sorry for the late update! also follow my VINE 420 lucaya hehe. also i didnt spell check because im lazy
title: serial dater
pairs: lucas/maya
characters: lucas, maya, riley (mentioned), oc
summary: are you scared?
word count: 2,399
At this point, Lucas was entirely certain that he had been daydreaming of clocking this—this asshole in the jaw. He wasn't quite sure where these immense feelings came from, maybe it was from the fact that he couldn't keep his eyes off of her. And, that, that made Lucas angry.
Of course, Maya was easy on the eyes. She was gorgeous, really, and it came no surprise to Lucas when boys hit on her. But, what was his name again?—right, Bryant, as if a name couldn't get anymore typical than that. Bryant, not only, couldn't keep his eyes off of her, but he couldn't keep his hands off, either.
It's not like they were dating, because that's something they definitely, totally weren't—capital W. They were platonic, at least as far as he knew. Which, in theory, made no sense with how jealous he was, because no, he shouldn't even be. Jealous, that is.
She always seemed to have a special skill of dragging him into stuff he didn't want to be dragged into. Exhibit A, being the third wheel of an absolutely horrid, and awful, double date. Maya, she didn't really seem to get that he totally hated third wheeling with her and her dates when Riley was out sick. He wasn't fond of watching her coddle and make out with another guy, other than him, of course.
And, honestly, the movie couldn't get a bit more tacky. He was feeling a bit of Farkle, predicting each and every move five minutes before it happened. This was just another one of those scary movies Bryant picked out so that Maya would cuddle into his arm like a scared puppy—and if that was Bryant's intention, he surely didn't know Maya that well.
Maya sat in the middle of the two, with Lucas on her left and Bryant on her right. Lucas felt a gag come inside when Bryant pretended to stretch and reached his arms over to put them over Maya's shoulders. Gross. Luckily, for him at least, Maya saw the tacky and overused move before he did and almost sneezed on him so he would pull his arm away.
The two exchanged a look and he chuckled. Well, he thought, at least that's another boy out of the billions in the world down the hole.
After the movie was done, Maya bid her goodbye's with—who was it again? Yes, Bryant, that name seemed to always slip Lucas' mind for some reason. They walked out of the theater, laughing, that is, about how horrid another one of her dates went. And he'd drive her home as she popped in one of his country CDs and as she made fun of him and even though she was with Bryant the whole night, he spent the latter half with her and her talking about his tacky moves so that's all that mattered, to him at least.
And then came another boy, his name was Brent which was already telling within itself. Apparently she met him at a blind date thing that Riley had forced Maya to go to and they seemed to both like ACDC but with similarities other than that, it seemed to stop short. He was tall, almost taller than Lucas but not just quite, which was good because he remembered Maya muttering something the other day about liking tall guys. He had jet black hair that was, what Riley told him one time, something like a fashion mess. And, god, he wasn't cute.
Lucas could see the way Maya raised her eyebrows in surprise as Brent ambled his way over, his stride that offered such a cocky persona Maya almost gagged at the sight. He introduced himself, yet again, and then looked over to Lucas with something similar to rage. "And who might this be?"
Lucas was about to answer, but Maya beat him to it. "This is my best friend. And, conveniently, my other best friend is sick, yet again. So he'll be joining us, if you don't mind."
They were at the mall, a neutral ground, Lucas remembered Maya telling him one night. They were placed at the food courts long before Brent came. He was a good fifteen minutes late. Ugly, and not punctual. Swoon. Maya bit back the urge to clock Brent in the knee, clearly unsatisfied.
Brent sat down with them, across from Maya since Lucas made sure there was no room next her. Brent's eyes filled with something, when he looked at Maya. Something mixed with lust, but Lucas couldn't quite place it. Either way, it was not a good look. "How are you, Maya?" he asked her, completely ignoring the fact that Lucas existed.
"I'm good," she spit out with a fake smile. "Just sat here for fifteen minutes, waiting for you. But, it's whatever. We should order something, shouldn't we?"
Luckily, for Lucas, Maya neglected to call Brent ever again. And then came the next boy, his name was Fred and he had a deep, dark complexion. Maya liked him a lot, Lucas didn't. They went on five dates before Maya broke it off. And then, there was the next. His name was Jacob. And then the next, and the next.
She oddly filed through his baseball friends, and then through his football friends. There was Cross, Zepher, and Jackson. They listened to the Beatles once before, so Maya stopped talking to them. Plus, they completely lacked in the same interest department.
There was Noah and Elizabeth, they both had green eyes (he remembered Maya told him), but she dropped them the day after meeting them. There was also Charlotte, he remembered. Charlotte had blonde hair and these pretty eyelashes, too, and she took her on a boat ride or something. He didn't beg for details, only knew that it didn't work out.
There was Caden, too, and Olivia. They had brown hair, but Olivia's cut just below her shoulder. Caden smelled like mint green and told her he loved her during their second date. She stopped dating him after that. He remembers a few more, Cameron, Isaac, Isabella, Owen, Harper, and Lincoln. She kept filing through people, like a serial dater.
Lucas would admit, only to himself, that yes, Maya being with other people in a romantic-esque way was certainly off putting. And he hated it, he didn't want to say it, but he hated it. Because, god, he'd see the way her eyes shined whenever she looked at art and maybe he's cliche but he loved her, more than the people she's dated ever could.
And she never stopped at a relationship, never exceeding five dates. She dated multiple people at once, if it came to it. He doesn't know where she found them, or perhaps they found her because she was so alluring and it was nearly impossible not to ask the Maya Hart on a date when she was single, even if only for a moment.
And so he asks her, what it's all about. Because he's not judging her, he isn't, he's just curious because at points it seems like she's filing and filing until she'll find the one person she's looking for, but she never gives them a chance. He asks her when her face is plastered to the inside of her textbook, which she was supposed be reading, but instead, she fell asleep. Her wild blonde hair spewed around the top of her head and Lucas could almost hear her soft little snore.
"Hey," he nudged her with his foot softly. She groaned loudly, flipping her body over, the page ripping from her face. She lied there for a moment, looking up at the ceiling with her hands on her stomach. "Can I ask you a question?"
"If it's about postulates or calculus or anything math related, please don't. I'm spent."
Lucas chuckled under his breath and closed his eyes, speaking with them closed. "I'm not judging you, if you think I am. It's an honest question."
She shot her hand up curiously, moving her body so she was facing him. "Shoot."
"What's with all of the, you know, like—how do I say this without sounding crass? What's with all of the serial dating, I guess?" He opened one eye to look at her and she peered at him curiously, and then her blank face turned into a smile. She titled her head fondly, tucking her knees to her chest.
"I don't know," she sighed, after a minute of silence. He opened his other eye. "I'm, just, trying to find someone to spend my time with other than you, and Riley, I think."
Ouch. That kind of stung. "What's so bad about spending time with me?" and Lucas could see Maya's face twist, recognizing the hurt in his voice. She could read him like an open book.
She shook her head. "That's not—that's not what I meant. Sorry, it came out weird. I... none of them are, like, someone I enjoy being around. And then comes the next one, and I think that I'll like them but we're too different, or something. Or they can't hold my personality, or I find no utter interest. It's interesting, really, that none of them are like..." she stops herself, trailing off with a breath.
"Like what?" he has to ask her, he does. Because he has to know, he does he does and he does.
"It's not important," she says, twisting her body to snatch her math book off the ground.
"When it concerns you," he tells her, "it's important to me."
She tilts her head to the side, forgetting the book next to her leg. "What about you, huh? I see you're completely lacking in the girlfriend department."
He doesn't know what to say. Because she's there, and he's here and there's always someone new in her life. So he tells her the truth, not the whole truth, but the truth. "Besides the fact you drag me along to every single one of your dates, there's this girl I've been keeping my eye on."
He can visibly see her expression fall, and she plasters on a fake smile. "Oh, really? That's great, Lucas. Have I met her?" she forces through her front teeth.
He nods his head. "Yeah, you have," is all he says.
An awkward kind of silence fills the air and Maya has to suck in her breath. They don't know what to say, because they both know what the other one is thinking. So she decides to break it, because she doesn't know what else to say. "What is she like?"
That throws him off guard. But he decides to tell her anyway, because what's he got to lose? So he takes a deep breath, and exhales, closing his eyes for a moment. Their study session got pretty intense. "She's really pretty," he tells her.
"Hmm?" she asks him. "How so?"
He can see behind her facade, though. "Well," he begins to tell her. "She's got this blonde hair, kind of like yours. And it's a bit curly, a bit wavy, and I don't know if it's natural or she curls it. I think it's natural, though."
"Her hair?" she asks him.
A smile splays on his face sloppily. "Yeah, it's really soft, too. She has this conditioner that she owns and she won't tell me what it is because she thinks I'll steal it."
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Oh?" she asked him. "Well, I'm sure her conditioner cost a bunch of money and she doesn't want your hair being soft, too."
"There's more about her, too, you know?"
"You can tell me," she tells him.
"She has these, blue eyes." He starts to ramble. "It's like they touched the ocean and the sky and they're so beautiful, that you can get lost in them for hours. There's not a color on the rainbow that can capture the beauty of her eyes."
Maya decides to get up from her spot on the floor and joins him on her bed, sitting next to him. "She sounds lovely," she tells him and it's true, he thinks. There's a small smile on her lips.
"And when she smiles," he adds on, "it's so big and beautiful that it could light up a thousand cities." She looks at her hands, fighting the blush on her cheeks. She's finally starting to understand. "And she's got these small hands, too, and I've got these big hands and they're so small compared to mine but she holds them anyway."
He doesn't stop looking at her. "She's also short, so she can't reach on the highest cupboard in her dorm so she calls me over because sometimes the chair is too heavy. And even though she's five foot zero, she swears like a sailor. She can also do art, really well. She draws and she paints and can capture anything she wishes because that's who she is. And there are people throwing themselves at her feet, inclusive to any gender."
Her lips are pursed together tightly and he can see that she's thinking, but he doesn't know what. "Do you love her?" she asks him.
"Well, I'd like to think so," he nudges her shoulder softly with his. "She's my best friend."
"She's very lucky," she tells him, and then she looks up to meet his eyes. Her eyes, the color of the ocean, and her lips, the color of a cherry. Her hair mussed up and blonde as ever and he's never loved her more than now, he thinks.
"Are you scared?" he asks her, about their relationship. Because something shifted in her eyes, and in their relationship.
"Not of you," she whispers.
the ending was going to be MUCH different with a longer ending but i liked this better
review and fave!
