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It’s almost too easy to sneak into Topanga’s. The door is locked, sure, but Topanga is so preoccupied entertaining the guests upstairs that she doesn’t notice Maya grabbing the keys. Mr. Matthews doesn’t see her doing it either, and she slips out of the apartment when Riley is busy gazing up at Lucas and Lucas is busy gazing right back. It hurts to realize that no one notices her, not even the people she loves and considers family, and something heavy settles in her chest. The heaviness mostly melts away once she’s in Topanga’s café by herself for a few seconds.
(Mostly.)
She only turns on one of the lights so half of the café stays shrouded in darkness, and she flops onto the couch in the shadows. She closes her eyes and exhales, letting the loudness of the party fade into the couch cushions.
Sometimes, all Maya needs is quiet. The world has a habit of becoming too much, and when it feels like everyone is shouting right into her brain and she can’t hear her own thoughts and it’s like being swallowed by a wall of noise—that’s when she hides. Her hiding places are never the same. One time she hid on the roof of her apartment complex in the dead of winter, because the stars were out and the stars never yell. Another time she hid in a tree in the park across the street from school, because she always went higher than anyone else would dare to chase her. Another time she wandered into the art classroom at lunchtime when no one else was there, and she ran her fingers over the paintbrushes until the bell rang.
This time, she hides in Topanga’s. The Christmas party upstairs had become too much—the music was repetitive and way too jolly, and there were so many people cramped into such a small space that she could hardly breathe. The worst part, though, was the fact that even though there were so many people, she couldn’t find anyone who wanted to be with her. Farkle and Smackle were busy sitting on the couch together, leaning close to hear each other over the noise; Zay was talking up anyone who would listen; Lucas and Riley were deep into a conversation, and every so often Riley would grab onto Lucas’ arm; Josh was chatting with Cory, the two of them laughing loud enough to be heard over the music; and Topanga was fluttering around the party and checking on guests, but often gravitating back to Auggie to see how he’s doing.
There wasn’t really any space for Maya, so she left.
And she knows that Christmas is supposed to be a time of happiness and togetherness, but somehow she always ends up feeling bitter during the holiday season. When her dad was still around, Christmas was plagued with fights between her parents and gifts that were, frankly, pretty lame. And then Maya would see Riley’s impressive haul and burn with jealousy. Then after her dad left, Christmas was just two weeks straight of hollow smiles between her and her mother while they pretended they didn’t feel his absence, and more lame gifts. As time went on, Maya began to appreciate any gift she received (even if it didn’t compare to whatever Riley got), but Christmastime had already been irreversibly tainted by that point.
She stares up at the ceiling of Topanga’s café for a while, trying not to settle on any particular thought but circling around a couple unpleasant ones anyways. Things are really bad when even just the thoughts in her own head start to feel loud, and soon the quiet café seems to be pulsing with the darkest thoughts that Maya’s brain can dredge up. She flips onto her stomach so she can press her face into the couch cushions, and she buries herself so deep that she almost doesn’t hear the door chime open.
But only almost.
She sits up quickly to see who’s at the door, briefly hoping it’s not a customer who saw the lights on and wanted some coffee cake, and her heart skips when she locks eyes with him.
“Lucas?” she says. “What are you doing down here?”
He stuffs his hands in his pockets and smiles faintly. “I came down to ask what you’re doing down here.”
“How did you even know where I went?”
There’s the slightest hint of a blush on his cheeks when he says, “I saw you take Topanga’s keys before you left.”
Maya tries to keep her gaze even with Lucas’, but she finds she can’t, not with the knowledge that Lucas was watching out for her all that time upstairs. When she was sure she was invisible in a sea of people, he was watching. And then he decided to follow.
It takes her a second to find her footing again, but she eventually coughs out, “What happened to Riley?” Her thoughts travel back to how close they seemed twenty minutes ago, and how Riley kept touching his arm and how he didn’t stop her.
He just shrugs cryptically. “She’s got other people to talk to.” He raises an eyebrow. “But you still haven’t told me why you’re not upstairs with everyone else.”
She holds his eyes for a second longer, then flops back onto the couch. “I’m relaxing,” she tells him.
“Oh, yeah?” he says and she hears his feet shuffle closer to her couch. “You couldn’t relax at the party?”
She taps her chin like she’s thinking, even though the answer is already behind her teeth. “Nope. Too many people, too much noise—just too much.”
Lucas drops down onto the cushion right beside her head. “I get it. I remember needing to be by myself in the quiet a lot after I first moved to New York.”
Maya nods, thinking back to her time down South. “It’s a lot louder in New York than Texas.”
“And just the fact that there’s always other people around was really hard for me to wrap my head around,” he agrees. “In Texas, you could walk for miles and not meet another soul. That’s impossible here.”
“Do you miss it?” she asks, genuinely curious.
“Yeah, all the time,” he admits. He gets a faraway look on his face as he continues, “I miss opening my window and not hearing traffic, but cicadas in the grass and sometimes frogs in the marshes. I miss the smell of fresh air, because it definitely doesn’t smell as sweet here. And I miss the wide open fields, where it felt like you could just walk for hours and still just find more field.” His eyes come back to focus right on Maya’s face, and he smiles. “But I’m still glad I’m here.”
Her cheeks threaten to burn but he looks up at the ceiling before they do, and she exhales. She tries to work out whether he meant he’s glad to be in New York, or if he’s glad to be here in the café, with her. And while she’s at it, why is he here beside her when he could be doing literally anything else with anyone else? There’s a whole party full of people upstairs that are probably way more interesting, and yet he left them all to sit quietly next to her. What makes her so special?
She rolls these questions around on her tongue, but she never finds the courage to open her mouth and ask. It’s too nice sitting with him like this, without either of them having an expectation of the other, and she’s afraid he’ll leave if she prods too much. But curiosity is pretty demanding, and she’s just about to cut her losses and ask anyways when he speaks up first.
“Why do you like to paint?” he asks.
The question catches her off guard. There are so many reasons she likes to paint—it’s a powerful thing to create something from nothing, and she loves that something beautiful can some from someone so flawed, and she likes how each stroke is different and creates something entirely new. But one reason keeps getting caught in her throat, and there isn’t any way around it.
“Painting makes me quiet on the inside,” she says, finding the strength in her voice as she realizes how deeply true it is. “Sometimes the world gets too loud, but sometimes my own head gets too loud, and painting is the only thing that makes the noise stop. It’s not like I can just walk away from my own head like I can walk away from a party.”
Lucas taps his finger on her forehead. “We wouldn’t want that anyways.”
“Sometimes I wish I could,” Maya says, sighing. It starts out as a sigh of exasperation, but when Lucas takes that finger and runs it through her hair, it becomes a sigh of contentment. Of longing. Of something more.
“I don’t wish that,” he says, very quietly. “Then you wouldn’t be Maya.”
She’s almost afraid to look up as Lucas keeps running that finger through her hair, but she does and he’s smiling down at her. It’s her new favourite smile—a little bit nervous, a little bit shy, but mostly confident and happy and true. This smile fills her with a little bit more confidence, and she pushes her head onto his lap so he can reach her hair even better. He doesn’t waste a second and starts to weave his fingers through her hair, following her waves until the very tips and twirling them around his fingers, like he’s tying ribbons of blonde around himself.
Maya keeps her cheek pressed into Lucas’ leg as he explores the folds of her hair, and the moment is peaceful enough that she closes her eyes for second. She makes sure to burn the moment into her mind like she’s being branded with it—she doesn’t want to forget the shivers trailing down her spine at his touch, or the scratchiness of his jeans on her cheek, or how sometimes his fingers pause like he’s taking it all in and that he can’t quite believe it either.
Once the memory is firmly burned into place, she turns over so that she’s looking up at Lucas from his lap. His fingers keep twirling themselves around the tips of her hair.
“I have a question,” Maya says strongly, hoping to sound like she isn’t about to lose her nerve.
He looks amused. “What is it?”
“Why did you follow me down here?” she asks.
His hands still for a second, but the expression that stretches across is his face is familiar and warm—that’s the only way Maya can describe it. She can almost feel the heat from it making her own cheeks feel toasts as he looks down at her, and meets her eye, and keeps meeting her eye.
(She doesn’t want to think about how the word warm always makes her think about the campfire, and the heat from the flames, and the heat of his fingers on her cheek, and the heat from his breath when it was so close to her face. She doesn’t want to think about that at all.)
“I like being with you,” he answers, quite simply. “And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m okay now,” she says to cover up how fast her pulse is racing. (She’s definitely thinking about it.)
“Glad to hear it,” he laughs.
And then his eyes dart down to her lips and back up to her eyes, and she might be imagining it but it feels like he’s starting to lean down to reach her and she starts to sit up to reach him and she’s starting to really think something might happen, they might happen—
And then the door chimes open again.
The two of them scramble to untangle themselves from each other, but there’s a look in Josh’s eye when they sit up that suggests he knows exactly what he stumbled into.
“Hi, Josh,” Maya says, a little breathless even though all she’s done is lie down for the past half an hour.
“Hey, Maya,” he says, his voice charred. “Lucas.”
Lucas nods at Josh, but he doesn’t say anything. He does clear his throat, though.
“What’s up?” Maya asks, and she can feel herself trying too hard to make it all seem normal.
“I just came to see what you were doing in the café.” He shoots a meaningful glance at Lucas, and then shakes his head. “But, um, I’ll leave you guys alone.”
Lucas and Maya look at each other.
“We don’t—”
“We weren’t—”
Josh holds up a hand. “No, it’s okay.” He doesn’t exactly sound okay, but he’s already talking again before anyone can interrupt. “I’ll talk to you later, Maya.”
With that, Josh walks back out of the café. He leaves just as suddenly as he arrived, and it honestly makes Maya’s head spin a little bit. She’s not sure she’s ready to look back at Lucas yet, but from the corner of her eye she can see him ducking his head and it fills her with a little bit of courage. At least he feels the same awkwardness. So she turns to face him again, and they both just stare at each other for what feels like a long time.
This is the second time they’ve almost kissed, and the moment definitely feels heavy, like it’s loaded with so many possibilities and any of them could end in disaster. It would probably be stupid if they kissed now, especially since they aren’t caught up in the moment anymore, but they could still do it. There’s no one else interrupting them, so they’re only keeping themselves apart, but the longer they just sit there in silence the less likely it gets that anything’s going to happen. The inevitability slips away.
Eventually, Maya just decides to end the uncertainty.
“Should we go back upstairs?” she suggests.
Lucas licks his lips and nods. “Yeah, sure, that sounds good.”
But neither of them gets up off the couch immediately, and it feels like there’s still something lingering in the air between them. Something unresolved but persistent, like something is pounding inside them in tandem and it won’t go away until they do something about it.
Maya looks back up at Lucas, who looks back down at her, and she could see it: grabbing Lucas’ shirt, pulling him to her lips, kissing him, and dealing with whatever comes after that. But there’s still something stopping her, and it feels like no matter how long she stands on this precipice today, she won’t take the final leap. Maybe she would’ve earlier when he was playing with her hair and it felt like they were the only people in the world, but now she’s been reminded of the other people in her life.
Like Riley—she doesn’t want to hurt Riley, who still likes Lucas, too.
And it’s that thought that finally pushes Maya off the couch and out of the café and back up to the party, and when she looks back to check that Lucas is following her she tries not to notice the disappointment written across his face, or the pang in her chest that reminds her this was the closest they’ve come to finally doing something since Texas. She shakes her head to banish the thought as they reach the Matthews’ apartment, but as she pushes open the door she still finds herself wondering if one day they’ll actually take the last step.
She feels a little guilty as she hopes for this right when she sits down next to Riley, but she can’t pretend that she doesn’t hope for it. And maybe it’s stupid or childish or dangerous, but since when is hope ever logical or safe?
So she gets through the rest of the party feeling like she’s being torn in two, her thoughts split between the loudness of the party and the quietness of the café.