The lyrics between pieces are from Cosmic Love by Florence + The Machine.
1.
I took the stars from my eyes and then I made a map.
Riley was six when she fell in love for the first time. She fell in love with her best friend, Maya Hart, who crawled through the window and sang with her, who slept over when her momma worked too late to put her to bed, who showed her how to flutter her eyelashes against someone's cheek to make it feel like butterfly kisses.
Riley didn't think she'd ever feel for anyone else the way she felt for Maya Hart. She didn't think anyone could compare, didn't think anyone was as pretty or nice or funny as Maya Hart.
So Riley gave Maya her snacks because Maya didn't have enough money to bring her own from home. And Riley gave Maya the pretty necklace with a butterfly on the chain (the one that Granda Rhiannon had given her when they went to Philadelphia) because she knew Maya liked it and didn't have any other jewellery.
And when they were fifteen and had a crush on the same boy, Riley gave Maya Lucas as well. Because Riley didn't know how to tell Maya that she loved her, that of course she loved her, and so she did the only other thing she could and showed her.
2.
I knew that, somehow, I could find my way back.
Riley fell in love again when she was seven. Her daddy's friend, Shawn, had come to visit them from where he was working in Taiwan, and although he said that they'd met before when she was real little, Riley knew better, because she knew there was no way she would ever forget this beautiful man.
Shawn was nice, too, but not like Maya was nice. Maya stopped people from laughing at her when she tripped over her own feet and played her games when other people said they were weird. Shawn showed her pretty pictures, and he helped her stick her favourites into her doorframe with thumbtacks, and told Mommy it was his idea when she started shouting at Riley.
Riley loved Shawn and decided early on that she was going to marry him, one day.
When she announced this to her father, he smiled at her fondly and told her that he'd also thought that, once upon a time. It wasn't the answer Riley wanted. She huffed and stomped off.
When Shawn took her to the arcade, she won a ring in the gumball machine. It was gold and had a purple star on top, and she knew exactly what to do with it. She handed it to Shawn and when he took it she announced, "There. Now we're married."
Shawn laughed, but softly, nicely, and told her that he was too old for her to marry. She shook her head furiously and insisted that he didn't love her.
That was when Shawn bought her a milkshake and told her that of course he loved her, but like she was his daughter, not like his wife. He also told her that someone would come along and she'd want to marry them, so he couldn't take her away from them
After that, she wasn't in love with Shawn, but she still loved him and loved spending time with him.
When he came back for Christmas in 2014, he was wearing the gumball machine ring on a cord around his neck.
3.
Then I heard your heart beating
The third time she fell in love, Riley was fourteen, and she'd fallen into a boy's lap on the subway. His name was Lucas, and he was from Texas, and he was amazing. He was nice, too, but in a different way, again. He didn't laugh at her, but he made sure to laugh at her jokes and share the food that his mother packed for him, and he was also nice to everyone else, which was something that neither Maya nor Uncle Shawn were.
He was clever, too, and polite, and she liked talking to him and spending time with him. She liked his smile and his ideas and his world view, and before she knew it, she was deeply in love, crushing on the boy from Texas.
That love fizzled out, as first loves are wont to do. There was drama, of course, and lots of it, before that happened. There was the trip to Texas and Maya&Lucas and the ski lodge before she ever managed to actually fall into a relationship, her first even though she had been in love three times already.
It fizzled out and Riley thought it was the end of the world, spent days crying in her bedroom on the bay window, didn't let anyone in (not even Maya, her first love).
Eventually, Riley recovered from the pain and went on with her life.
And, many years later, when she and Maya were living together in a tiny flat in the Bronx, her third love became her first love's true love.
Riley was the one who consoled them after fights, was the one who cleared the air. She was the relationship translator, she joked, but when Maya left her flat with Lucas, after pressing a kiss to her cheek, Riley realised that she couldn't think of anything else she would rather be.
And Riley was the one who stood next to both of them at the wedding (Farkle stood next to Lucas, and it was quite a mission to place everyone so that Riley could be there for her first love and her third love, but eventually they decided that Riley would officiate and Smackle would stand next to Maya).
Riley's third love was also her first love, and she never forgot it. But both of them found true love, and that was what mattered.
4.
You were in the darkness too
Riley fell in love for the fourth time when she was sixteen. She'd never admit it, but her fourth love was what contributed to the end of her relationship with Lucas.
She fell in love with Farkle Minkus.
By that time, Farkle Minkus had already been in love with her for nine years, and had fallen out of love with her but still loved her, and she had thought that that was fine.
But she studied with Farkle and Smackle, and watched them peck each other on the cheeks when the answer was right, and debate complicated topics, and she watched when Farkle pulled Smackle into his arms and they lay on the bed, and she thought, I want that.
At the time, she'd thought that she wanted a change in her relationship, wanted that spark again, but when she and Lucas eventually broke up (headed to different colleges, not in love anymore) she realised that she hadn't wanted what they had, she'd wanted him.
It had been a jarring realisation, at first, but Riley grew used to it, and, by the time she was standing next to Maya and Lucas at the altar, she'd all but fallen out of love with him.
But not really, because she judged every date against a standard they could never reach, and when she described her ideal boyfriend, there was an image of light brown hair and smart words that guided her mouth.
5.
So I stayed in the darkness with you
The last time Riley fell in love, she was twenty-eight. She was older than she had ever thought she'd be when finding true love, and most of her friends were already married.
After Maya got married, Riley went on to get a PhD. And that was expensive. So when Farkle Minkus, tech genius, offered her a place to live, she thanked him profusely and moved in the next day, with a reusable coffee mug in her hand and new linens.
She and Farkle fell into a routine, too. She cooked Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, He cooked Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and they made dinner together on Sundays. They went out for brunch on Saturday morning and did movie nights on Wednesdays.
It was the routine, above all else, that reminded Riley about her fourth love, that reminded Riley about all the best parts of Farkle.
It didn't take much for them to fall into bed together- they didn't see other people as often as they should have (Maya and Lucas Friar came over for game nights on Thursdays and they visited her parents on Saturday evenings, but that was the most of their social interaction) and one night they were slightly tipsy.
The one night they were slightly tipsy didn't really matter though, because every other night after that, they weren't.
They didn't even really mean to be in a relationship, either, but one day she called him in a rush and hung up with love you, babe. And it just stuck.
After that, he was kissing her when she came home from lectures and she was made his emergency contact with Minkus International.
They got married in their garage, and she wore a short white dress (it was everything her second love had promised it would be) and that was all Riley ever really wanted.
+1.
The last time Riley fell in love with someone new, it was someone she'd known her whole life. When Riley was twenty, she managed to fall in love with herself.
It had taken work. It had taken therapy, and long nights on the phone with Maya and Farkle because she hated herself so much she needed the company of someone else. But when she was twenty, and living with Maya in their shoebox apartment and eating ramen, she looked around and thought yes.
Riley loved herself, and her partner and her best friend and just about everyone else she'd ever met or known. It was the best thing about her.