Maya knew they were going to burn out before the fire started. But the thing is, the thing is she’s wanted this since she was thirteen and what happened when they were fourteen and fifteen really doesn’t count because that’s a middle school romance-which is frankly worse than a high school romance by a million. And isn’t Riley the romantic?
But Riley is happy with Missy-it’s love, with commitment rings and a walk up in Brooklyn and it’s so much grown up that it makes Maya shudder just a bit. She’s twenty-six and a mess and her best friend is talking about adopting a puppy with her college girlfriend who none of them knew was gay until Pride in Chicago three years ago. Riley grew up and got her heart broken by Maya for falling in –air quotes around the word now everyone-love, with the guy who was supposed to be a happily ever after.
It took a lot of nights crying with each other, without each other, missed phone calls and broken dates and just a lot of sadness before they got over that mountain, and really with hindsight and ten years removed it’s almost laughable. Mountains over molehills, the saying goes and neither of them really lasted with Lucas but they both loved him.
Riley maybe in a deeper way, because Lucas has the great distinction of being the first and last (and only by consolation) boy Riley Matthews has ever loved. Maya loved him in the way you fall in love with someone who just…gets you. He got her on a level no one really did at fourteen, at fifteen. He got the anger, and the frustrations that comes from being part of Rileytown, where Riley all wants you to be better, expects you to be better and sometimes you just can’t be and it’s just tiring.
He just got her and he made her feel like she was someone’s first choice-and you know Katy loves her, gives her the world as much as she can on a single mom budget, but she had to work and she gets it now but then, it was work, then maybe Maya. Her dad walked out and tried to come back before walking out again. But it felt like Lucas chose her, and she liked it and maybe that made her a bad friend but she liked it.
And it doesn’t matter because that was ten years ago; this is now. This is sitting on a bar stool at the bar that’s got beer rim stains all over the oak bar, this is Lucas who looks good-damn good-leaning against the bar beside her, the football game (Texas against New York, figures) on a television behind her. She’s got a glass of wine-she’s a wine drinker near now, after four years of her undergrad on cheap beer and two years of her masters drinking heavy liquor, showing her artistic credit.
Wine is just simpler.
‘Why are you back?’ she asks, he doesn’t stop watching the game. He lives in Austin again; farm vet taking over his Aunt Rachel’s practise.
Lucas doesn’t answer, just tip his head back and drink his beer. She notices his eyes go around her bare ring finger. Stupid question.
When he’s finished his beer, and her wine is almost done, he reaches across the bar easily and casually. His strong hand under her chin, he tips her face until he can kiss her fully. She can taste the nachos he had earlier, and she wonders if he has the sweetness of her wine on his.
It’s an easy way to take him home, like he doesn’t already know the way to her apartment. Like he didn’t help her assemble have the Ikea furniture there and they didn’t have sex against it. See here’s the story of Lucas and Maya, the real version that no one wants to say: they have great sex but they’re not really good at anything else.
See they argue, they argue and him kissing her to shut her up doesn’t work when there’s something to argue about. He cares too much and she doesn’t care enough (or is it the other way around). He believes and she just doesn’t. Opposites attract and all that jazz, but there’s got to be a common ground, something to keep the opposites grounded. They had Riley, they had Farkle, they had Zay. But you can’t use other people forever.
There's a certain type of fire-a special kind of spark two souls have. The balance between flirting and fighting and fucking; when arguments are just foreplay and name calling is pet names.
It's one of those things that's so temperamental. Too much of one can make everything self-destruct. Fighting can get mean, and words can hurt. A pet name becomes an insult and something fiery and beautiful is just old ash.
And god, they were kids. They were kids at nineteen with a drug store pregnancy test that was an ugly colour pink and a choice. They were kids and she made her choice and he never agreed with it and maybe it was a one night stand but lord she wanted it and she didn’t want the aftermath.
And here’s how you fall apart, how you tango off that temperamental line when lovers can flirt and argue but still be fine. You abort something you never wanted, while he begs you to reconsider.
Maya’s never regretted going into Planned Parenthood, holding Katy’s hand like a vice, Shawn beside Katy and Riley on the other side. She’s never regretted her decision, or how Topanga sat her down and told her what her rights contain and how if she doesn’t want a baby-she doesn’t want one now either-no one can make her have one.
This is how it goes. And it takes a long time for him to forgive. It takes Spring Break in Mexico senior year when the six of them just got super drunk and well it wasn’t an orgy but it started the new rule of Maya and Lucas.
They get drunk and they fuck. This time with protection. It’s good and it’s glorious and there’s something wrong about it because he as a girlfriend most of the time and she dates other guys, but they keep it up. She wonders how long it will last, when he’ll get tired and just walks away.
It took him until just about the time she gets engaged (his name is Ryan, he’s an artist in residence at NYU, he doesn’t want kids and he likes craft beer and Mario Kart and when he asks her, she says yes.) to decide that this is done.
He cut her off, cold turkey. No phone calls, no visits, no skype, no sexts, nothing. He’s done with her and Maya never knew what Lucas being done with her would feel like (like she’s being carved from the inside with a pumpkin scooper.)
Her apartment doesn’t have any trace of Ryan and she knows Lucas was looking, the way she can feel his smile in her collar bone as he kisses her skinning, pulling her shirt lower and lower until he has to pull it off to kiss more.
She takes off his shirt, and by the belt loops of his jeans leads him to the bedroom.
Maya knows how this story goes, tomorrow he will leave because Maya and Lucas as a functional couple went up in flames many years ago, but she’s always been good at dancing in the flames.