachelor and bachelorette parties, they wanted to have fun for one weekend before they walked down the aisle the next weekend. They were going to have another moment under the sunny sky that had brought them towards one another and the rain clouds that had sealed the deal. They wanted it to rain on their wedding day, because it would mean that the most important moments in their relationship were brought in with a thunderous cloud and wiped away any hardships they had faced before they moved closer together. It was their blessing because although many would say that Maya was the night for him she was the sun and the ocean, warming him every day, and surrounding his heart from every side.