The days between Christmas and New Years flew by the way they usually do; time never feels real in the limbo at the end of the year. Riley hung out with Maya and with Lucas, the group went out to eat a few times, and overall it was a good break.

For Maya, the time seemed to drag along achingly slow. Christmas was great with her mom and Shawn and the Matthews, but afterwards, she felt restless. Josh wouldn't be back in the city until the 30th, and 5 days seemed to stretch into 500.

Maya did everything she could to stay busy; she painted, she hung out with Riley, she met up with Lucas on the 28th for another ASL lesson. She actually cleaned her room, she was so bored.

She watched Riley talk about her relationship, smiling to herself as she thought about how far her best friend had come.

But the waiting for Josh to come back was agonizing, not only because she missed him. They hadn't really spoken in depth after their date; just a few texts here and there. Part of her was terrified he had thought it was a mistake, and she wanted to ask him what he was thinking; the other part of her didn't want to seem pathetic like that.

So she waited.

Can you meet up? I need to talk about something.

Lucas showed up at her window thirty minutes after Riley sent the text, and he crawled in to sit down next to her on the seat, where she had been fiddling on her laptop.

"Hey," he said and signed, and Riley smiled nervously as she set the laptop aside.

'I wanted to talk about something… something serious.'

When Lucas's eyebrows furrowed in worry, she rushed to assure him, 'It's nothing you did. It's not about our relationship.' She took a deep breath. 'It's about me.'

'I'm paying attention,' Lucas signed silently, using what he saw as the sign language equivalent to 'I'm listening'.

She fidgeted again, nervous energy not fully expelled by signing, and she still wasn't sure about this. But she opened her laptop and handed it to him, swallowing as his eyes scanned over the page.

She had planned this conversation out to make sure that it wouldn't be made harder by Lucas not understanding her. So when he finally looked up, she pointed at the words at the top of the page and used two fingers to poke behind her ear.

'Cochlear implant.'

A/N: Obligatory apology for the long wait. Moved back to school and realized just how much work college is again. I know this chapter is hella short, but I wanted to leave you guys on a cliff hanger cuz I'm evil like that.

I'm actually not 100% sure where I'm going with this but I'll figure it out. I wanted to put something up in the meantime.

I'm on a full-stop with Nodus Tollens. I'm not happy with what I have written as a draft for the next chapter so I'll probably scrap it and totally rewrite. I'm trying to skip through a whole year because it's uneventful but I'm still working on how to do it effectively. Probably won't be coming out anytime soon because I'm way overwhelmed with school right now.

I am so sorry for those of you who love Nodus Tollens (it's one of my favorite stories to write too). I promise I'm not abandoning the story. A chapter will go up eventually.

Reviews are always nice, of course :)

Kisses,

C

(Also, I wrote and posted this on my phone in the app so... I might have to repost tomorrow if there are formatting issues and stuff).