chapter rating: pg
word count: 1,092
summary: Maya confesses her feelings to Lucas

He opens the window with one hand, the other still scrubbing at his face. He was sleeping, she can still see how it clings to his face, a shroud of not-quite-awake. His jaw cracks as he yawns but he leans out the window on his elbows and offers her a tired, tilted smile. "You sure you're got the right window?"

He heart is pounding so loudly, she almost can't hear him. "Trust me, I asked myself that a few thousand times just climbing the fire escape." She thought about backtracking, going to Riley instead, but here she was, tempting fate.

Brows furrowed, he shakes his head. "What's wrong?"

"I need to say something. And it's serious. Like, 'change everything' kind of serious, and I need you to just listen."

"Okay…"

"No interrupting, not for any reason," she stresses. "Just… Let me get it all out. And when I'm done, I'll go, and you can go back to sleep, and we can pretend this whole thing never happened."

"Why would–?"

She presses a hand to his mouth, her brows hiked. "Starting now."

He stares up at her, takes a moment to consider it, and then nods.

Maya slowly peels her hand from his mouth, and then she just kneels there, the cold sinking through her jacket and chilling her skin. And part of her wants to run, it wants to turn tail and not look back. But a bigger part of her tells her to stay, to stop running, stop hiding.

"When I was six, I asked my mom what love was, and she said it was forever. It was a promise. And two years later, my dad packed his bags and walked away. He just... left. And suddenly forever seemed so much shorter than it was supposed to be." Her hands shake, so she presses then down against the window ledge to keep them steady. "And I held onto that. I remembered it, every day, because the look on her face when we came home every day and he wasn't there, when days and weeks and months passed and he just never came home, it killed me. Because she tried so hard to be strong for me, but I kknew she was falling apart. I could hear her crying herself to sleep every night. Until she just stopped and she let him go and she gave up on all of it. On love and finding someone and 'forever.' Seeing her go through that, knowing how much it hurt, I knew I didn't want to fall in love. I never wanted to feel like she did. Because he broke my heart too and I never wanted to give anybody else that kind of power. And I was doing really good for so long..."

She laughs humorlessly, her eyes stinging. "I was okay without it. I was okay without hope. Because as long as it was for suckers, I could convince myself I wasn't missing out on anything. I wasn't walking head first into something I knew would only knock me down in the end. And then… Then you were there. And I told myself it didn't matter. Because you were Riley's and you were such a Huckleberry and there was no way you would ever look at me like you did her. So it was okay. Because you were safe. You were safe to like in the lines of my journal and in between insults and when nobody was looking, because if I could convince myself that it was nothing, then it really was."

She pauses, and huffs out a defeated breath. "The thing is, I'm not sure if pretending works like its supposed to. Because I thought if I stepped back, if I just let things happen like they were supposed to, if I helped Riley get her prince, then I could be okay with it. And I was, for a really long time, I was okay with that. Because Riley– She deserves the world. And you… You do too. I might not say it, but there it is. You deserve someone great, and maybe that's Riley for you and maybe it isn't. I don't know. I do know that I want you to be happy. And I think that's what my mom got wrong.

"Love isn't forever. Nothing is ever a guarantee. Sometimes love is temproary and sometimes it's not. But what it should be is whatever makes you happy. So that's what I want for you, Lucas. And I don't have to be a part of it, I don't have to be the reason or the root, but if I help make it happen, even a little bit, even just as your friend, then good, great even."

She swallows tightly, her fingers biting into the edge of the window sill. "And that's it. That's all I wanted to say." Staring at him searchingly, her brow pinches and her teeth scraping at her bottom lip, she nods. "Get some sleep, Sundance. We've got school tomorrow."

She pushes off the window then, turning to leave, but then his fingers are around her wrist, holding on. Not too tight, just enough to make her stop and look back.

And he smiles, that soft, warm smile of his. "Can I speak now?" he wonders.

She glances away briefly. "Depends."

"On?"

"You don't need to say it if it's going to hurt. I can fill in the blanks on my own." She half-smiles, shrugging. "You can just let go and we can go back to ten minutes ago, when I never said a thing."

"I don't want that." He shakes his head. "I don't want to go back and I don't want to break your heart." His thumb strokes across her wrist. "I wanna try to make you happy, Maya… If you'll let me."

Her heart skips and she draws a quick breath, her eyes a little wide with surprise. "Yeah?" There's a feeling in her stomach that feels a whole lot like the slow, hopeful stir of butterflies.

He nods. "Yeah."

She tamps down on a grin and raises an eyebrow. "You think you're up for the challenge, Cowboy?"

He smiles slowly. "I think I am."

It's a risk, a big one, but she turns her hand over and threads their fingers together. "Yee-haw, I guess," she says.

And he laughs. "Yee-haw."

It might be temporary. It might end in tears and heartbreak. Or... it might not. All she knows for sure is that right now, right here, she's happy. And that's enough.

{end}