Paint covering her hands, Maya sat on the steps of the school. She had stayed late to finish up an assignment and with everything that was happening, truthfully she just wanted to avoid her friends, let them cool off. When they found out about Lucas' past, Riley had, in her opinion, overreacted and created a big deal out of nothing. But that was just how her best friend was and despite the difficulties between them sometimes, Maya loved the brunette to pieces. So there she sat on the steps, watching the occasional car drive by when she heard footsteps coming up behind her.

"You're still here?" Maya turned to look over her shoulder, but her confused expression faded when she saw her Texan friend towering over her.

"Sure am, Huckleberry. You wanna sit?" She turned around and pat the step next to her. He complied, his feet finding a step two down from her own with his longer legs.

They sat quietly, simply feeling the autumn breeze on their skin and in their hair and both subconsciously counting cars. When Maya got up to her twenty fourth car, she finally spoke.

"Today was pretty crazy huh?" She could see him glance at her in her peripheral vision as he pondered his response.

"Yeah, yeah it was. It's funny, I didn't tell you guys about my past because I was purposely trying to avoid that kind of response but I guess it was inevitable." Neither of them laughed. It wasn't funny.

"Does Riley get like that about these kind of things a lot?" He rest his elbows on his knees with the wrists lightly crossed at he turned to her again. A snort from Maya told him she did.

"Yeah, take it from me, Riley is a bad person to keep secrets from." He furrowed his brow.

"You've kept secrets from her? But I figured you guys were such good friends that you would never have anything like that?" She stared at him incredulously with an eyebrow raised.

"Lucas, you're part of the Riley Committee. We keep practically everything from her. If she ever found out she'd totally flip." Lucas' face crossed into one of understanding but Maya shook her head lightly so that her blonde waves fluttered around her face.

"But that's not even what I'm talking about." The Texan's look of relief returned to confusion once again.

"What do you mean then?"

"Well, I met Riley in Kindergarten. She just kind of, appeared one day, I don't know. I've always been kind of a loner I guess but she just came up to me while I was drawing and asked if I wanted to play dolls with her. We've been best friends ever since, even though I told her her doll looked stupid wearing so much pink." Maya smirked at the memory.

"Those were the days. Anyway, everything was great for a while, but in third grade, Riley found out everything about my dad and how he left us. It hadn't seemed like a big deal to me, I figured some girls were just lucky to have dads and some weren't and that was that. But Riley, when Riles found out, she acted like I had kept some huge secret from her. She thought I was purposely keeping this from her, but really it just hadn't really been an issue that ever came up. I would have told her if she had asked, but…" Maya trailed off, staring at a piece of gum stuck to the step in front of her. Lucas' eyes were trained on her downcast ones by now and his jaw was slack.

"What happened?" The blonde looked up at her tall friend and a small smile appeared on her face as she met his eyes.

"Relax, Ranger Rick, she's not going to ignore you for the next year, that's me. See, I give people the silent treatment all the time and Riley was always trying to be just like me, but she's not very good at it." Her smile widened as she saw him loosen up.

"Back when it was just me, Riley and Farkle, we didn't have nearly as many problems as we do now, but the Farks made some graph that showed that on average the three of us combined found some issue to deal with about every week. Riley's still the little problem solver she's always been, so whenever a problem came up, she'd drop everything, any grudges, any anger, everything. It was the longest week of my life, but eventually an issue came up with my mom and she was there for me. I don't even remember what it was, like my mom couldn't walk me home from school or something, but Riley just totally forgot about me not telling her about my dad or forgave me or something and invited me over. And everything went back to normal." At the conclusion of her story, the blonde looked over at the boy beside her. He nodded silently. They both looked back out to the street and thought.

"Now that Zay and you are here to have your own little issues too, the time span of her silent treatment is probably down to like, two days now, if that makes you feel any better." He smiled and she saw a flash of green as he looked back at her.

"Thanks, Maya." She exhaled heavily and stood up, barely scuffing her combat boots on the rough cement. She slapped her hand on the back of his shoulder.

"Hey, no problem, Sundance." He grabbed her wrist and when she looked down at him he was staring at her with an imperceptible look on his face.

"What?" He bit his lip as he chose his words carefully.

"Do… do you want to know what I did? You never really acted like it affected you at all or anything so—"

"Of course I do," she interrupted, sitting back down next to him. "My goofy little Huckleberry friend finally did something interesting!" He laughed at her condescending, sarcastic tone and his eyes crinkled at he looked back up at her.

"But I don't want you to tell me until you're sure you want me to know. It's your life, I shouldn't be the one to decide what you share about it." She squeezed his shoulder in a more earnest way than her previous gesture had been before she stood up. As she started down the stairs, he called out to her.

"Let me walk you home, ma'am?" Maya smiled as he trotted down the steps after her.

"Yeah, why not." He held out his arm for her to loop hers through and she snickered at him as she took it. They walked down the sidewalk together with a spring in their step as they both took their little game a little too far.

And deep down they knew there was something between them that they were keeping from Riley and from themselves, but right now they told themselves that they had nothing to hide.