Things seemed to be par for the course over the next few weeks. Lucas and Maya rarely spent time alone given their busy schedules and the demands of the rest of their friends, mutual and otherwise. It wasn't because they'd made things weird though, that was obvious given the sincere smiles as they passed one another in the hallway and the ease when they would hang out in a group.
It wasn't until one night when the air was starting to get brisk and the seasons were starting to change that Maya heard the knock at her window again. She shouldn't have been surprised to see that it was Lucas but for some reason she was.
She opened the window and moved aside quickly, mostly to get away from the cold air that he was bringing in with him. "You can knock on my door, you do know that right? You've done it before so I know you know where it is," she joked. She didn't mind though, it wasn't like she didn't treat Riley's room the exact same way.
"You're just lucky I knock." He unbuttoned his jacket and Maya had to laugh as she watched him.
"You're always going to be Texas. Six years later and you still can't handle how cold it gets. This is still sweater weather for us," she mocked. He responded with a dramatic head shake and continued to shed his layers onto a chair in the corner of her bedroom.
Lucas still hadn't made any mention of why he'd come over when he made himself comfortable on the edge of her bed, but she hadn't insinuated that there was any rush either. It was comfortable. Which was weird. Why was Maya so comfortable with this boy that she'd known for six years but only began to have these one on one moments with recently?
She tried not to pay it too much thought. Thought only ruined things, and she liked this - whatever they had that was definitely, one hundred percent, absolutely not a relationship of any sort.
"Were you doing anything important? I was just kind of walking and I just ended up here." He seemed to do that pretty often, although most of the time it didn't result in him actually stopping by so it wasn't like she'd know that.
Maya reached for her sketchbook off of her desk and crawled back into the middle of the bed. If Lucas wasn't there for anything other than hanging out then she was going to take advantage of the absentminded downtime. "No, I was just...I don't even remember what I'd been doing, so it couldn't have been important at all." She opened up to a blank page and started sketching as she spoke.
Lucas didn't ask about it the way people usually did. It didn't seem like he was uninterested or anything though, just that he was respectful of her privacy. "Is it okay if I hang out here for a bit then? I just really don't want to be home and I couldn't take the cold anymore."
At this Maya stopped what she was doing and looked up at him with a sad smile. "You know you can come here whenever you want, right? My mom picked up a second job so she's usually gone until late again and it's not like she would care even if she was here but it's boring being here alone all the time." She wasn't sure if boring had been the right word to use but if it would make him feel more welcomed then it wasn't important.
"God, I would kill for that right now. Not being lonely all the time or anything just," he trailed off, looking toward her bedroom door as if he was looking through it at the emptiness of the rest of the apartment. "My dad's here and my dad's never here. They fight all the time and I don't even know why he showed up. I said I didn't want to go to Texas for thanksgiving and he flipped out and booked a ticket without even asking if either of us wanted him here."
Maya tilted his head at him in confusion. She knew that his parents had divorced but she'd always been under the impression that Lucas had a good relationship with his father. Sure, she knew that his side of the family had always made him feel pretty inferior but with the amount that he flew back and forth between the states she was sure that there was at least some hero worship there or something.
"It's just never quiet and I keep getting dragged into the middle of it. I don't know why he won't just stay in a hotel if he insists on being here. We don't even have a guest room so I have to sleep on the couch. Basketball is already killing me. I don't need this too," he continued as Maya kept her eyes trained on him, listening intently without interrupting.
He wasn't acknowledging her anyway, just staring off into the distance and venting. She was okay with that. If she could be one thing for Lucas Friar then she was glad that it could be a sounding board. She knew it was something that she searched for more than anything sometimes and she was sure it was the same for him.
Lucas kept on venting about things, some heated and some sad, and Maya kept on listening without preoccupying herself with her sketching. This was more important, and honestly it was how she would have preferred to spend her night anyway.
"What do you do when you feel like the only thing you are to people is a vote in their favor or a card in their back pocket to win an argument?" It was the first time he'd looked at Maya this whole time and he wasn't looking away as she contemplated the question.
Their eyes were locked and if Maya was being honest it was making coming up with an answer all that much harder. Of course she knew that at some point she was going to be asked to weigh in on what she was saying, she just hadn't imagined that the question would hit so close to home for her.
"I don't really let people make me feel like that anymore. I mean, sure, they treat me that way still constantly. It's not just my parents though. I've always been the sidekick or the plot device or whatever. I think that's what you're feeling like at least, right," She asked to make sure she was even going in the right direction with the question. She continued when he nodded. "I just let them. It sounds so much easier said than done I'm sure, but I just tune into me. It's probably why I draw so much. It gets me out of their world and into my own and I'm the main character in mine. They can't control it. I guess that doesn't really help you though."
He laughed at her last words and nodded, finally breaking eye contact and falling back into the bed with his legs still hanging off. She finally set her sketchpad off to the side entirely. She wasn't going to need it anymore tonight and she knew it.
"Is it really healthy to just fold in on yourself like that though?"
She thought about the question momentarily before shrugging. "I don't know. Is it really healthy to allow people to make you feel like a supporting player when they're supposed to love you unconditionally?"
He nodded, not to say that it was, but to acknowledge that he saw her point.
She knew that it was really terrible advice. She really did. Their talks were usually so clarifying. He seemed to ask the questions that really prodded her in ways that nobody else ever did. This time she couldn't pretend to have it figured out though. They were a lot more alike than either had let on.
"If you go and make me some tea I'll let you stay here tonight. In a real bed and everything. You're too tall for a couch," she teased in case there was any awkwardness due to the offer.
Luckily she was met with a thankful but sad smile that could have shattered her heart into a million pieces if she gave it the chance. All she let it do was put a small frown on her own face, but only after he'd gotten up to put on a pot of water.