Chapter Text
Maya stared at her phone, failing to comprehend the words in front of her.
From: Miles Hollingsworth
Message: ‘Hey, want to come over and talk?’
This was the first time Maya had heard from Miles since the fire, aside from a few hellos in the hallway at school. The message was so out of the blue that her initial reaction was panicked concern. Was Miles okay? Why on earth would he want to see her on a Monday night?
She impulsively hit the ‘call’ button and nervously tapped her fingers on the kitchen counter while she waited for Miles to answer. Her anxiety had improved significantly with therapy, but she couldn’t help but have flashbacks of Miles from the month prior, when he was constantly distressed and self-destructive.
“Do you not text anymore?” She heard him say only a few seconds later. He sounded confused, but otherwise calm, which eased her worries a little.
“I- No, I’m just doing homework so I thought it would be easier to call.” She lied. The homework part was true, but she wasn’t going to admit that she really just called to make sure Miles wasn’t in the middle of a meltdown. “What’s up? What did you want to talk about?”
“I’d prefer to talk about it in person.”
Maya bit her lip. “You know I’m dating Zig, right?”
He laughed. “I’m not trying to lure you over here to seduce you, Maya. I just figured you deserve an explanation for… well, why I went completely crazy for a while.”
“Oh.” Maya said, surprised. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that.
“So, are you coming over?”
“Yeah, I’ll be over soon.”
“Great. See you then, Maya.”
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Despite having been there many times, the Hollingsworth household never failed to amaze Maya. It was so hard to believe that people actually lived in a mansion so extravagant.
Miles opened the front door before she even had a chance to knock.
“Hey. Thanks for coming.” He had a small smile on his face. Frankly, he seemed much less distant than he had been a month ago. He wasn’t skipping school anymore and he was staying out of trouble. Maya was happy for him.
“Yeah, no problem.” Maya stepped into the house. Miles led her onto the back porch to the set of table and chairs that overlooked the pool.
Miles gestured for Maya to sit down and closed the sliding glass doors behind them. “Sorry this is kind of sudden and weird, but I’ve just been thinking about everything that happened, and I think I’m just finally ready to talk about it, y’know?”
Maya shook her head. “No, this isn’t weird.” It was kind of weird. “I’m always here to talk.”
Miles smiled and sat down. He put his feet up on another chair- his usual rebellious sitting position. It drove his mother crazy.
If Miles was honest, Maya was the only person he thought would take him seriously, aside from his family. He’d practically disowned Winston when he cheated on Frankie, Tristan wanted nothing to do with him, and in his self-destructive downward spiral he’d managed to push away the rest of his friends, too. Despite everything that happened, Maya was the only one who stuck with him and genuinely wanted to help. At the time he wasn’t willing to accept the help, but looking back on it, he really appreciated her attempts to get through to him.
Maya watched Miles from across the table. He was staring at the water in the pool, seemingly deep in thought.
He sighed. “My dad finished moving out today.” He met Maya’s eyes and made an expression that she couldn’t quite decipher. “I mean, he left last month, but his stuff is all gone now.”
“Have your parents… are they divorced?”
“Not officially, but they will be, once all the paperwork is done.”
“How does it feel?”
Miles shrugged. “That’s the thing: I thought I was going to be happy. I thought it was going to fix everything and I would instantly feel better. But that’s just not how I feel.”
Maya didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t relate to what Miles had gone through, especially since she didn’t know all the details of the situation.
“I just lost… everything.” He said after a period of silence. “I pushed my best friend away, I pushed Tristan away, I called you crazy- I’m so sorry for that.”
Maya shook her head. “No, I understand why you did it. Miles, it wasn’t your fault.” He nodded, but she had a feeling he didn’t forgive himself for it.
“I know Tristan blames you for us breaking up.” He said quietly.
“He thinks you still had a thing for me.”
“I thought I did too, for a while.”
Maya looked at him, surprised. “What do you mean?”
He shook his head and went to speak, then seemed to change his mind. He was having trouble getting all of his thoughts into words and finding a place to begin. “Maya, my dad was abusing me. Physically and verbally, and the longer it went on, the worse I felt. Mentally, I was in an awful place.”
She stared.
“So after a while I started thinking about you. At the time I thought it was because I still had feelings for you, but after really thinking about it these past few weeks, and well, talking to my therapist about it, I think I just wanted to go back to the time in my life when we were together. I was happier then, and less aware of how awful my dad was. So I guess subconsciously I thought that if we got back together, my life would go back to like it was back then.”
Maya nodded, but was having trouble processing all the information being thrown at her. She settled on asking a question to keep Miles talking. “You’re going to therapy now?”
He nodded. “I am suffering from depression that manifests itself in major depressive episodes, or something like that.”
Maya was surprised at how easy it was for him to reveal this information. He never used to be so open about things like that.
“Some days I can’t get myself out of bed. I take medication but it’s heavily monitored due to my ‘addictive personality.’”
“Miles… you don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to.”
He shook his head. “I want to. I invited you over to talk. Besides, keeping things to myself is what got me in this mess. I’m making a conscious effort to be more honest.”
A small smile danced across Maya’s face. After everything Miles had gone through, she was glad to see that at least something good came out of it.
“Anyway, it’s gotten better. When I have really bad days Frankie and Hunter will come and lay with me just to keep me company. I pretend I’m annoyed by it but it’s really sweet.”
Maya rested her chin in her hand and smiled to herself. She could never know how bad it truly was for Miles to live in such an abusive environment, but she saw the affect it had had on him. It was clear that his dad leaving had helped a lot. A few weeks ago, there would have been no way Miles would have opened up to her like this.
“Are you going to talk or just smile at me?” Miles asked, chuckling when he turned to find Maya smiling and staring at him.
She laughed and sat up in her seat. “I’m just so happy you’re out of that environment.”
“Me too.”
Maya smiled and looked out at the pool. The pool was illuminated, making the water a bright, clear blue.
A comfortable silence passed before Maya spoke again. “Miles, you know you didn’t deserve what he did to you, right?”
Miles was tapping his fingers against his leg, a nervous habit that Maya shared. Some time passed before he responded: “I like to think I know that what he did wasn’t my fault, but deep down I still think it is. My therapist said that’s normal, and that it takes a while to come to terms with abuse and whatnot, but I’m just not there yet. Not-“ he made a strange hand gesture in an attempt to explain his jumbled thoughts. “I’m just not there yet. I did bad stuff and it still makes me feel like I deserved what he did to me.”
“Bad stuff?”
“Treating Tristan like garbage, treating you like garbage, prioritizing weed over our safety, the list goes on.”
“Are you going to tell Tris about what happened?”
“He hates me.”
“He won’t if he knew about what happened! Right now he just thinks that you were using him to get back to me.”
Miles frowned and stared at the pool yet again.
“You really liked him, didn’t you?”
He nodded and exhaled a shaky breath. “I told him he was pathetic. I wish I could take it all back.”
“You can, Miles! Just talk to him.”
Miles sighed, and Maya felt that topic suddenly become off-limits. Maya slumped back into her chair. She wanted to help him reconcile with Tristan, but she couldn’t just do it for him. Besides, she was trying to stay out of other peoples’ business.
“Miles?”
“Hm?”
“We sucked as a couple.” She smiled, hoping to get a reaction from him.
He laughed. “Yeah, we did.”
“But I’m glad we’re friends.”
Miles smiled to himself. “Me too.”
They spent a couple hours getting caught up with each other and sitting in a comfortable silence. Miles didn't drive Maya home until after midnight. In the back of her mind she was slowly forming a plan to get Miles to talk to Tristan. He might not have thought that Tristan would forgive him, but Maya knew he would. Tristan liked to think he was able to keep a grudge, but he could be easily changed with one emotional conversation, and Maya intended to make it happen.