It was a Tuesday afternoon and the group was meeting at Topanga's to study for their respective classes. As juniors in high school they'd all come to find themselves in different places at different times and rarely ever together all at once. If they were anything like Maya and Farkle, on two completely different ends of the academic spectrum, they found themselves having not one class together. The only things they all had in common were their lunch hour and their once a week meeting at the bakery. Don't get them wrong, in smaller groups and pairs they spent quite a bit of time with one another. Tuesday afternoon was just the one day a week that all five had an empty after school schedule and could come together all at once.
On this particular Tuesday afternoon they found themselves in different areas of the bakery, all studying for different things and working on different projects. This was how it usually went. They would take periodic breaks to enjoy one another, but for the most part it was just the togetherness that kept them bonded. Sometimes if two or three of them had the same class together, like Maya and Lucas on this particular afternoon, they would partner or group up to do their studying together while the others did whatever it was they had to do.
Today Lucas had his laptop out in front of him while Maya poured over the notes the two had taken. She wasn't the worst student anymore and Lucas had only complained sarcastically when the two had been paired up to work on their English presentation. For the most part students would split up their work during school hours and not bother getting together one on one, but given the fact that they would be spending the time together anyway they'd opted to just do it all together.
For the time being they worked in relative silence, both just looking for their own little bullet points to match the other with once they felt like they knew what was going on. Every so often Maya would pause to take a sip of Lucas' raspberry smoothie, having pushed her own finished one across the table long ago. He never protested even though he watched her do it every time. It was more or less their thing. He thought maybe Maya did it with everybody, finished their food nonchalantly, but if he paid attention he'd see it was just him. Maybe subconsciously he always knew to leave half of whatever he got for her in the first place. After years of friendship it had just become their unspoken ritual.
Lucas finally shut his laptop only to find that Maya was scrolling through her phone without any regard for their notes and he reached to wave his hand over her face to get her attention. "Earth to Maya. Did you forget we were doing something?"
Maya looked up with a furrowed brow and set her phone down beside her notebook on the table. "I didn't forget. I just finished a few minutes ago and didn't want to pull you away from your..." she gestured at his laptop, "whatever you were doing." The truth was she was pretty sure she'd seen him tab over to his facebook multiple times. Not that she was going to call him on it or anything.
"Yeah well, what can I say? This just isn't interesting. I can only look up so much about the symbolism in Moby Dick before I lose it," he admitted, earning a genuine laugh from Maya.
Unlike when they were in middle school and everything was so awkward and forced, everything seemed more genuine between them. The entire group in general was less awkward and more in sync, but honestly nobody evolved in their friendship more than Lucas and Maya had. Sure, Riley and Maya were still inseparable but they were more or less the same as they always had been. Lucas and Maya on the other hand had become the best of friends. The romantic undertones had shifted into actual admiration, the teasing had shifted into, well, still teasing, but with a genuine sincerity that couldn't be mistaken for anything else.
Maya settled for knocking Lucas' shoulder with her own playfully before flipping back a page in her notebook to get back to work, sharing thoughts back and forth until it was time for the five of them to shove their assignments away and get to the actual hanging out part of their afternoon- the part everyone actually came for.
The bakery had long since been left behind and dinner in the Matthews' kitchen had been cleaned up, put away, and forgotten about. Maya and Riley found themselves in the familiar bay window babbling on about irrelevant details about their days. At least, they were mostly irrelevant until Riley brought up a topic that Maya hadn't heard her touch since the summer before their freshman year.
"You and Lucas looked pretty cozy today," she mentioned out of nowhere, causing Maya to choke on absolutely nothing, which Riley just rolled her eyes at.
"What do you mean cozy?" Maya accentuated the last word in a more mocking tone than Riley had said it in the first place. She found the observation ridiculous. Of course she and Lucas were cozy. They were the best of friends. They spent more time together than she spent with anyone else in the group aside from Riley. They had a lot in common and they grounded one another. They could bounce ideas off of one another without having to explain themselves. Cozy was an understatement if Maya was being honest, but no matter what word she would use to describe them it still didn't merit any conversation. It wasn't anything more than it was.
Riley simply bounced back and forth and put on a face as if she didn't mean anything important by her statement. As if it was just another random anecdote about her day. "I don't mean anything. I'm not insinuating anything. I'm just saying. I looked over while we were studying and I noticed," she offered with a shrug, as if it just wasn't anything. Maya was absolutely dumbfounded.
"You can't just act like you didn't mean anything by it. You can't just pretend you said it like, 'oh I was a quarter short in my lunch money so Farkle lent it to me and also you and Lucas seem awfully chummy.'" Maya deadpanned, completely confused by the entire thing.
Riley simply shrugged and went on to talk about how she was pretty sure she aced her history midterm. Maya really wasn't listening enough to weigh in.
She was not cozy with Lucas. No. If she was it wasn't like it was anything anyone would notice. She was cozy with Lucas the same way she was cozy with Riley right here and now. This whole global phenomenon of boys and girls not being able to be friends was infuriating. Maya and Lucas had been close for years now and if they happened to brush hands and linger longer than most people, and if they happened to exchange playlists, and if they happened to understand the gibberish that the other was spouting even if it didn't make sense to anyone else, well that was just what it was. Wasn't it? All it meant was that they were comfortable, that they had the same taste in music, that they had stuff in common. Didn't it?
Of course it did. Maya hadn't entertained the thought of being cozy with Lucas in years. As far as she knew he hadn't either. Then again, as far as she knew Riley was also on that page, but apparently she was wrong about that. Maybe she was wrong about other things.