Chapter 38

"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Lucas answered. "But you didn't. You got so excited to see him that you froze for a second before you ran to him, and I heard you call him 'Dad.'"

"I did not," Maya scoffed.

"You did," Lucas insisted, staying gentle about her argument for now because he realized that it was a sometimes tender topic for her. "And why wouldn't you? He is your dad! Jack is a genuinely good guy! He loves you, you love him, and there's no reason for you not to call him 'Dad!'"

"Lucas, I didn't!"

"You did too, Maya."

"I didn't – and if I had, it was only once, probably because I was so excited it was practically on accident! If I'd called him 'Dad,' in the middle of being excited and having him around and whatever, it doesn't really matter. I'm not going to admit that I called him that because it doesn't matter!"

Lucas stared at her silence, and only then did she realize that she'd gone wrong somewhere in what she'd said and he knew that she knew what she'd done. But in a battle of stubbornness, she was pretty sure he had no idea what to do with her, or what to say to get her to change her mind.

Until a new voice said quietly, "It does matter, Maya."

Both she and Lucas were startled, turning to see Tommy Murphy standing behind Lucas. Maya hadn't even noticed him come up, but she rolled her eyes and asked dryly, trying to get him to go away, "Oh, yeah? And what would you know about that?"

Tommy blinked at her in surprise before both of his eyebrows flew skyward, and Maya suddenly got the sinking feeling that she'd said exactly the wrong thing to him. He looked down at Lucas and asked, "Do you mind if I join the conversation?"

Lucas stood up from the box he'd been sitting on, saying softly, "Be my guest. Good luck."

Then he went back to where he'd been sitting with Riley, and Tommy sat down on the box across from Maya instead, saying, "Don't worry, nobody else heard what you two were talking about."

"What do you want, Murphy?"

"The same thing Lucas wants: to help you cultivate a good relationship with your dad. We both think that you and Jack deserve that."

Maya looked at him in exasperation, asking, "Why do you even care?!"

"I want to see this work out for you, Maya," he answered solemnly. "I see… parallels in the way that you think, the… dark lenses that you look at the world through. I used to think that way when I was younger. I was six, seven, eight, and already as cynical as you are now."

"What changed for you?" Maya asked, more to try and get him off topic than anything, and he knew it, but he allowed it anyway.

"Eric did. He got involved in my life, took an interest in this little kid who'd asked Santa-Eric for parents for Christmas. He took me under his wing for about four months. The rest of the story you already know," he shrugged, adding, "At least vaguely. One thing that you don't know is that, on the day Eric almost adopted me… I had been packing my stuff, an excited little kid picking up as many toys as I could before it was time to go, when he knocked on the door. I opened it, and once, in the course of whatever I said about being ready to go – just once – I called Eric 'Dad.'" Maya dropped her head into her hands, seeing where he was going with this. "It was only one time – five minutes later he had insinuated that he didn't want me and walked away – so surely it didn't matter to me, right? I mean, that is what you said, isn't it?" Maya looked at him with tired eyes as he said fiercely, even while keeping his voice down, "But you know that it did matter to me, don't you, Maya? I called him 'Dad' because I meant it – because I felt like he was my dad. In a way, I still do… I think I never stopped, actually. He's always been something to me, even if it was, for a while, just an old, treasured memory. I called him 'Dad' because I loved him, because I knew he loved me, and I felt comfortable labelling our relationship like that."

"Right before he walked away," Maya snarked.

He smirked at her. "We've already had that conversation." He pointed covertly to Jack, Shawn, and even Cory. "These guys aren't going anywhere on you, Maya. I promise. I talked to a couple of them just yesterday about it, even. It's just not going to happen; you're stuck with them, because they love you that much. They each already feel like they're some sort of father-figure to you, so what's the problem with acknowledging that, especially with Jack, your actual dad?"

"The problem is-" she froze, then huffed, but said nothing else.

"You don't want to risk getting hurt, right?" She gave him a plaintive look, and he continued, knowing he was right. "In a way," he pointed out. "You're hurting yourself by not saying it. You're depriving yourself of something great, and you're depriving Jack of that same thing. It is a good thing that you trust and love him enough to want to call him 'Dad.' And you know what? I bet you'd make his day if you did it where he could hear you. In fact, I know you would!"

"And how do you 'know' that?"

"He's pretty much said so on two separate occasions," Tommy answered evenly. "He's not… like Shawn in that way. He likes order, guidelines, definitions, and the like. I think he'd like to know what you would call whatever he is to you."

"He hasn't said anything like that!"

"He has – yesterday, and even after the movie the first day he met you."