Chapter 29

"It's okay," Zay murmured near her ear. "Your hair's hiding your face. No stranger's going to notice if you cry. You've had a hard time recently; I'd say you deserve a good cry as much as anybody right now."

Maya shook her head fiercely. "No. Lucas and Rachel are the priority right now; we've already decided on that. Once they're fine, then, maybe, I'll… do whatever I need to do."

"Whatever you need to do, it seems like you need it right now," Zay pointed out quietly. "And that's okay."

"No," Maya scrubbed fiercely at her eyes before more tears could fall. "No, it's not, because, I mean, look at all of this, Zay! I'm sitting here crying over, what, my dad, when I'm the lucky one compared to Lucas! I have a dad! Heck, I have three of them, depending on how you want to count it! And I want to cry over that while the one father that Lucas has does that to him and his mom?! No, that's not okay. That's completely selfish of me, when he and Rachel are both so obviously hurting!"

"It's okay for you to hurt too!" Zay insisted. "You have that right just as much as they do – and you know that if the roles were reversed here, you'd be telling me or Lucas exactly what I'm telling you, wouldn't you?" Maya screwed her eyes closed, took a deep breath of air that smelt of Zay's fabric softener and cologne, and refused to answer the question that they both knew the answer to. "You are both very much allowed to have daddy issues," Zay murmured.

The patterns he was drawing on her back hadn't paused once, and she could almost feel the chinks he was causing in her already weak walls. One last time he whispered, "It's okay; you are allowed to feel."

She buried her face in the curve of his neck and cried. She still didn't want to, not really – she was so tired of how weak she'd felt since the argument with Katy that had snowballed into all of this – but they both knew she needed the purge. Again. Even if she did still think their problems were bigger than hers. Good grief, she irritated herself sometimes!

But there again was Zay, whispering a calming litany in her ear over and over while he just held her. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."

And slowly she started to believe him, and as she did so, she found her tears drying out. She started to feel better. She started to think that maybe she could allow herself to feel this hurt, to heal herself even while she kept an eye on Lucas and Rachel and helped them where she could. It sounded like the perfect solution, and she trusted Zay just enough to believe that it could happen.

No. No, "trust" wasn't the right word, was it? She trusted Zay, yes… but she was pretty sure that in the middle of going through the events of the past days she'd started to love him. How had that happened?! And how did she feel about the fact that it had?

Hesitantly, Maya raised her head from Zay's shoulder, searching the boy's eyes, moving closer so slowly that she didn't realize she was doing it, not when she was close enough to breathe his air, not when she was so close that he took up her entire field of vision. Only when her eyes were closed and she was kissing him did she realize what she was doing. And how he was kissing her right back.

It was over suddenly, when she remembered something important and instantly drew back, glancing nervously towards where she'd left Riley. The brunette was still right there, now with Farkle and Lucas, and the trio was grinning approvingly at Maya and Zay. Zay groaned and Maya put her head back onto his shoulder with a delighted chuckle.

She certainly felt a lot better now, thinking contentedly that she'd managed to get one thing figured out at least. Even if she didn't know how she felt about her parents – in whatever sense of the word someone wanted to take it – after that kiss, she didn't doubt that she liked Zay.

Lucas, Riley, and Farkle wandered over as one unit, and Zay asked cautiously, "I guess y'all saw that?"

"Every last bit of it," Lucas said with a grin. Apparently his talk with Jack had helped put him in a better state of mind, and Maya was glad to see it.

"It could be worse," Farkle pointed out helpfully. "One of the brothers Hunter could've seen."

Zay chuckled nervously when Jack chose that moment to come over and declare, "Oh, but one of them did. I didn't hear everything, but I saw it." Maya had expected him to pry about the boy whose lap she was on, but instead he asked, a line of concern showing in the space between his eyebrows, "Were you crying?"

Maya shrugged, and Riley asked the more important question, "Are you okay?"

"I am now," Maya assured them all.

"What were you talking about?" Riley asked, doubtlessly trying to figure out if there was a way for her to help so that Maya didn't get hurt again.

Maya didn't answer right away, so Zay volunteered, "Daddy issues."

But Riley was perceptive enough to see far more than what Zay had said. "She doesn't think she's allowed to have them, does she?"

Zay cocked his head at Riley, his tone dripping with sarcasm as he answered, "Well, don't you know that she's not allowed to fall apart while other people are hurting worse than she is?"

Irritation flashed through Riley's eyes, something undefinable flared in Lucas's gaze, and Jack pinched the bridge of his nose before he looked expectantly to the redhead who'd come up just in time to hear Zay's comment. Somehow it looked like he just knew she was going to have something to say about that… and Rachel didn't disappoint.