Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For as long as she could remember, Piper Hart had wanted to know who her father was. Her mother had always been rather tight-lipped on the subject, and her aunts Riley and Isadora seemed to be on the same page.

Now that she was engaged, though, finding her father had become a bit of a personal mission. She’d confessed her dream of him walking her down the aisle to her fiancé, but he’d come from a two-parent home, and therefore didn’t fully understand the need for another parent the way someone in her situation would. She’d been mostly content with the fact that her search wouldn’t be done in time for her wedding, and that would be that.

But then she found her mother’s diary.

She hadn’t planned on reading it, but she didn’t recognize the book she’d come across while looking for something else and had opened it, only to gasp when she saw the date: it was May of the year her mother had been pregnant with her, starting with her moving to Europe to study art. It had quickly become her secret obsession, and through it she discovered some rather interesting information.

Within the span of less than two weeks, her mother had had sex with three different men.

Nine months later, Piper was born.

She’d stopped reading after that revelation, too awestruck by what she’d found. She had full names and some description for her three possible fathers and it was overwhelming.

So, she’d done the only thing she could think of:

She’d invited all three of them to her wedding without telling a soul, and, somewhat unsurprisingly considering she’d signed her mother’s name to all three invitations, they were all coming.

She would know her father on sight, she was sure of it. It kept her up at nights, really. Would it be Farkle Minkus, the fiercely intelligent and loyal man who had been her mother’s closest companion for most of the summer? Or perhaps Josh Matthews, the sauve architect from Philadelphia, several years older than her mother, who seemed to have some sort of relation to her aunt RIley? Or maybe Lucas Friar, the cowboy who was about to go to vet school, that had left her mother crushed and heartbroken when he’d told her he was engaged to another woman.

Now, it was the day before her wedding, and they would surely be arriving any minute. She could barely contain herself. Her best friends, Finley and Josie, would be arriving on the nine o’clock ferry, and her mother had mentioned Riley and Isadora arriving on the ten or eleven. The last ferry to Kalokairi, the small Greek island her grandmother had built the family hotel on twenty years ago, was at noon. By then, her father would be on the island.

She stood at the docks, eyeing the ferry for Finley and Josie, and saw the two of them waving furiously at her before grabbing their stuff and rushing over to greet her with hugs and smiles. She hadn’t seen either of them in ages; Josie was studying at St. Andrew’s, so she had last seen her on her spring vacation, meanwhile Finley had a job in London that she rarely got away from. But now it was summer, and it was her wedding, and her dad was going to be here, and her two best friends were here, and she couldn’t ask for much more.

“I have to tell you something,” she confessed as they began to walk up the cliffs to the Villa Katia, all of their arms around each other, “And you have to promise not to tell anyone, not even Connor.”

“Oh my God, Pipes!” Finley said, immediately moving her hand to Piper’s stomach, “Are you-”

“No, no!” she said, batting her friend’s hand away. “No, I- I invited my dad. To the wedding.”

“You found him?” Josie demanded. “Who is he?”

“Well, that’s where it gets complicated. I found this diary of my mom’s and, well… There’s three possibilities.”

“What?!” both girls screamed at the same time, staring at her in shock. She laughed, not sure what else to do.

“Yeah! There was this guy, Lucas, and my mom fell for him, they were together for a couple weeks and then she found out he was engaged and he left to go get married, and she was pretty heartbroken and she’d met this guy, Josh, through my fake aunt somehow, and they just kind of… Well, you know, and then not long at all after that her and her friend Farkle... and then nine months later, baby!”

“Then who did you invite?” Finley said. Piper looked down at her shoes.

“And how many of them are coming?” Josie asked. Piper didn’t look up.

“Oh. My. God,” Finley and Josie said in tandem, collapsing down into one of the benches at the top of the villa. Piper squealed in excitement.

“What’s going on out here?” a voice called, and Piper turned to see her mother in the doorway, white paint smeared across her face and a tired smile on her face. “Hi, girls.”

“Maya!” Finley and Josie chorused, rushing forward to hug her mom.

“Have you been painting?” Josie asked, and Maya sighed, shaking her head.

“Not unless you count retouching the walls. I swear, my mother picked a real clunker to erect her dream on,” she said with a laugh. “You sound like you’re having fun already.”

“We are, Mom,” Piper said, sharing a conspiring glance that almost sent Finley into fits.

“I used to have fun,” Maya sighed as she walked away.

“Oh, we know!” Finley said, almost breathless, and Maya’s head snapped their direction, which Piper took as a sign to drag them upstairs to her room before Finley or Josie could say anything else that would give anything away.

“Your mother has no idea that you’ve invited three of her former lovers to your wedding and that they’re all coming? And neither does Connor?” Josie said the second the door had closed behind them.

“Mom would be mad at me and Connor would just try to talk me out of it. But I have to do this. Besides, Mom will be happy once they’re here! I don’t want her to think I’m not grateful for everything she did for me, because I am. But I need to know who I am and where I come from. And that’s where my dad comes in.”

“If you’re sure…” Josie said, trailing off, and Piper nodded, resolute.

“We are happy for you, Pipes,” Finley said, “Don’t think that we’re not. We just worry.”

“I know. And I thank you for that, but… I can do this. Now,” she said, walking over to her armoire and pulling open the doors, “Who’s ready to try on dresses?”

Maya was stressed.

When she’d made the decision to take over her mother’s hotel, it had been a difficult one. Piper had just turned five, and while she’d been living at Villa Katia for almost five and a half years at that point, she’d never pictured herself running the place one day. Owning a hotel had always been her mother’s dream that she’d put on the backburner for so many years in order to raise her, and because the hotel was profitable enough then, she’d decided she needed to do the same for Piper. She deserved something steady, and a barely beginning, very slow going art career wasn’t going to be that. It was the same decision she’d made when she told her mom about the property on Kalokairi in the first place, and for Piper, she would make it a thousand times over.

But things had sort of dried up over the years, with international financial difficulties. Oh, sure, they had still had customers and got great reviews, even if one did cheerily note that "the owner always seemed to be rushing off to fix something for one of us!”, but the place was practically falling apart, and there was only so much she could do to fix it.

Plus, there was her daughter’s wedding.

She was happy, of course, for Piper and Connor, all grown up and ready to take on the world, but honestly, she was stressed. She’d been young and reckless at age twenty, had had a baby by twenty-three, and it terrified her that her baby girl was making basically the same large commitment at the same young age.

Not, of course, that she could say any of this to Piper, because it would only make her stubborn, stubborn daughter more convinced to do it.

Like many of her daughter’s traits, she wondered where it came from. So many had called her stubborn, but could it have been from Lucas? And her eyes, were they Farkle’s blue or hers? The shape of her face and the goodness in her, was that the signature Matthews features?

She didn’t like to dwell on these things, but the big milestones always made her think about it. Would Farkle have helped her with her science project? (Yes, and she would’ve gotten first instead of second even though she’d made hers mostly herself with only minimal help, while Genevieve’s mother had done most of hers.) Would Josh have been able to make heads and tails of her math homework? (Yes, and he would have made sure he was the loudest one when she got her first honor roll after finally bringing her math grade up after a years’ worth of agonizing over it.) Would Lucas have taught her how to ride a horse? (Yes, and they would have ridden all over the island by now, and probably elsewhere, too.)

She was broken out of her thoughts by Riley’s shouted and gleeful cry of “Peaches!” She and Smackle ran off the boat together, and Riley practically launched herself into Maya’s arms.

“Hi, honey,” she said, setting Riley down. “Hi, Smackle.”

“Hello. I would prefer not to be hugged, if that is alright,” Smackle said, but her smile was bright and welcoming.

“Of course. How’s the research going?” She reached down to pick up her two best friends’ bags and lead them over to the jeep she used to go around the island. Piper and her friends may love hiking around the island, but she was getting too old to keep doing that. Plus Riley would complain the entire time if they had to walk.

“Oh, excellent! We’re discovering crucial things in regards to the future of stem cell usage for treating autoimmune diseases,” Smackle replied, climbing up and into the car. Once they were all safely settled, Maya started it up and began the drive up, both friends immediately gripping the dash for dear life.

“Oh, live a little!”

“I could say the same to you!” Riley said with a smile. “Have you done anything other than stress these past couple of weeks, peaches?”

“I’m fine, Riles,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “If Piper thinks she’s ready for this, then I support her. What do I really know of marriage? Maybe it’s easier than it looks!”

“It’s not,” Riley said with a sad smile, twisting the wedding ring on the chain around her neck sadly. Riley’s husband, Evan, had died of a brain tumor just about two years ago now, and it had been a slow adjustment to her. Their eight year old daughter, Chloe, was on her annual summer trip with his parents this week, which had been planned well in advance of Piper’s wedding and thus deemed by Chloe too important to miss. She knew Riley was missing her terribly, but at least they were on the same continent this year, with Chloe, her cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all visiting France.

“I know,” she said, squeezing her friends’ thigh, “But still. They want to see the world. That’s what I think they should do, toughen up. That’s what I did and it worked out great.”

“You wound up single and pregnant,” Smackle said.

“Well I would hope she doesn’t do that ,” Maya laughed, “But for the two years I’ve known him, that’s all he’s ever talked about, and you know Piper’s been fascinated by other cultures since she could walk. If she doesn’t want to travel she should at least go off and study antro-an- whatever it’s called.”

“Anthropology, the social science of humans and societies, closely related to sociology, the science of societal changes and interactions,” Smackle announced as if reading from a encyclopedia.

“Yes, exactly,” Maya said, and she put the jeep into park and helped the two girls out. Piper happened to be standing up there with Connor, and she turned at the noise.

“Auntie Riley!” she called, and she raced forward to embrace the girl.

“Hi darling!” Riley replied, hugging her. Piper stepped away and grinned at Smackle.

“You probably-”

“Auntie Isadora, of course I remember you!” She went in to hug her, causing Smackle to flinch and Piper to stop in her tracks. “Right, no hugging. Not right away, at least.”

“Thank you. And this fine young man must be Connor?”

“Yes, Professor Smackle,” Connor said with a grin. “That’s your title, right?”

“Yes, but I believe, as you are to be family, you may call me either ‘Isadora’ or simply, ‘Smackle.’ ‘Izzy’ or ‘Dora’ is prohibited,” she replied. Connor nodded.

“It’s good to see you again, Riley, and under better circumstances,” he said. “Is Chloe here?”

“No, she’s with Evan’s family in France. I believe they’re visiting a bunch of castles today, so she’s probably running around in her princess dress trying to find a princess as if it were Disneyland,” Riley grinned. “It’s what I would have done at her age, after all.”

“Mom, Connor’s gonna go work on the website in your office, is that alright?” Piper asked.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead,” Maya replied. Connor flashed her a smile, kissed Piper on the forehead, and then headed inside. “You’ve started your chores?”

“Mom. I’m getting married tomorrow,” Piper said, grinning at her.

“And that’s exactly why this place needs to look nice, let’s go,” Maya said, pushing her towards the door. Piper groaned, but went and did as instructed.

“She’s so good, Maya,” Riley said. “You’ve done a really good job with her.”

“I hope so,” she sighed, watching her daughter disappear down the path back towards the docks. “Alright, so, we need to talk about the toilets in your room.”

Lucas was having a lot of trouble keeping the butterflies in his stomach to a minimum, and he didn’t think it was because of the boat they were on.

It probably, actually, had a little bit to do with that.

Maya’s invitation had been light on the personal details, but he was pretty positive her inviting him to her daughter’s wedding was crossing some sort of line. Also, how old was her daughter? He didn’t remember that. Maybe they’d both been lying to each other, though he wasn’t sure he could begrudge her that. He and Missy had been divorced for six years, and she’d kept her current boyfriend, Billy, hidden from Holden and Andrew for almost a year even though they’d both been sixteen at the time. Bringing up kids on dates at their age now was more commonplace than it had been than at age twenty-four.

His traveling companions were nice, though. Josh owned the boat and was currently attempting to show Farkle, a self-professed science genius, how to steer it. Both were American, and both headed to Kalokairi, and were about his age, so he assumed they were friends of Maya’s rather than the daughter’s. Josh was an architect and Farkle a professor, unsurprisingly. His vet gig had been met with less enthusiasm, which he figured was fair. Any medical profession that wasn’t like “head trauma surgeon” was never met with much acclaim, in his opinion.

Farkle spotted the island first, and Josh practically whooped as they prepared to dock. The butterflies, however, only increased on land. Maya had told him, once she learned about Missy, that she never wanted to see him again. It had been an agonizing twenty-one years away from her, and it was hard to believe he would be seeing her very, very soon.

They got off of Josh’s boat and followed the signs towards the Villa Katia, which seemed to have taken over a large amount of the island. Nobody seemed to glance their direction until they reached the top, Farkle panting heavily, when a girl, probably fresh out of college, with long blonde hair and startling blue eyes, set down a basket of apples as they approached.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“We’re here for the wedding,” Josh said. “Josh Matthews.”

“Minkus. Farkle Minkus,” Farkle said.

“Lucas Friar,” he said.

“Oh my God,” the girl said, staring at all of them in shock.

Lucas felt faint himself. Those eyes, that hair, that nose…

This was Maya’s daughter.

Chapter Text

Piper didn’t know if she wanted to faint, throw up, or pee herself. Her father was standing in front of her.

Except she didn’t know who it was.

She scanned all of their faces hungrily, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was seeing. Maybe that could be her features, but she honestly didn’t know. She felt nothing, no pull towards one of them.

“You must be Maya’s daughter. Maria?” Josh said with a smile, pulling his sunglasses down.

“Piper, actually.”

“Maria’s your middle name then, right? I swear I saw it on the invitation,” Josh asked, and she nodded, unable to speak. “I had a great aunt Maria, on the mainland. She taught me to sail.”

“I was wondering where someone from Philadelphia picked that up,” Lucas said, laughing. Turning to her, he said, “Can we see Maya now?”

“Oh, Mom’s busy. But she’ll be so excited to know you guys are here!”

“How about our rooms, then?” Farkle asked, taking a step forward, in the direction of the sign pointing towards the lobby. Piper paled; her mom was standing there right now, checking guests in, and the fact that she’d invited her father being secret and all, she hadn’t made sure they would have a room. Where were there beds on the island she could stick them in?

“Oh, actually, your rooms are this way,” she said, stopping Farkle in his tracks and heading back down the path towards the goat house. She would be able to keep them hidden there.

When they arrived, she could see the realization dawning on Josh’s and then Lucas’s face as they climbed up the ladder and onto the second floor. When she reached the top, Farkle turned to her.

“This is great, but I’d like to see our rooms now,” he said.

“Don’t hold your breath, kid,” Josh said with an appraising laugh.

“Oh,” Farkle replied, and he threw his bag onto the ground with a look of resignation. Lucas turned to her.

“Can we see Maya now?”

“I sent the invitations,” she said suddenly, “My mom has no idea you’re here.”

The looks on the three men’s faces were a combination of surprise, confusion, and, mostly in Lucas’s case, horror. Farkle collapsed onto the small chair in the corner, and she was honestly just impressed it didn’t fall out from under him.

“Yeah! She’s always talking about her friends from the good old days and I thought this would be such a nice surprise! To see you all again at my wedding!” she said with a small smile. This was the excuse she’d planned because she had known, of course, that she would have to confess, and while Josh and Farkle seemed convinced and began to argue about who would get the mattress, Lucas walked over to her.

“Piper, I don’t think I should be here. The last time I saw your mother, she told me she never wanted to see me again.”

“But that was over twenty years ago,” she said, and she reached out to rest her hand on his arm. “Please, for me?” She could see him cave before he actually did, and even then he didn’t say anything, he just laughed and moved over towards the other two men.

“I hope you and my boys don’t cross paths; you’d be the death of them,” he said. Her heart dropped a little. She hadn’t seen a wedding ring on his hand, but that didn’t really mean anything, did it?

“You have sons?” she found herself saying.

“Twin boys,” he said with a smile. “I’ve always wanted to bring them here, just never got around to it before they moved on. Holden’s at Texas A&M, and Andrew’s at Michigan. The apartment’s pretty lonely, these days.”

“You’re a single father?” she said, butterflies back in her stomach.

“Divorced. Six years this August,” he replied. “It was for the best.”

Someone started humming outside the half-open window and she froze. All three men snapped their attention to where her mother’s voice had come through.

“I will come back later but just-- stay here. Our secret, remember?” she said, slowly backing towards the ladder.

“Alright,” Farkle said, sounding resigned but grinning.

“It’s a promise,” Josh said.

“See you later, Piper,” Lucas said, and she opened the hatch and ran off in the opposite direction of her mother.

Maya was going through bags in the goat house when she heard voices from up above. She’d caught employees in compromising positions up there more than once, so she sighed and began climbing the ladder, resigned to her fate and hoping she wouldn’t be seeing anything. She pushed the trapdoor and froze with it no more than a crack open. In front of her were the legs of three men; the easiest one she could make out was sitting in a chair in a pair of khaki shorts.

And he had an eye of Horus tattoo on his knee.

“Josh?” she whispered in surprise, pushing open the trapdoor a little more. None of them had noticed yet, thank God, and she glanced at the man standing next to him and did a double take. Even without the turtleneck he’d somehow been able to wear in Greece in the summer, she’d recognize that man anywhere.

“Farkle?”

No way were two of her former lovers, two of Piper’s possible fathers, standing together in the same room. Her goat house, nonetheless. What the hell was going on?

Then the third man turned to talk to them, away from the wall and an old art piece she’d shoved in there, and her heart fell out of her stomach and she closed the door and climbed down and away. Ranger Rick, in the flesh, on her island, after she told him to fuck off.

What the hell?

Her heart was hammering inside her chest as she collapsed onto the steps out front. The three men who had had the most significant impact on her life were all here, together, the day before her daughter’s wedding. One of them she had explicitly told she never wanted to see him again. One had never struck her as the settling down type. And the third she had stopped talking to as soon as she was pregnant enough that he would be able to tell. What was she supposed to do? Let them stay? Once again, why the hell were they all here?

She closed her eyes, trying to think, but instead she was bombarded by a stream of images long thought buried: Josh, getting off the airplane and Riley rushing to greet him as her broken heart took him in and knew she’d found something. Farkle, taking her to some science award thing and making out with him on the ferry as it sailed back to Kalokairi the next morning. Lucas, sitting beside him at the campfire and teasing him relentless until he called her on her shit and soon they were coming together under the stars for the first of many nights. It was all so fresh and clear in her mind. She was twenty-two again, ready to take on the world and find herself far away from her shitty New York apartment and shitty relationship with her mom. It was an amazing feeling.

But fuck them, especially the cowboy. They had no right to be here, to mess with her emotions like this. She was going to go in there and figure out why they were here and make them leave, nothing less and nothing more. She did not want to see them again because doing so made her heart race and palms sweat in a good way, nope, not at all. Not at all.

Though looking into Lucas Friar’s beautiful eyes wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

She couldn’t help it and walked over to the window, watching them. Farkle and Josh were setting up an inflatable mattress, Lucas holding the instruction manual. She wanted to snort. An architect, a vet, and a genius were apparently unable to inflate a mattress. It was like a bad sitcom or something.

Tentatively, she stepped back away from the window and made her way back inside. She gripped the ladder with shaking fingers, but pushed herself up until she was just below the trap door. She could do this. She didn’t need them in her life. She and Piper had been fine without them. She could do this.

With one last gulp, she pushed open the trapdoor, and let it hit the floor with a bang. She popped her head up to find three pairs of eyes snap to her figure with looks of surprise and, in Farkle’s case, something akin to embarrassment.

“What the hell are you three doing up here?” she said.

“You don’t recognize me, Maya? I’m hurt,” Josh replied, giving her a hand to help her up.

“Uncle Boing, how could I forget?” she said. “And Ranger Rick and our future leader, Farkle Minkus. What brings you all here?”

“I’m researching the architectural styles. Gives me an excuse to break out the boat,” Josh said.

“I’m here spontaneously. Because I’m a spontaneous person,” Farkle said after a beat.

“I just wanted to see the island. You know what it meant to me,” Lucas said, catching her gaze, and Lord, did she miss those eyes, remember the feeling of them on her.

“That’s great and all, but we’re booked. There’s a wedding, tomorrow, um, some local girl, and so we’re closed. Josh, you said you had a boat? Great. You can all head back together, seeing as you seem to be great friends and all. Great. I have a lot of work to do, so I’m going to leave, and hopefully you’ll be out of my hair soon. Okay? Okay,” she said, and without another word, she disappeared down the hatch.

The guy behind the bar was definitely eyeing her. She couldn’t deny that she was flattered, but she couldn’t help but wonder if it was still too soon to make any sort of move on anyone? Evan had made her promise she would find someone else before he died, and he’d said she would know when it was time, but she didn’t think she was there just yet. At least he was her age, though. Most of the people working at Katy’s hotel were on the younger side, so at least she didn’t feel like a cougar for not hating it.

Smackle was not getting the eye. She was drinking her water and decidedly not not watching them, but if the bartender-- Charlie-- noticed, he clearly didn’t care.

“Look, Maya is back,” Smackle said, nudging her, and she turned to see Maya racing towards them, clearly stewing over something. She stopped in between their two chairs and reached for the cocktail in Riley’s hand, then it threw it straight back. “And her drinking habits suggest that something is amiss.”

“What’s wrong, peaches?” Riley asked, pressing her hand to Maya’s arm, but Maya just shook her head and ran off towards the restroom. Riley raced after her, and could hear Smackle start to follow. Maya sat on the sink in the bathroom, head in her hands, and Riley raced over to her and caressed her hair. “Maya?”

“Remember how, when you asked about Piper’s father, I said it was Lucas, the vet student who went home to get married?” she asked, finally looking up at the two of them.

“Yes,” Smackle replied, “The Texas cowboy you had very strong emotions for, possibly love.”

“Yeah. Well… There were two other guys, right around the same time,” she said.

“Maya Hart,” Riley said, almost scandalized.

“I had a broken heart, Riles. Most of us have slept with more than one man in our lives,” Maya replied.

“Statistically speaking, women on average have four sexual partners in their lifetime, and men have seven,” Smackle said.

“See?” Maya said.

“Okay, okay. But why are you telling us this now?” she asked. Maya sighed.

“Because they’re all currently in my goat house. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, and being around them is bringing up so much…” Maya trailed off, looking back down at her feet. Riley, meanwhile, tried to cast her mind back to that summer, and the guys she and Maya had been around as they explored Europe.

She had been drawn to Lucas Friar from the second they met on the ferry to Kalokairi, but he and Maya had had an immediate spark. Plus, she and Evan had been dating for a month or so at that point, so it’s not like anything was ever really going to happen, especially now that he was married, he and Maya had a rather complicated history, and the fact she wasn’t sure she wanted to move on. Then her uncle Josh had come to visit, and Maya had seemed taken with him. There’d been Farkle, too, the researcher who got them from Paris to Greece in the first place. She couldn’t think of anyone else. God, had all of this been under her nose this whole time and she’d never noticed? Maya had never betrayed a thing.

“How is that possible?” Smackle asked. “Do they know each other?”

“They seem to now,” Maya replied with bite. “What the hell do I do?”

“Forget about it,” Riley said. “Seriously! Your daughter’s getting married tomorrow. You have so many important things to stress about then the three men who might be your father, especially the butthole who broke your heart. So stop feeling sorry for yourself, and let’s get going! What can Smackle and I do to help?”

“Nothing; you’re guests,” Maya said. “Thank you, though.”

“What are friends for?”

Chapter Text

Piper may or may not have panicked when she discovered the goat house was empty. She hadn’t seen her mom since before the three men had arrived, so she simply had to hope and pray she hadn’t found them and kicked them out for good. They’d seemed to like her, right? They wouldn’t just break a promise that quickly. they weren’t like that.

She had to physically bite back the thought that Lucas, at least once upon a time, was exactly like that.

She raced down to the beach and one of the less heavily populated docks and she was just close enough to make out Lucas, Josh, and Farkle setting sail. Without thinking about it, she ripped her shirt and skirt off so she stood on the dock in just her bathing suit.

“Lucas!” she called, since he was the closest. He turned, and once she knew he could see her, she dove into the water.

Lucas and Farkle helped pull her up onto to the boat once she reached it and she shook out her hair, watching as Josh brought over a towel for her. They all seemed happy enough.

“What happened? Did my mom find you?”

“Yeah,” Lucas sighed.

“Look, she kicked us out of the goat house, but we all talked and agreed that we made a promise to you and it would be unfair to not keep it. We’re just gonna sail around a little. Care to join?” Farkle said.

“Sure. I probably know it better, anyways,” she teased, and Farkle rolled his eyes at her. He walked back over to stand closer to the wheel and when he did, revealed the guitar she knew as well as her childhood blanket. “Hey! Who stole my mom’s guitar?”

“Hey, I have as much claim to it as she does!” Josh said. “I bought it for her!”

“You play guitar?” she said.

“Don’t sound so surprised!” Josh replied, sounding almost offended. He sat down and pulled the guitar over, pointing out the initials carved into the neck that she’d stared at for hours as a kid, wondering if it was her father’s name. “MH, Maya Hart, and JM- Jam Machine.”

“Jam Machine?” Farkle asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Hey, the man your mother knew was a very different Josh Matthews,” he said. “I came over to Greece for a family reunion. The Matthews family has no Greek blood whatsoever, so I don’t know why whatever relation who concocted the thing did it over there, but it was a nice trip. Your mom had just graduated college, so I hadn’t even gone to grad school yet. I was living at home, aimless, wandering. Hence the boat. I spent two summers learning how to sail and saving up for this thing.” He started to play an aimless tune. “Your mother came with my niece Riley to the airport. You must know Riley, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” she said, grinning widely.

“Actually,” Josh said, quickly setting the guitar down and running below decks. She exchanged a confused glance with Lucas, who simply shrugged. “Ah-ha!”

Josh returned with a photograph in his hand, which he handed to Piper. She looked at it and burst out laughing.

Her mother was wearing short, cut-off jean shorts with a Rolling Stones crop top and a sparkly black vest. She had black combat boots on, too, none of which she would wear today. Josh stood next to her on the edge of his boat in dark jeans and a New York t-shirt. He, honestly, hadn’t appeared to have changed all that much. Piper grinned widely just looking at it.

“We were what we called rebellious,” Josh said with a smile. “I thought she’d like to see that, reminisce about the old days with me.”

“Funny,” Farkle said, reaching into his pants pocket, “I had the same thought.” He produced a photo that showed her mother in a similar style-- obviously; they had both known her around the same time-- but Farkle himself looked completely different. He had a bowl cut and, even in the heat of a Grecian summer, was sporting a bright orange turtleneck. He had a blue button down undone on top of it, and khaki shorts and sneakers. This one actually made her laugh.

“Talk about a glow-up, man,” Josh teased, before turning to Lucas. “What about you?”

With a sigh, Lucas also reached into his pocket and produced a picture, which he handed directly to her. She glanced down at it, and smiled.

The picture was taken beside the large stone fireplace in the hotel’s main lobby. Lucas was leaning back, his back against the wall, and her mother was sitting comfortably in his lap, his arms wrapped around her and his head resting on her shoulder. Her legs were propped up, and what was clearly a sketchpad rested on them. It was by far the most intimate of the pictures, which she had a feeling Lucas knew. In the picture, he was laughing at something, presumably her mother’s drawing. She wondered if it was one she’d seen before, but she couldn’t remember any drawing of her mother’s that were intended to be humorous.

“Do you remember what she was drawing?” she asked, glancing over at him.

“It was a caricature of me. With a big old cowboy hat stuck on my head. She loved making fun of the fact that I’m from Texas. She had all these nicknames for me, like Ranger Rick and Sundance, so in return I started calling her Shortstack, you know, like a stack of pancakes? People used to ask why I let her tease me, and… I just loved hearing her do it,” he replied.

“Do you still have it? The caricature?” she asked. He shook his head.

“She never gave it to me. After the way I left, I wouldn’t be surprised if she destroyed it.”

“Mom doesn’t destroy her art. That goes against like, everything she stands for,” she replied. Lucas, though still looking pretty sad, smiled at that.

“Glad she’s still sticking to her guns.”

“Only thing she knows,” she replied, making Josh and Farkle laugh.

She spent the rest of the day with them, sailing and exploring the island. She learned more about Lucas’ two boys, and Josh’s dogs. Farkle told her about the research he’d been doing recently, and it sounded fascinating. She got to learn about their hometowns, and their families-- she of course knew a lot about Josh’s family, but she hadn’t realized her Grandpa Cory had three siblings. It was such an amazing day.

Yet she still had no idea who could be her father. She honestly wanted it to be all of them, but that didn’t answer any of her questions or solve her problems. What was the point of having them all here if she couldn’t figure it out?

The first thing Connor did upon leaving Maya’s office was eat. He’d been locked in there, coding and adjusting, for hours, and he was hungry. Plus, he knew his friends had a long and alcohol-fueled night planned for him, so he figured the best course of action was to eat as much as possible in preparation.

The second was look for Piper.

She’d been acting kind of weird the past couple days. He was pretty sure it was partly due to the fact that Maya had seemed to be getting less and less good at keeping her own nerves hidden. He was twenty-four, after all, and he knew that, for Maya, the thought of Piper getting married to someone that much older-- which, at twenty and twenty-four, could still be an awful lot-- was a Thing. A Thing being, of course, reasons Maya was freaking out about their wedding. He could think of several Things off the top of his head, none of which Piper had ever told him, but he’d figured out on his own:

-He was much too old to be with Piper

-Piper was much too young to be getting married

-The hotel was not doing as well as she and her mother had hoped

-Piper was throwing her life away

Not on him, per se. Just she was. She hadn’t gone to college, and she had told him why. Maya had fought tooth and nail to be able to go to college, and was quite possibly still paying off loans to this day. The fact that she couldn’t give that to Piper, he knew, had been a source of contention for several years, even if it was just because Piper didn’t want to put her mother through what she had been offering. Now, she was getting married to a man she’d known for a year. He and Piper were of the opinion that you knew when you knew, and they knew. He couldn’t imagine life without her. He had wound up at the hotel through family friends during a study abroad junior year of college, when he was twenty-one and she was seventeen. They had become friends, and when after graduation, he and his friends had returned to Greece, they had resumed their friendship.

He hadn’t left.

If Maya was freaking out, then that would explain why Piper appeared to be freaking out. She’d been awfully out of it the last couple days. He didn’t know if that was the right word, but something had clearly been on her mind, and he hoped to get to the bottom of it soon. After all, they would be married tomorrow evening.

“Hey, Finley!” he called, spying her sitting in one of the deck chairs facing the ocean. She glanced over at him as he approached. He always felt like Finley and Josie were sizing him up, though Josie was much more obvious about it. “You seen Piper?”

“I saw her heading down towards the East Dock,” Finley said, and he nodded in thanks before going off that direction. He went out onto the edge of the dock, still not seeing any sign of her, and just then, a boat he didn’t recognize started making its way closer. He thought he could see Piper on it, which wouldn’t surprise him, since both she and Josie loved to sail. She also had a habit of swimming out here, so maybe that’s all she was doing and he just couldn’t see her at the moment. Either way, he knew exactly how to get her attention.

“PIPER!” he shouted at the top of his lungs several times in a row, and when he didn’t get a response, he made his way back onto the beach. Only seconds after he did did he see her, cutting through the water and arriving back on dry land. “There you are. Was wondering where you’d gotten off to.”

“Sorry. I lost track of time,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to see you. Plus I think I’m supposed to meet the boys down here,” he said. “It’s my last night of freedom, apparently.”

“Good save,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“You know how I want to find my father,” she said. He rolled his eyes and gripped her shoulders.

“Pipes, I’ve told you a thousand times. You don’t need your dad. If you need a guy to always be there… That’s what I’m for,” he replied. She gazed at him with that guarded look that he hadn’t seen in years.

“And you’ll never leave me, right?”

“Are you kidding? You’ve turned my world upside down,” he said, and he kissed her deeply. “Everything I thought I knew about love became irrelevant when I met you. You are the only woman in the world for me.”

“You were that way for me, too,” she said. He kissed her again, letting his hands wander through her hair. They both got wrapped up in each other, and she tugged him downwards as she laid out on the sand.

Just then, he felt hands that weren’t hers grab him and pull him off of her, as she got tugged backwards, laughing. His friends were surrounding them, holding them apart from each other.

“What’re you guys up to?” she asked.

“You know we gotta steal him away,” Jax said with a grin. Piper rolled her eyes.

“Enjoy your night, love,” she said, then whispered in his ear, “Don’t do anything… you wouldn’t do without me.” He felt shivers down his spine as she walked back up the beach, deliberately swaying her hips. Henry made a whip sound with his mouth.

“Oh shut up,” he said. “There’s no such thing.”

That was the old Piper back. That was good. If she was still this way tomorrow, he’d be content that it had just been nerves about everyone showing up on time and getting situated. It wasn’t about him, or what they were doing, even though the whole spectacle made his skin itch.

Chapter Text

When she, Smackle, and Riley arrived at the bachelorette party, everything was in full swing. From her spot in the doorway, she could see Finley standing on a chair next to Piper, who was chugging from a glass bottle. She wanted to wince at the sight of it. She, personally, had thought that having bachelor/bachelorette parties the night before the wedding was stupid because then everyone would be ridiculously hung over, but with the ceremony not until early evening, she’d decided to not push it. Piper was having fun, and that was all that mattered.

That and she had probably, hopefully, avoided a confrontation with Piper’s possible dads. She had let her friends distract her, help her fix what they could around the place, but she hadn’t been able to stop her mind to wandering. They’d all changed, aged. What would things have been like if one of them had stayed?

“Alright, everyone!” she yelled, “Listen up!” As expected, she got everyone’s attention, and made her way over to the easel she’d painstakingly set up that afternoon. Riley’s mom had made a big speech at her bachelorette party, and Maya wanted to do the same for Piper, but she wasn’t good with words. She just hoped her daughter appreciated it. “In honor of Piper and Connor’s big day, I thought it would be only fitting if I painted something.” With shaking hands, she pulled the cover off and stepped out of the way.

The gasps were audible, quickly followed by applause, and she felt the familiar rush of adrenaline that exhibiting used to give her way back when. Piper ran up to her and hugged her, tightly, which she returned. She hadn’t been sure her daughter would like it. She had never been great at portraits, so instead she’d painted where Connor had proposed based on all the times she’d heard Piper tell the story. It hadn’t been overly elaborate, having just kind of happened naturally, but it was a beautiful scene that she’d itched to paint the second she heard about it, and she hadn’t really painted in a while. Running the hotel took up a lot of time, sadly.

The DJ’s music picked up again and attention slowly turned away from her and her painting. Riley and Smackle returned to her side, and the three watched as the girls went wild, dancing and drinking and laughing.

One of Piper’s friends from school had been standing near the staircase leading up from the beach, and she moved just then to go towards the bar. Maya felt as her stomach drop as it became visible who was coming up that very path.

“What the fuck are they doing here?” she said, quietly, but loud enough that Riley immediately turned her attention away from Charlie at the bar.

“Is that them?” she asked, her jaw dropping.

“Yes. Josh, Lucas, and-”

“You actually had sex with both Farkle and my uncle!” Riley hissed. “I was hoping there’d been guys I didn’t know about!”

“Technically, you didn’t know about it, did you?” Maya retorted, shutting Riley up. “Yes, yes, that’s them, and yes, you knew all of them, and yes, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, alright? Can we all just get out of here before they see us?”

It was too late on that front; Josh was pointing at the three of them and Lucas was already leading the charge. She practically pushed Smackle back towards the hotel until all three of them were firmly inside, door shut.

“Someone up there has got it out for me,” Maya said in more of a hiss than anything else. “I bet it’s my mom. She always said that I was hurting Piper by keeping her dad away for no good reason.”

“She may have been right,” Riley said. “Peaches, you hated not knowing your dad.”

“I hated that my dad walked out on us. That’s a very different thing, Riles,” she said, rubbing a hand to her forehead. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t hide in here forever!”

“True, I would give the three of us about 4.6 weeks to survive on what is in that kitchen, factoring in Riley’s above average cooking skills,” Smackle said. Maya kind of wanted to hit her.

“Then, do what you do best,” Riley said, “Tell the world who’s boss. They don’t have any power over you anymore.”

“Except for the fact that one of them is Piper’s father.”

“So? You did a great job without him. Piper’s awesome,” Riley said.

“You’re right. If they really cared about me, they would have called. For God’s sake, Josh is like your honorary brother, he could’ve heard about it. I did do a great job. Piper’s going to rule the world better than Farkle could ever dream of!”

And with that, she threw the door open and walked back out to her daughter’s party, which had taken a definite turn while she was inside.

Her mom had disappeared, which was good. She couldn’t tell if her mom had seen her possible dads or not before disappearing which was…

Less good.

Josh and Lucas had been over at the bar, but it seemed like some of her friends were more interested in drooling over them. Josh seemed to be eating up the attention, while Lucas looked decidedly uncomfortable. Her friend Sammy dragged Josh out of his seat and onto the dance floor, so she ran in to distract Lucas.

“Hi,” she said. “Sorry about… all of that.”

“It’s quite alright,” Lucas replied. “I’ve been told I have a rocking dad bod, whatever that means. I don’t think she meant to say it out loud, but my son found it hilarious that she did.” Piper smiled, unsure of what to say. “That song you played today, over lunch. Was that an original?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, rubbing her neck awkwardly. Josh had gotten wind that her mother had taught her guitar, and he’d all but forced her to play. She had, and sang, too, not daring to look any of them in the eye and immediately redirecting conversation after she was done.

“It was very good. You should consider pursuing that,” he said.

“I can’t,” she replied.

“If you’re worried about your parents, Piper, your mother is a grown woman who can take care of herself, and I’m sure your father is the same. You have a real talent. You shouldn’t throw it away that quickly,” he said. She could have sworn he stumbled when he mentioned her father, but she could hear her mother’s voice from behind the door closest to them and, afraid she was going to come out, bolted away, unable to ask the question she’d been dreaming of asking all day. She found Farkle over in a corner, quietly drinking from a beer. He smiled when he saw her, and she sat down on the bench next to him.

“Not the center of attention?” she teased, and he laughed.

“Even with the ‘glow-up,’ as Josh put it, no,” he replied. “He seems to be enjoying himself, though.”

That much, at least, was true. Sammy was practically grinding on him, which was just amusing to watch. He looked less comfortable than he had before, but still very much at ease with his predicament. She smiled, then turned towards Farkle.

“Are you married?” she asked. He shook his head.

“I’m open to it, I’ve just always been more attached to my research,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m not the best place to go to for marriage advice.”

“Right,” she said.

“Where’s your dad? I’d love to meet the man who settled down with Maya Hart,” Farkle said. “That’s probably the best place you could go for marriage advice.”

This was it.

“I don’t know,” she replied, finally, searching his face. “I don’t know who my father is.”

The wheels started to turn immediately. She could see it as it crossed his face. Her heart started hammering in her chest.

“Wait, how old are you?” he said.

“I’m twenty,” she replied.

“Oh my God,” he said.

“Farkle,” she said, watching as every muscle in his body tensed. He started scanning every line of her face, every piece of her.

Then he bolted.

“Farkle!” she yelled, racing after him as he went down to one of the outcroppings. “Farkle, stop! Farkle!” Once they were a decent distance away, he finally did, glancing at her with a mixture of guilt and sadness and possibly even fear on his face.

“Piper, I can’t-”

“Farkle! Please, all my life I’ve had this huge unanswered question hanging over me like a cloud! Just-” She stopped, taking a deep breath. “Are you my father?”

“I think so,” he whispered, the words barely reaching her ears as he breathed them out. “The timing… and you have Maya’s hair and eyes, you have to be related to someone with those phenotypes in their family, and my mom’s blonde and my dad’s blue eyed…” He trailed off, taking her in again. “I’m your father.”

“Do you know what comes next?” she said. He paled.

“Don’t tell me you have a twin sister.”

“No,” she laughed, stepping closer. “Will you give me away tomorrow?”

“You want me to?” he asked, and she nodded. “Alright,” he said, and then, with no warning, he pulled her in for a hug. He let go as excited shouts were heard from up above, and she glanced in surprise as men started swinging from ropes onto the outcropping. With a last glance at Farkle, she raced back up to her party, and wasn’t overly surprised to find Jax grinning at her from behind a mask, and she kept walking until she found Connor.

“Aphrodite’s Necklace,” he said, holding it in his hands. “Why didn’t you tell me I’d be diving for this?”

“I didn’t think Jax and Henry knew the tradition!” she said, and she let him put it on her. She caught Farkle’s eye as he did and her father-- her father !-- sent her another smile.

Her mother and her aunts appeared in the doorway they’d disappeared through, surveying the scene before them, and she knew that if she wasn’t careful, her mom was going to find out she knew her exes were there.

“Go dance with Mom!” she said to Connor, pushing him towards her and she raced away. Someone pushed her and she fell into Josh, who laughed and started dancing with her.

“How did your mom get the money for this place?” Josh asked over the din.

“She and my grandmother bought the property before I was born, actually. From the woman my mom looked after when I was little. The Maria that I’m named after. She left them the rest of her money when she died.”

“My great aunt Maria?” he asked in surprise.

“I thought you said you had no Greek blood?”

“Oh, Aunt Maria wasn’t Greek. I’m not entirely sure how she herself wound up over here. Maybe she was the relation who concocted the whole Greek family reunion in the first place,” Josh said, frowning.

“I guess she was, yeah,” she said.

“But I thought her money was left to family.”

He looked over at her, a questioning look in his eye, and her breath caught. If Farkle was her father, then why…

“I’m your father!”

“Josh-”

“That’s why you invited me, you wanted your dad to give you away! I won’t let you down!” He pulled her into a quick hug and then spun her away as he raced back out into the crowd with the spirit of a much younger man. She heard him whoop and felt her head spin.

The party was in full swing. Riley was dancing with Charlie the bartender, while Smackle and Farkle were awkwardly dancing in that same corner. Lucas seemed to be eyeing her, which was worrying her.

Suddenly, Connor was in front of her, running his hands up her face.

“Baby?” he said, and she shook her head, pulling him away.

“I can’t breathe!” she said, the words coming out as more of a shout than anything else. It seemed to have gotten her mother’s attention, as she could tell her mom was trying to push towards her.

“Piper,” Lucas said, appearing at her side, “Come here.”

Her mother seemed distracted, which was good, so she let Lucas lead her into the doorway. He seemed to be buzzing with nerves, or excitement, or maybe it was just alcohol.

“I can’t believe Maya didn’t tell me. Piper, how long have you known I’m your father?” he said.

“Not long at all!” she said, her head spinning even faster.

“Who’s giving you away tomorrow?” he said. Hope was bubbling in his face, so she bit her lip.

“Nobody,” she said, hating it as it happened, and he grinned.

“No. I am. We’ll keep it our secret,” he said, and then he returned to the party, trying to make his way towards her mother. She took slow, shaky steps behind him. Her heart was pounding in time to the beat of a song she couldn’t even make out anymore. Everyone seemed to be circling around her, and she could hear all of them in her head, everything swirling around until it was just too much, and she collapsed onto the ground of the courtyard.

Chapter Text

“Okay.”

The blinds were pulled open and she groaned, rolling over in bed. Josie came over and stood over her, a glass of water in hand that she passed to Finley, who was equally groaning from her spot on the floor.

“You need to talk to your mom. Or Connor. Or one of them ,” Josie said.

“No, I can’t, or the whole day is going to fall apart,” Piper replied, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “I just need time.”

“And that’s what we’re here for,” Finley said around a yawn. “Josie said I’m going to watch Josh and she’s going to watch Farkle. So that leaves you with Lucas, right?”

“Fin, she can’t watch him. It’s her wedding day. That’s why we’re doing this, remember?” Josie asked.

Piper ran her hands through her hair, already feeling a headache forming.

 “Okay.”

The blinds were pulled rolling over in bed. Smackle came over and stood over her, a glass of water in hand that she passed to Riley, who was equally groaning from her spot on the floor. Maya snorted. She hadn’t seen Riley drink as much as she had last night in a while , and was pretty positive her best friend and bartender had disappeared at about the same time. Riley certainly had not been subtle when she stumbled in at about 4 AM.

“I think the best solution is to scope out the potential biological fathers. Farkle and I are both scientists, so I will speak with him. Josh and Riley are family, so she will speak with him. You, therefore, must speak with Lucas.”

“I don’t need to talk to him,” Maya said, “Or any of them. I don’t need to think about them at all, thank you very much.”

“Right. Farkle and I have made plans to go talk about our research over breakfast this morning, and Josh and RIley are doing watersports.”

“Watersports?” Maya snorted, looking at Riley in disbelief. She just groaned. “What watersports are you referring to, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Josh saw your weird boat thing,” she said, sitting up and rubbing her head. “Peaches, my head hurts.”

“Come on. We’ll get some food and aspirin in you. It’s going to be a rather long day.”

 Josh was still having trouble coming down from last night’s high. Between Piper and the rather… interesting night with Sophie after, he was practically skipping. He had to keep it cool, though. He wasn’t sure he wanted to have Lucas and Farkle digging into his personal life.

He was looking forward to a morning with Riley, though.  She must’ve known, and never told him. Probably because Maya had asked her not to, but still. Riley was more of his sister than niece due to the age difference, even though she had grown up in New York and he’d grown up in Philly. He was more impressed she’d never mentioned that Piper was his daughter. Of course he’d known Maya had a daughter, was now pretty positive she’d even been in Riley’s wedding, but Piper was really short, and had a bit of a baby face, even at twenty. Then again, people still thought he was in his late twenties/early thirties. Maybe that was just genetics.

God, he had a daughter. That was terrifying. A good terrifying. He was definitely excited about it, but he didn’t know how to be a parent. The fact that Piper was an adult somehow made it worse. He didn’t know enough about her to form a good relationship with her, something she’d need now that she was married, and would likely be a mom. Though he prayed she wasn’t pregnant yet. Twenty was awfully young to have that kind of responsibility. Not that Maya had been much older, but he had no control there. Probably wouldn’t have much control with Piper, either, especially since she’d been raised by her mother. What kind of relationship would she even want? It was making his head ache just thinking about it.

He flipped the pancake in the pan with practiced ease as Farkle stumbled down the stairs dressed for the day. He glanced down at his towel, wondering if he should get dressed for real, but shrugged. It was his boat. He could do what he wanted.

“I have a confession,” Farkle said suddenly, practically collapsing into a seat at the table.

“Okay, shoot,” Josh replied, “I kinda have one, too.”

“Last night, I learned something I never knew about myself. It was a bit of a wake-up call,” Farkle said, laughing a little. Wait, was this a coming out thing? Josh had always kind of gotten the vibe that the beanie-wearing man in front of him was more interested in science than people by a longshot, but he’d thought he saw him and probably one of Maya’s friends talking.

“Last night? You never knew?” he decided to say as he sat down opposite Farkle at the table. “You didn’t even suspect that you were…” he trailed off, unsure of what word to fill in with, but it didn’t matter.

“No, never, it’s always been a secret!” Farkle interjected, almost smiling. Josh nodded, and punched him lightly in the arm.

“And now we, say it out loud?”

“No, no, it’s absolutely hush-hush,” Farkle said, glancing around as if he expected someone to suddenly materialize. Though, considering Lucas was MIA at the moment, maybe that wasn’t the worst possible reaction. “All will be revealed tonight.” That didn’t make sense. What would Farkle reveal? A girlfriend? Boyfriend? Science experiment?

“Well, speaking of revelations,” Josh said in an attempt to move on, “Last night, um…”

“You and a little lady?” Farkle said with a bit of a shit-eating grin. “I think I know what’s going on.”

“No, you don’t,” he said with a laugh, but Farkle shook his head.

“No, the minute you clapped eyes on each other, you just knew.”

“Yeah,” he said, because he’d felt something, seeing Piper there, but he’d thought it was just because she looked so much like Maya. He could barely pick out his genes if he tried. “Farkle, I don’t know if I can do this. She’s a great girl, but can I take her on in my life?” He didn’t like to be tied down, plus, he lived on the other side of the world.

“Josh, where’s your spontaneity?” Farkle said.

“But it’s family, you know. That’s a lot.”

“Well you don’t have to marry her!”

Okay, yeah, Farkle did not know what was going on.

“What?” he said, much louder than intended, but he was saved by Riley’s call of his name from above. “Hey, Riles! Want pancakes?”

“Always, Uncle Josh!” she said, dropping down into the cabin, and that was the end of that.

 Her to-do list seemed to be growing by the second. Her mother always thought that was the sign of a good event on the horizon, but to Maya, it was just a sign that things that were supposed to get done, hadn’t.

Like the crack that formed in the middle of tonight’s dancefloor that she needed to fix.

With Smackle and Riley off attempting to be subversive agents or something, she had no one to help her out. Which was fine. Okay, it wasn’t fine, but she had made do before, and she would now.

That was when she saw Piper exiting the hotel, dressed for the day and looking beyond stressed. Forgetting about the crack, she went over and laid her hand on Piper’s arm. The touch made her daughter jump, at first, but then she just stared.

“Hi,” Maya said. “You feeling better?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Piper replied, beginning to pull away, but Maya didn’t move.

“No, hey, what’s wrong? With you and Connor?”

“What? Nothing, Mom,” Piper said.

“It’s okay. We can call this whole thing off, you don’t need to feel pressured,” Maya said, thinking it would help, but instead Piper’s face dropped.

“Because that’s what you want, isn’t it?” she said, actually pulling away from her. “You never did the marriage and baby thing, you just did the baby thing, so I can understand why this rubs you the wrong way.”

“Piper,” she said. God, if only she could read this girl’s mind . What had happened to the seven year old girl who told her everything?

“I love Connor, Mom, and I want to marry him, and I want my children to grow up knowing who their father is, because this, this is just crap!” Piper replied, and she stormed off, down towards the beach. Maya stood still, practically paralyzed, right where her daughter had left her. What was going on in her head? She didn’t want to fight, and she definitely didn’t appreciate her daughter throwing her decisions back in her face. What was she supposed to do? Call up Lucas, who had gone home to get married , Josh, her best friend’s uncle, and Farkle, whom she had really only slept with because he was trying to cheer her up, and say hey, we might have a kid together and I need your DNA to find out? Piper may be getting married, but she was young. She didn’t understand the decisions and sacrifices Maya had had to make.

At least, that was what she had been telling herself all these years.

She was startled back to reality by bad, off-key singing and someone strumming a banjo. Clearly, someone had gotten into the utility shed last night. She turned, and saw, somewhat unsurprisingly, Jax, Henry, and Ollie stumbling up the path, and she walked over and wrenched the instrument out of Ollie’s hands.

“Piper and Connor are going to have a beautiful wedding, alright? Go help set up,” she said, much louder than she intended, and watched as the three boys scurried off. She stood in the middle of the courtyard, banjo neck in one hand, tube of grout in the other, and sighed.

“I see you kept my banjo,” the one voice she did not want to hear right now said from behind her, and she turned, unsurprised to see Lucas Friar behind her.

“Yeah, well, it wards off evil spirits,” she said, setting it over on the table and trusting someone-- likely her-- would become responsible for putting it elsewhere. “What do you want, Ranger Rick?”

“Why didn’t you tell me it was Piper getting married?” he said. He looked almost hurt when he said it. No, he doesn’t know . She knelt down on the ground in order to fix the tile, purposefully avoiding looking at him.

“Why would you care?”

“She’s too young to be getting married.”

“Yeah, well, try and tell her that,” she said. He laughed.

“It’s punishment for being so stubborn, Shortstack,” he replied. She rolled her eyes, glad he couldn’t see her. “Do you need help?”

“Not from you,” she said, finishing tracing the line of the crack and standing up. “I’ve got it covered, thanks.”

“C’mon, Maya. This was our dream, remember? Living on the island. No responsibilities.” He said it so wistfully that she snorted. “What?”

“I run this whole place, Sundance, and I’ve got a kid. Don’t lecture me about not having responsibilities. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding to put together,” she said, trying to push past him.

“But what about her father? After everything you told me-”

“After everything I told you, you know it’s best that he’s not here to let her down the way mine did,” Maya said as she spun to face him, silencing Lucas with her glare. He looked down at his feet, then back up at her. “Don’t you have somewhere other to be than here , Mr. Perfect?”

“Maya-”

But she turned away and ran to the kitchen, unwilling to face Lucas Friar anymore than need be, even as her heart beat furiously and said go to him! She was done with all that. Her focus today was Piper, just like always, and she didn’t need to do anything else.

Chapter Text

Lucas watched Maya go, even though his heart was screaming at him to go after her. Letting her run off that first time had been the biggest mistake of his life.

He and Missy had been friendly with each other for years. His whole life, basically. His dad ran a company owned by her father. Even though she lived in New York and he was in Austin, they saw each other often enough that it became essential to at least remain cordial. Once they became teenagers, he slowly started to pick up on her newfound romantic interest in him. He had started avoiding her, then, hanging out more with his guy friends when she was in town.

In college, it became clear to him that he was disappointing his father by following his dream of being a vet. It was never voiced out loud, but as his parents’ only child, it had been implied for most of his life that he would join the company and take over. He ran into Missy at a party one night and it just seemed to make sense. Not in a I can fall in love with you way, but in a, Of course this should happen, for them way.

The responsibilities started to pile up, then. Treat Missy right, because now how happy she was correlated to things like the size of his dad’s Christmas bonus. Get good grades, because you need to get into a good vet school, get a job at a high-paying practice, and so on and so on. Suddenly, he was twenty-four, and engaged to a woman who seemed as happy as him, some days, which wasn’t saying much.

His best friend, Zay, invited him on a family trip to the Mediterranean that summer, a combined celebration of one of his younger brothers graduating college and his older sister finishing grad school. They’d also known each other their whole lives, thanks to Zay’s dad working at his dad’s company, but their friendship was real, and always had been. He was close with Abby, Jace, and Xander, Zay’s siblings. Mrs. Babineaux’s English class in high school was his favorite, and Mr. Babineaux was their scout troop leader. It was a good opportunity for the break he so desperately needed, from his parents, from school, from Missy.

He was exploring one day in Greece when he learned about Kalokairi. People said you could sail off the edge of the world there. It would be a place to disappear. None of the Babineauxs were really interested in checking it out, but with almost two weeks in Greece, they let him do what he wanted, so he took the ferry over to the island, and was enchanted before he even got there.

At twenty-three, Maya was as blunt as she was beautiful, feisty as she was creative, and as funny as she was broken. He doubted most of these characteristics had vanished, and was pretty consistently being proven right about them over the past thirty-six hours.

She and RIley had sat across from him on the ferry. Riley, he had noticed, had been shooting looks at him since he got on, but she was very pointedly attempting not to do so. It was Maya who came over. It was Maya he developed some sort of charged rivalry with, Maya who challenged him and joked with him and laughed at him. He pushed and she pulled, and it all felt right. They talked about important things, but not his fiancé. She never came up.

That night at the campfire was a long time coming. He should’ve stopped things, he knew that, but he couldn’t. He felt things for Maya he’d never even dreamed of feeling for Missy. It was a blissful week full of love and tenderness and yeah, teasing. He could still hear the smile in her voice as she spoke to him.

Zay told him he was being stupid, that no blonde beauty could possibly be worth all the pain it would cause his family. He knew, he knew that he had to tell her, but she spun such beautiful stories, paintings, sketches. The two of them, hiding at the edge of the world.

She found out, though. There was a picture of him and Missy in his passport holder that his mother had snuck in, like she expected him to wander and needed to give him a reminder. Maya knew, and she asked him to leave. He returned to meet with the Babineauxs feeling more like a shell than a person, and when Missy picked him up at the airport, he told her everything and said he had to end things with her. She didn’t cry, she didn’t say anything, and he packed more of his stuff and went straight back.

The ranch hand that he and Maya had sort of befriended was the one to tell him she was off with some other guy. The scolding in his eyes had been clear. Lucas should not have some back.

So he went home. Missy called him an idiot, then asked if the date they’d already set still worked for him. All business. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant, but they both loved their boys and wouldn’t trade them. They tried, for years, but divorced when the boys were twelve. It was for the best, he knew, even if Holden had hated it and refused to speak to them for six weeks. They’d come around, and Billy was good with them, and good for Missy. Much better than he’d ever been, that was for sure.

He’d always hoped to come back here, but he’d been too scared. She hadn’t wanted to see him again. If she was still here. The invitation had been the spur he needed, had made him think Maya was ready to maybe not reconcile, but move on. He could dream.

Now, he had Piper to care for. No matter what Maya claimed, he knew she must have hated hiding the girl’s father. He knew why, of course. In Maya’s head, he had gone home and gotten married. He didn’t love her the way she loved him. He wouldn’t want a kid. Blah, blah, blah. She clearly didn’t notice the lack of wedding ring. He had come for her , not Piper, though he was glad he knew about her now.

Maybe she didn’t feel the same way anymore. Maybe she had moved on from him, even if not onto someone else. He’d like to know that, though. Then she could finally get her wish, and he would be out of her life forever. He would know. Maybe then he could move on. People found it weird that Missy had and he hadn’t, he knew. Holden, in a complete 180, was now trying to set him up with all the divorced or otherwise single moms of kids he knew from both high school and college. Maybe he could find something real, if Maya would just let him know.

He glanced at his watch and realized time was ticking. He needed to talk to Piper. As her father, it was his job just as much as Maya’s to make sure she was really ready for this, right?

He went with yes, and started making his way towards the beach.

Riley and Josh managed to have a rather nice morning. They talked about family gossip and what he’d been up to recently. She talked about Chloe a lot, with Josh asking all the right questions. Evan was not brought up, which she appreciated. She was pretty convinced he had no idea about Piper possibly being his.

“Maya must be tearing her hair out doing this wedding by herself,” Josh began after a few moments of silence. They were making their way back towards the beach, and his tone was much too forced and casual for her taste. What is he up to?  “What would the father of the bride do?”

“Why do you ask?” she replied, also too casual, expecting it to get to him, but of course it didn’t; Josh was too suave for that.

“Just curious. Don’t have much interest in weddings, so I don’t know how these things work. Evan had a single dad, right, and you yourself are now a single mom, so you must have figured this out by now.”

She didn’t like the turn this conversation had taken.

“Dad paid for mine,” she finally said. “Well, Mom did, too, but that was their main job. That and walking me down the aisle, of course, but Piper seems headstrong enough that she’ll probably walk herself.”

“As Maya’s daughter, I’m not surprised.” Their paddle boat reached shore at this point, and Josh practically jumped out of it. “See you on the flip side, niece.”

“Who still says flip side?” she called after his retreating figure, earning a loud laugh from him. She stood up and climbed out of the boat and almost tripped over her own feet as she did, only to be saved by…

Charlie.

Last night had not been one of her proudest moments. She and Charlie had wound up talking for a lot of the night, mostly over drinks. She hadn’t had that much since Evan’s death and was honestly surprised she didn’t blackout. Charlie had a lot, too, which made her feel better about their… activities after leaving the party. Drunk people can’t give consent, obviously, but the fact that they were both drunk made her stomach feel less funny about it.

He seemed pretty put together this morning, his hair swooping just right and his smile twinkling. She hated it. How dare he look so hot.

“Hi,” she said, dumbly, once she was upright again. His smile was practically blinding. Did these men actually exist?

“Hi,” he replied. “You raced out pretty quick last night.”

“Yes, I did,” she said, brushing some of the sand off the sarong she was wearing. Chloe had bought it for her for Christmas. Chloe. Her daughter. Who, while in a different country, was still hers, and she needed to keep that in mind while dealing with people like Charlie.

People like Charlie, who were sweet, and personable, and probably great with children…

She needed to shut this train of thought down now . Especially since he was still giving her that look that made her stomach feel funny in a way it hadn’t in a really , really long time.

“I take it you don’t normally do things like that?”

“Do you?” she asked before she could stop herself. She had had three one-night stands in her entire life . The previous two times, whoever she had been with had snuck out first. She felt weird about everything. She needed to talk to Maya about this, but later. Maya was busy.

“Once or twice,” Charlie answered, still watching her, still smiling. “Why? I didn’t think you would care.”

“What?”

“Look, Riley,” he said, “I’ve worked here for a while. I know you used to be married. I know you have a daughter.” She frowned.

“How do I not recognize you, then?”

“No one remembers the bartender,” he said, and she nodded. That was probably true. Though, now that he’d mentioned it, she definitely was starting to remember. But he hadn’t looked at her like that before. Like she hung the moon. Like he existed to make her happy.

Or maybe she just hadn’t noticed it before. Maya always said she and Evan were in their own little bubble and it made her sick, but she’d always thought that was just Maya being Maya.

There were too many hypotheticals swirling in her head right now. She needed a break. Or a drink. No, a break. Maybe she should go find Maya.

“I should apologize, though,” Charlie said, bringing her out of her stupor.

“For what?”

“We shouldn’t have done that, last night. Drunk people can’t give consent.”

“Most people don’t agree with me on that,” she said in surprise, and he smiled.

“I’m the bartender. I should’ve known better. Especially my own tolerance. I don’t drink much, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“Well, you work with alcohol. That would turn me off drinking, too. The same way running this hotel turned Maya off of vacations,” she said.

“Well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know. Thank you; it means a lot.” He turned to walk away, and she felt disappointment start to bubble up in her. Maybe a little fling wouldn’t be the worst thing. Maybe she needed something like this. Maybe it could help her. “Charlie?”

“Yeah?” he asked, turning around and smiling at her. God, that smile.

“If- If I asked you to go to Piper and Connor’s wedding with me, would you?”

“Yeah, I would.”

“Why?” She could’ve sworn his smile brightened.

“Because I think a girl like you deserves to be swept off her feet.”

Connor told her last night that he would be down at the beach most of the morning decorating one of the boats for their honeymoon departure, so that was where Piper headed after the fight with her mom. It was time to come clean. Connor was smart, a lot smarter than her; he would have a way out of this.

The boat looked beautiful, all strung up with lights and flowers. Connor was laughing with his friends and he looked probably the most relaxed she’d seen him since the whole planning thing began.

“Connor!” she yelled once she was close enough that he would hear her. He turned and smiled, but it drooped slightly when he caught the look on her face. “You have to help me!” she said, and then she turned and ran, knowing he would follow.

“Baby?” he yelled, but she heard footsteps pounding the dirt behind her, so she didn’t bother looking back. Once they were far enough away, she turned to him. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“I found my father,” she said, and he stared at her in confusion.

“You-”

“I read Mom’s diary. And I have three possible fathers. And they’re all here and think they’re walking me down the aisle and- I need help.”

“They’re all here? But how-”

“I sent them invitations and signed them with Mom’s name because I knew they would come and they did. I know I should’ve-”

“Wait,” Connor said, and he had a really far-away look on his face, like he was trying to add up their entire relationship, “Is that why you wanted a big white wedding and everything?”

“What? No,” she said, reaching for his hand, but he pulled it away.

“I wanted to grab a couple of witnesses and go to the mainland, but you insisted -”

“No, it was not just for that, Connor, you have to know that! Every little girl dreams of her wedding, I just wanted to have that!”

“With your father,” he said, and she couldn’t tell what was irritating her more: the anger or the hurt in his voice.

“I wanted to know who I am. I wanted to get married knowing who I am,” she said, and Connor shook his head.

“That doesn’t come from finding your father. That comes from finding yourself, Pipes,” he said, and he walked past her.

“What, so that’s it? You don’t love me anymore?” she yelled. Sure, maybe she was being extreme, but she knew him, and of anything, that would get an answer out of him.

“Of course I love you; I just wish you’d told me!”

And with that, he disappeared.

She groaned in frustration and leaned against one of the nearby trees, trying to get her thoughts in order. It was almost time for her to start getting ready. Finley and Josie were supposedly still trailing Josh and Farkle. The plan was for them to distract them long enough so that it would become too late for them to walk her down the aisle. She had no idea how they hoped to accomplish that, but the effort was sweet, so she couldn’t bother them. That really only left…

“Piper?”

She looked up, and Lucas was smiling down at her, a touch of concern on his face.

“I heard you and Connor shouting; is everything alright?” he asked. His tone made it clear to her that he was genuinely concerned, like her mom, like… Well, like a parent. It made her heart beat faster; he’d thought he was her father for maybe twelve hours and he was already caring for her like that. Yesterday at this time, she had craved recognition and love that quickly. Now, it just terrified her.

“Of course,” she said, keeping her own voice even.

“I know when you’re young, every spat can feel like the end of the world.”

“Are you trying to give me relationship advice?” she said with a barely muffled laugh. He smiled at her, some of that concern morphing into sadness.

“It may seem odd for the divorced man to do, but that’s just it. I know what it’s like on the other side. I know what brings about endings.” He reached out and rested his hand on her arm. “You’re young.”

“You keep saying that,” she replied. “So what if I’m young? I know what I want, and I want Connor.”

“I thought you wanted to pursue music,” he said. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“I didn’t tell you that.”

“You didn’t have to. I heard it yesterday, in your song, and saw it in your eyes when I asked you about it last night. You shouldn’t trap yourself here with someone because you’re scared of your future.”

“Isn’t that what you almost did? With my mom?”

“If I had stayed here with your mom, it wouldn’t have been a trap, and I would’ve stopped being scared,” he said. The words hung in the air for a second, and he almost looked like he wanted to take them back, but he didn’t. “Look, Piper, I got married for all the wrong reasons. To please my parents being the main one. There’s only been a couple times in my life that I ever did anything because I wanted to, and most of them have happened since my divorce. I needed to do some growing up, a lot of growing up. You should’ve seen the kind of guy I was in middle and high school. I wasn’t the Mr. Perfect your mom says I am. I’m still not. I just- I don’t want you to regret this.”

He meant it, she could feel it practically oozing out of him. And he made good points. But she wasn’t going to regret marrying Connor today. She hoped she wouldn’t, at least. How would she know if she would regret it, after all, when she hadn’t even done it yet?

“Thank you for the concern,” she said, resting a hand on his arm, “But I don’t need your help.” She felt his eyes on her as she turned and walked away, but she ignored it. He didn’t know her and Connor, not really. He didn’t have the right to judge her.

She got back to the main courtyard, and her mom was there, ordering Ollie about the correct way to string lights. She looked more tired than she did this morning.

“Piper? You alright, sweetheart?” she called, and Piper glanced over at her. She had a hesitant look on her face, like she was afraid that they would descend into another fight, but she didn’t have the energy for that, right now. She was making her way over, though, so she couldn’t be too scared. “Isn’t time for you to start getting ready? Where are Finley and Josie? They’re supposed to help you, right?”

The answer, of course, was still distracting Josh and Farkle (Maybe), but her mom couldn’t know that she’d invited them. It’d be best, she decided, to just not bring them into it.

“Can you do it?” she said instead. Her mom looked surprised for just a second, but then she schooled her features and nodded.

“Yeah. Let’s get you ready.”

Chapter Text

They walked in silence through the hotel and up to Piper’s room. Her mother’s eerie silence was concerning. She couldn’t tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing. She felt bad about snapping at her earlier, but it wasn’t like what she’d said was untrue. It was crap not knowing her father, and somehow the knowledge that there were three possibilities was worse. She wanted a clear cut answer.

Josh’s claimed seemed strongest due to his great-aunt. She didn’t know a ton about her. She remembered going to the mainland with her mom when she was very little, three or four probably, and reading stories and coloring with a very old woman. She did a report for a social studies course on year on her name, going through the etymology, popularity, and such on all three aspects. That was when she’d learned anything about her namesake.

She wouldn’t mind Josh as her father. He loved to sail as much as she did and she could imagine just setting off around the Mediterranean with him and Connor, no cares or worries. They would play guitar together and she could teach him about the constellations. If he’s an architect he could probably draw, too, and he and her mom could do a big mural together around the side of the hotel, like her mom had been talking about doing for years. Maybe all she needed was a second set of hands to get it done.

But she could imagine all of them as her father. Lucas would do everything in his power to get her to perform music outside of her bedroom and stand in the back of every gig beaming at her, eyes welling up with tears because he was so unbelievably proud of her. He would be the one to sit and have late night talks about anything and everything with her, next to a fire, drinking hot cocoa. He was the type of dad she knew she could always turn to for advice. They would go to football matches together and he would make embarrassing jokes that she pretended to hate but secretly found hilarious. She would have brothers she would learn to love and challenge and take care of, who would goof off with Connor and set pranks that would annoy the hell out of her mother.

Farkle would convince her to get an education, to actually go to college somewhere and fall in love with something, whether it was music or history of chemistry. They would watch movies together and she would throw popcorn at him when he spoiled things too early, like her mom mentioned him doing in her diary. He would play trivia games with her and yeah, she would probably lose every time, but she would also have so much fun getting to know him.

Her mom sent her to shower pretty much as soon as they entered the room and she did so without much of a fight. It concerned Piper a bit that her mom had not yet tried to convince her to open up about what was running through her head, or what she had said earlier that morning. She supposed she should be grateful for it. Instead, though, it felt more like a ticking time bomb.

She and her mom had barely talked about her father since Piper was eight. They fought; she can’t even remember what about anymore. Probably grades or chores or something equally insignificant. It ended with her screaming, “I hate you! I want my daddy!” She ran to her room and cried. Her grandmother came in and calmed her down and she and her mom made up, but she woke up to pee in the middle of the night and overheard her mom crying to her grandmother about it.

She made the decision that night that she wouldn’t talk about her dad around her mom. Whatever happened was clearly bad and she didn’t want to give her mom any reason to stress, between the slowly declining hotel guests and her grandmother’s illness, which had taken a sharp turn at the time. Making such a decision didn’t make life any easier. That included checking herself on any comments like she’d said today.

Thanks to the distraction of a racing mind, she nicked herself shaving and groaned loudly. She finished the last couple strokes then shut the water off. She found herself staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to find her father in her face. All she could see was her mother.

Her mother, who had stood at her side through her first swim, her first sail, her first heartbreak. Who had attached every horrible art project to the fridge of the small kitchenette in the suite they once shared. Who had sung her to sleep, kissed her cuts, walked her to school, made her breakfast. Her mom had done it all for her. Had sacrificed a life for her.

Could she herself ever do that, when the time came? She would have Connor by her side, God knows where they would live or what they would be doing. She’d always imagined raising her children here, running the hotel after her mother finally decided to screw it all and go paint for all eternity. She couldn’t say with confidence that life is what she wanted, but it was all she knew. This island, her mom, Connor.

Piper left the bathroom and let her mom tend to her. She applied a Band-Aid and kissed it better, and Piper felt ten again. They argued over hair and make-up and jewelry and even underwear but before she knew it, she was staring at her reflection again, her mom standing behind her, playing with her hair.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said. Her mom looked at her in the mirror.

“For what?”

“What I said, earlier. I know that I sounded ungrateful for everything you’ve done for me and I’m not. I- I’m sorry.”

“My dad wasn’t around either. He went for a walk when I was six and never came back. I found out he had a new family, and I blamed my mom at first. I was ten and she worked two jobs and late nights and I always assumed she pushed him away. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that it wasn’t her who did it and it wasn’t her that I blamed for him leaving; it was me. I did talk with him once and he told me he wasn’t ready for me at the time, but neither was my mom and she did it. She stayed. We can talk about your father if you want, but you need to know that I raised you alone and unaware of him because I didn’t want you to feel like I felt. I was angry for eighteen years, Piper. I couldn’t let you feel the same, so I hid him. And I hope I didn’t make you angry the way I was.”

“No, you didn’t make me angry,” she said, wiping at a tear.

“There’s a lot we should talk about; I know. But we have to get going or we’ll be late.” Piper nodded and her mom kissed her forehead.

“I’m so proud of you, baby.” She turned around so she was facing her mom, noticing that she, too, was on the verge of tears.

“Will you give me away?” Piper asked, fiddling with her hands. Her mom swallowed, then she ran her hands down her daughter’s arms.

“Of course,” she said, her voice coming out thicker than Piper was sure she meant it to.

Without warning, Piper spun around and threw her arms around her. Her mom returned the embrace, kissing her shoulder.

“I love you, Mom,” Piper whispered.

“I love you, too, baby.”

Piper and Connor loved the church on the hill, so even though it was a hike, that was where the wedding was going to occur. Maya followed Piper down the path to the hill, her heart hammering in her chest. She wasn’t sure if she was ready yet to talk with Piper like she promised. She wouldn’t be able to tell her until after the honeymoon, and she couldn’t not tell her that they had been on the island. Plus, what would she say? That she didn’t actually know who the father was because she’d been a bit of a-- well, slut?

“Maya, we need to talk about whose giving Piper away,” came out of nowhere, and suddenly Lucas was standing in front of her. She hadn’t even realized she’d fallen behind.

“That would be me,” she retorted, and pushed past him. Her heart was picking up speed again. Why did he still have this effect on her, twenty-one years later?

“But what about her dad?” He was right behind her, practically breathing in her ear, but she pushed herself to keep walking.

“Her dad isn’t here.”

“It’s what she wants. She told me she wants her father here. What if her father wants that too?”

She spun to look at him. How had he figured it out? Well, actually, it wasn’t all that hard to figure out if you didn’t know about Josh and Farkle. Piper was hers and was twenty; it didn’t take a genius to figure out she’d gotten pregnant that summer, but still. And he appeared to be talking to Piper behind her back, too, which was another can of worms she didn’t want to deal with.

“Lucas, I’m not doing this right now. I can’t hear this right now, okay?”

“Maya, listen to me. This is about us-”

“Shut up! I’m not able to do this right now, okay?”

“Maya, please.”

“You left, Lucas, you left for that beautiful woman in the photo, you left for the life that had been hand-picked for you. You don’t get to walk back in and demand a post-mortem because you don’t get one. You won, okay?”

“Won?”

“I don’t know what brought you back here, Lucas, some sort of midlife crisis or twist of cruelty, but you left. You have no idea the hell you put me through because I loved you so much and sometimes I think I still do, which is insane of me! I’m a different person because of you. And I need you to accept that and I need you to leave.”

She turned and walked the rest of the way up to the church, not daring to wonder if he had followed her, not daring to think about what she’d said about still being in love with him. She had to make it through this wedding without falling apart, because after all the shit they’d been through, Piper deserved that.

Piper was waiting at the top of the hill and they walked in together. She pressed a kiss to her daughter’s cheek as she joined Smarkle and Riley on the sidelines. She watched Piper take Connor’s hand and watched him squeeze it. If anything had happened there, it seemed alright, for now. She just hoped it actually was and they weren’t pretending.

“Thank you to everyone for joining us here today to celebrate Connor Walsh and Piper Hart. Thank you for your friendship, and thank you to Maya, who represents your family.” She had to. She couldn’t lie to Piper about it, not when she’d seen Farkle as she walked in.

“And,” she said as she stood, facing the congregation but only focused on Piper, “To Piper’s father.” There was a mumble through the crowd and Piper furiously flipped up her veil. She turned to face her. “I have to tell you: he’s here.”

“I know. I invited him.”

“You couldn’t have. I don’t know which one it is.” People gasped. Looking into the guilty eyes of her daughter, the realization crashed over her. “Oh my God; that’s why they’re all here!” She looked out into the crowd and noticed that Lucas, Josh, and Farkle had all stood and were all staring at each other in confusion.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please forgive me!”

“Can you forgive me? From hiding it from you?”

“Of course I can! You’re my mom and I love you,” Piper said and she hugged her, pulling her close. Maya pulled away and smiled at her, taking her seat. Riley ran her hand down Maya’s arm.

“Wait, so Piper could be mine, but she could be Josh’s or Farkle’s?” Lucas said, making his way up the aisle.

“Yes, and you have no one to blame but yourself. You were engaged!” Maya said, standing back up so they stood on either side of Connor and Piper.

“Yeah! You just left my mom and went home to get married!” Piper added.

“I had to because I was engaged, but I went and I told Missy that I couldn’t marry her and then I came right back!” Lucas yelled. Maya froze, staring at him in shock, trying to find the words.

“Why didn’t you call?” she finally said. She could see twenty years of heartbreak melt into that beautiful, perfect face, and she wanted to scream that he wasn’t allowed to do things like that because she could feel herself knocking down that fragile dam she’d constructed in her head, letting herself fall for him all over again.

“Because I was crazy enough to think that when I got back, you would be waiting for me. Instead I was told you were off with some other guy.” Josh and Farkle both developed sudden interests in the stone walls of the church. “Missy called me an idiot and married me to prove it.”

“Can I just jump in for a second?” Farkle said, pushing his way through the crowd and up to the front. “I- I’m okay with having a third of Piper. I never even expected that much of a child. I’m- I’m asexual. If you don’t know what it is you can Google it but I just- I never expected to find someone who could see past that and adopt children or something so. I’m okay with a third. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy, Maya, and Piper, I want to give you that, too.”

“We could find out, if you want,” Lucas said to Piper, “But I’m with Farkle. Being a third of your dad is fine with me.”

“Me, too. I’ll take a third!” Josh yelled, walking towards them. Maya’s heart swelled. None of them cared. They had all fallen in love with Piper immediately, just like she had. She sat back down, content with that, and watched the three men preen themselves from their place behind the happy couple.

“Dearly beloved-”

“Look, okay, I have no clue which one of you is my dad,” Piper said, spinning around to face them, “But I don’t mind. I know what I want. Connor, let’s not get married.” Maya sat up in her seat as Connor’s face, calm through all of the baby daddy drama, dropped. “You never wanted this, anyway. Let’s just go see the world and live our lives!”

“I love you,” he said, pulling her in to kiss her. There were cheers, but soon the two were retreating farther down the aisle to talk with Farkle, Josh, and Lucas.

“Maya, is the wedding cancelled?” the poor priest asked her. She laughed.

“I really don’t know.”

“Well, why waste a perfectly good wedding?” Lucas said, and he turned to her and shrugged. “How about it, Shortstack? You and me, like it was meant to be?” Riley and Piper turned to her wearing identical looks of glee, but she kept her eyes firmly trained on Lucas.

“I’m not a bigamist,” she chose to say, watching him. His eyes twinkled.

“Neither am I. I’m a divorced man who’s been in love with you for twenty-one years. C’mon, Maya. You wanna tangle with me?”

She saw it all. Every moment they spent together. Every stupid joke, every tender moment, every tear she shed as she let him in farther than she’d ever let anyone else. This was the only man she’d ever seen a real future with, and here he was, ready to embark on that journey with her. It had been a long twenty-one years. She knew they weren’t the same people. But love grows.

“I do. God, I do,” she said, and suddenly he was holding her and they were kissing and she was crying but God, it felt so good to be held by him again, to relish in the feeling of being his again.

She could remain in his arms forever and she couldn’t wait to do just that.

Chapter Text

Lucas hadn’t felt this alive in years.

Sitting next to Maya, his arm wrapped around her, holding her hand, he felt young and carefree and happy. Not that he wasn’t happy with his boys and his life in Texas, but this was different. He couldn’t quite explain it.

They had a lot to talk about, he knew. He assumed he would be moving to Greece. He didn’t mind that entirely. He could probably get work on the mainland, though he’d probably need to do some testing and such first. Being so far from his boys would be hard, but they were in college now. Hopefully they would react well to this newest development. Andrew he was more worried about, but he had a feeling that he and Piper would get along quite well. The boy was as much a wanderer and adventurer as Lucas himself was, and apparently Piper, too. They could compare notes on their adventures.

He would have to go home this weekend like he was slated to, to start making the arrangements, to talk to Missy and the boys. It would be an adjustment, to say the least.

“Stop thinking,” Maya whispered into his ear. He grinned and pulled her closer to him. Most of the wedding guests were dancing up a storm, but he was content here with her.

“How’d you know I was thinking, huh?”

“Because I know you. It’s been twenty-one years but you haven’t changed that much.”

“I have changed, though.”

“I know. The Lucas Friar I met was not so impulsive.”

“I rode a bull.”

“Because you fell off a sheep and needed to prove yourself. That was the farthest thing from ‘impulsivity’ I can think of, but keep trying. I know all your darkest secrets, Maddog. Can’t pull a fast one on me.”

“Only use that name if you mean it,” he said, growling for effect. She rolled her eyes at him.

“I won’t use it then. You don’t seem like a Maddog to me.”

“What do I seem like to you?”

“You know that lamb that Mary had?” He scoffed, but kissed her anyways, relishing in the feeling of getting to touch her and love her again. “I don’t want to think about the hard stuff right now. You’re here. We’re together. I want this to be all that matters.”

“But it’s not. There’s so much to think about. You’re right; I’m not impulsive like that. This is stuff we need to think about and talk about. My flight home is on Sunday. I have to take it. I have to turn in my notice at work and sell my apartment and my car and work out custody with Missy and probably even more than that. It’s a lot.”

“Yeah, it is. But you’re not gonna do it all alone. I mean, I have to stay here for a bit, but I can put a black out date on reservations for a week or so and join you, if you want. You’ve got me, from now on.”

“Till death do us part,” he whispered, and then he kissed her again, just because he could.

“God, you’ve been married an hour and you’re already gross,” Piper announced, standing in front of them holding three glasses of champagne. He almost reprimanded her for it before remembering the eighteen year old drinking age in Greece. If all else failed, he could lure his boys to Greece with the promise of alcohol. But regardless, he’d not protested this girl getting married this morning. One glass of champagne was nothing compared to that.

“I should’ve known you’d be a wanker about this,” Maya said, taking her glass.

“A ‘wanker?’ Have you and Finley been talking behind my back?” Piper asked, sounding scandalized.

“That’s British slang, right?” he said, glancing back and forth between the two, both wearing identical expressions of bemused irritation that made his heart swell just to look at them. His girls were peas in a pod, and the fact that he got to call them his made his chest feel tight and heart skip a beat for all the right reasons.

“Most of the people who pass through here are British. I’ve learned a thing or two, and so will you,” Maya said. She turned to Piper then. “You really are okay with all of this?”

“Yes. Typical, isn’t it? You ask for one dad and three come along all at once,” she said, pointing over her shoulder at Josh, who was poorly dancing with some younger children who must’ve been the children of the hotel’s employees. Lucas snorted. Josh had been much sauver last night, though grinding was a very different skill than actual dancing. Farkle was probably better than both of them. Andrew certainly complained about his dad dancing.

“Pipes, I need a serious response here.”

“Mom, if you’re happy, I’m happy. You deserve this. But I wouldn’t mind if I could steal the cowboy for a second?”

Maya didn’t say a word, and instead just nudged him so that he was forced to get out of his seat. Piper set her champagne glass down and took his hand, leading him to a corner where Farkle was already lurking, grabbing Josh along the way.

“I just wanted to thank you. For coming. For wanting to be a part of my life. And I know now that everything isn’t going to just easily slip into place but… I want to get to know you all,” she said. Josh threw his arm around her shoulders.

“Well good, because we wanna get to know you, too.”

Lucas wrapped his arm around her from the other side, and soon they were all hugging. He heard her take a deep, shuddering breath, like she was releasing twenty years worth of tension. That made him want to hold her tighter, a feat he couldn’t achieve while sharing her with the other two men in her life.

It was going to be a long road, and there was so much to discover, but he was undeniably excited to get started.

Farkle was quite pleased with how the events of this trip were working out.

If he was being completely honest, he had been fairly positive he had a shot at being Piper’s father the minute he saw her. He’d imagined a girl of seventeen or eighteen, likely sporting a baby bump of one size or another, looking like she had just walked out of a Greek myth with tan skin and thick, dark hair. When Piper was strikingly none of those things, he had begun to wonder. He didn’t know her age until the bachelorette party, but then it had clicked.

He befriended Riley and Maya fairly quickly. Riley had flitted in and out of his social circle for most of their lives, as their parents had known each other in school and became something resembling friends as adults, when they all landed in New York. Farkle himself had traveled the world as a child as his father’s business took off. While New York was always his home and where he now taught, he couldn’t deny his emotional attachments to Beijing, Capetown, London, and Prague, where he had spent most of middle and high school.

When his thesis experiment had taken him off and sent him to Paris for the summer, he had used it as an opportunity to return to Prague and London. Heading to Prague, he literally ran into Riley and Maya outside the Orly airport when Maya spilled her coffee all over him. The two were supposed to be heading to Greece but had missed their flight due to an airport mix-up— they had flown into de Gaulle from New York and it didn’t occur to them to make sure they were still flying out of there prior to getting to the airport. He gave them the keys to his car and his address in Paris and told them to have fun.

They sent letters back and forth until Farkle himself could finally reach their elusive island prior to an event in Athens, only to find a crushed Maya and a Riley busy with a family reunion. So he took Maya to the award function and they spent the night staying up late talking about things he had rarely discussed with any one. She initiated their make out session on the ferry back, she pulled him into her room, and he didn’t protest because he thought maybe he was falling in love with her.

Within four months of being back home in New York, she stopped talking to him. Riley told him she was dealing with stuff with her mom and then she, too, slowly reduced the amount of contact with him. It was okay, though. He was busy. They were busy. And he quickly realized he loved them without being in love with them— an important distinction for all involved.

Now he knew what she had been up to all that time, and he forgave her for not talking to him. He wasn’t sure how he would’ve reacted if he had been told about it when it happened. Back when he was younger, he desired children solely to pass on what he had referred to as his ‘superior genetic code.’ With his sexuality realization and its impact on romantic relationships, the desire had waned, and he was content with his students being the people he had the most influence on. But at twenty-two, his career was front and center. He couldn’t have done what his parents did and put everything on the line for a kid. He couldn’t have been what Piper clearly craved so badly, but now he could be, and he was going to try his damndest to be.

It was nice to have Riley and Maya around again, though. They were still the same fiery duo he remembered, complementing each other perfectly. The new addition to their group, Isadora Smackle, was quite fun as well. He was fairly positive she was in his year at Princeton and studied psychology, possibly even was on the debate team with him, but she looked quite different than he remembered. While she worked as a researcher in psychology, she knew of his biochemistry accomplishments and could talk about them with him with ease. Their conversations had descended into less science and more general, in-depth connection type stuff.

It was nice, but terrifying. He couldn’t figure out what Smackle, as she apparently prefered to be called, wanted from him. He knew it had to be more than friendship, because she was doing things like sitting close to him and twirling her hair and laughing at his jokes. After his coming out at the wedding, he figured that would be the end of that, and he would spend most of the reception catching up with Riley or Piper, or just sitting alone entirely.

Riley, as it turned out, seemed very interested in connecting with the bartender, who stood at her side for most of the night, a hand loose around her waist. Her eyes sparkled every time she looked at him and Farkle smiled. He and Riley were Facebook friends, so he knew about Evan and his death and her daughter, and he was glad to see that, at least for tonight, she was looking forward instead of back.

Piper was equally as distracted with Connor and all of her friends since it was, after all, originally her wedding. She made sure to spend time with him and Josh and Lucas, though, and talked with each of them. Apparently, she and Connor were going to be doing lots of traveling together and she hoped to come visit him in New York sooner rather than later. He couldn’t deny how knowing that had made his heart swell.

So in the end, he was left sitting next to the brilliant, beautiful, wonderful Isadora Smackle. As the sun set and wine flowed freer, she leaned in to kiss him and he stopped her.

“I’m asexual.”

“I was there.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“No. I know I have sexual desires, but I also have spent much of my adult life single and know how to handle them. I am not trying to kiss you, though. Right now I would like to be held by you. I do not like hugs or being held, but I want to try it with you. Because it has been such a short time and yet I already feel safe with you. And as I live in New York City as well, I imagine it would not be too hard to see you again, should I desire it and you desire it. I would like this to be a chance that we take. It’s a hypothesis I have, and I would like your help with it.”

He swallowed, but staring into her eyes, he couldn’t deny that he had a similar hypothesis.

“May I hug you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, hesitantly, as if revealing all of this to him had made it harder to do the physical action she’d planned in the first place. With equal hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her. They must’ve looked funny, and not at all comfortable, her quite stiff in his arms, confirmed by her quiet, “I don’t like this at all.”

“I know,” he said, but she wasn’t pulling away. In fact, she leaned in more.

“Don’t stop,” she replied, and slowly the tension disappeared, and warmth spread through his body.

“Okay.”

Piper set her suitcase down next to the door and then walked the rest of the way into the tent, still pitched from last night, where her mother had decided to serve breakfast this morning. Many of the wedding guests had trickled in, in various states of exhaustion and hungover. Josh sat at one of the back tables wearing sunglasses and she snorted, walking over to join him. He smiled when she did and pushed the shades up his head, blinking once or twice.

“How are you, Pipes? Feel any different?”

“I’m not married.”

“I know, but it must feel different. All this tension released.”

“Yeah, it is,” she said, staring at him, but she wasn’t referring to her wedding, and his slow-spreading smile indicated he caught on. “You never did tell me where you’re going to go after this.”

“Who knows? I mean, I’ll sail back home, stop along the way. Probably take a contract or two, sail around New England. Who knows? I went freelance because I could, and I don’t have deadlines right now. I’m in the Mediterranean with my boat, and I got people to draw me out here more often. I can go where I please. Always have, always will. It’s for the best that I never knew about you before now, I think. I couldn’t have been a dad to you then, but I want to be now.”

He reached out across the table and without hesitation she took it. It was nice. All of her dads were so different-- Josh wild and carefree, Lucas careful and protective, Farkle intelligent and affectionate in his own way. She wouldn’t have been able to suss out just one of them as her father, since they all had pieces of what she’d been searching for her whole life.

She sat with Josh for a while, and soon Riley and Charlie joined them, and then Farkle, Smackle, her mom, Lucas, Connor. They talked and laughed and swapped stories of each other until Connor tapped her on the shoulder and whispered that it was probably about time for them to leave. She nodded and they stood up slowly, catching her mom’s attention.

“Are you two off already?” She glanced down at Farkle’s watch and laughed to herself, standing up and pulling Connor, as he was closer, into a hug. “Wow.”

“Wait, wait!” Josh said, and then he reached down and pulled up a familiar guitar. “I should return this. And I think it should go to you, even though it’s technically your mother’s. You’ll get more use out of it.”

“Hey!” Maya said, “It’s true but don’t say it!” Piper snorted at that, but took the guitar from Josh’s hand.

“Thank you. I hope to get to play with Jam Machine someday,” she said.

“Maybe Ranger Rick over here will bring out the banjo for you.”

“You play the banjo, sir?” Connor asked, amusement dripping in his tone.

“I had no idea that was yours,” Smackle said.

“Will you play for us before you go? Please?” Lucas asked. She sighed, but put the guitar strap around her neck and started to pluck a song she wrote years ago to a picture of a father and finding him someday, about the dream she carried with her that brought her here, to this, to all these lost souls finding themselves in each other, the best any of them could do.