Riley

Riley bent over at the waist, bowing her body into the Russian splits on the floor next to her bed as her earphones blasted music. She loved the feeling of her muscles stretching whenever she did warmups, but it wasn't the same when she knew she wasn't planning on actually dancing when she finished.

"Riley," Savannah tapped on her shoulder, and Riley pulled her earphones out, pulling her legs up to hug her knees.

"Yes?" She asked, her cheeks flushing.

"Nurse Kay told me to get you, your psychologist is here," Savannah notified her. She glanced over Riley's legs. "I didn't know you could do that."

"I'm flexible, I'm a dancer," Riley stated, before getting up, not wanting to go any further into it. She grabbed another sweater out of her dresser and pulled it on over the clothes she was already wearing, before leaving the room without looking back.

It wasn't that she didn't like her roommate; it was just that she was always self conscious with one. She hadn't ever talked to her roommate in high school, nor her roommate in college. In fact, she really only talked to a few people - her closest friends. She wasn't a social butterfly.

Riley sat down on the couch in the common room, curling her legs around her body as she stared down at her hands, waiting for her psychologist to come out and get her. She glanced around at the other few people in the room; there were four girls sitting at the table doing art or drawing or playing cards, and there was one girl sitting on the floor in front of another one of the couches. She was playing solitaire, as far as Riley could tell, but she couldn't see her face, before the girl looked up and her blonde hair fell back for Riley to see, and her eyes widened.

The girl, noticing Riley too, let her mouth fall open, before shaking her head and asking, "What are the odds?"

"I didn't know you were in New York," Riley admitted, getting up to go and sit on the floor in front of her.

"I didn't know you were in New York either," she confessed.

Riley smiled, tightly. "How have you been, Danielle?"

"Well obviously not well, and you haven't either, considering where we are," her old roommate pointed out, and Riley remembered how pessimistic Danielle had always been.

"Good point," Riley agreed.

A silence passed over the two of them as they both realized that they still had no idea how to talk to each other.

"What have you been doing the past ten years?" Danielle asked hesitantly.

"I went to Juilliard and then became a principal dancer at American Ballet Theater," Riley summarized. "You?"

"I had guest parts on some TV shows in Hollywood, did a few movies, and then got a part in a broadway show. I just finished a tour and came to audition for the next Wicked cast, when I ended up here," Danielle explained, reaching up to brush some of her platinum blonde hair behind her ear as her eyes fell to her knees. "It was an accident, really."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Riley asked softly, scanning her old roommate.

Danielle paused, taking a few moments to think, before her eyes flicked up to meet Riley's and she asked, "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

Immediately, Riley knew what she was talking about. But she wanted to be sure. "Tell who what?"

"The health counselor at Idyllwild," Danielle suggested emotionlessly. "A teacher. An administrator. Maybe if we had both gotten help back then…"

"I couldn't tell without you telling," Riley pointed out. "And I wasn't ready to deal with it."

"And now I've done 'irreparable damage to my heart'," Danielle stated, using her fingers to make quotes in the air.

"Well, what do you know," Riley giggled a little, "so have I."

"Figures we'd both end up here," Danielle smiled a little, and Riley smiled back, reaching out to grasp her hand. The link back to Idyllwild was helping her feel less alone, as it always did.

The two girls with broken hearts sat together, silently, not needing to talk - just needing a companion who knew what it was like.

Riley's parents came to see her twice, but her brother was in Africa somewhere with a volunteering group. It was nice to see her family, but nobody was comfortable with the circumstances, so after the second time Riley requested that they not come back.

Maya and Farkle were there a few times a week for the first month or so, and Riley watched Maya's baby bump grow as the weeks passed, a little jealous of how Maya's life seemed much more 'together' than hers was. They sat in the common room and Maya caught them up on her meetings with her brother and her art, and Farkle gave them all the theater updates.

Riley knew they were trying to make her feel more normal, but it didn't help. It just made it all worse. So after a few weeks, she requested that the nurses not let them in either, and effectively shut out all her family and friends.

Unfortunately, Dr. Friar and Dr. Matthews had clearance that allowed them to go straight past the nurses and see her despite her feelings about it all.

Sometimes she felt like they were ganging up on her; tag teaming her to berate her about how much weight she was gaining and why she wasn't seeing her family or friends. She usually just sat in her bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, repeating in her mind that she was an adult, and their opinions didn't matter - no matter what degrees they had.

They could say whatever they wanted; they had no idea what she was going through, and they never would.

"Riley," her psychologist called her name, and Riley looked up.

"I'll talk to you later," Danielle smiled as she returned to her solitaire, and Riley got up.

"I'm so glad you agreed to have your friends join us today," Riley's psychologist, Quinn, praised her.

Riley smiled tightly, still not entirely sure it had been a good idea. But, "I thought it was time."

"They're already waiting in my office," Quinn said, leading her out of the eating disorder ward and towards her office.

"Riley," Maya beamed, jumping up and flying to hug her as she entered the office, not entirely conscious of her protruding belly. "It's been so long."

"And you look even better," Riley smiled, referring to Maya's pregnancy. "How many weeks left?"

"About four or five weeks," Maya explained. "The doctor says she's doing perfect, no complications."

"Just like Maya," Farkle added from where he was sitting on the couch behind her.

"Hi," Riley greeted him softly, smiling.

"Hey," he smiled back.

"Why don't we sit?" Quinn suggested, going to her own chair as Maya sat back down on the couch with Farkle, and Riley took a seat on the other chair in the room. "I'd like to thank you two for coming in."

"Of course," Farkle said, glancing at Riley. "She's our family."

"Riley has told me about your friendship and your friendship and relationship with her friend Helena, but I'd like it if you could go over your own thoughts about it," Quinn requested, jumping right in as she picked up her notepad.

"I knew her as Halle King," Maya started after a moment of thought. "She had changed her name when she became an adult. Or, started going by her full name and changed her last name to her mom's maiden. She was my father's other daughter, but she hated him. I met her when I was sixteen and she was thirteen, after our brother Eli found out about me and sent me a letter."

"And your father left your mother?" Quinn assumed, noting something. "When was that?"

"Their divorce was finalized when I was seven," Maya informed her.

"I noticed you didn't call her your sister," Quinn observed bluntly, and Riley realized that at that exact moment too.

"Um," Maya suddenly seemed uncomfortable, and Riley immediately felt bad for putting her in this situation. "She and I only talked a few times, and met in person even less times. I think it was four or five times total between when we met and when she… died."

Riley swallowed. "And I didn't know she was your half sister."

"I know how Riley felt about it, but how did it feel for you to find out about Riley and Halle's friendship, Maya?" Quinn asked a question Riley hadn't known she wanted the answer to. She looked at Maya.

"A lot happened that day, and it was all just a lot to… process," Maya admitted. "And then Riley's… incident happened only a couple of days later, and I saw Farkle and our friend Lucas and Riley's uncle and my old roommate Isadora for the first time in a while, all at the same time, while dealing with what happened to Riley…" Maya sighed. "Like I said, it was a lot to process. It was a bad week."

"But how did you feel about Riley and Halle's friendship?" Quinn pushed.

Maya's eyes went out of focus for a moment, as if deciding something. "Jealous," she finally whispered.

"Of what?" Quinn asked, and Riley leaned forwards unconsciously.

"Both of them," Maya admitted. She met eyes with Riley. "She was your best friend in the end, when I wasn't there. She replaced me in your life. And Halle… you knew her much better than I did. You had a much better relationship with my sister than I did. I know it was my fault, but it just didn't seem… fair."

"But it must have been easier to deal with her death if you didn't know her as well," Riley began. "Helena and I were best friends for years, and we did everything together… it was impossible to imagine my life without her in it."

"That's how I felt about you," Maya admitted.

"I didn't die," Riley pointed out, a little bitterly.

"No, but you might as well have, back then, and you almost did, a couple of months ago," Maya pointed out. "You hated me. You cut me off, cut me out of your life, and it was so abrupt that it felt like you had died. Or like I was dead to you. After almost ten years of being best friends and doing everything together, suddenly you weren't there, at all. No contact. Nothing. My life was without you in it. Just like yours is now, without Halle."

"It's not the same," Riley contradicted.

"I know," Maya said. She pursed her lips. "I know I can't compare my grief to yours. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything I put you through, and what happened back at Idyllwild, and for you losing your best friend. You shouldn't have had to go through that. And you should have been able to go to her funeral."

Riley fell silent. This was harder than she had thought it would be. But hearing Maya apologize for what happened back then, what had made their friendship end after ten years…

"I'm sorry too." Riley took a deep breath. "I might have overreacted back then. And then after graduation, there were so many times I wanted to just pick up the phone and talk to you-"

"Me too," Maya agreed, "but I couldn't make myself do it, and after a certain amount of time, it felt like it was too far gone to fix."

Riley nodded. "That's how I felt too."

"But Riley, when I found out that I was pregnant, and I had no idea what to do, I called you," Maya reminded her. "And you picked up. You helped me even after everything that happened. And that… that was the biggest thing that you've ever done for me. My life felt so empty without you and my other friends, and it didn't matter how much success I had in Hollywood. I was alone. I dealt with all the pressure of that world alone, and I became someone I didn't like. But you, Riley," Maya met her eyes, and Riley felt the intensity that she knew Maya meant, "you brought me back. And I will never be able to explain to you what that meant for me and my life, and I'll never be able to thank you enough."

"We were best friends," Riley said automatically, "you didn't need to thank me."

"Riley," Quinn pressed, obviously recognizing the automatic response.

Riley sighed. "It wasn't even an option to reject you when you called me after so much time, I didn't even think about it. I wanted to call you all those years, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. You were the one that bridged the gap between us. If you hadn't, I don't know if we'd ever have spoken again." She shrugged limply. "I felt weird about speaking to you after so much time, but," she thought back to that night at the cafe, "but you were Maya. And I'm Riley. No matter how much distance there will ever be between us. No matter how much time."

"We're Riley and Maya," Maya repeated, her eyes glassing up as she smiled, and reached out her hand to clasp Riley's.

A/N: If you made it all the way down here, it means you chose to read this chapter, and if you hated it so much that you want to tell me I'm terrible for writing it, or that Maya is a whore, or spew whatever hate, then you're just doing it maliciously. If you don't like the story, don't read it. It's as simple as that.

I posted chapters to 3 different stories all in the same day, so if you hate this story with a passion, go find Nodus Tollens or Anecdoche, or just go find a different fic by a different author. There are thousands of other stories on this site. I can't handle so much negativity because I am a human and I'm still getting over my mother's death too. My mental health is not in a good place anyways so please. Be kind.

As always, constructive criticism is welcomed.

I'm sorry I've been MIA on this story, thank you to CarrieKay and a Guest for the review and reminder to update :) It's always nice to get a positive email from a review, and those emails remind me to keep writing those stories.

I'm not totally sure about a plotline for this story, but I've got ideas for the future of it. Stay tuned!

Kisses,

C