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The sun is warm as it touches them, filtering through the cracks in the windows, everything golden, everything light. It's the summer before they start college, before Maya moves to Philadelphia to pursue art and music at a school she can afford and Riley stays in New York to major in human services and women’s studies at Columbia.
They don't talk about it though, something they still need to get better at, because this road trip isn't about running away from anything; it's about saving every last second, every last piece of each other that they can get before they go in different directions for the first time in their lives.
Riley doesn't like thinking about it either. Ever since second grade, Maya's always been there beside her, teaching her how to tie her shoes without doing bunny ears and how to do cartwheels in the pool without getting water up her nose. It's always been RileyandMaya, and then everybody else as an afterthought. She doesn't want to think about the Riley she's going to have to be without Maya around.
“Peanut or regular?” asks Maya from the passenger seat, stealing Riley from her train of thought – which she's thankful for because it was about to get real depressing real fast. Her legs are crossed on the seat, an opened bag of potato chips on her lap, red heart-shaped glasses on her head pushing her hair back from her face. She's holding up two packets of m&ms for Riley to choose from.
“Peanut,” she answers, and catches it clumsily once Maya throws it at her. They've been driving for five hours, and Riley didn't even realize she crossed the border to Pennsylvania until Maya pointed it out to her. She had wanted to do a cross-country road trip, go all the way to Los Angeles, but Riley’s dad would have skinned them both alive and then put their pieces back together to lecture them about the dangers of two women traveling alone in an imperfect world where the only thing men know how to do is take. He's right, of course. But they can still be mad about it.
“Look at us, Riles,” says Maya as she toys with the broken radio, a wide grin on her face that Riley thinks should always be there. The truck they're in was a gift to Maya from Shawn. He found it in a junk yard and gave it to her exactly as it was, rusted and in pieces, and told her that they could rebuild it from scratch together. Maya was ecstatic, obviously, never having a car in her life, always taking public transportation to places too far to walk. And she always had fun whenever she spent time with Shawn so there wasn't any problem there. But it took a while for them to finish it, a year and half of diligent repair, of Maya coming home after school and working on it with Shawn until dark everyday, waking up with skinned knees and callused palms. She didn't mind so much though. “Two young independent women making their own road.”
Riley smiles over at her, steals a couple chips from her bag before Maya swats her hand away. Some pop song breaks through the static of the radio, too scratchy for them to decipher. Maya rolls the window down all the way, hooks her arm over the door and leans her head on the inside of her elbow, watching as the world moves past them in a blur of blue sky and green landscape.
It's just the two of them, and stretched out highways and mile markers. Exactly the way it should be.
*
They stop for gas three hours later. Maya jumps out of the truck eagerly to stretch her taut muscles and Riley does the same. She grimaces as she hears her joints pop, rolls her neck side to side to stretch out the kinks.
Maya's inside buying snacks as Riley fills the tank, leaning against the hood of the truck. It's somewhere in the 80s, the sun sending beads of sweat down her chest and the back of her thighs, but it's nice. Riley's always liked the summer time. It reminds her of pink lemonade and inflated swimming pools and firecrackers in July. Reminds her of barbecue picnics with family and summer camp with Maya and beach trips with her Uncle Josh and coming home with sun-kissed skin and salt on her cheeks. She's always been a romantic; thought of summer as something ripe with opportunities and freedom.
She's just about to go in to find Maya, who's been inside the gas station for fifteen minutes, when Riley sees her walk out with a skip in her step. She makes to go over to her but pauses immediately once she realizes that she isn't alone. Walking next to Maya is a boy, who she knows as a sure fact that he never went to school with them, but Maya is talking to him like he's a long lost friend.
Riley appraises him, eyes dragging up and down from his combat boots to his black leather jacket to his slicked back hair. Doesn't he realize that it's eighty-five degrees outside right now?
She only notices too late that he's looking at her, with a half smirk on his pretty face that Riley can only describe as dangerous.
“No boys,” Riley says to Maya as soon as they stop in front of her. She crosses her arms over her chest, raises her eyebrows, and tries her best to look assertive. Which is kind of hard to do in a daisy print sundress and braids but she tries, she really does. “Remember what we said? No boys .”
“Aw come on, Riles,” Maya objects – or whines, more like. “Charlie's pretty cool and he really needs a ride – just hear me out okay? Poor guy’s had it rough.”
But Riley’s already shaking her head before Maya even finishes her sentence. “Absolutely not. He can be a serial killer for all we know. He’s already lured you in with his lies and good hair and now it's just a matter of time before we’re being kept hostage in a cabin in the middle of the woods praying that he doesn't cut through our bones with a hacksaw next. And those screams you hear down the hall? Screams of the dead cats he kills for breakfast.”
Maya rolls her eyes and turns to the boy, who looks amused more than anything. “She's just being dramatic; she's like that sometimes. She doesn't really believe you're going to cut us into tiny little pieces.”
“Yes I do!”
“It's okay,” he says, and it surprises Riley how nice his voice is. And so is his smile. “I swear I'm not a murderer. My motorcycle just broke down and I could use a ride down to Tennessee – Maya said you'll be passing through there anyway.”
Riley cuts a sharp glance to her supposed best friend. “First name basis with a serial killer already, are we?”
“I swear on my grave that I will not touch you without your approval,” he says seriously, hands up in a silent surrender.
She steps towards him, eyes like daggers through him. “That's what they all say.”
“This could be fun,” Maya contributes brightly and Riley really wants her to shut up. “You like adventures, don't you? This could be one, if you let it.”
It takes half an hour of convincing, of him showing Riley his drivers license, his school ID, all of his social media accounts so she can humanize him – almost asks him for some phone numbers of family or friends she can call for reference, but Maya puts a stop to that almost immediately.
She hates how excited Maya is at all of this, how she slings her arm over Riley’s shoulder and tells her to let loose a little, and that he obviously think she's a little cute with the way he won't stop staring at her. That doesn't make her feel any better. She really doesn't need a potential serial killer thinking she's cute .
“You can sit in the front, Gardner,” says Maya with a cheeky grin as she hops in the backseat after she’s helped him place his motorcycle in the bed of the trunk. Riley glares at her once she hears this, mouths he rides a freaking motorcycle , Maya and makes a point to stare resolutely out the windshield.
But Charlie doesn't get in yet. “Is that okay with you, Riley?” She looks at him then, hesitantly, with a lot of will power, and she can tell that he's nervous. He rubs the back of his neck, shuffles his feet into the dirt, looks up at her under hooded lashes. And she hates that she finds it endearing.
She stares back through the windshield, puts the car into drive, and mumbles, “Fine. But get in before I change my mind.”
His grin puts the sun to shame.
*
Riley’s all too aware of Charlie Gardner sitting next to her in a way that she isn't with Maya. He isn't that tall but his legs take up so much space in the way that all boys do, and he hooks his arm around the car door, drums his fingers on the outside of the truck. He's distracting her, catching her staring at him every so often and then giving her this smirk like he just knows what she's thinking. And he doesn't – so he should just…stop it.
He tries talking to her an hour into the drive, once Maya's fallen asleep and curled in the backseat after a straight forty-five minutes of singing along to old nineties songs. Riley wishes she would wake up soon, act as a buffer between them. Maya's good at this kind of stuff, keeping up conversations without being awkward.
“Listen,” he begins and she holds her breath. “I know you're still not really – comfortable...with me, but I just wanna thank you for giving me a ride and all that. And I do hope I can change your mind about me.”
She doesn't reply, just nods her head, and that must be enough for him because he goes back to staring out the window and drumming his fingers, and one time his knee accidentally bumps into hers and he crosses his legs at the ankles so that doesn't happen again.
But Riley doesn't do so well with silences, unless it's Maya with whom she's the most comfortable, so she clears her throat. “Can you…can you pass me that plastic bag, please? By your feet?”
“Sure,” he agrees easily, leans forward to grab the bag filled with snacks Maya bought at the gas station earlier. Riley ignores how his shirt rides up, ignores the fact that he has back dimples and a couple scars at the bottom of his spine. Charlie leans back again, riffling through the bag. “We've got some beef jerky, trail mix, Cheetos, Famous Amos cookies – “
“Anything, I don't know, more healthy? Like a fruit cup? Granola bar maybe?” she asks, briefly glancing at the bag in his lap before returning her gaze back to the road.
“Nope. But there is a fruit roll up.”
Riley groans. She really shouldn't have trusted Maya to get the snacks, and the next rest stop isn't until a couple more hours away. “Of course. I'll take the trail mix, I guess.”
She hears the bag rustling under his hands, and the crinkle of a plastic wrap. She asks him about his plans as he opens the package for her, pours a combination of nuts and fruits into his hand and offering them for her to take. And obviously Riley doesn't notice how soft his palms are, because you're not supposed to notice these types of things about potential serial killers.
He tells her everything she wants to know. That he's visiting his family, his mom and four sisters, in Nashville. He talks about them like they're the best thing that's ever happened to him, a fondness in his eyes that one can't possibly fake. Riley learns that eight year old Ruby loves hockey and painting her nails six different colors, that nineteen year old Cassie loves black and white films and vintage shops that smell like old people, that four year old Kayla loves to paint the kitchen walls with grape jelly, and that twelve year old Ana loves reading old books about kings and queens and sometimes Charlie gives her some money from his savings to spend on moleskin journals and poetry books.
She's irrationally angry after he tells her this because now she can't really see him as a serial killer anymore but an actual good guy . She can practically hear Maya's told ya ringing in the back of her head.
“So you like…won't kill me then?” she asks tentatively, only half joking, a few minutes after the silence settled around them, Maya's even breathing and the static of the radio the only thing audible in the truck. “Unless you made up all of that stuff about your sisters, which I cannot fathom any reason why you would – unless you're some type of psychopath – or was it a sociopath? I can't really remember the difference right now. But – “
“No I won't kill you," he reassures her, "not unless you're really into that,” and when she looks at him he's got that amused smile on his face again, like she's just so funny to him.
And then she just relaxes into her seat, and it feels a little like relief. She makes him tell her stories about his family, about the crazy stuff that's bound to happen with a boy in a house full of girls. When she asks about a dad, he changes the subject, asks her about her family instead. He does it so easily, so effortlessly, that Riley doesn't even notice she's talking about herself now until a few minutes later. But she doesn't ask him about it again.
*
Maya wakes up when they're in Washington, the truck parked right outside of a motel in the middle of the night. Riley's arguing with Charlie because he said he would pay for the motel rooms since the girls are driving him, but Riley’s too nice of a person to let him do that.
“Just let him pay, Riles, Jesus, he's offering ,” Maya pipes up, voice rough and muggy with sleep. She sits up in the backseat and cracks her neck with a satisfied sigh.
Riley grumbles an agreement and they get two rooms: one for Charlie and another for Riley and Maya. They buy real food that isn't candy bars or chips from a fast food joint across the street, sharing fries and chicken tenders. Riley gets a little jealous at Maya, which surprises her since she didn't think she even cared that much, when she sees how easily she talks with Charlie, even though Riley knows Maya's like that with everyone. Charlie laughs a lot more with her, and Riley finds herself desperate for his attention.
She doesn't even realize how easily she gets it, how perceptive Charlie is to her that all it takes is a clear of the throat from Riley and she's got his full attention.
In the morning, they get right back on the road, with Maya behind the wheel this time. She turns the music up, rolls the windows down, and chugs down the lukewarm motel coffee like it’s her lifeline. Riley’s in the passenger’s seat this time, with Charlie in the back. She flips the mirror down at one point to reapply her Chapstick and she catches his eye in the backseat. They smile at each other, roll their eyes at Maya’s exaggerated singing to some awful country song that no one likes, and – really, when has Riley Matthews ever been one to say no to an opportunity anyway?
They get to the next state faster than they anticipated, mostly due to the fact that Maya likes to test fate by speeding until Riley can hear her teeth chattering in her skull.
Charlie leans forward in his seat and Riley gets worried for his life. “Does she want us to die?” he says into her ear.
His breath fans across her skin and she doesn't shiver. “Probably. I wouldn't put it past her. She's had a death wish ever since she willingly jumped off the tallest monkey bars when we were in third grade because Billy Ross dared her to.”
“If I die, tell my family I love them and I went out in a blaze of glory.” She feels his arms circle around her head rest and she has to tell her heart to shut up. It doesn't get the message.
“And if I die, then I'm taking you with me because I don't really think I can handle death very well if I'm being honest.” Riley looks behind her to see that he's grinning at her, all teeth, and eyelids crinkling at the corners. She doesn't think she's ever seen a smile like that, at least never directed at her.
“I got your back,” replies Charlie. She feels his fingers at the base of her neck, doesn't say anything about it, and he stays like that for a while. And she doesn't think about how disappointed she feels when he leans back into his seat twenty minutes later.
A few hours later they stop at a roadside café somewhere in Virginia with wooden floorboards and round tables. Riley goes to the restroom and calls her dad to assure him that they're both okay, and Maya texts her mother a quick haven't been killed yet but will update u if that changes and orders them coffee and scones.
Maya leans back against her chair, drapes her arms casually across the back and stares at Charlie sitting on the other side of her. He takes a sip of his coffee, black with one sugar, and stares back. She tries to look intimidating, tries to communicate to him in some way that Riley will always be hers and that if he does anything to hurt her she'd be forced to use her three weeks of jujitsu lessons on him.
He nods once anyway, like he understands her, and maybe he does. Riley comes back with a smile on her face, gratefully takes the proffered coffee from Maya’s hand and sits in the chair that Charlie pulled out for her. “Dad says hi. Says he's glad you're doing okay, not driving too fast or doing anything illegal.”
Maya grins unabashedly. “Still got time for the second one later. Hope you told your pops not to worry.”
“He does anyway.” If Riley sits a little too close to Charlie, if her knee brushes against his under the table, if her shoulder presses against his, then that's just her business. Maya sees it though, smiles into the palm of her hand and rolls her eyes exasperatedly.
“Where to next?” asks Charlie. There's a live band playing on the small stage set up at the front of the shop, some acoustic duo singing about love and loss. Riley's just about to answer Charlie until she sees Maya staring off at something, her lip tucked between her teeth, eyes lit up with – something . She's never seen Maya look at something (someone?) like that before, so she follows her line of sight, stops when it lands on some boy with a flannel shirt and a guitar strapped to his back.
“You know him, Maya?” she asks even though she knows the answer. He's watching the band play, a contented smile on his face, completely unaware of the wolf encased in human skin staring at him with her tongue pressed against her teeth. He's not the type of boy Riley would assume that Maya would go for – someone like Charlie, yes, maybe, with his leather jacket and crooked smile. But not him, the boy with the blue eyes and cowboy boots. He looks like someone she herself would have fallen in love with in another life, when she'd been younger and more naïve. He's too perfect, in a way that makes it kind of hard to look at him.
“No, but I want to,” she replies without looking away from him. Riley learned a long time ago that what Maya wants, Maya gets. She cups her hands around her mouth, lets out a short whistle. “Hey, cowboy!”
About half the shop, including him, turns around to look but Maya's got her eyes locked on his. His eyebrows shoot up, eyes widened, and he points at himself as if to say who, me?
Maya nods. Yeah, you.
She waves him over and he obeys. Riley watches this in fascinated horror. He walks over hesitantly, never taking his eyes off Maya, who has this huge shit-eating grin on her face that if he knew any better – which he clearly doesn't – he'd run away, fast.
“Something wrong, ma’am?” his accent is thick and sweet, like maple syrup, and Riley wonders if maybe this isn't his home.
“Hi, I'm Maya,” she introduces herself, pats the seat next to her so he can sit. Riley is continually surprised when he actually listens. Again . She glances at Charlie to make sure that she isn't crazy and hallucinating all of it, but he's watching carefully too. “And you're really cute.”
He grins now, overly pleased, and honestly Riley can't really blame him. Maya's gorgeous, especially in this moment, with her hair in wild curls framing her face, eyes like a dusky blue sky, and cherry red lips like temptation. She's a five foot nothing pixie with spikes on her jacket and holes in her jeans but one smile from her and boys would follow her into the seven circles of hell. This one is no different. Except for the very important fact that Maya seemed to take a quick liking to him.
“I'm Lucas,” he says, settling into the chair more comfortably, rubbing his palms over his jeans. “Lucas Friar. You don't seem like you're from around here.”
“We're not,” she says. “My girl and I are on a road trip. Picked up a stray.” She gives Charlie a grin, one that tells him she means no harm. “Where are you from, cowboy? Long way away from the horse ranch?”
And he tells him his story. A Texas boy trying to make it to the city that never sleeps with just a few quarters in his pockets and his guitar. He's hitchhiked across states, hopped on the back of trains, stole a kid’s bike in South Carolina before the tires popped on the highway so he had to walk six and a half hours to the next bus station. He wants to play music with his life, that's all, and he'd do anything to be able to.
Riley's never seen Maya look so interested in someone else’s stories – she either falls asleep or doesn't even pretend to pay attention, but Lucas has her entire focus. Someone calls his name on stage, and he smiles at them, gives them a nod and a lingering look at Maya before he makes his way to the platform. When Lucas strums the first chord, it's like something stills in Maya.
“This is weird,” she whispers to Charlie, leans in a little closer than absolutely necessary. “Maya is so…what's the word? Interested . In someone. It's weird . It's freaking me out a little.”
“Why?” asks Charlie, with a wry grin. “Because you're not the sole focus of her attention now?”
Although it may have been brass for someone she had met only the day before, she can't really deny the truth of it. Maya's never shown any interest in anyone; one night stands were kind of her expertise during high school, only going on dates because she felt like she had to. And maybe that made Riley feel safe, knowing that Maya would never leave her for someone else if she didn't have anyone else.
Riley hums in reply, sips her coffee, stares at the back of his hand that's resting on the table. She wants to smooth the tips of her fingers over his veins there, wants to feel his hands on her so badly it's almost an ache.
“So there's supposed to be a meteor shower tomorrow night,” Charlie says to her a little bit later. “Lots of stars, big open field, very romantic. Think you'd be up for it?”
Riley smiles to herself because - he's the type of guy to wear steel-toed boots and stick his head out the window to curse out shitty drivers on the road, but he's also the type of guy to sing his baby sister to sleep when she has nightmares and take a girl that he likes stargazing.
“Yeah,” answers Riley, hiding her grin in her shoulder. She thinks she could get used to the way he looks at her like that. “Yeah, I'd like that very much.”
*
Of course Maya convinces Lucas to ride with them because of course she does. He's more than happy to come along, reassures them that he’s okay with taking a couple detours before getting to New York, that they could drop him off in Alabama because he knows a kid from Greenwich Village that's vacationing there, Zay he said his name was, who could help him out.
He strums his guitar in the backseat while Maya sings, and Riley’s relieved a little that she doesn't have to listen to the same three songs on the radio. Maya finds that she likes to tease him a lot, about his accent and his hometown, but Lucas just takes it all in stride. Riley guesses it has something to do with the way he looks at her when she isn't looking back.
It's dark by the time they hit North Carolina, and Lucas has his head on Maya's shoulder as she connects his freckles like constellations on his arm with blue ink. He's drifting in and out of consciousness and Riley sees a soft smile on his face through the rearview mirror as he watches her fingers flit across his skin. It's an odd thing to look at those two sitting next to each other, how startlingly different they are. But then Riley looks to her right at Charlie and wonders if it isn't so odd at all.
Charlie’s been to this part of North Carolina before so he tells them where to go, and the four of them check into a cheap motel by a lake just as the setting sun paints the sky a cotton candy. They all decide to share one room together, the boys on the pull out couch and the girls on the bed.
After scavenging the small town for food and tasting the salt in the air as they race each other along the beach, they drag themselves back into their little room with sand between their toes and happiness carving dimples in Riley’s cheeks.
When everything is quiet, Maya takes Riley’s hand under the covers and turns to face her.
“Can you feel it, Maya?” she asks her in a whisper after sneaking a glance at Charlie on the other side of the room. “Everything is changing. Really fast.”
“Yeah,” answers Maya, with a half smile on her face. Sometimes she thinks Maya is too old for her age, much more mature than she is. Maybe it has to do with all that she carries over her shoulders; she must be so tired. “You think you can keep up?”
“If I have you, yeah,” Riley replies truthfully.
“Hey, you're stuck with me, honey,” Maya assures her, with only a little of her usual dryness. “No matter where we are in the world, no matter who we’re with. You run, I run, remember? Always.”
Riley thinks back to the tree house in her backyard, to the bright-eyed little girl with blonde pigtails and candy colored bracelets, to the it's you and me against the world, Riley. It feels something like comfort.
You and me, huh?
Yeah. It's a funny kind of thing, being eight and thinking the whole world is already against you . We don't need anyone else if we have each other.
But, Maya, what about my parents?
Someday you won't need them anymore. You can still love them, but loving someone and needing them are different things.
I don't understand how that works. She still thinks that Maya understood a lot more than she did at their age, that she was always tripping over her feet to catch up with her.
You will, I'll show you. Riley remembers apple cheeks and a wide smile.
Okay. I believe you. Wanna race to the end of the street?
Sure. Maya points to Riley’s chest where her heart beats underneath, and then at her own. You run, I run.
I’m gonna beat you. I'm gonna go all the way to the end before you and I'm gonna win.
How can you do that when I'm already ahead of you?
“Us against the world,” Riley says to Maya then in the stillness. “But it's okay to have some people on our side though, right? The world’s a pretty big place.”
“Sure,” replies Maya sleepily. Riley sees her eyelids struggling to stay open, her hand going limp in her own. “Cute boys are always welcome.”
She smiles. College is going to be a scary place without Maya, but she thinks, for the first time, that she'll be okay.
*
Charlie drives them to the lake the next day and they lie on the grass and see who can skip rocks the farthest. Before that, they spent the morning walking around the small town with their arms linked together, getting ice cream from this hole-in-the-wall parlor and visiting antique shops filled with things they'll never buy.
Riley tugs on his sleeve then when she catches Maya and Lucas kissing lazily in the dirt with hands on skin, deciding to allow them their privacy.
“I used to be really good at climbing trees,” she tells him as she grips her feet into the bark of an oak tree. She grunts when her foot slips and blushes when she feels a hand on her spine, steadying her in place. “Thanks.”
“I got your back,” he says. “Keep going, put your foot there - that's it.”
Riley makes it to the second branch - she's not quite ready to go all the way up to the top yet. She swings her legs as she watches Charlie swipe his jacket off, clad only in a black tee shirt and black denim jeans. He flashes a grin up at her when he grips the tree, finding his footing easily and landing on the same branch as her. She scoots over to give him more room.
“So here's a funny story,” he begins without looking at her, but he swings his legs in time with her own. “When my dad was alive, he used to take me on all these trips – hiking, biking, fishing. You know, all those stereotypical Dad things, because he thought it would make me more ‘manly’ or some bullshit like that. He was very into hyper-masculinity, which is to say was kind of difficult in a house full of girls who half of them liked stereotypically feminine things. He didn't want me to turn out, god forbid, gay or whatever.”
“That’s a pretty crappy way of thinking,” she mutters. She remembers ninth grade, remembers Maya kissing this girl from math class and getting a black eye for it, remembers Maya trying out for the basketball team but the coach laughing right in her face because the cheerleading try outs are next week, sweetie in that condescending tone that made Riley want to tear his eyes out.
Charlie laughs humorlessly. “Yeah. You're telling me.”
She doesn't know if she should but she reaches over and takes his hand in hers anyway. It feels nice, his thumb rubbing mindless circles on her skin.
“He took me to this park one day when I turned ten,” he continues. There's a breeze that rustles the leaves, brushes his hair away from his face. “Told me that he's gonna teach me karate because all boys need to learn how to fight. In his own twisted way, I know he was trying to protect me. A lot of kids picked on me when I was younger for being too sensitive, for liking ‘girly’ things. Fucked up reasons like that. So he didn't want me to come home with a black eye and my underwear over my head, you know?”
Riley nods, though she can't tell him she understands because she doesn't. She didn't grow up like he did. Her parents were kind and understanding, taught her that that gender isn't binary, that it's okay to be a girl and like boy things.
“So every Saturday he would take me to the park to practice, but I hated it. I hated it so much that I whenever it was time to go I would climb the tree outside of my neighbor’s house, all the way to the highest branch, and thought maybe he would forget. Maybe he would disappear. But every time, he would come get me, drag me down from the tree, and I'd scrape my back on the bark, and he wouldn’t care. Told me to take the bloodshed like a man.”
Charlie lifts his shirt to show her the tiny scars on his back, all the way from his shoulder blades to the bottom of his spine. She hisses through her teeth. All the scars are healed now, never really were that deep, but that doesn't matter. He shouldn't have any in the first place. But, as Riley is discovering over and over again, they don't live in a perfect world and shitty things always happen to people that don't deserve it.
When he drops his shirt back down, he turns to her with a wry grin. “I didn't tell you that so you can feel sorry for me.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because,” he says, “that's what strangers are for, right? They’re the best at keeping secrets, only staying in your life for a short period of time, and then they're gone, taking your secrets with them.”
Riley knows he's right. That once the meteor shower is over, they're going to go right back on the road to Tennessee where she'll see the last of Charlie Gardner. Three days ago, she wouldn't have even cared. She wonders why it feels so much like a loss now.
“So I guess it's my turn for a secret?” she says after clearing her throat.
He shrugs. “Only if you're willing.”
She looks back at him, his hair a mess of dark, his lips perpetually curved into a half smirk, and she wants to tell him everything. So she does.
Charlie tells them there’s an abandoned church a couple minutes walking distance and Maya jumps at the chance to go, tugging Lucas by the hand. Riley and Charlie are still sitting in the tree as the sun descends, sharing secrets and memories.
“We're gonna stay here,” Riley yells down at her. She watches Maya pull out a bag of weed she's been saving, dangling it in front of Lucas’ face with a dangerous glint in her eye, a mischievous smile on her lips. “Don't wanna miss the shower.”
“Okay, weirdos,” she calls back. “If we're not back in an hour assume we're either dead or still fucking. Also, I stole the condom from Charlie’s wallet so if you were planning on using it then my bad.”
“You stole my what?” Charlie exclaims, patting his back pocket to pull out a worn-through leather wallet.
Maya shrugs. “You lost it the minute I met you, buddy, sorry.”
Riley sighs something long-suffering. “Maya, please don't have sex in a church. Where is your decency.”
But she just grins and sticks her hand in Lucas’ back pocket as he swings an arm around her shoulders. “Relax, Riles, your boyfriend said it was an abandoned church. Therefore, Jesus has already left the building.”
She doesn't see a point in arguing with Maya, so she just watches the two as they run towards the direction Charlie supplied them. The air seems to shift, suddenly, now that it's just the two of them. He's still holding her hand and she doesn't want him to let go yet.
“Are you gonna stay in Nashville?” she asks him. He told her before that he lives in Pennsylvania, which pleased Riley because that meant he was only one state away from her and he'd be in the same state as Maya. If she wanted, she could visit both of them.
“Only until school starts,” he answers and she thinks he can see right through her. She hates how transparent she is. “You know, my uncle lives in New York. Not in New York City, but close. I can visit him during breaks sometimes.”
She brings their linked hands up to her mouth and smiles against his fingers. She sees something white flash too quickly across the sky in her peripheral. “You think so?”
“Only if I'm really wanted.”
She's not about to miss this opportunity. If Maya’s taught her anything, it's that it's okay to go after what you want, and it's okay to be scared, but you do it anyway. So she grabs the collar of Charlie’s shirt with her free hand and crashes her lips against his. It's too fast at first, too much teeth among all the excitement, but he settles a hand at the base of her neck and slows them down until all Riley can feel is his mouth, soft and languid, on hers and his fingers through her hair and she's kissing him and kissing him until she can't breathe, until she can feel it in the pit of her stomach, until it's a good kind of ache.
She’s kissed boys before, boys she didn't like, boys she thought she loved. But this is different. Kissing Charlie feels a little like freedom. Feels like the moment she opens the curtains above her bay window in the mornings to let the light flood into her room. Feels like putting something back together again after it's been broken. Feels like she's alive, electricity buzzing underneath her skin. And she thinks that, if she wanted him to, he would pull down the sky with his hands to bring the moon closer to her. All she would have to do is ask.
*
It's quiet in the truck, the stars prickling holes into the night sky as they pass through Mississippi. Maya's sitting in the passenger’s seat again, her red heart sunglasses tucked into the collar of her shirt, a subtle kind of sadness in the way she leans her head against the window.
They dropped Charlie off a while ago, Riley leaving him with closed-mouth kisses on his cheeks and her phone number on the inside of his wrist. Maya said her goodbyes the only way she knew how: a slap on the back, a salute, and a “here's to looking at you, kid” because she's really a closet dork.
But Riley knows she was sad to see Lucas go. She saw Maya slip a folded up piece of paper into his pocket while she had her head resting on his chest, and in turn he placed a lingering kiss on top of her hair, so sweet it left a sharp sting between Riley’s rib cage. How cruel the world is, to bring someone you know you could love one day into your life at the wrong time.
“You okay, peaches?” she asks, breaking the silence.
Maya lifts her head up and gives her a smile. “I'm always okay, honey. It's just bittersweet, that's all.”
“Hey, maybe we can pick up some other strays along the way,” she suggests brightly as to cheer her up a little.
“Sure,” Maya agrees, but she knows what she's thinking because she's thinking it too: it's not the same. She left a piece of herself with a boy with a soft heart and too many hard edges.
“Hey,” Riley addresses as Maya starts to shuffle through some CDs. She's wearing Lucas’ flannel, the one he wore the first time they met him, and it's too big at the sleeves so she's shoved it all the way up her arms. “You and me, right?”
She doesn't know when she'll see Charlie Gardner again, but she hopes the world will bring him to her soon if he ever wants his secrets back. And she thinks she's starting to get it finally. She doesn't need Charlie, just like Maya doesn't need Lucas, but she thinks she could want to love him some day.
“Yeah, kid,” says Maya as she laces their fingers together. “You and me.”