The first-time Riley wears something of his, it's his sweatshirt. It's bright red, emblazoned with their high school logo, and there's a stain on the sleeve from when his pen had snapped in half and the ink had gotten on everything.

It drowns her tiny form, but she doesn't seem to mind, as she rolls up the sleeves and wraps her arms around herself.

He catches her smelling it out of the corner of his eyes and has a frantic moment where he's counting back the days to the last time that he washed it, but she just catches his gaze and a blush appears in her cheeks, before she quickly glances away.

"Thanks for walking me home," she offers, looking uncertainly down at the cracks in the sidewalk.

"We haven't had a lot of time to talk lately. I miss it," he admitted, thinking of how messed up things had become since they had started high school.

The constant balancing of things between Maya and Riley was wearing on him and he wasn't sure that he could ever really even things up. His relationship with each of them was so different.

"Me too," she offers, before lapsing back into silence.

They make it another few blocks in silence and all too soon, he's leading her up the steps of her building. He'd been hoping for one of those deep conversations they used to have that would make him think, or for her to look at him with those wide-brown eyes that were absorbing everything that he was saying and really listening.

But, she just shrugs out of the jacket as they reach her door and hands it over to him.

"You could keep it," he suggested, awkwardly, knowing that he should make a comment about how much better it looks on her or how much he likes seeing her in his clothes, but he can't get the words out fast enough.

"It's better that you have it for when you're evening things up," she informed him, slipping through her door and leaving him standing out in the hallway.

He clutches the bunched red fabric in his hands before lifting it up to his own nose. It mostly smells like his body wash, but he can pick up the faded traces of something citrus that he likes to believe belongs to the brunette.

He hangs the sweatshirt in the back of his closet and completely forgets about it until it's time for him to make his final decision between Maya and Riley. He finds himself pulling it out of the closet and smelling it again, hoping for any trace of Riley, but all that's left is a musty smell that comes from his unwashed laundry that's been sitting below it.

For some reason, he never got around to evening things up and he tries to imagine Maya in it and just can't seem to do it. There's only one girl he's ever wanted to see in his clothes.

Riley sat on the floor of Lucas's bedroom, carefully folding a pile of his shirts before stacking them in the open box on the floor.

"You could just toss them in there," Lucas suggested, reentering the room and handing Riley a water bottle that he had just snagged from the fridge.

"I am not going to just throw your clothes into a box," Riley snorted, leaning back against the edge of his bed, as she unscrewed the cap on the water, "Unpacking is going to be so much easier if you're organized."

"They'll probably all end up under my bed, anyway," Lucas informed her and Riley let out a long-suffering sigh before her eyes rolled to the ceiling.

"I don't know how your mother has put up with you for all these years," Riley offered, setting the water bottle down next to her, as she folded a blue, flannel shirt and added it to the top of the pile.

"She's on her way to sainthood," Lucas returned, shoving the box forward, so that he could sprawl out next to her.

"I don't doubt it," Riley smiled before her eyes darkened as a contemplative look took over her face.

"What are you thinking about?" Lucas pressed, threading his fingers through the hand that she had resting on her thigh.

"We're starting college next week," Riley replied, her head sagging onto his shoulder.

"I know," he rested his head atop of hers, as he glanced around at the remains of his room. It looked like he'd been robbed or a tornado had blown through and left everything out of place.

"It's going to be different," she sighed.

"Probably, but I can tell you one thing that will still be the same," he agreed.

"What's that?"

"You and me," he replied and she pulled back to look at him.

"You're at an entirely different school," she reminded him.

"Which is thirty-five minutes away by car and forty-five if I take the Subway. We're going to see so much of each other, you'll be begging me to leave you alone," Lucas promised.

"What about classes? We're going to get busy and we'll make new friends," Riley argued, her head having already played through a million of these scenarios.

"But none of those things will be as important as you," he assured her, his eyes burning as they pierced into hers.

"You say that now," Riley trailed off, her eyes moving down to their clasped hands.

"If I show you something, you have to promise me you won't freak out," Lucas said and her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"What is it?"

"Promise," he insisted, squeezing her hand, as he waited for her answer.

"Okay, I promise not to freak out," Riley agreed, watching as he dropped her hand and got up from the floor. He made his way over to his bedside dresser and pulled something out, enclosing it in his hands, before he returned to sink down beside her, again.

"What is that?" Riley questioned, feeling her heart speed up in her chest.

Lucas opened his hand to reveal a black, velvet box and Riley immediately stopped breathing.

"You can open it if you want," Lucas suggested, setting it into her hand.

"What's in it?" Riley asked, terrified of what she was going to find inside.

"It's my promise to you that nothing will ever be as important to me, as you are."

Riley bit her lip, her hands running over the box, as she tried to decide whether she was going to open it or not. It could be nothing, but Riley, also, wouldn't put it passed Lucas to have already gotten her a ring.

It had been several months ago, that he had informed her that he was done with her constantly saying that she didn't know if things between them were going to work out. He knew they were and she could doubt all she wanted, but it wasn't going to change what he already knew to be true.

"Luke?" Riley looked up at him, surprised by the mixture of amusement and pure love that she saw in his eyes. It was impossible to doubt him when he was looking at her like that.

"You can wait to open it, but it's not going anywhere. It's for you, Riley, when you're ready," he assured her.

"I love you," Riley whispered, feeling that the words couldn't fully express what she was feeling for him at the moment.

"Hey, Man, you're still packing," Zay interrupted them from the doorway and Riley jumped, dropping the box in her surprise.

"We keep getting distracted," Riley admitted, as Lucas stealthily retrieved the box from the floor and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans.

"Sure, you do," Zay's voice was laced with innuendo, "If we're going to be on time for dinner. We need to get out of here, now."

"I was going to go home and change," Riley complained, her eyes flickering to the window that was coated in raindrops. She'd managed to make it to Lucas's home before the rain had started, but she was going to be cold in the short-sleeve shirt that she was wearing.

"You can borrow a jacket," Lucas suggested, snagging one of the last ones that was left on the hanger. It just happened to be Riley's favorite. It was made out of the softest, blue fleece, which had the double benefit of being something that Riley loved to burrow into and it brought out the color of Lucas's eyes.

"Okay," Riley agreed, pulling it on and zipping it up. She was drowning in it, especially since Lucas had put on almost twenty pounds of muscle in the last year and she wondered if she looked like a child playing dress up.

She glanced up and was surprised to find that Lucas's eyes had glazed over as he looked at her.

"What?" Riley questioned, looking to Zay to see what his reaction was.

"You look fine, let's go before they order the food without us," Zay insisted, gesturing wildly in the direction of the front door.

"Alright, alright," Riley snorted, following Zay and glancing back to see that Lucas hadn't moved from the spot that he was standing in, "Lucas, are you coming?"

"Yeah, of course," Lucas shook it off, grabbing a vaguely familiar red sweatshirt and pulling it on over his head. It stretched tightly across his chest and arms and if she was playing dress up, he looked like he'd shrunk his clothes in the wash.

"Did you want to trade?" Riley suggested, as he followed her out of his bedroom and down the hallway.

"I'm good," Lucas decided, locking the door, before he shoved his keys into the front pocket.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," he insisted, grabbing her hand, as they caught up with Zay and made their way into the night.

At the end of the night, the rain has stopped and Lucas is walking her home, the sweatshirt clutched in his hands.

"You going to tell me what's with the sweatshirt?" Riley asked, her hands buried deep inside the pockets of his jacket.

"You don't remember it?" he looked at her in surprise and she shook her head, "This is the first sweatshirt of mine that you wore."

"Alright," Riley offered, trying to figure out where his head was.

"I asked you if you wanted to keep it and you gave it back to me and told me to even things up with Maya," Lucas explained.

"So, you didn't want me to wear it because Maya has?" Riley questioned, resisting the urge to laugh at the absurdity of the idea. They were so far beyond their freshman year that it was barely an annotation in the history of their relationship. Lucas had made it up her a thousand times since then and Maya had been sporting a pretty ratty NYU hoodie that night that she wouldn't be caught dead in if she wasn't not-so-secretly in a relationship with Josh.

"No, it was one of the many things that I couldn't bring myself to even up," he admitted, "I didn't want you to wear it because I've made it a goal to see you in as many of my clothes as possible."

"You're ridiculous," Riley informed him, a smile spreading across her face as she looked up at him.

"But you figured that out a long time ago," he shrugged, unable to hold back his answering smile.

True to his word, Lucas spends most of his freshmen year of college sneaking into Riley's sorority, which means that he spends uncountable hours hiding under Riley's bed. Riley sets up a reading light under there and he gets quite a bit of studying done, to which Maya never skips the opportunity to laugh at him about.

She ended up at NYU in their art program, while Riley had decided to attend Columbia. She's changed her major too many times for Lucas to keep track of what she's currently studying, but she's not as stressed about the future as he had expected her to be.

It doesn't take long for half his clothes to somehow end up in Riley's closet and if her roommate thinks that it's weird that most of Riley's nightshirts and jackets have the Cornell logo on them, she never says anything. At least, not while Lucas is around.

"You're in my room," Lucas said blankly, his bookbag halfway to the floor and one shoe already kicked off. He was usually the one to visit Riley, although she'd come down and they'd had dinner a couple of times. He knew that she was worried about what kind of state that he was keeping his dorm room in and he worried that if he invited her over, she'd think he just wanted her there to clean.

"Your roommate let me in," Riley admitted, from where she was sitting on the edge of his bed. Her shoulders were slumped and he could automatically tell that something was wrong, "I'm relieved to see that you aren't actually keeping your clothes under the bed."

"I've gained a new appreciation for that particular location," Lucas joked, sinking down next to her and pulling her into his arms, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"About what?" Riley asked, her voice slightly muffled in his shirt.

"Whatever it is that has you upset," he played with the ends of her hair, his hands brushing across her back.

"It's not anything big. I just, had a bad day and I needed to see you," she admitted.

"I have some homework that I need to do, but we could go somewhere if you need a distraction," Lucas suggested.

"No, you can do your homework. I'll just sit here," Riley suggested, pulling away from him and leaning back into the pillows of his bed. He's only ever had one, but shortly after he'd started dating Riley he'd discovered that they were incredibly important to her. She insisted that she needed to be surrounded by them when she was sleeping, so he'd gone out and bought a few more to see what she was talking about. He still only slept with one, but they'd followed him all the way to Cornell.

He pulled his textbook out and settled back next to her, flicking on the bedside light. It was only then that he realized that she had pulled on the same red Abigail Adams sweatshirt that he'd almost forgotten was stuffed in the back of his closet.

He can't help noticing the tiny holes along the sleeves and the frayed edges of the bottom, but Riley doesn't seem to mind, as she settles into his shoulder and closes her eyes.

"Read to me," she suggests, her voice a whisper.

"It's College Algebra," he informed her, waiting to see if she would change her mind. When she only burrowed further into his neck, he shrugged and started reading. It wasn't long until her breathing evened out and he knew that she was asleep.

He catches the same smell that he's come to identify as tangerine and now knows is the scent of her ridiculously expensive shampoo and conditioner, that had hovered over that same sweatshirt such a long time ago and he hopes that it will stick a little longer this time around.

She takes the sweatshirt home with her and he doesn't see it again for a long time.

Riley enters her dorm room and immediately opens her closet, pulling clothes off of the hangers in one swoop and tossing them recklessly onto the floor.

"What happened?" her roommate, Noelle, questioned, looking at Riley in surprise, as Riley continues to viciously attack her closet.

"I just ended things with my boyfriend," Riley admitted, pushing open the window and tossing several shirts out of it.

"Why?"

"Because he never notices when girls are flirting with him," Riley replied, returning to the floor to grab another bundle of clothes, "And he's too nice."

"None of those things sound like his fault," Noelle pointed out, as Riley chucked another handful of clothing out the window.

"I told him that the girl in his study group was flirting with him and he laughed at me," Riley spat, pausing in her efforts to catch her breath, "Well, she asked him if he could help her move some furniture around her apartment."

"And he said yes?" Noelle was on the edge of her bed, completely absorbed in Riley's story.

"And she kissed him," Riley added, sinking to the floor as the adrenalin wore off and she finally came to terms with what just happened.

"I'm sorry, Riley," Noelle offered and Riley nodded once, "But it wasn't like he intentionally did it."

"But I asked him not to go," Riley sighed, her hand bunching in a familiar red sweatshirt. Riley slowly got up from the floor and made her way to the window. The sweatshirt seemed to take forever to flutter to the ground and Riley stared at it for a moment before slamming the window closed.

It's dark when Lucas finally pulls himself together enough to go and talk to Riley. He knows that he's messed up and the guilt is threatening to slowly eat him alive, even after coming clean about what happened.

He's surprised to see a dark figure standing in the front, collecting what looks like clothes off the front lawn.

"Riley?" he asks and the figure slowly turns around. The streetlight is just enough to illuminate her face.

"What are you doing here, Lucas?" Riley questioned, the pile of clothes dropping to her feet.

"You didn't really think I was going to leave things like that."

"I don't know what else there is to say. You completely ignored my feelings about something and you put yourself into a situation that you never should have been in," Riley reminded him.

"I messed up and I'm sorry," he offered, moving closer to her, "But I want to try and work through this."

"We've been together for such a long time that we've just been taking each other for granted lately," Riley explained, refusing to look at him, "I think we need to take some time apart."

"Riley," Lucas protested, struggling to find the right words to say, "I should have listened to you, when you said that you weren't comfortable with me being alone with her, but it's one thing that I did wrong. Is one kiss, really worth throwing away what we have?"

"I need some time, Lucas," Riley repeated, moving towards the house.

He leaned down and picked a red sweatshirt off the ground. It took him a minute to realize that it was his.

The next time Riley borrows a jacket from Lucas she has to ask. It's the first time she's ever asked him and she can't help missing the way he always used to be so in tune with what she needed.

They're spending the summer at the Minkus's Hamptons home and they'd been sitting out on the back porch watching as the sun goes down. A breeze had just picked up and Riley finds herself shivering. She has a light-weight jacket back in the house, but going inside and getting it seems like a huge inconvenience and Lucas doesn't seem cold at all.

His jacket has been sitting on the back porch for most of the night and, for a minute, she thinks about just picking it up and putting it on. But things have been weird between them since they broke up and she's not sure what the lines are between them, anymore.

"Hey Lucas?" Riley questioned, keeping her voice low enough that the others can't really hear. Zay's telling a joke about something and Maya's whispering something into Josh's ear, from where the two of them are curled up in a beach chair.

"Yeah?" he glanced up, looking at her in surprise.

"Do you mind if I borrow your jacket?" she asked, biting her lip and resisting the urge to squeeze her eyes closed as she waits for his reply.

"Sure," he agreed, reaching over to grab it and tossing it to her.

It's black with silver, fleece lining and it's still far too big for her. She slips her arms through the sleeves and zips up the zipper on the front, discreetly allowing herself to smell it, in hopes that it will smell like him. She's disappointed to find that it smells new and she doubts that he's ever actually worn it.

"Thanks," Riley held it out to him, at the end of the night. Their bedrooms happen to be right across from each other and she's never been so aware of how small the hallway is.

"Yeah," he took it from her, as she turned the doorknob to let herself into her own room.

"Hey, Riley?" he asked and she spun around.

"You never have to ask," he informed her, before entering his own room and closing the door behind himself.

Lucas has to blink to make sure he's not dreaming, when he opens the door to his bedroom and finds Riley sitting on the edge of his bed. It's almost exactly like when he'd found her in his dorm room, except she's not wearing his jacket and she looks about ready to jump out of her own skin.

"Hey," he greets her, kicking his shoes under the bed and stepping around a box that he'd already taped and labeled for when he was moving out the next week. He was moving in with Zay for the next year and the two of them were excited.

"Hey," she repeats, a ghost of a smile dancing at her mouth.

"Hey," he offered, again, when it was clear that she wasn't going to say anything. He could see her hands shaking in her lap and he sat down beside her, trying to keep a respectable distance. His first instinct will always be to pull her into his arms

"I've spent the last few months without you," Riley began, clutching her shaking hands into fists, "And I realized that I can live without you, I can even be happy."

"Well, good for you," he offered, wondering why she'd come all the way over here to say that. He'd never known Riley to be deliberately cruel.

"But I've missed you every second of every day and I don't want to live another one without you. You're the first person that I want to talk to whenever something happens to me and you're the last person that I want to talk to at night before I go to sleep. I love you, Lucas Friar."

"I love you, too," he admitted, daring to reach out and grab one of her shaking hands.

She turned into him, her free hand reaching up to settle on his face, "So, can we stop being broken up?"

"I'd like that," he laughed, his forehead descending, until it touched hers.

"Well, that's good because I've realized that I don't like any of my own pajamas anymore," she informed him.

"I missed you, too."

Riley's not sure whether it's Zay or Lucas that keep the apartment as an alarmingly cold temperature, but she has a sneaking suspicion that it directly correlates with Lucas's appreciation for Riley in his clothes.

Today, however, he's taken this idea to new extremes. Her teeth start chattering the minute that she puts the key that Lucas had given her into the door and she swears that she's experiencing the beginning stages of hypothermia by the time that she's crossed the apartment to Lucas's bedroom.

She starts to get suspicious when she discovers that Lucas has already laid out suggested attire on his bed. The red sweatshirt is familiar, but it's also on its last leg and Riley's not sure that it will really do the job in keeping her warm.

It's nostalgia in the end that convinces her to pick the red material off the bed and shrug her shoulders into the sleeves. It fits her better than it did back when she was a teenager and its worn in a way that suggests it is a beloved article of clothing.

She's not even thinking when she reaches into one of the pockets and discovers that there's something in it. She slowly pulls it out and finds the same black box from all of those years ago. She runs her hand over the lid, discovering that it's lined in a thin layer of dust, before she finally pops it open.

She's surprised by the feeling of disappointment that she gets when she discovers that it's empty.

"Are you going through my things?" Lucas's voice startles her and she drops the box to the ground.

"I've been going through your things for years now, Friar, and I'm pretty sure that half of them are mine, now, anyway," she snorted, placing her hands on her hips in defiance.

"I've been thinking," Lucas crossed the room, standing in front of her and grabbing her hands.

"That sounds dangerous."

"I love you, Riles," he continued, as though she hadn't interrupted her, "And if there's one thing in this life that I'm certain about, it's you."

"Me too," Riley echoed, feeling her heart stop, as he slowly dropped down to one knee in front of her.

"I wasn't sure if you were ready, until I saw you open that box. But, I want forever, Riles. I want you and me and all of our clothes in one closet for the rest of our lives. So, will you do me the honor of marrying me?" he reached into his back pocket, pulling out a ring that was simple, stunning, and perfect.

"Yes," Riley breathed, tears running down her cheeks, as Lucas slipped the ring onto her finger.

She held her hand out, watching in awe as the diamond caught the light.

"It's the ring that my Pappy Joe gave to my grandmother. They didn't get nearly as much time together as what they wanted, but they loved each other for every second of the time that they had," Lucas explained, and she collapsed into him, as her emotions caught up with her.

"I love it," Riley promised, losing sight of the ring, as she threw her arms around his neck.

Lucas and Riley Friar die one day apart from each other. Their funerals are held on the same day and there are plenty of questions about the array of sweatshirts that Lucas Friar is packed away with before the casket it closed.

Riley wore plenty of Lucas's clothes over the years, but she'd been adamant up until the day that she died that she was going to be buried in her Sunday best. So, her kids comply with her wishes.

The last thing Riley wore of Lucas Friar's is a wedding band.

So, this was an experiment on playing with points of view, which also morphed with a challenge from my sister that I couldn't write something romantic without the main protagonists kissing in it. So, I got to thinking about what some of my favorite things in relationships I've been in are and I remembered my high school sweetheart had the softest sweatshirts and he smelled good. Thus, this story was born.