A/N: So a while ago someone on my WattPad asked for a one-shot... when I started thinking of ways to write said one-shot it sort of spiraled and turned into this story. I'm still working on my other stories, I'm still planning on writing Season 6, I'm also on the tail end of finishing my Master's thesis and completing my Masters degree. I'm a busy busy bee. I'm attempting to finish this one by the end of the year, as well as write the next chapter of the Superhero Fic, which of course is turning into a monster of a fic considering it's going to surpass all of my other fics word count.
Chapter 1 – The Beginning of Everything
They had moved around a few times growing up, it had been him, his mom, and his sister Maya, going from state to state. It started just after he had turned ten, after his step-father had beat him one too many times, except this time his mother found out and she was furious. The man never laid a hand on her before, but that day he had hit her so hard that she cracked her skull on the counter, before he had turned on Lucas and broke his arm.
His sister had been at a neighbor's house, when the police went to pick her up, Lucas and their mom were in the hospital getting treatment. The police took a statement, and his step-father had been arrested. This was Maya's father, not Lucas's but neither of them cared because they both hated him. Maya had only known because she had been hiding in the closet during one of her father's drunken rages. Lucas had made her promise not to tell because they didn't have anywhere to go, and he was doing it to protect their mother.
"But Lucas," Maya had said that day crying while he tried his best to treat the wounds. The man never hit anywhere that would be noticeable to anyone, so his clothes covered the bruises, the cuts could be explained as if he were just playing with his friends outside, but the bruises had marks that looked distinctive to the older man.
"Not a word Maya, I don't want momma to get hurt," he said trying his best not to cry.
That had been one of many days where Maya had helped him hide the bruises, to help around the house when he could barely lift his hands. Lucas always made sure to put himself between his step-father and Maya so that she was never hurt.
The day they ended up in the hospital, with the police asking a million questions, that was the day his mother heard everything that had happened. She had been working double shifts since the end of summer because she wanted to save up for the kids to have a good holiday season. It was the reason she hadn't noticed what had been happening.
"I feel so stupid, I should have known," his mother said as tears stained her face. She watched in horror as she saw the bruises on Lucas as the doctor's examined him that day.
The police took statements from all three of them before speaking to his step-father, the man swore that he didn't do anything, even with the overwhelming amount of evidence against him. He screamed that Lucas and Maya had both lied about what had happened, but in the end the police and the courts made sure that he would end up in prison. Their mother moved them three times before they settled down, the first place was his grandmother's house in Arkansas, but Lucas kept quite for a long time. His mother was afraid that he wasn't making friends because of what had happened. In middle school they moved to Texas and lived with Pappy Joe on his ranch, they only moved afterwards because his mother had worked on her degree during those years and had gotten a job in New York.
Lucas also knew that it was during this time that his step-father had gotten out of prison, Lucas had just turned sixteen when they moved to New York, Maya was fifteen, and they were hiding in plain sight in a way. The city was so big that it would be impossible for the older man to find them. His mother changed her name to Hart, Maya did as well but Lucas kept his biological father's last name, Friar. There was a restraining order on his step-father, so that if the man so much as stepped into the city he would be picked up by police.
Their lives moved on from there, Lucas and Maya became friends with Zay and they all started hanging out every single day. But Lucas still had some anger left over from what had happened, over how he couldn't protect his mother or his sister. There were days where he got into fights at school, others where he tried his best to keep his temper from becoming too much. His mother worried that all of that time her ex-husband had beaten him, had had a harmful effect on Lucas.
After one too many fights his mother put him in therapy, it had work for a small amount of time, but somedays he felt as if he couldn't control it. He stopped fighting in school after Zay had told him to join the football team, so he played football and got into Columbia on a scholarship. He played, but he also found another outlet for his anger in an underground boxing club that Zay had found one day.
He stopped fighting once he got his bar up and running, he had the money and the means to run the bar, as he got into graduate school, he wanted to run a successful business, and getting an MBA seemed like the best option for him. He wanted to make sure that he would be successful enough to protect his family if the time came. The bar had become one of his business investments, some of the others had worked out brilliantly as he worked on his degree and when he finished at the age of twenty-two, he was turning a profit on the bar and a security company he ran during the day. Maya and Zay took care of the bar, he worked on security, protecting people, setting up security for huge firms, and gaining a reputation as one of the best companies in the country.
Luckily something had happened in all of the sadness, his mother had found the chance to move on in her life and had fallen in love with a good man. A teacher who had tried to help Lucas while he had been in high school. They had dated for three years, earning his mother's trust and eventually Maya's trust as well. Lucas was always wary, until the man had proven to him that he was worth his mother's time. The year Lucas started grad school his mother married Jonathan Turner.
Riley Matthews' life was a series of tragic accidents met with moments of happiness, or at least that how she had seen if for so long. Born during her parents' second honeymoon in New York, they had raised her in an apartment not far from where her grandparents lived as they worked on finishing their degrees. It was a small apartment, but it was full of love from what Riley could remember. Those happy days didn't last, when she was six her parents were driving home from a ballet at the Pennsylvania Ballet, they had done Sleeping Beauty and, so they took Riley as a Christmas present. It had been a snowy day, and the car had skidded to the side and flipped on the highway and into a ditch.
Riley was the only one to survive.
She had been in the hospital for six months recovering a brain injury, while her Uncle Shawn sat by her bedside. He brought her toys, and books to read to her, he made sure she ate, but he never mentioned her parents. No one did. They were all afraid that it would hurt Riley more.
The thing was, that she didn't remember them, she didn't remember a lot those first few months, so Shawn being the one constant in her life aside from her grandparents and Josh had become her legal guardian. It was in her parents' will. Everything they owned had been packed up and moved to her grandparents' house.
Riley and Shawn lived there until she turned ten, when he had been offered a job at a newspaper in New York. At first her grandparents protested the move, but after a while they had let them go if only to give Riley a chance at happiness without the ghost of her parents following her around. When they got to New York, Riley had been enrolled into a local elementary school, but soon Shawn noticed that she had picked up her mother's intelligence so for middle school she had been enrolled into Einstein Academy.
That's where she met her best friends, Farkle Minkus and Isadora Smackle, the two geniuses helped her come out of her shell and have a little bit of fun. Farkle was a reminder of the past, his parents had known Riley's and at that time she had become curious about them. All she could remember were the photographs Shawn had put up throughout their apartment, she had no memory of them at all. So, someone who knew them could help her fill in the gaps of her memory. Her friendship with Isadora had become something special in itself. Isadora was deaf, but her loss of hearing didn't stop her intelligence from growing over the years. Even though she wore hearing aids, she rarely had them on because they would sometimes crackle in her ears, so Riley learned sign language until Isadora had become comfortable with her being around.
The three of them hung out with one another, they smiled, and Riley's life began to change around her. Shawn took her back to Philly whenever the holidays came around so that their little family stayed close no matter what and her Uncle Josh stayed with them every summer. Riley had been accepted into the same specialized school as her friends and the three of them worked together throughout the years. Riley was no longer hiding behind the sadness of losing her parents, she celebrated them, asked about them, and although she couldn't remember their faces from her own memories it helped that they had been so loved when they had lived.
Isadora and Farkle started dating in high school, and while Riley went out on a few dates, no one really clicked with her throughout those years. College had their group separating, Farkle and Isadora went to Princeton and completed their bachelors within the first eighteen months. Riley went to Yale because it had been her mother's dream school, she met Charlie who had become a close friend to her and she had taken classes in a number of departments before settling into the English department and earning her degree in English.
When she graduated, she still didn't know where she would go, but a last-minute decision found her at graduate school on her way to earning her master's degree while Isadora and Farkle were on their way to their Ph.D.'s at the same school. Charlie followed her to New York with a job at a nearby school while he earned his teaching credentials. The four of them moving into an apartment together that they could afford while they worked on their degrees. Riley had known that they could have gotten a better place because Farkle's family had the money and means but they all wanted to do was find their way through their lives on step at a time.
This was the beginning of everything.
Riley's shift at the café started at seven in the morning every single day, she worked most mornings and if she could she picked up extra shifts so that she could save up for when a emergency happened, mostly she was trying to have enough to pay her tuition, pay her part of the rent and buy herself food. She hadn't brought new clothes since high school, everything was second hand, or something her grandparents sent as presents. She didn't care about having new anything and was glad that Shawn had raised her to be good with money. The apartment they shared was a four-bedroom walkup, luckily, they lived on the first floor because she wouldn't want to actually walk to the second floor. She knew that Farkle took care of the bulk of the rent and while they fought about it on occasion she was grateful for that as well.
"Why not," he would often say. "I can afford it Riley."
She sometimes hated relying on anyone for anything and a lot of the time she wanted to yell about how unfair it was to put the burden on Farkle, hence she would work and save even if he didn't take the extra money she saved it anyway. She had just received her work study assignment, her first day on the job was on Tuesday, and she only worked on days she had classes which made the commute to the school easier.
"I think you're crazy," Charlie said while she made drinks at the café. He had come over to take her out to dinner as a celebration for getting into grad school at one of the top schools in the country. Her bachelor's was from Yale so of course NYU would accept her, she worked hard to get into the program, she was always working hard towards something, she wanted to make her parents proud. She wasn't sure about becoming a lawyer just because it had been her mother's career goal, she wasn't sure what she wanted but it was a step towards something.
"I'm not crazy Charlie, you're crazy," she said to him sticking her tongue out to him.
"Riley, you don't want to be a lawyer," he said for the millionth time. "Hell, you don't know what you want to be."
"I could be a family lawyer, I could be something, hell Charlie I could be President of the United States if I wanted to be. I just want to find my way."
"I just don't want you to regret this Riles," he said as she handed the customer their drink with a smile and a quick thank you.
"I know you're right, but I feel like… I don't know that there's something that I can do as a lawyer, especially after helping out with those women's groups back when I was at Yale, it's just a start towards something."
"Fine, but remember if you want to runaway at any point in time I'll take you anywhere you wanna go, just say the word," he smiled at her taking her hand. "You're my soulmate."
"Yeah, I'll tell that to the next guy you ask out and see how it goes," she said rolling her eyes. Charlie had come out to her after she talked about helping people. She remembered that conversation, it had happened a month after his parents had cut him off for being gay, and he was ultimately alone. Riley had adopted him into her makeshift family and Farkle and Isadora love him as much as Riley does.
"I haven't had a date in months, I feel like I've lost my edge, the move to New York killed it," he said smiling at her.
"You wish Gardner," she said pushing him aside. "Who is it? I want a name."
"Not giving it to you, and it's only a crush anyway so who knows where it will go. I'm not even sure he's gay, so I'm taking it slow."
"Sure, you are, just don't come crying to me if it doesn't work out," she said knowing that she would comfort him anyway.
When she finished her last drink for the day and handed it off to the customer, waving a quick goodbye to her co-workers and getting her stuff, she was greeted with the hot summer heat that stifled the New York streets. Charlie dragged her off towards one of the shops to get an outfit for dinner.
"You're not wearing that, heaven forbid this girl wears anything knew," he said as he dragged her towards the back.
The store was a used clothing store named Demolition, she had been there a few times when she was in high school but only ever brought one shirt because she hadn't known what to get.
"Charlie, I can't spend a lot of money," she said trying to drag him back out towards the street.
"Nope, you have some money saved from last month and for once I want you to look good," he said pulling out a pair of dark grey skinny jeans, followed by a black flowy spaghetti strap top. She almost groaned, when Charlie wanted to dress her up he became a man on a mission, it's one of the reasons he had gotten a job at Nylon when they moved to New York.
Before she could protest he shoved her into the dressing room and closed the door. She took the chance and looked at the price on the clothes, the jeans were only $20 which seemed reasonable, and the shirt, well the shirt wasn't cheap.
"Take a chance on this Riley," he said, instead of fighting him on it she changed into the clothes, her white bra strap peaking out making her self-conscience about it, but before she made a comment Charlie opened the door. "See you're hot, now we can go and buy you a bra and panties set and then we can go out."
"Seriously are you going to make me blow all of my saved-up cash?"
"Nope, cause I have a gift card for Victoria Secret, I won it at work and figured I could use it on you because if anyone needed it, well it would be you."
"You don't have…" he stopped her before she could finish, putting his hand on her mouth.
"None of that, you're the reason I can keep going, after… well after you know, so I want to repay you," he said with a small smile. "Now let's pay for this, buy you $500 worth of new undies and get home so we can get ready."
"Thanks Charlie," she said making his smile reach his eyes, if she didn't think it were possible, but she saw a sparkle in his eyes and it warmed her heart.
When he said he was using the gift card on her, he wasn't joking, they walked into Victoria Secret and he picked out several sets of undies, as well as pajamas and a nightie, he made sure to use every cent on the card so that she would have to throw away her old panties, because to him it was a travesty that she had had them for so long.
When they were both ready he pulled her out towards a nearby bar, "They have cheese fries that are to die for," he said smiling at her as he pulled her towards a table. She noticed that he had kept looking over a the bartender serving up drinks to the people at the bar.
"I bet they also have good drinks," she said to him making him trip over his own foot before they reached the table at the other end of the place. Charlie sat down and glared at her for a moment. "What did I ruin your suave entrance?" she smirked at him.
"Funny, very freaking funny," he said before pulling out the menu that was on the center of the table. "Just pick whatever you want to eat, and drink, you have to drink today I already know that you don't work tomorrow so don't give me some lame excuse."
"Fine, I know you just want me to get something to drink because it means you can talk to the bartender," she said looking over the menu. "How many times have you been here anyway?"
"A few, usually with people from work because my best friend is too busy running herself ragged to go out anywhere with me," he said mulling over the menu.
"Sorry," she said as a blonde waitress walked up to their table.
"Can I get you guys anything?" she asked smiling without really smiling. Riley hadn't thought that it was possible for someone to be as confident as her.
"Can you give us a moment?" Riley answered and the waitress moved on to the next table.
"We might as well wait," Charlie said to her. "I invited your uncle Josh to hang out with us, since he's been bugging me to get you to stop working so much."
"You invited Josh?" she was shocked at hearing this for the first time. She hadn't seen Josh since graduation, because she started working at the café while doing an internship all summer long. Mostly she was hiding from her family because they still wanted to coddle her and give her money for going to school and finishing.
"Yes, he invited me," Josh said smiling at her, but it made her feel like she should hide under the table. "Maybe if you would stop ignoring me then this wouldn't be so awkward."
"It's not awkward," she said but her throat felt dry. "Not… not at all."
"Yes it is," Charlie said.
Before they could go into it any further the waitress was back, except this time her smile was genuine, which meant she was interested in Josh.
"Of course," Riley said rolling her eyes for a moment as she watched the two interact.
"Be nice Riley," Charlie said in a hushed tone, Riley loved them both, but for some reason it made her feel ten inches tall every time they ganged up on her. She was raised to be self-reliant, but some days it felt as if they wanted to put her in a bubble and keep her safe.
Josh ordered a burger and a beer, smiling at the blonde taking the order as if they've gone through this dance a million other times. Charlie ordered some complex drink that Riley didn't even want to understand and his fries. When the girl's eyes settled on Riley she felt as if she were challenging her, 'gross', she thought to herself.
"Cheeseburger, and a vodka cranberry," she said trying not to roll her eyes.
When the she was gone Riley turned to Josh with a glare, "No coddling please," she said before adding. "Also tell the waitress that you want to go out with her before she spits in my food because I'm sitting next to you."
"You might also want to mention that you're both related," Charlie added.
"Seriously," Josh said before standing up. "And we're talking, not I'm not going to coddle you I just want to talk, you know like we used to growing up. I'm not my parents."
"Yeah, I know, but grandma and grandpa are a little much when it comes to me, I know they miss daddy, but some days it feels like it's too much."
"I know, remember I was a premature baby, they're the same with me," he said before kissing her on her head and walking off.
"You think he's actually going to ask her out," Charlie said when Josh was at the bar asking for the waitress.
"Yes," she said watching the two interact. "Josh probably comes here as much as you do just to see her, which just makes you both hopeless."
"Maybe if they get close I can get information on the guy, and we can work from there," Charlie said a grin on his face, she knew it was his plotting face, she's seen it enough to know, especially when there was someone who Charlie was interested in.
"Why not just give it a shot and ask?"
"I don't want to I guess mess it up," he said reminding her of his last relationship. He liked the guy so much, but when push came to shove, they broke up in a very public fashion. It took Charlie a year just to get over the heartache, so she could understand why he was being so cautious about it.
"If I have to start taking chances so do you, I'm not going to push you but maybe next time we come you can try to, well you know."
"Okay," he said smiling. "What if we come here every Friday, for the next month, maybe you'll meet someone too."
"Right, like that works out so well for me, the last guy I went out with used me as a beard," she said with a smile.
"Yeah well you win some you lose some," he said as Josh made his way back towards their table.
"Well," she said as her Uncle sat down.
"Her name is Maya, and we're going on a date next Monday because the bar is closed on Mondays."
"Good for you," Charlie said smiling at Josh before turning the full force of the grin on Riley. "Riley has decided to come out with us every Friday while I build up the courage to ask someone out."
"Wait," she said looking at the two of them. "What, huh?"
"Yeah," Josh said looking over at her. "This was originally just a plan for us to get together to convince you to stop hiding out and having more fun. Riley, my darling darling niece, you work too damn hard for someone your age, you need to have a little fun."
She couldn't help but look at the two of them stunned at what had just happened, her best friend and her Uncle conspiring against her.
"I go out," she said knowing it was a lie and they knew it too because they both gave her very pointed looks. "Fine, I don't go out, but I need to save money, I can't live with Farkle and Isadora and Charlie for the rest of my life."
"Yes, but that doesn't mean that you have to stop living either," Josh said to her. "That's why mom and dad worry, that's why they are constantly asking me to check up on you."
"Fine you win, you both win, I'll go out once a week but that's it, between school and work it's impossible to do anything anyway."
"Actually, I had the school cancel your work study," Charlie said and all she could do was look over at him stunned at what he had just said. "Listen to me Riley Matthews, you have a full scholarship, and a job, you're not allowed to have another one."
"Charlie," she said smacking his arm. "You," smack, "Had," smack, "No freaking right to do that."
"Riley you're twenty-three years old, you'll be twenty-four in December, you need to live a little and not work yourself to death," Charlie said to her.
"That's where I come in," Josh said to her. "Mom found a trust left to you by my brother and sister-in-law, Riley you don't have to touch anything in it but use it to keep yourself from running ragged, I know you better than anyone else, you try to help everyone, while trying to do everything and at some point, it's going to be too much."
"But," she said quietly.
"No buts," Josh said. "You need to live please, do it for your parents who loved you."
"I'll try," she said, feeling the sadness in her heart clamp down on her shoulders, she couldn't remember her parents, but she knows from what everyone had said to her over the years that they had loved her and treasured her, and they would want her to live and be as happy as they were.
It had been a long day, Lucas knew that he still had to do the numbers for the bar, he loved his sister, but she was horrible with math, and he had wanted her to finish school, so he took on the extra work to make sure she had time to study. Especially since she only had one year left before she finished her bachelor's. She was the artist, he wanted her to keep that dream alive after the way their childhood had been. Their mother was happy with John, and Lucas was glad that for once she had found happiness, but Lucas will always worry it came from the years of their lives that they had spent with his step-father.
So, Lucas worked hard, the few relationships he had had over the years only lasted a week, he preferred quick hook-up to actual relationships, he didn't have time for clingy people he needed to take care of his family.
"Hey Lucas," Zay said from behind the bar as he mixed drinks. His best friend wanted nothing more than to be a bartender, he liked the movie Cocktail and just ran with it, plus he was a good cook and helped Lucas manage the bar when he was too busy running his company.
"How's the day going?" Lucas asked standing behind the bar for a moment, pulling beers up for patrons and helping Zay get everyone their drinks.
"So far so good, Maya got a date with that guy she's been flirting with for the last two months," Zay said before pointing the guy out to him. Lucas saw the messy dark hair and the suit and tie and thought that if they lasted it would be a miracle because Maya wasn't the type to like straight laced guys, but then again neither had his mother and she ended up with a guy who was the superintendent of schools, so he could be completely wrong about this.
"Who's that he's with?" he said point the girl out. Lucas had seen the other guy around before, Zay has a soft spot for the other guy in the group, but he hadn't dated a guy since high school because he had been in a relationship for the last two year, but his girlfriend and him decided to split because it felt more like a friendship than a real relationship. So Zay was afraid of asking the guy out and him not being bi, or gay.
"The girl is new, I've never seen her before, Maya was ready to spit in her food because she thought that she was with the guy she like," Zay said smiling. "Why do we gossip like a bunch of old ladies?"
"Blame my mother she loved those gossip magazines, but I also like to know who comes in here, and whether I need to kick them out," he stopped for a moment before cycling through what Zay had said. "Did Maya actually spit in her food because I don't want to lose my license."
"Nah, the guy got to her before she did anything," Zay said before mixing a few drinks.
Lucas eyed the table for a moment, "She looks like one of those rich girls with too much time on her hands," he said watching the brunette smile at the other two guys at her table before he was pulling away from the bar.
"You should know better than to judge people Lucas," Maya said as she walked behind the bar to grab the drinks for one of the table.
"I'm allowed especially when you want to date my customers," he said to his sister before pulling away from her.
"Where else am I going to find someone as nice as Josh," she said with a smirk. "Anyway I don't have time to go find a different bar to hang out in especially since I live over this one so deal with it."
"Whatever," he said before walking towards the back door. "I'm going to work for a minute call if you need anything."
Once he was out of the front of the bar and in his office where he ran both his businesses he felt calm, he had the place decorated to be comfortable since he worked long hours there. Somedays he shuffled between the bar and his security company, most days he worked directly from the bar because like Maya and Zay he lived above the bar itself. He owned the building, both the bar and the apartments above it so it didn't matter where he was working from. He lost himself in the numbers, making sure to order the things the bar needed while checking with the night crew from the security side.
He called his mother around ten to tell her about Maya and the suit, his name was Josh according to Maya.
"I wish you would date more often instead of working yourself to death," his mother said on the other side of the line.
"I'm not working myself to death, and I date, but there's no one out there that would measure up to your standards," he said wanting to hit himself in the face with his phone.
His mother sighed from the other side of the phone. "Lucas, I want you to bring a girl to thanksgiving this year, please try a little at least. I know you feel like everything that happened when you were a kid was you trying to protect us, but I want you to be happy my little angel."
"Fine I'll go out on some dates, and see if one of them sticks, but I'm not making any promises."
"It sounds like a promise, but I understand, just have a little fun, and tell your sister to call me, I know she's avoiding me because of the scratch on my car but it wasn't that bad and John fixed it."
"I'll tell her, love you mom," he said and when she said that she loved him back he hung up the phone sighing. He knew that his mother would annoy him until he settled down for a moment instead of working too much. He was twenty-five, turning twenty-six in January, but he also knew that his mother was itching to hook him up with a daughter of a friend and he wanted to avoid that situation.
"Whatever," he mumbled to himself before standing up and stretching, his muscles ached from everything he had done throughout the day. He had to help train two security teams for a large-scale event, as well as a meeting with his managers, and the team leads, so finishing the day off with sitting at his desk wasn't making anything any better.
Walking out of the office looking for food was the best option for him, especially if it's a burger and a mountain of fries, he needed to carbs to fill his stomach before finishing up the last of the orders.
"Lucas, I need you," Maya said peeking her head into the office.
The only time she called him for anything was when something was going badly, with a sigh he walked out to see one of the patrons drunk and by the jukebox blocking the princess from earlier for moving. Maya called him because if she went it would cause the drunk to turn his attention towards her. Zay was stuck behind the bar so all that was left was Lucas since his security for the bar was stuck outside holding the line.
"Come on girl," the guy said as he rubbed himself against the princess. "You know you want this."
The drunk was holding her hands down, stopping her from defending herself which was when Lucas saw red and yanked the guy off of her.
"What the hell man, you can get your turn when I'm done," the guy said before Lucas pulled him towards the door and handed him off to the bouncer, he couldn't afford to deck the guy, but he was also worried about he woman he had just helped. Her friends hadn't seen what had happened, when Lucas checked he noticed that the two guys had been at the bar and had missed the interaction.
The woman was rubbing her wrist as she walked towards her table and started grabbing her stuff, "Are you alright?" he asked as he stood in front of her table.
"Uh… um, yeah," she said but her voice was shaken he could tell that she was going into shock.
"I'm the owner of the bar, if you want you can sit in my office until you've regained your composure, or I can call a cab for you," he said knowing that he had to establish that she was safe first.
She was mumbling to herself before she nodded, and Lucas led her to the back, grabbing a bottle of water on his way there. He handed it to her and sat her down on the couch before moving towards one of the chairs on the other side.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" he asked but before he could get an answer she started chugging the water in large gulps.
"My friend and my Uncle went to the bar, to order something, honestly it was because my best friend has a crush on your bartender, but I decided to go to the jukebox because I wanted something to do and…," she sighed for a moment. "I should have just stayed home today."
He looked at her for a moment, noticing her fingers had burn marks on them, a bandage on her wrist, he wondered if he had been wrong about her. "Why are you here?" he asked curious.
"I was shanghaied into coming, everyone thinks I work too hard, I'm in law school and I have a job and everything, but everyone thinks I don't know how to have fun, so of course the day they force me to go out something happens," she said with a sigh. "Thank you for your help, but I should probably go out there and tell them I'm going home."
"Okay," he said to her. "But don't let one bad night discourage you from going out with your friends," he said thinking that for some reason that he didn't want her to go anywhere and just talk to him, but if she came back maybe he'd get the chance to see her again.
"Thanks again," she said as she stood up and left the room, leaving behind the smell of strawberries.
"There's something in the water," he murmured to himself thinking about how the moment his mother asks him to date he gets a freaking princess. "I don't have time for princesses," he said before going back to his desk and getting back to work.