Fantasies I'm Not Sure I'm Worthy Of
A Josh & Maya Story
By Brown Eyes Parker
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rated: T
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"Maya!"
"Josh!? What are you doing here?"
"First day of high school for you! I wanted to walk you home. Maybe we can stop and get ice cream or something."
"Don't you have things to do?"
"I moved some stuff around for you."
Maya raised an eyebrow and started to take the concrete steps two at a time. "You just moved some stuff around for me?"
"Nah. I had a free afternoon. Things are different in college, you know."
"You don't say," Maya said sarcastically.
"So, what do you say?" Josh asked. "Would you mind if I walk you home from school?"
"You're not going to carry my books are you?" Maya replied.
"Of course I am," Josh answered, following into step beside her and unzipping her backpack, he scooped up a huge pile and stacked them haphazardly in his arms. "There. Are you ready?"
"Put my books back!" Maya ordered.
"Make me!" Josh said playfully.
Maya karate chopped them out his arms and they scattered all across the sidewalk. Josh hurried to collect them all while she watched him and then sighed, bending down to help him because she had made the mess.
"Really, I don't mind carrying my own books," she told him. "This isn't some fifties sitcom, you know."
"Hey! I'm sure Richie never carried a girl's books home from school!"
"Richie?"
"The Dick Van Dyke Show?" Josh asked.
"Oh! The guy from Mary Poppins is in it. I've only seen three episodes. Mom bought a DVD for me at the dollar store and put it in my stocking," Maya said as she held open her backpack and nodded for him to dump the books into it.
Josh sighed. "Fine. Okay. So, I won't carry your books home then! I didn't want to be Ricky Nelson anyways."
"From Ozzie & Harriet?"
"So, you know Ozzie & Harriet but you don't know the Dick Van Dyke Show?"
"The dollar store sold more Ozzie & Harriet DVDS than Dick Van Dyke!" Maya replied. "Geez."
"Well aren't we Miss Sunshine USA today," Josh teased.
They started to walk together, their steps in perfect sync as they strolled the New York sidewalks together.
There was a lull in conversation, so Josh started to mutter the words to a song.
Maya eyed him. "Don't you even!"
Josh smirked at her and stopped, taking her hand, shout singing the lyrics at her. "MAYA! MY EYES ADORED YOU! THOUGH I NEVER LAID A HAND ON YOU, MY EYES ADORED YOU! LIKE A MILLION MILES AWAY YOU COULDN'T SEE HOW I ADORED YOU! SO CLOSE, SO CLOSE AND YET SOOOOOOOO FARRRRRRRRRR!"
"Stop it! You're seriously terrible!" Maya protested but she was smiling, for the first time in months she was really smiling.
"I KNOW I WON'T EVER FORGET YOU WERE MY CHILDHOOD FRIEND!"
Maya covered his mouth with her hand. "Seriously, people are starting to stare at us!"
With an audience, Josh's theatrics doubled. He started to snap his fingers and warble out a melody before breaking out into another song, in the middle before he even started.
"I LOVE YOU BABY! AND IF IT'S QUITE ALRIGHT, I NEED YOU BABY TO WARM THE LONELY NIGHT!" Josh pulled her in and started to swing dance her. "YOU'RE JUST TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE! CAN'T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU! I WANT TO HOLD YOU SO MUCH!"
"You are holding me and you're skipping lyrics," Maya told him.
But he was too busy bump-bump-bumping and spinning around to pay attention to what she was saying.
"Is this a distraction?" Maya asked when he had dipped her.
"Distraction?" Josh repeated. "I don't know what you mean."
The group of people who had been watching them dispersed and Maya was left feeling self-conscious. She wondered if Josh felt that way or if being in college had desensitized him to embarrassing situations.
She reminded herself it had only been a few days since he'd become a college student and he hadn't joined a fraternity. He wasn't the type to. So, why would he be acting the way he was?
Unless Riley told him. . .
And he was trying to distract her so Riley and Lucas could be together.
But Riley and Josh weren't like that. They weren't schemers or cheaters. They were some of the sweetest people she knew.
She would have to give them the benefit of the doubt.
.
Josh kept showing up.
Sometimes he'd walk her home from school but only if he had an afternoon free. He'd take her all over New York. They'd get Big Gay ice cream when the days were still warm mixed with a tinge of September. They split doughnuts and had long talks over creamy iced coffees.
They would go to the library and spend hours studying together. Josh would help her with her algebra homework since she wasn't good at math. Sometimes they would forego studying books altogether and he'd pick a book and just read to her all afternoon.
She would pretend to be listening while she pulled apart her split ends and wondered why Josh was being nice to her.
"Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore," Josh read to her one afternoon.
Maya dropped her hair and looked at him. "You picked this book on purpose!" She accused, struck with how well the lines fit how she was feeling about Josh.
"What!? No! I'm just getting some homework done. I need to read this for a lit class that I'm taking! Geez, Maya. What's your problem these days?"
"Riley hasn't told you?"
"Excuse me? Will you two please quiet down or leave?" A severe looking librarian asked. "You're disturbing the other patrons."
Josh lowered his voice. "Oh. Right, sorry. We'll go, come on Maya."
Maya stood up and grabbed her backpack, following him. When they were just outside of the library, Josh whirled around and looked at her. "Did Riley tell me what!?" He asked.
"What?" Maya repeated. "You mean you don't know?"
"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."
"Then why are you here? With me right now?"
"Riley might have called and said you've been upset lately. That's all I know, I swear. Should I know anything else?"
"Things are just a mess. I'm a mess," Maya answered.
"I think you're all things lovely and fierce," Josh replied, coming closer and pushing her hair away from her face.
"Josh, what is this?" Maya asked. "I am not stupid. You're a freshman in college. I am a freshman in high school."
"I know. I know. I-I want to be your friend."
Maya felt shaky like they'd just aired their grievances and forgiven each other for them even though they hadn't. Maybe it was just having a friend who wasn't close to the whole triangle thing.
"You wanna blow off homework and go see a movie? Cinema Classics is showing the Competition this afternoon."
"Okay," Josh agreed, rubbing the back of his neck and smiling at her.
Maya smiled in return and took his hand.
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Life became a blur of high school classes and movie dates and cover band concerts for earlier 2000s groups like Dashboard Confessionals and Jimmy Eat World with Josh.
And she kind of forgot she was a mess and that Lucas liked Riley a little bit better than he liked her.
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One afternoon in late autumn, she found an envelope with her name on it in her locker at school. There were four tickets in the envelope for the upcoming Saturday. One was for a trip on the T to Boston and back. The other one was for the Boston Pops.
"They're playing a collection from the Ghibli and Pixar and Disney songbook," Josh said, coming out of Cory's classroom. "Do you want to go with me?"
"What would you have done if I said no?" Maya asked as she went over to join him.
"I don't know. I didn't count on you saying no," Josh answered.
"You have to come with me to pick out something to wear."
"It's a Saturday afternoon matinee. You don't have to dress up too much," Josh told her.
"You have a lot to learn about girls," Maya said. "Come on! We don't have much time. Saturday's tomorrow!"
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"You don't get to see my final decision," Maya told him as she stepped back inside of the dressing room at Demolition and removed the last dress she had tried on.
"Why not? It isn't like we're getting married," Josh said. "It's just a trip to see the Boston Pops."
"So?" Maya said. "You're still not seeing my final choice. Go outside and wait for me, I'll be right there."
.
She couldn't believe how impatient she was to see Josh. Her heart was actually beating rapidly in her chest, it hadn't happened in a while where he was concerned. Not since the night he had looked at her and told her that he had to stop looking at her like a little girl.
"Maya, Josh is here!" Katy announced.
Maya spun around from staring out at the rain and Josh smiled at her, looking her over from head-to-toe. She twirled around for him in her hunter green shift dress and black tights "Well? What do you think?" She asked.
"You look beautiful," Josh answered sincerely.
Katy cleared her throat, breaking the spell that had seemed to fall over the living room. "You're going to need your raincoat and boots."
"Okay," Maya agreed, not caring that her raincoat was actually her mother's old leopard print one that she'd worn as a theater major in college. Nothing could dampen her mood. Not even the dismal weather outside.
.
The concert was beautiful, it painted pictures in Maya's mind and she ached to get her sketchbooks and pencils and put it all down before she forgot what it looked and felt like.
Later on, when they had stopped at Au Bon Pen for an early dinner, Josh kissed her under the awning. It was a blink and you'd miss it kind of moment but it was her first kiss and he didn't take it back or stop himself from doing it because he was loyal to another girl in his heart.
.
After that afternoon in Boston, there wasn't a magical shift in their relationship. She still thought that maybe she could like Lucas and that maybe one day he would choose her over Riley.
His choosing her was starting to make less and less sense.
Maya Hart was no fool. She could tell that there was something more going on between Riley and Lucas than they were saying.
She confronted them about it one afternoon before Josh was going to take her to see Hamilton, her heart beating out of her chest as she accused them of dating behind her back.
She knew she was being irrational. Lucas wasn't her boyfriend. She had no claim over him. He could spend time with whoever he chose and she had no right to say a word about it to him. But she had to know, for her own peace of mind.
For whatever was blossoming between her and Josh. When Riley told her that she had been waiting for her not to like Lucas anymore, Maya wanted to be anywhere but there. She told them as much as she fled from the Matthews's apartment and to the subway where Josh would be waiting for her.
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"I can't actually believe them."
"Believe what?" Josh asked. "That they like each other and they're spending time together? What did you think was going on? You've been spending so much time with me lately."
"You knew?" Maya asked, bringing up the months old accusation against him.
"I didn't know anything!" Josh assured her as he put a comforting hand on her knee as the subway train started to move. "But I don't think you should be upset—"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence if you want tonight to go well!" Maya ordered.
Josh shut his mouth and let Maya fume in the seat beside him for the rest of the ride to Broadway.
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Somewhere between "Helpless" and "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story", Maya found a flat soda kind of acceptance to the fact that Riley and Lucas liked each other and wanted to be with each other.
When the show was over and they were standing outside of the theater, Maya turned around and fell into Josh's arms. He hesitated for a moment and then wrapped her up securely, holding her as tightly as he could.
"I think I don't even know why I really ever liked him," she confessed, her voice muffled against his wool coat.
"It's going to be okay," Josh told her over and over again.
And Maya believed him.
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She went with him back to his dorm room because she didn't want her mom asking why her mascara was smeared. Josh put some records on his record player and sat on his bed. She joined him, curling up in a ball at his knees.
His fingers found the wisps falling out of her milkmaid braids and he twirled them around his fingers as they listened to old singers and Maya wished she was years older than she really was.
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It happened on Easter Sunday. Lucas finally came and swept Riley off her feet, had his moment. Josh kept his hand on her knee the whole time, making sure she was okay.
When Riley and Lucas were gone, she covered his hand with her's to reassure him that she was fine.
They didn't need words, they had a silent understanding.
The End
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Author's Note:
So, this begs a question. Will there be a follow up to the follow up? I don't know. Maybe so. But next week it's back to the multi-chapters, so we'll see if I get any ideas for this new universe I created. The title comes from "Safer" from the Broadway show, First Date.
The stomach bug I got is gone. I finally drank a full coffee and ate meals. Yay! I feel like being sick threw my whole writing off. But I hope you enjoyed this anyways, it's a shameless love letter to pop culture, I think and the relationship I wish Maya and Josh will have one day. Please tell me what you thought of this one-shot.
Until Next Time!
Love,
Holly, 3/25/2016_