Chapter 37

"But she definitely wasn't the only reason," Zay said, rounding the front of the truck and looking at his girlfriend. "Sorry, sweetheart."

Maya shrugged, truly not caring. She was just glad that he was here.

"What makes you say that?" Lucas asked Zay.

Zay looked at Farkle as the other boy climbed down out of the truck and said, "This."

The genius held up what Maya instantly recognized as an old sketchbook. But Lucas was the first one to recognize the portrait on the page, and he took the book from Farkle, muttering, "This is of Mom."

"It was already opened to that page, just sitting there on the dashboard," Farkle said. "I guess he wanted to make sure he knew where it was. I don't know what that looks like to you, but it looks to me like somebody was in love once upon a time."

"I think it's pretty obvious that they still like each other even now," Riley said, and a glance at each of the kids proved that they agreed.

But Lucas wasn't listening, instead staring down at the drawing in something like awe.

"What is it?" Riley asked him, laying a hand on his arm.

He murmured, "She looks so happy here."

It was true, Maya noted, peeking around Riley to get a closer look at the picture. But it wasn't that she just happy… Jack had drawn the picture of Rachel straight on, in full color so that she was smiling right at whoever looked at the drawing. She was depicted with a sheer purple niqab across the lower half of her face, and she was looking out with love in her gaze, smile wide and eyes dancing with an expression of pure joy that Maya herself had yet to see Rachel wear. She could tell at a glance that this was one of those moments that Jack had been in himself and wanted to capture on paper. She didn't blame him in the least; the drawing was beautiful. But it wasn't beautiful just because the moment itself, or even Rachel's expression, was breathtaking, but because the artist himself had drawn the portrait with such unmistakable love.

Jack Hunter and Rachel McGuire had definitely been in love at one time… and Maya was inclined to believe that they still were even after all these years.

"Guys, look at this though," Farkle said, suddenly reaching around Lucas to flip through the pages.

Though there were a few portraits of natives from one country or another – India, Mexico, Brazil – most of the drawings were of Rachel.

Zay shook his head when they came to the first blank page that meant they'd reached the end of Jack's drawings. "This guy had it bad, didn't he?"

"He still does," Maya said with a grin. "He just…" her eyebrows drew together as she tried to find the way to word it. "He's mature enough to realize that there's a time and a place for everything, and now is far from the time to be pursuing something with her."

"She is technically still married," Farkle pointed out with a wince.

"That's why we have the bay window meeting scheduled for when we do, right?" Riley reminded them all brightly. "I mean, the way they've faced this as a group so far, we've got to assume that there's going to be some sort of get-together the day the divorce is finalized."

Lucas added happily, "And that's when we're rallying the five of us back together to see if we think there's anything between them."

"You guys," Zay asked a little dryly, "I know I haven't been involved in one of this groups big schemes yet like this, but… are we even going to be needed to help this one along, or do we just need to step back and let life happen, because it looks to me," he pointed towards the sketchpad in Lucas's hand, "Like they could do this on their own."

"That's part of what the bay window meeting will be about," Riley assured him. "But so far I'd have to say…" she looked around for agreement or disagreement from the other four. "So far so good?"

A chorus of agreements and smiles met the question, and Maya couldn't help letting a grin settle onto her own face. "Yeah," she murmured, moving with the others as they started back towards the apartment building while her mind wandered back over everything that had happened since she'd gotten into that argument with her mother almost a month ago. "So far so good."

Hours later, after the day of arranging things in Jack's conveniently pre-furbished apartment, the group had seemed loathed to separate again just yet, so they'd ended up eating supper together in the apartment, sitting on chairs and boxes and the floor with pizza-filled paper plates in their laps.

When the two of them had finished eating, Lucas caught Maya's eye and slanted his eyes towards an out-of-the-way corner of the room. Frowning, she obliged him, standing from the cardboard box where she'd been sitting between Jack and Zay. Lucas nudged two more boxes into the empty corner and sat on one, gesturing for Maya to take the other.

She raised her eyebrow, but did as he'd asked before she demanded, "What's up, Huckleberry?"

Lucas leaned forward so that he could all but whisper the words to her as he asked with a small smile playing at the edges of his mouth, "I'm just curious – do you even realize what you called Jack when you saw him this morning?"

Maya tried hard to keep her expression neutral because, yes, thank you very much, she'd realized halfway thought the day what she'd called him, but she'd thought she'd gotten lucky and no one had heard her. Apparently someone had, and now Lucas wanted to discuss it. But she just didn't think she was ready for that.

So she said, "I don't know. Nothing special – I would assume I said, you know, his name."