KING LUCAS
CHAPTER 35
The New Year passed by and Lucas hadn't heard anything from Maya. She would ignore him at school, besides the classes they shared she was doing everything to avoid him. He had tried asking Riley for information, but she told him that she couldn't say anything for the sake of her friendship, so it was best to just let her cool down. Zay tried asking Maya what had happened and that almost ended with her knee in his crotch, so another dead end.
He thought that after Christmas she would talk to him, he sent her a new easel for her painting. It was handmade, he intended to keep his mind busy by doing some carpentry, but ended up making something for Maya. It was probably sitting in some dump by now.
Although these days hadn't been as lonely as he thought, it turned out that his mother had gotten serious with the doctor she had been seeing. He was a little older than her and she stood a couple inches above him, but he made his mother happy and he treated her like a queen. At the beginning Elizabeth wasn't sure if she should keep dating him, but then she saw that Boyle made Lucas laugh and these days not a lot of people could accomplish that.
Boyle had an 8 year old daughter, Anne, and she couldn't be happier to have more company in her afternoons other than her babysitter. At first, Lucas was very distant, wanting to lock himself in his room all the days of their holiday break, but after the fourth or fifth time he saw a little head poking around his bedroom, he decided to end it.
"Are you looking for something?" He asked, putting his laptop down.
"Do you want to play with me?" She asked back, jumping in full sight.
"What kind of game?" He suspiciously closed his eyes, Anne smiled widely, showing her missing tooth.
She liked to play with dolls, something that Lucas never thought he'd be doing at eighteen, but turned out that she had intricate storylines for her dolls and after the red Power Ranger had broken Summer's heart for the second time for having a baby with her best friend, he was in.
The next days he gladly took care of her while their parents worked, she had an enormous doll house in her apartment that she began decorating with her dad but there were some parts unfinished. So Lucas build her some stairs out of wood, a bath tub and a master bed for Christmas. He took her around the park to play with the snow and he was teaching her how to properly throw a baseball, he could see some future for her in the little league. Anne always remembered to bring Cal a hot cup of coffee or some soup. Lucas had also taught her how to get an extra scoop at the ice cream shops, he was very impressed by her crying, she was now an expert and even managed to get a free refill of popcorn at the movie theater.
"Lucas?" She asked him one day as they returned from their baseball practice. "Will you drop me off when I return to school?"
"Why? Don't you like that your dad does that?" He frowned.
"Daddy is okay, but when people see my big brother with me then they won't bother me." She said, casually grabbing his hand while they crossed the street.
He looked down at her, suddenly realizing that he never had someone to take care of beyond himself and his mother. He didn't mind, she was a pretty extraordinary kid. When he was younger he asked for a little brother, his dad slapped him and grounded him for the week, how could Lucas think such a thing, didn't he see that a second child was for when the first one went wrong and he wouldn't have a bad son.
As they approached Lucas' apartment building, they saw a blonde girl walk out in a hurry, his heart stopped just as Maya made eye contact with him. She froze, he couldn't move either, Anne watched as they stared at each other.
"Annie why don't you go up and I'll be right there, I have to talk with my friend for a second." He told her, finally getting his thoughts in order, she listened and walked inside, saying hi to Maya on her way. "She's... uh, my new sister, well not officially, but I kinda like the sound of it." He tried to explain, not sure of what she was doing here or if he should start saying something.
"Should we take a walk?" He asked, she began walking and he followed. They remained silent for a solid minute."Did you come all the way here to walk and...?"
"Why did you pick coach Cooper's office when we hooked up?" She said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.
"What?" He asked frowning.
"I want to know why you picked his office, from all the places to hide in our school, why there?" She wasn't making any sense to him. "I mean, I remember we tried different spots, but then you wanted to go there."
"I don't know... He always went out for lunch at the same time. I thought it would be a safe place to hang out." He followed along her interrogation.
"But we almost got caught." She pointed out.
"Where are you going with this?" Lucas didn't need to be reminded by what had gone wrong.
"What about the day that Riley saw us? Did you plan that?" He knew that she deserved the truth, but her accusations were absurd.
"No, of course not." He couldn't change his face of confusion.
"But every time we sat down for lunch, she knew your schedule and you knew hers." She was spitting out facts about things that seemed so far away, yet they were still fresh in his memories, that was the day she called him Lucas for the first time.
"So? She would always talk about what classes she had that day. But she didn't tell me she was staying." He tried to defend himself.
"Except she did." He took a few seconds to understand what she was saying, he frowned. "I borrowed Riley's phone–" She continued. "–and I checked her texts, she told you that she needed to search a book for her lit class, the day before."
She took her phone out and in a matter of seconds she was showing her screenshots of their conversation, she was right, Riley had told him.
"I forgot about that... I had a lot in my mind, I knew that Riley was a vital part of you and without her I would never get you." It was just a rookie mistake, but you're no rookie, he told himself.
"And on Halloween, you didn't sleep with me, even though I asked you to. You slept on the couch." She knew, he had forgotten to put the covers away.
"You were just scared by the thunderstorm." He tried brushing it off. "What's with all this?" He asked.
"These are the things that don't add up in your plan." She replied. "I've been trying to put it all together, how you could pull off such a thing. Lisa told me that it took you two months to break her heart, but you tried with me for more than five. And these–" She pointed at her phone. "–these are the things that don't fit."
"Those were mistakes that happened and I tried to fix, to be back in the game." He said, getting upset.
"But you don't make mistakes." She raised her voice. "At the beginning, when we met, the way you eyed a person and how you would think before you talked, everything was calculated. You didn't make mistakes, you made choices. You chose to visit me that day on school, the keys were on your side of the office when we snooped around, you could've left me in that party but you didn't."
"Why are you doing this?" He said, he couldn't understand.
"Because while you were pretending to be a monster, you saved Zay's academic year and brought Riley and Farkle together and–" She was out of breath.
"Stop." He told her, this was starting to feel like torture.
"And you screwed up your own plan without you even knowing it." Her eyes were getting teary, he had a knot in his throat. This couldn't be, sometimes plans go wrong, there are events that change the plan and you have to adapt and try to fix it. Sure, this plan in particular had gone wrong more than he was used to, but... He never made mistakes.
"Maya stop! Why are you defending me?" He didn't deserve it, not after all the pain he had caused, and not only her, but all the other girls. But Maya couldn't stop.
"And you showed me that is okay to be broken, that it doesn't make you a bad person. A monster is a father that hits his wife and son, a monster is a father that leaves his family, but the fact that we come from monsters it doesn't mean we're anything like them." After that she took a big breath, like she had been keeping the air in for a long time.
"Maya, I don't understand, why the sudden change of heart?" He asked after some time, fighting the itch behind his eyes.
"Matthews has this stupid tradition, called the forgiveness project–" He finally managed to look at her face, she was staring back. "– and I picked you this year. I'm not saying I will, but I can try." She added.
"How can you forgive me after what I did?" He asked, defeated.
"Because I've tried to forgive people far worse than you." Maya walked closer to him, and taking his cheek in her hand she cleaned the tears that had fallen from his eyes.