Overview: In the middle of her freshman year of high school Riley Matthew’s mother gets a once in a lifetime opportunity to run her firms London Office. Almost three years later the Matthew’s family moves back to New York and Riley comes to realize everything has changed in the time she’s been gone. Everything except her feelings for a certain green-eyed boy.
Author’s Notes: Only 2 chapters left after this one! Warning: this one has a lot of dialogue lol.
Chapter 14: “Growth.”
Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13
Word Count: 3,020
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Riley was hoping her parents were right. That maybe, just maybe, getting some fresh air or having a 'change of scenery' would do her some good. But the thing is, she's heard that exact line twice in her life before. Once, when they were deciding to move to London and again after her "scandal" when they decided it was time to move back home. It was like every time something big happened they moved her away. It's no wonder she has a habit of running from her problems.
It was already their sixth day in Texas and after an unfortunate encounter with Farkle she somehow managed to spend all of her free time outside, isolating herself from everyone else. Whatever master plan Zay had wasn’t working. Everyone was tense all the time and the casual conversation that used to flow between them so easily was now tainted by what wasn't being said.
As she stood out in the backyard of Pappy Joe's ranch she thought of everything that’s happened to her since her first move back during freshman year. She's made new friends, lost her old ones, fell for someone new, lost her new friends... lost herself. It was a lot to handle. There was still so much on her mind, so much that her friends didn’t know that she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud just yet. Especially to Lucas.
"Enjoying the view?" The husky voice jarred her out of her thoughts. She was surprised to see Pappy Joe standing next to her. She figured someone would eventually come see why she was spending all her time away from the group she just didn’t think it would be him.
"It's weird, it all looks the same but it, it feels different." She half smiles, still looking out over the acres of land.
"That's not weird at all." He reassures her, "It's like coming home after a long trip. It looks like your home but it doesn’t quite feel like it. Personally, I like to think it's because of growth."
"Growth?" She scrunches her eyebrows up at the older man.
"Everyday you grow more and growing puts perspective on things. You might feel one way about something but then something happens that forces you to learn, to grow, suddenly you no longer have the same feelings about it." He glances at her. "You feel differently being here because you're not the same person you were the last time you visited."
"I'm not sure how I feel about that. " She laughs weakly, running her hand through her hair. "Guess I'm tired of change..."
"Change is a part of life Miss Matthews but you know, no matter how much you change or who you become, this place will always stay the same. That I can promise you."
"Riley." Isadora cuts in. The teen and the older man look to see the petite ravenhaired girl standing off to the side. "Sorry to interrupt but we're all getting ready for the bonfire if you wanna..."
Riley nods and turns her attention back to Pappy Joe for a brief moment. "Thanks for the talk. I really needed it."
He chuckles and nods, not saying much else as the two girls tuck back into his house.
--
The night brought such a silence that the crackle of the fire was all that could be heard. More deafening than the usual silence that followed them around lately. Maybe it had something to do with the history of the bonfire. Every year it was something different. Like the fire brings something out in all of them.
When the sun went down, the fire became bright and vivid, as though someone had shined a spotlight on it. The colors were brilliant reds, oranges, and faint yellows. It was hard to be apprehensive when looking at something so beautiful. As Riley's eyes flickered over to Lucas she realized she knew that feeling all too well.
He had barely said two words to her. Aside from his instinctive "hey" when they first arrived and a mumbled "ready?" before they left for the bonfire, conversation was a no go. Not that she expected any different. After his trip to Philly, conversation was kept to a minimum.
"Alright, that’s it." Zay shakes his head, demanding the attention of the group. "Six days. Six fucking days of awkward silences and mumbled conversations. I've had enough." His eyes glance over everyone before landing on Lucas. "We're all going to get everything out in the open once and for all - whether you guys like it or not."
Silence.
"Okay." He breathes harshly, rubbing his palms together. "I'll start."
"I'm not sure what I thought would happen when Riley moved." He begins, the mention of her name causing the brunette to look up at him. "But I sure as hell never would've guessed this... I mean look at us! We all have our little side friendships within the group but when we all get together it's like were strangers."
He takes a deep breath before speaking again, "For awhile it was like everything was back to normal, what the fuck happened?"
"Riley happened." Farkle says bluntly, unable to look her in the eye. "Everything was fine before she came back..."
Riley cringed at his words. She could tell by the look on his face that he regretted it the moment it left his mouth but that didn’t make it hurt any less. She knew why he was being so cold towards her although to everyone else it must've seemed so out of left field. She looks over to Lucas who has yet to look up from his hands.
"Maybe it's time to face the facts that none of us would even be friends if it weren't for Riley." Zay looks around. "I mean, that proved to be true the moment she moved away. She brought us together and without her there is no us. I mean, look around. We have nothing in common and we've all changed. We're six very different people, it shouldn’t have worked but it did."
"What, so because she's back now we have to try and force a friendship again?" Farkle asks, looking over the group.
"You've got some nerve." Maya scoffs, shaking her head in disbelief. "If I remember correctly she's the one who got you and Smackle back together. Without her you two idiots would still be avoiding each other. How about being fucking thankful."
"Says the girl who can't even function without her around." Farkle snaps back. "Does she even know about all the crazy shit you did when she was in London, replacing us?"
"Replacing you?" Riley pipes up but they continue to talk over her.
"Fuck you Farkle." Maya flips him off. "You don’t get to pass judgment on my life. Not when no one gave you the time of day when Riley wasn't around. She made you likeable."
"The same could be said about you." Smackle chimes in, rolling her eyes.
"Excuse me?" Maya glares at the bespectacled girl.
"In layman's terms? You're a bitch."
"Understatement of the year." Lucas says under his breath, now staring straight ahead.
"You got something to say Huckleberry?"
"Guys please..." Riley tries to cut in but her words are barely a whisper.
"You're fucked up. You kissed me to get back at Riley. That's a pretty bitchy thing to do if you ask me."
"Oh because you're Mr. Perfect right?" The blonde snarls, "Poor little moral compass Lucas Friar."
"You're the most fucked up of us all." Farkle says, now directing his anger towards Lucas. "No wonder Riley rejected you again."
"What the fuck is your problem man?" Zay snaps, stepping in before Lucas could.
"My problem? What's your problem?"
"Right now it's you." Zay retorts.
"Of course you get to act all high and mighty because you're the only one she stayed friends with--."
"Enough already!" Riley screams, feeling the rage that’s been bubbling inside her finally come to the surface. Lucas finally looks up, locking eyes with her before she looks at Farkle.
"You don’t get to be angry." She glares. "Don’t you dare say that I was replacing you or that I'm the reason we aren't friends anymore. All of you abandoned me."
"Riley..." Lucas starts but she cuts him off.
"I'm talking now!" Her eyes were narrowed, rigid, cold, hard. In that moment they all knew she was already far away from the girl she used to be. "Do any of you have any idea how hard it is to always put on a fucking smile? To pretend that everything is okay when everything is falling apart?! I had to do that for years with all of you. Farkle you don’t get to be angry because you're the reason we stopped being friends. You stopped talking to me, you stopped replying, you ignored me when I reached out, you gave up on our friendship... All of you did."
"Riley, calm down." Zay reaches out but she yanks her hand away, now standing up.
"No! You wanted to get everything out in the open Zay, so let's do just that." She wipes her tear stained cheeks before speaking. "You stopped talking to me the day Lucas and I broke up, confirming the suspicion I always had which is that the only reason you ever put up with me in the first place is because you had to and that hurt. Because I always felt like our group wasn’t complete until you showed up."
She swallows the lump in her throat before turning to the next person, "Maya. I know you think I still hold resentment against you because you kissed Lucas but I don't. I don't care that you kissed him. What I care about and what hurts me more than anything is knowing that you wanted to hurt me, you were the closest thing I ever had to a sister but somehow you were still able to drop me like it was nothing all because you were jealous. The funny thing is even after you dropped me, if you had come back months later I still would've accepted you back with open arms because that’s who I am and that’s who I thought we were."
"You wanna know the reason why this is so hard? Why being friends again is so difficult?" Riley continues, her voice calmer than it was a minute ago. "It's because none of you care. Zay's right. We've all changed. We're different people. We're still holding onto a middle school friendship that probably should've ended the minute we started 9th grade." When no one says anything she continues. "When I moved back I had no idea you weren't friends anymore. It was never my intention to try to force us back to the way we were before I left. I get it, okay? We don’t have to do this to ourselves anymore... there's only two months left of school and then we'll never have to see each other ever again. We can go our separate ways, back to the way things were before I moved back to New York..."
Almost instantly the mood changes. Everyone wearing the same solemn expression.
"You mean, you wanna stop being friends?" Maya furrows her brows. "Because I don’t want that."
"I don’t want that either." Zay adds, both of them staring up at Riley. "I said our friendship shouldn’t work not that I didn’t want it to."
"You said the only reason we were friends is because of me." She reiterates, "What happens if I leave again? The 6 of us are just going to fall apart all over again?"
"We won't make the same mistakes twice." Isadora chimes in, giving Riley a hopeful look.
"We all know what it's like to not have you in our life and there is no way we'd voluntarily go through that again." Maya half smiles. "Besides, it's not like you're leaving again."
Her heart breaks as she realizes it’s the perfect time to tell them all what's she's known for weeks.
Farkle looks up at her, waiting for her to spill it. "You want to tell them or should I?"
"Tell us what?" Lucas locks eyes with Riley, anticipating whatever news she had.
She tries to speak but her throat feels like its closing up, putting her stomach in knots. She looks over to Farkle and he takes that as he cue to talk up.
"Riley got into Oxford." He looks at Lucas while he's saying it. "She dropped her phone the first night we were here. I didn’t know who's it was so I picked it up and saw the texts from Josh, asking her if she told us the news yet... the news that she got early acceptance into Oxford."
"Oxford? As in... as in... England?" Maya shakes her head, gazing up at the silent brunette. "But... but you just moved back."
Before Riley can answer or explain further Lucas marches off, kicking the log he was sat on as he makes his abrupt exit.
"Lucas wait!"
Riley runs after him, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu as they find themselves on the same road as the last time she was in Texas. The same road he first said "I love you" on.
An urgency she's never felt fills her chest, consuming her as she desperately tries to catch up to him. "Lucas! Let me explain."
"Explain what, Riley?" He snaps around, facing her. "That you were keeping things from me?"
"I applied when I was still living in London."
"That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me." He begins walking away again, nearing closer to the lake.
"I didn’t think I'd get in." She admits, still struggling to keep up. "I didn’t see the point in telling you that I applied because I genuinely didn’t think I'd get accepted and then when I did find out I tried to tell you.."
"When?!" He turns around again, eyes widened in disbelief.
"When you came to Philly, I asked about your college applications and you said you didn’t wanna talk about it."
"Are you really trying to put this on me?" He shakes his head, "I can't do this right now."
This was it. She knew she could no longer run away from her feelings. She wasn’t willing to make the same mistakes as before. It was almost beautiful how symbolic it all felt. Three years ago, on that exact road, she had the chance to tell him how she really felt but she was too afraid. She was afraid of letting herself be happy and then their moment in the pool showed her just how happy she could be if she just gave it a chance but again she was too afraid.
In that moment a sense of clarity washed over her. What if this was the last time she got to see him? Three years ago she never expected things would turn out the way they did and she's been filled with regret about all the things she didn’t say to him ever since. She wasn't going to let him go this time.
"Lucas." She calls his name but he continues to leave. "Don’t walk away."
"Why not? Hm?" He slows his pace, looking over his shoulder with a cold expression painted on. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t walk away."
"Because--" Her lips tremble and her heart beats erratically in her chest as she slowly begins to close the space between them. "Because I love you, you idiot."
His hardened expression melts away, leaving behind a softer look, eyebrows knitted together and mouth slightly agape as he swiftly makes a beeline for her. Without another word he yanks her to him and covers her mouth with his in a hungry kiss. As their lips crashed together, it felt like they were walking on air. It was magic, the way his lips connected with hers. Her lips moving in perfect sync, as his hands feel on her waist; pulling her closer, making the kiss deeper and more passionate.
A smile grew on his face as it sunk in, finally pulling apart. "You love me?" He asks through heavy breaths, trying to make sure it wasn’t some cruel dream.
"I've always loved you." She smiles, caressing his cheek before leaning in for another kiss. Sparks flew in every direction, and the world slowly disappeared around them, along with all of their worries, troubles and problems.
She made him feel like none of that mattered. Of all the kisses they've shared over the years Lucas never knew one could be so intimate and electrifying. Knowing she felt the same way was all he's ever wanted and now that he knew he had no intention of ever letting her go again.
Summary: It's finally time for Lucas and Riley to sort things out, or at least try. What would Riley do once she listens to Lucas' reasons to leave?
“Riley, there’s something I need to tell you…”
The brunette wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and lifted her gaze to meet with Farkle’s. He gulped.
“I’ve been talking to Lucas all this time” he declared “He had meant to come back eventually”.
It was Riley’s turn to gulp and clear her throat. So there it was, more secrets being held back by the scientist. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, taking a deep breath before talking.
“Why?” her voice was barely a murmur, only loud enough for Farkle to manage hearing it, a tremble in her words as she spoke and looking at him again. “Why did he never replied or called if he intended to return?”
“I… I believe that’s something he should be telling you”.
“You’re the one already talking Farkle. I can’t believe you kept this from me… How am I supposed to” she closed her eyes again, feeling her already reddened eyes begin to swell.
She wanted nothing more right in that moment than to be back to the good old days. When she was still Riley Matthews, the sunshine whose life warmed everyone around her, and whose voice and mind where as pure and soothing as she felt.
She wanted to be happy again. To be able to trust people, to have hope and faith in people… It all seemed so impossible right now.
“I just don’t get why would he leave then if he was going to come back?”
“Because of every reason he has had since coming to New York for the first time, it was because of you”.
“Riley” a voice interrupted. Her swollen eyes widened at the voice she knew so well and had loved so tenderly.
She looked up and gaped at the form of the Texan catching his breath.
“Lucas…”
The sound of her voice finally calling out to him made the strangest things inside of him, his breathing stopped for a second before he exhaled loudly and realized she must have been waiting for him to clear things up. Her reddened eyes hinted him that, he clenched his jaw before shortening the distance between them with a few large strides.
“It’s true… Riley, I made that choice because of you”.
“M-Me? Why did you think I wanted you to leave? Th-that I wanted to wake up one morning and find out you had disappeared? Is that what you think that I wanted?”
“Yes.”
“No! How could you even think that I wanted—”
“What were your plans for us, Riley?”
“What?”
“How did you see us in five years from then? What did you think we would be doing right now?”
“What do you mean? We would be together…”
“Did you ever think about living together in a department in Times Square or back in Texas? Did you see us married? With a family?”.
“Well, no. But we were just kids! How was I supposed to think about that when we were still figuring out which college to go, what major to take, what impression we wanted to leave about ourselves in the world...”she stopped herself as realization hit her.
Lucas was still looking at her, his greenery eyes now gleaming with hidden pain.
“I wasn’t seeing us like that… but you were”.
There was a long pause in which Riley could only stare at nothing in particular, just caught in the memories of years back and letting the realization hit her.
“So it really was my fault after all…”
“No it wasn’t” Lucas tried to soothe her, pulling her closer to him until he could hug her. She allowed him, her tears still falling down her blushed cheeks.
In the background, and uncomfortable Farkle watched the scene, and noted: “Yes, I think it was…”
Lucas hissed almost immediately a “Farkle! Not now” to which the intellectual could only shrug and step a little farther from the troubled couple. The Texan sighed and focused again on the brunette in his arms.
“I knew you would give up those dreams you had if I told you mine, and I decided that I would rather see you achieve those dreams, before letting you know mine”.
“That is so unfair on you; you gave up your happiness because of me. Why would you do something like that?” she mumbled against his chest, her delicate fists wrinkling his shirt.
Lucas sighed and lifted his gaze to the night that had fallen over them. No stars could be seen in this big city, yet the only one he had ever cared to look at was under his embrace.
AU: Ever since he broke up with his girlfriend, Lucas Friar has been stuck in a perpetual state of purgatory. One night, he shows up outside of her apartment, desperate to escape the emotional paralysis that’s held his soul hostage for over a year. What he discovers eventually sends him on an emotional journey through Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell as depicted in The Divine Comedy.
Pairing(s): Rucas centric, but Joshaya are dating in this AU.
Rating: M - there is nothing graphic, but there is some language and some adult situations, so I’d rather play it safe. If it were a movie, it’d be rated R due to the fact that fuck is said more than once. This is an angsty/dark fic, but there are dashes of fluff, too.
Flashbacks are in italics. Quotes from The Inferno are sprinkled in and notated.
Chapter Word Count: 6,862
Tagging: @naelacy @iwantyoutochooseme @madelinecoffee@fireawayniall @katherinefrays if you want to be tagged, let me know
“There is no greater sorrow than to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.” - Dante, The Inferno
‘When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.
Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
that savage forest, dense and difficult,
which even in recall renews my fear:
so bitter – death is hardly more severe!
But to retell the good discovered there,
I’ll also tell the other things I saw.
I cannot clearly say how I had entered
the wood; I was so full of sleep just at
the point where I abandoned the true path.’ (Inf. I. 1-12)
The last 24 hours felt nothing short of surreal for Lucas Friar. It still didn’t feel real, even after he boarded the afternoon bus to Connecticut. Maybe it was because at this particular point in this life, nothing seemed to surprise him. Maybe it was because over the course of the last year, he found it hard to care about anything at all. And, he learned, if you didn’t really care about anything, you couldn’t ever really be surprised.
So, he pondered as the bus pulled out of the station, if he no longer possessed the ability to care about anything, why was he on a bus to Connecticut—to Farkle’s parents’ ski cabin? Sure, he used to enjoy snowboarding, but why did he have the sudden urge to spend the next several days gliding down the slopes? He hadn’t had any desire to do anything evenly remotely considered fun in over a year. Why now?
Because he knew that it had nothing to do with snowboarding and everything to do with who else would be there that weekend.
She was going to be there, and after the previous night, he knew that he had to be there too.
The same she that he swore to himself he’d stay away from. The same she that invaded every single one of his senses the moment she fell onto his lap on the subway when they were in 7th grade. The same she who had occupied every ridiculous dream he had ever envisioned for himself. The same she that he left behind on her 21st birthday.
Lucas pressed his forehead against the slightly frosted window as the New York City skyline slowly faded away. Had it only been a year since that dreadful night? It felt like a lifetime ago. He was a completely different person back then. That Lucas had hope for the future. That Lucas had goals he wanted to achieve, and was well on the way to making all of those dreams a reality. That Lucas had a clear direction for his life.
Above all else, that Lucas could feel. Back then, he was capable of experiencing every human emotion under the sun: joy, sorrow, anger, pain, but above all, he knew what being in love felt like. And God, he loved her more than he ever loved himself.
And yet, it was that version of himself who broke her heart. He broke up with her hours after she turned 21. Even now, a year after the fact, whenever he closed his eyes, he could picture her standing in the middle of her bedroom while he told her that he wanted to end their six year relationship. Over the course of the last twelve months, he had become haunted by the anguish that shown in her beautiful brown eyes. He could also pinpoint the precise second when her heart broke, because that was the exact moment his did the same.
Seeing her crumble right in front of his eyes—and knowing that he was the one who caused it—had to be one of the most gut-wrenching moments he would ever experience. Almost immediately, he tried to take it all back. He didn’t want to break-up. He never wanted to break-up. He only wanted everything to be better. He wanted her to be happy. The moment he saw the first tear slide down her cheek, he knew that he had made a horrible mistake. He desperately tried to take it back, to fix everything he had just done, but it was already too late. She promptly kicked him out of her apartment and out of her life.
The moment his legs carried him away from her apartment, every incredible feeling he had ever felt with her faded away. The pain that had overtaken every nerve in his body intensified with every step he took away from her apartment. When it all became too much—when the weight of his actions and his own heartache became unbearable—a new sensation overpowered him: numbness. When he realized that he no longer felt suffocated by what he had done, a tidal wave of relief washed over him. In the back of his mind, he knew that it wasn’t right—that pushing down all of this self-inflicted pain would only be detrimental in the end—but he didn’t care.
That was the entire point.
He simply didn’t care about anything anymore.
Until last night.
Lucas wasn’t sure how long he paced outside of her door.
He wasn’t even sure what he was doing there.
He hadn’t heard a word from her in over a year. She refused to speak to him. She refused to see him. Even though he found an alternative way of handling the pain of the break-up, he still wanted to try explain the situation to her, perhaps even salvage their relationship, but apparently, he was the only one. She ignored every single gesture he made the month following their split. When winter break drew to a close, he knew he had to leave. Even though he transferred to Cornell, even though he was now in the same state as she was, he realized that he had to give her what she wanted.
After all, it was the least he could do.
He wanted to fight like hell for her—for them—but the fact that she wouldn’t even talk to him sent a very clear message to the stoic Texan: leave her alone. The fact that he now felt completely numb to the entire world around him made that choice a much easier one to make. The old Lucas wouldn’t have given up so easily, but this new Lucas realized that she deserved something much more than what he had been able to offer her for the last three years.
With that in mind, he ceased all attempts at communicating with her. He didn’t call, didn’t text, and deactivated all of his social media accounts. She knew nothing about his life just has he knew nothing about hers.
So, why did he end up outside of her apartment—the one place he swore he’d never return to?
Because it had been over a year since that horrific night and he still couldn’t feel anything. He had become completely detached to the world around him. Logically, he knew that it was no way to live—that he had somehow detached himself from his emotions in order to cope with what he had done—but he couldn’t help but to wonder if this coping mechanism had become permanent? Maybe his brain was still trying to protect his heart from facing the emotional consequences of what he had done. Maybe it was because he had not idea how she was doing. Every time he talked to Zay or Farkle, he was tempted to ask about her, to see how she was, but he never did. He knew he lost the right to know anything about her life a long time ago.
And yet, here he was—about to disrupt her life just to get a glimpse of the woman he had foolishly left behind that frigid night. Maybe if he saw her, maybe if he knew that she was ok, that she had moved on, he’d be able to feel something again.
He had been selfish with her once before. It was how he ended up exactly where he was now. He knew that if she wanted to talk to him, she would have reached out by now. He knew that he had absolutely no right to barge in on her life anymore.
He knew that he was being selfish once again, but her apartment was the first stop he made when he got back to the city. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. Somewhere between leaving his apartment in Ithaca and arriving in New York, he shifted into autopilot, but instead of ending up at his parents’ place, he ended up outside of her apartment. That had to mean something, right? Maybe it meant that enough time had finally passed. Maybe it meant that they could act like adults and finally sit down and talk this whole thing out. He had no expectation that anything would return to normal or that they would even part as friends, but he also knew that he couldn’t even begin to repair himself until he saw her—until he knew that she was ok.
Maybe somewhere deep down, she felt the same way.
Before he could second-guess himself for the tenth time since he arrived at the building, he knocked on the door.
As Riley loaded her bags into Farkle’s SUV, she was hit with an incredible sense of dread about the weekend ahead. She groaned as she tried to squeeze her bag in with the other luggage and groceries piled underneath it. She wasn’t sure why she was suddenly feeling so anxious about the trip. It was ridiculous. They had planned this little vacation for nearly a month now, not to mention the fact that being able to escape the city for a few days was the only thing that pushed her through finals.
It was going to be fun.
It had to be fun.
She knit her eyebrows together as she continued to wrestle with her luggage. She knew that it would also be the first time she had gone back to the mountains since the breakup.
Maybe her sudden bout of anxiety was just a side effect from seeing him the previous night? She paused as a flash of him outside of her door came to mind. She shook her head as she tried to quickly chase the mental image away. No. That wasn’t it. That couldn’t be it. Lucas Friar no longer had a hold on her. He broke up with her over a year ago. He dumped her on her 21st birthday. That was it. That was the end of their story.
So, if that were true, then why had she thought of little else since she saw him through her peephole last night? An even bigger question she had for herself was why she let him come inside in the first place? Why did she pretend that everything was perfectly fine when she felt anything but fine? Why did every single feeling she had spent the better part of last year trying to free herself from come charging back at her the moment she looked into those brilliant green eyes again? Why did her legs quake when the right corner of his lips turned up into that charming little half smile? Why did her heart race at the sound of his voice?
But why, above everything else, did she ask him to stay?
“Need help with that,” Farkle chuckled from behind her.
Riley spun around as she faced one of her best friends. Her frown deepened when she noticed that he looked completely bemused at her frustration. ‘If you only knew,’ she thought to herself as she handed him her bag. She said nothing else as she walked toward the passenger side door.
She mentally chastised herself as she opened the door and climbed into the black SUV. As soon as she buckled her seatbelt, she leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.
She should have never answered that stupid door.
Riley groaned as she leaned her head back. She rubbed her aching neck as she looked back down at the chemistry book that sat on her coffee table. “I hate you,” she muttered. She had always been pretty good in her science classes until she came face to face with an organic chemistry class the fall semester of her senior year of college. She glanced at her phone. ‘12:35am.’
She yawned as she slowly stood up and made her way to the kitchen. It was going to be another all-nighter. She needed coffee—tons of it. As soon as she put a K-cup in the Keurig, she heard a knock on her door. She frowned at the sound, and briefly considered ignoring it all together, but her curiosity quickly got the better of her. Maya was spending the night with Josh, so unless something catastrophic had happened, she knew it couldn’t be her roommate. Besides, Maya had a key. She wouldn’t knock on her own apartment door.
Riley frowned as she peered into the peephole. No. This couldn’t possibly be real. Her mouth ran dry as she closed her eyes and leaned forward in order to rest her forehead against the door. It was the last person she’d ever expect to see outside her door in the middle of the night. She had no idea what he was doing here, but she knew that she couldn’t see him right now. Not only was it the first time she had seen him since that night, but also, she was in the middle of preparing for a hellacious exam that she had to take in seven and a half hours. Maybe she could just walk away and pretend that no one was home? Maybe she could force herself to forget all about the guy who stood on the other side of the door?
She leaned away from the door, fully prepared to turn around and walk away from him just as he did to their relationship, but instead, she found herself unlocking the door. She shook her head at her own weakness as she opened it. Even in the middle of the night, even when she looked like a complete mess and was stressed beyond belief, some small part of her demanded that she face the past.
As her tired chocolate eyes met his shiny emerald ones, it felt as if she were teleported back to when they first met that fateful morning on the subway ten years ago. Despite the fact that she could hear her heart pulsate in her ears and could feel her legs quiver at the mere sight of him, she tried to act casual. She knew she had to. She couldn’t let on that he had any sort of physical affect on her.
In order to mask her quaking form, she leaned against the doorframe as she crossed her arms over her chest in a protective stance. God. She hated her body. She hated how it always seemed to betray her in situations like this. She cleared her throat as she forced herself to focus on the fact that her ex-boyfriend had showed up outside of her apartment in the middle of the night. “Lucas? What are you…when did you,” she took a deep breath in order to steady her rapidly unraveling nerves, “It’s after midnight…what do you want?”
Lucas had rehearsed what he was going to say the moment he realized where he was, but as soon as he laid eyes on her, his entire speech went out the window. He couldn’t help but to take in the spectacular picture that had always been Riley Matthews. The girl of his dreams, the one who got away, the one who still haunted his every dream, even a year after their painful breakup.
The corner of his right lip lifted into a smirk—his first attempt at a smile since the breakup. “Are you wearing my shirt?”
Riley looked down at her apparel. She wore a blue button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. The denim shorts she wore could barely be seen underneath the oversized shirt. Her long brunette tresses were piled on top of her head in a messy bun with a pen to hold it all in place. “I-I don’t know,” she lied, “I can’t remember where I got it from.”
The truth was that she could recall every detail of the moment that he gave her that shirt, but she wasn’t about to let herself go down that road. It was another lifetime ago. They were different people then. She hadn’t spoken to him in a year. She didn’t know anything about the guy who stood in front of her. He was nothing more than a stranger to her now, and while at one point, the thought of Lucas Friar becoming a stranger seemed impossible, Riley refused to allow herself one second of remembering him as anything else.
It was easier that way.
Before the silence that hung in the air between them completely took control of the situation, Lucas knew he had to just come out and ask for the impossible. “Can I come in?”
Even though she was surprised to see him outside of her apartment, she was floored when he asked to come in. “I-I don’t know,” she stammered as she crossed her arms over her chest once more. “Why are you here?” She knew that she wasn’t mentally prepared to handle the situation that was beginning to unfold in front of her. She hadn’t seen him, let alone talked to him, since their breakup. Even if she didn’t have that final in a few short hours, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to see him—or even if she’d ever be ready to see him again.
“I know it’s late,” he began as he began to fidget with his fingers, “but I just got into town and I…well, I…I know it’s late, it’s just that…I…um…” He eyed her from head to toe once more. His memories of her did not do her a shred justice. She was still completely and utterly hypnotic. “I had to see you.” Before he could stop himself, before he could back peddle and accept the fact that he had caught her at a bad time and leave, he told her the one urge he forced himself to bury for the last year. He needed to see her the moment he left her apartment that night. Every day, every hour, every minute since then he had to stop himself from doing exactly what he had just done. He thought that after being away for a year, after accepting the fact that he was no longer of capable of feeling anything, that it would be easier to see her—to know that he made the right decision that night, but now, as he stood in front of her, he wasn’t sure how he had ever managed to utter those words to her. It was the biggest lie he had ever told anyone, and he said it to the one person he swore he’d always be honest with.
She swallowed under the scrutiny of his gaze as she tried to ignore the slight pang in her heart at his words. Why did he need to see her? Did he want a first hand look at the ruins he left behind? Was this some sort of ploy to placate a guilty conscience? Riley didn’t want to know. She had learned over the last year that, perhaps, some things were better left unsaid. “I…um…I have a final in the morning.”
He nodded slowly as a wave of disappointment flashed across his features. He should have known that she was busy, not to mention the fact that it was late. If she weren’t in the middle of something important, then she’d most likely be asleep. He should have been more aware of the time. He should have talked himself out of this whole thing long before he ever reached her door. He had been able to do it every day for over a year now. What made tonight so different? “Oh. Well, I…um…you don’t have to…you probably don’t want to, but is there any way I can see you sometime over break…maybe this weekend?”
She bit her lower lip as she considered her options. This whole thing was completely unexpected and to say she was thrown by it would be a complete understatement. She had no idea what he wanted to say, and quite honestly, Riley wasn’t sure if she was ready to hear it. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to engage in any sort of conversation with him ever again. She knew that if she did, that night would inevitably come up, and she had no desire to relive a single second of it. “I’m going to Connecticut this weekend.”
“Connecticut?”
She looked down at the ground next to his feet. “Farkle’s parents’ cabin.”
He nodded. “Oh.” How could he be such an idiot? Zay had mentioned something about going to the cabin a few weeks ago, but much like most of his thoughts, that little piece of information completely vanished the moment he saw her.
“Yeah. I mean…with everything going on…graduating in a few months and everything, Farkle wanted to go…and I need to…” She took a deep breath as she tried to control her chaotic thoughts. “I need to get out of my head for a little bit.” She turned her head to the side as she looked back in the apartment. Her gaze immediately landed on the bane of her existence, which taunted her from its position on the coffee table. She wanted nothing more than to throw the book and all of her notes out the window. When she turned back to Lucas, a completely insane and desperate idea came to her. “You aced organic chemistry when you took it sophomore year, right?”
He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, but chuckled at her question nonetheless. “Yeah. I took an advanced course last spring, too.”
Why was she even entertaining this notion? She was absolutely certain that this was a terrible idea, one in which she would question during the following days, but right now she was desperate, and once upon a time, before everything got complicated and they completely imploded, they were friends. And friends helped one another, right? “I know it’s late, but if you aren’t doing anything and aren’t jet lagged or something…would you mind helping me study? I’ve been struggling with it all semester and the final is half of my grade…and it’s in seven hours.”
He never thought that she’d even open the door to him, let alone ask for his help with something. Desperate to spend any amount of time with her that he could, he gave her a small smile. “Of course. You know I’d do anything for you.”
Riley opened her eyes when she heard the driver’s side door open. She reached for her purse as Farkle slid into the driver’s seat. ‘Yeah. You did everything but stay,’ she thought as she put on her sunglasses. She knew she had to get out of this funk before they reached the cabin. If Maya suspected that Riley even saw Lucas last night, let alone the fact that she spent a few hours with him, Maya wouldn’t ever let her hear the end of it. She didn’t want the whole weekend to be focused on every single detail of the few hours she spent with her ex-boyfriend. Despite what had happened the previous night, Riley believed that their romantic relationship was exactly where it belonged—in the past.
Farkle frowned as he looked over at one of his best friends. “You ok?”
“Yeah,” she lied as she leaned her head back against the headrest. “I guess I’m just burned out from finals, you know? It’s…been a very long semester.”
Farkle nodded. It had definitely been a rough couple of months. He had spent the better part of it interning at Minkus International. Between that and his classwork, he barely had any time left to see his friends. He was hopeful that this weekend would somehow reconnect everyone before they scattered for good after graduation in the spring. “At least it’s over now though, right?”
“Yeah,” she sighed as he pulled away from the curb in front of her apartment building. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be more like myself once we get there, you know?” More like herself? What did that even mean? Riley was fairly certain that she hadn’t been ‘herself’ in years. She wasn’t sure where that bubbly little optimist was anymore. She lost bubbly somewhere in the middle of freshman year and her optimistic nature had slowly diminished the older she got. Now, she was just stressed-out-exhausted-and-way-too-busy-to-allow-herself-to-think-about-much-of-anything-else-Riley. Maybe this weekend would offer her something that the last year hadn’t—a moment of peace. She looked over at one of her best friends in the world and gave him a small smile. “Let’s get some music going and I’m sure I’ll decompress on the way there.”
When Riley reached forward to turn up the volume on the radio, Farkle’s frown deepened. He had known her for seventeen years. He knew when she was stressed out. He knew when she was upset. He also knew when her mind was focused on something, rather someone, else. “Are you sure it’s not anything else?”
“I’m sure,” she easily lied before she changed the radio station. “So, where’s Zay? I thought he was riding with us.”
Farkle knew when to take a not-so-subtle hint. He learned a long time ago that just because he knew she was hiding something from him, he didn’t necessarily have the right to call her out on it. She had changed the subject and he knew that he needed to respect her desire to talk about something else. “Finishing up his last final. His stuff is already loaded up. We just need to swing by one of the performing arts buildings to pick him up. After that, we’ll be on the way.”
‘And just as he who unwills what he wills
and shifts what he intends to seek new ends
so that he’s drawn from what he had begun,
so was I in the midst of that dark land,
because, with all my thinking, I annulled
the task I had so quickly undertaken.’ (Inf. II, 37-42)
The two-hour trip to Connecticut felt more like ten hours to Lucas. While he still felt emotionally disconnected to pretty much everything around him, the time he spent with Riley the prior evening had revealed several cracks in his emotionless foundation. For the first time in a very long time, he felt something—perhaps a twinge of nervousness—at the prospect of seeing her again. He wasn’t sure if she knew that he was coming. He had no clue if Zay had warned her or if she was going to be completely surprised by his presence.
He spent the majority of the previous night with her as he helped her study for her exam. For the most part, they kept it strictly about the material, but his thoughts couldn’t help but to drift back to her as the wall he had built around his heart began to crumble. In the few hours they spent together, he was reminded of every single reason why he fell in love with her in the first place. She was easily the most captivating person he had ever met. By simply being in her orbit, he felt lighter. At one point, he even felt something akin to actual happiness. Even though they spent most of the time studying, her mere presence had more of an affect on his emotional state than anything else in the prior year had.
He told himself all along that if he showed up and she seemed ok—that it appeared as if she had moved on from their relationship—then he would force himself to finally let her go. He would attempt to shuffle through the rest of his life and be content enough with the knowledge that somewhere out there, she was happy.
But somewhere in the midst of studying for organic chemistry, he realized that she didn’t seem to be happy. It was late at night and they were studying what had to be her least favorite subject in the world, (not to mention the fact that her least favorite person was helping her), but even with taking all of that into account, she still didn’t seem quite like the girl he fell in love with. Melancholy and despondency clung to her in much the same way that it did to him.
As he approached the bus station, he began to think that perhaps he was wrong in his assessment—that maybe he only saw what he wanted to see. He knew that if he saw only a slight hint of sadness in her eyes, it would push him to do the one thing he should have done a year ago—fight like hell to keep her.
It was nearly 2am before Riley’s fourth cup of coffee that night began to wear off. She and Lucas had been going over the material for well over an hour by the time first yawn escaped her exhausted lips. She squeezed her eyes closed in an attempt to offer them a brief moment to recharge. She knew she couldn’t stop and go to sleep now. It finally felt like she was getting somewhere.
When she opened her eyes, she looked over at Lucas, who seemed—amused?—by her sudden drowsiness. “I think I need another cup of coffee,” she admitted.
“I think you probably need to get some sleep,” he commented when she yawned once more. As much as he wanted to spend more time with her—even if it was just to help her study for her final—he also knew that at some point, she either knew the material or she didn’t. Riley seemed completely exhausted. All of this studying wouldn’t do her any good if she fell asleep during the exam.
“I’ll be fine,” she grumbled as she stood up. “Do you want some?”
Lucas was too captivated by her simple movement to fully comprehend the fact that she asked him a question. He couldn’t help it. It had been a year since he had seen her. In that year, he had forced himself to forget how he felt by simply being in the same room as her. Even though he could tell that she had changed in much the same way that he had, she still had this uncanny ability to make him forget about everything that existed outside of the space they shared.
It scared the shit out of him.
He thought that he was so far gone that even Riley Matthews wouldn’t be able to infiltrate his stone cold heart, but there she stood, completely unaware of the fact that she was threatening to dismantle the walls he subconsciously constructed the moment he left her apartment that horrible night.
“Lucas,” she curiously asked as she slightly tilted her head to the side.
“Hmm,” he answered as the sound of his name on her lips slowly brought him back to reality.
“Do you want some coffee?”
“Oh, s-sure,” he stammered. When she disappeared into the kitchen, he turned his attention back to the book in front of him. He began to fidget with the pencil she gave him earlier as he looked back down at the book in front of him. He slowly inhaled as he forced himself to remember what happened the last time he was in this apartment.
No matter how she made him feel, he knew that he had no say in whatever path their relationship would take—or even if they would have any kind of relationship after tonight. He was well aware of the fact that they weren’t even friends right now. They were barely acquaintances, strangers more precisely, although he knew he would never be able to classify Riley Matthews as a stranger, no matter how much distance was between them.
When she reemerged into the living room, two steaming cups of coffee in hand, he could feel the distance between them as a result of the selfish decisions he had made in the name of love and for the sake of the utopian future he had always dreamt of with her. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He did what he did in order to preserve the wide-eyed optimistic brunette who flew into his arms one fateful day on the subway, but instead, his actions had forced both of them to grow up and grow cold.
When she offered him one of the mugs, she gave him a small smile. Most people wouldn’t think twice about it, but Lucas immediately noticed the significant amount of effort she put into that forced little smile. He could always distinguish her genuine smiles from her fake ones, and this was no different.
At least she tried.
It was more than what he had been able to offer anyone in the last year.
When he reached for the mug she held out to him, their fingers brushed against one another—the first time they made physical contact with one another since the night of their breakup. He swallowed as he felt a dull pang deep inside of his chest. It felt more like a thump than anything else. Still, the sensation was more than anything else he had felt in a very long time.
Judging by the way Riley’s eyes immediately fell to their still slightly interlaced fingertips, he could have sworn that she felt the same sense of longing that threatened to demolish the emotional barrier that guarded his tortured soul. If she looked back up at him, if those gorgeous brown eyes met his, he knew that everything he had tried to protect himself from would immediately flood him. A year of suppressing every painful second of that horrific night and a year of self-hatred—mixed in with the consequences of spending a year without her—would completely engulf him, and while he wasn’t sure exactly what would happen next, he knew that at the very least, he’d crumble to his feet in front of her.
He never got the chance to find out, because instead of shifting her downcast eyes up toward his desperate gaze, Riley flinched as she pulled her hand back and tucked her hair behind her ear. Her gaze fell to the floor behind her as she turned away from him.
Neither breathed a word about it. Neither acknowledged the way their hearts jumped at the sensation. Neither wanted to admit the truth that threatened to suffocate them.
They’d both prefer to choke on their respective heartaches than to admit what the absence of the other had done to them over the course of the last 12 months.
Besides, they both reasoned as they edged back into studying, they hadn’t spoken to one another in so long. Neither knew what the other’s life held—or even if there would be room for them in it—and what, if any, role they would play.
Lucas gripped the mug as he sipped the piping hot contents. As the dark liquid burned the inside of his mouth, he slowly fell back to earth. This was his reality. He chose to become a spectator, and until she indicated otherwise, he knew he had to respect that.
Right?
Riley was grateful that neither one of the guys seemed overly enthusiastic to maintain any sort of conversation as they made their way up to the mountains. If her mind had been a little less foggy, then maybe she would have noticed how uncharacteristic it was for Zay to not be fully immersed in the stereotypical high-energy road trip spirit. Riley was too preoccupied with being grateful for the fact that she had a couple of hours to think, to try to find a way to get that surprise encounter with Lucas out of her mind. Whenever she found herself analyzing any part of their interaction, she quickly reminded herself of what he did to her on her birthday. The guy she knew—the guy she once loved—would have never done that. He would have fought for her. He wouldn’t have shattered her heart, especially in the manner that he did.
When they reached the cabin, the trio unpacked the car in silence for the most part. Riley was grateful for the fact that Maya and Josh had apparently left the cabin in order to do something somewhere else. She knew that would buy her a little time to unwind from the drive and from the last several chaotic hours of her life.
She busied herself with unpacking her clothes while the guys took a quick trip into town in order to pick up a few last minute items from the grocery store. The mundane task of putting her clothes away became cathartic as her mind slowly drifted away from Lucas and toward the excitement of the upcoming days. Riley knew she’d analyze every millisecond she spent with him at some point, but for now, she was on vacation. She needed to get out of the city and get out of her own head for a while. Being in the mountains always offered her peace. She wanted to spend the next several days completely immersed in the moments that surrounded her. She wanted to create lifelong memories with her best friends and not dwell on one interaction she had with her ex-boyfriend.
Still, she was also well aware of the fact that this was the first time she had ever gone to the cabin without Lucas. When she first caught sight of the house that held so many memories for them, she briefly thought that this whole trip would be one huge mistake. How could she possibly not think about Lucas if everywhere she turned, she’d come face to face with a memory of him?
Surprisingly, and gratefully, Farkle switched up room assignments, so instead of staying in the room that they shared during the last few trips, Riley’s new bedroom was located on the opposite side of the cabin.
Perhaps that was why Riley was able to have a few moments to pull herself back together. She knew that she could do this. She could enjoy a long weekend in the mountains with her friends and not think about her ex-boyfriend. After all, she had been doing just fine for the last few months.
When she heard someone knock on the door, she half-expected it to be Maya and Josh. As her fingers gripped the doorknob, she failed to remember that Farkle had given the couple a key to cabin a few days earlier as Maya and Josh arrived earlier that morning. So when Riley opened the door and recognized who stood on the other side, her grip on the doorknob instantly tightened as her knees nearly gave out from underneath her.
She opened her mouth and closed it twice while her brain tried to reconcile what was happening. Was this some sort of dream?
Standing in front of her, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, was the one person she was desperately trying to forget about this weekend.
Riley blinked several times as she gripped the doorknob even tighter. Her chest constricted as she felt the onset of a cold sweat forming across her entire body. This couldn’t possibly be real. Was he actually here right now? “Lucas?”
He gave her a small smile as he adjusted the weight of the bag on his back. He wasn’t expecting her to answer the door. He wasn’t even sure if anyone was there as there were no vehicles parked in the driveway. He only knocked as a courtesy before he grabbed the spare key, which resided underneath a flowerpot placed on the side of the house. “Hey.”
“Hi,” she automatically answered without even thinking about it. She didn’t possess the ability to focus on the fact that she had slid back into their old greeting. She was too floored by his presence to comprehend anything else.
“Hey,” he easily replied with a pang of nostalgia. It was the way they used to greet one another in middle school, back when they thought things couldn’t possibly get more complicated between them, and yet, here they were—eight years later and they couldn’t possibly be any more estranged from one another.
“Why are you…w-what are you doing here?”
‘Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.’ (Inf. III, 1-9)
A/N: This has become a multi-chapter fic entitled “Abaddon”. Links to subsequent chapters are posted below.
Trigger Warning: alcohol usage, depression mentions, also some swearing. This is an angsty piece.
Rating: M
Song by: Aquilo (lyrics are italicized)
Word Count: 9,115
//Stood at the cold face
Stood with our backs to the sun//
Lucas Friar gazed out of the window as the plane made its way back to the place he once called home. Sure, his parents still live in New York, but for the last three years, Texas was once again his home. With every mile he drew closer to the city, the pit in his stomach grew bigger and bigger. His parents weren’t the only ones he left behind when he made the decision to go to college in Texas. He also left behind all of his friends. He also left her behind.
Riley Matthews.
She was the girl of his dreams. She was his first date. She was his first kiss. She was his first girlfriend. She was his first love. She was his first everything. And she remained in the city where they had met in 7th grade. She had opted to go to NYU with her best friend and his best friend. Lucas had applied to NYU and heavily considered going there because how great would it be to go to the same college as your girlfriend and friends? It was a dream.
But as he poured over his acceptance letters, something kept telling him to go down the road less travelled. He knew what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to become a veterinarian. He had always wanted to attend Texas A&M and he knew that his best shot of getting into the program would be to attend undergraduate school there.
He remembered everything about the day he told Riley he had decided to go to A&M. Of course she was happy for him. Of course she understood. Of course she was the most supportive person out of everyone because that’s who she was. She had always pushed him to be the best possible version of himself.
As graduation came and went, as his departure date loomed over them, they knew they had to discuss what his leaving would mean for their relationship—if they still had one. Riley told him that she didn’t want to hold him back from anything, that if they were meant to be together in the end, then they would be. Lucas promised over and over again that he wanted to be in a long distance relationship with her. He was convinced that they would beat the odds. He knew that their relationship was different. He knew that she was the one. He knew that they could handle anything that life threw at them.
//I can remember being nothing but fearless and young
We’ve become echoes, but echoes, they fade away//
But that was three years ago.
In the beginning, he was so certain of their future. After all, he was in Texas, in large part, because of her. He wanted to be worthy of her. He wanted to become a veterinarian so that she could be free to pursue whatever career path she wanted to.
As he watched the tears stream down her cheeks outside of the airport, he vowed that they were going to make it. A flash of something crossed her features. Lucas wasn’t sure what it was, but his heart constricted at the sight. Later on, he would realize why his heart ached when she looked at him like that. But for the moment, he dismissed it as he kissed her goodbye and promised that he would be back for fall break.
He was determined to start building their future the moment he left the city. He was only 19 years old at the time, but he knew. He knew that one day they would look back on this time in their lives and laugh at the dramatics of it all.
He dove into his studies during those first few months. He made friends with a few people in his classes, and went to several study groups, but for the most part, he kept to himself. He called her every single day. Most of their conversations were one on one, but sometimes, he would call and she would be with Maya or Zay, so they would all end up talking about how their classes were more difficult than they initially thought they would be, but that they were still happy to be out of high school.
He came back to the city during fall break. She met him at the airport, and he had never been happier to see anyone in his life. Her fall break wasn’t scheduled until the week after, and she was right in the middle of midterms, so most of his days were spent in his old bedroom working on a project for his marketing class. He didn’t mind or even think much of it because the time he was able to spend with her was nothing short of magical. He felt lighter whenever she was around. The future still never seemed so bright.
Leaving at the end of the week was hard, even harder than his initial farewell. They both had more of an understanding as to what they were up against, but they still swore that they could make it work. They just had to take it from one visit to the next. They knew what they were working for. They knew that one day, they would be able to live in the same city again and then, everything would be perfect.
//We’ve fallen to the dark as we dive under the waves
(I heard you say)//
The first year came and went in a flash. Lucas made it back to the city for Christmas break as his family went to Austin for Thanksgiving that second year. He was only in the city for two days when he and Riley got into an argument. Sure, they’ve argued before, but this was different. They hadn’t argued at all since he left for Texas freshman year. They were always so caught up in spending time together, that they had nothing to argue about. It wasn’t as if it was a horrible argument either. She only told him that she wanted to talk to him more. Their daily conversations had turned into twice a week phone calls that sometimes only lasted for a few brief minutes. She simply expressed her desire to actually speak to her boyfriend for more than ten minutes a week. Initially, Lucas took exception to that. He had to spend a lot of extra time in the biology lab, he constantly had to study with his study groups, not to mention the fact that he became more involved with some of the student organizations on campus, due in large part to Riley’s suggestion that he get more active to curb the loneliness he felt in a city where he didn’t really know anyone.
After a few minutes of intense back and forth, he had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. They were wasting their precious time together by arguing about not being able to spend time together. Even though she still seemed upset by it, he kissed her and promised he’d made a better effort with his time management skills.
That’s when it happened.
For the first time since he first left for Texas, she gave him that look again.
He frowned when he saw it. If anyone else had looked at him in that way, he’d understand that it was a look of doubt, but he knew that couldn’t possibly be the case with Riley. Riley was the most optimistic person he had ever met. She had never doubted their future, not even for a second. There was no way that she could possibly doubt him now. He promised he would call her more, and he would. This was just a little hiccup. He just needed to adjust his schedule. It was going to be ok. After all, they had made it through a year and a half. All of the other couples he knew in high school had already broken up. Even two of his best friends, Farkle Minkus and Isadora Smackle, called it quits right before the end of freshman year, and they even went to the same school.
Perhaps that was where the flash of doubt came from. High school relationships were a dying breed, but they were going to go the distance. They had to. Whenever he thought about his future, he thought about her. Whenever he was away from her, she was on his mind. Even though he hadn’t been able to get to the phone, that didn’t change how he felt about her.
He was still convinced that his future was with Riley Matthews.
//The devil’s on your shoulder
The strangers in your head//
The summer before junior year was rough for them. They argued a lot. Lucas knew that they had argued more in those three months than they had since they first met. It wasn’t over anything major. It was a bunch of small insignificant things. He got mad that she was half an hour late to one of their dates. She was furious that he had to cancel one of their days together to go to Ithaca with Farkle to check out Cornell’s campus. She had no idea that he only went with Farkle to see if going to veterinary school there would even be a possibility for him. He didn’t tell her about it because he knew it would only lead to a bigger argument.
He went to Texas in the first place because A&M was his dream school. Now he was considering moving back to New York? He knew Riley would never let him do it, and he wasn’t entirely sure if that was what he wanted. He was so confused about everything that summer. He hated fighting with her. He hated the thought of leaving her with their relationship so fractured. Where he went to school wasn’t nearly as important as them being on the same page with one another. She was the most important thing in the world to him, but he knew if he even breathed a word about transferring, she would get upset because she never wanted to be the reason he didn’t get everything he wanted in life.
He didn’t tell her that while they were there, Lucas spoke with an admissions counselor. He didn’t tell her that he applied to transfer that very day.
After all, what good was staying in Texas going to do if it cost him the most important relationship in his life?
She wouldn’t understand, so he kept it a secret and made Farkle swear to keep it a secret as well. He knew that he would have to figure out some kind of way to tell her, but he hadn’t even been accepted yet. Why risk another argument over something that might not happen?
//As if you don’t remember
As if you can forget//
Now, here he was, flying toward her, his official acceptance letter in the front pocket of his carry-on bag. He wouldn’t be able to do it mid-year, but next fall, he would be in the same time zone as Riley for the first time in three years.
He would only be a four-hour drive away instead of a four-hour flight away. Admittedly, he wasn’t sure about transferring when the semester started, but as their arguing increased and intensified, he knew that it would be their saving grace if he got in. The distance was starting to pull them apart. He knew that if he could only be closer, they would fall back into who they used to be.
He took a deep breath when he saw the lights of the city rapidly approaching. Her 21st birthday was in a few short hours and he managed to convince his professors to allow him to take his finals early, citing a family emergency.
He wasn’t lying. It was an emergency. His estranged girlfriend was about to celebrate her 21st birthday and he had to be there. He had to surprise her. He had to make that effort. He had to tell her that they were only a few months away from being rid of this nightmare. They were only a few months away from being able to start over and becoming better equipped to handle the distance between them.
Things would get better between them, if they could only hang on for one more semester.
//It’s only been a moment
It’s only been a lifetime//
No one was at the airport to greet him, but he didn’t expect for anyone to be. No one knew he was in town. He wanted to surprise her and that meant not telling anyone that he was there. He found the closest cab and immediately went to his parents. On the way, he texted Zay in order to figure out where they were going to be at to usher in her birthday. Zay told him that they were going to a new club that was a client of Josh’s. They were all going to be in the VIP area and dance the night away. He told Lucas that he hated he wouldn’t be there, but would be sure to take a ton of pictures so he wouldn’t completely miss it.
Lucas thanked him just as the cab pulled up to his parents’ place. He quickly made his way inside, and spent the following half hour explaining everything to them. When he felt as if he couldn’t speak anymore, he finally escaped to his room where he quickly changed his clothes.
Before he left, he made sure to grab the letter.
His heart raced the entire ride to the club. He wasn’t sure how he was going to bring it up. He wasn’t sure how she was going to react, but God, he was so excited. He couldn’t wait to tell her that they had made it through. They were going to be fine. Riley and Lucas had defied every ridiculous statistic about high school relationships.
He spotted the long line outside of the club and knew he wouldn’t be able to wait. Reluctantly, he pulled his phone out and called Zay. Zay could barely hear him over the thumping music. It took several minutes for Lucas to get him to understand that he was outside of the club. After what felt like an eternity, Zay finally emerged from the flashing lights and pulsating music of the club. He was shocked to see Lucas, but with a grin, he told the bouncer that Lucas was with Josh Matthews’ private party.
After officially welcoming him back to the city he used to call home, Zay led the way upstairs toward the VIP area.
As soon as Zay pulled back the black velvet curtain, Lucas saw her.
//But tonight you’re a stranger
Some silhouette//
She was standing on top of a table, arms linked with Maya as they danced to the beat of the song that played. There were a ton of people that surrounded them. Lucas had a hard time believing that this was any kind of VIP area. It seemed like a miniature version of the club he briefly saw downstairs, but in the center of it was his girlfriend, clad in a mini dress, dancing on top of a table with her best friend.
His jaw dropped at the sight. Of course the majority of the crowd that surrounded her were guys, seemingly gleeful with the view they had of the girls above them.
Lucas glared at Zay as Zay bobbed his head to the beat of the song. Zay never noticed the look as he smacked Lucas’s chest and yelled that they needed to get closer to get their attention.
It took an entire song and a lot of pushing and shoving before Lucas and Zay were close enough to the girls to try to get their attention.
Riley had her eyes closed as she moved to the beat of the song. It wasn’t midnight yet, but the club had already provided them with bottle service. She wasted no time in celebrating a little early. What was a few more hours anyway? In some parts of the world, she was already twenty-one. Besides, the fact that Lucas wasn’t there may have contributed to her eagerness to throw caution to the wind.
She missed him, but that wasn’t anything new. She had been missing him for the last three years. God, how was she supposed to keep doing this for the next six years? How was she supposed to act like everything was ok when everything felt so wrong? They were fighting more and more and it was over the most ridiculous things. They had slowly morphed into that couple she swore they would never become. He had always been more than just a boyfriend. She knew that was one reason why they had been able to make it work, but the last year had been hard on them. She couldn’t help but to wonder that if they kept misunderstanding one another, what would remain of them even if they could find a way to make it for the next six years?
They had both changed so much since he first boarded the plane to Texas over two years ago. He had thrown himself into his academics as a way to cope with being away from her while she filled up her social calendar. Both were busy. Both were trying to survive. But it was in the midst of that self-preservation that they began to fall apart.
She couldn’t talk to Maya about it. Maya’s perception was skewed when it came to Lucas. He was like a brother to her now. She had been there through every moment of their relationship. There was no way that Maya would ever tell Riley that she might have to face a very difficult decision one day.
So, Riley opened up to some of her new friends, people who didn’t know Lucas or anything about their relationship. She wanted an unbiased view. She wanted to know that everything she was feeling was validated. She wanted to know that she wasn’t being ridiculous with the stream of thoughts that had overtaken every ounce of hope she had for their relationship.
They all said the same thing: you shouldn’t have to put more into a relationship than what you’re getting out of it. It was obvious that she was in a constant state of depression. She knew that it was why she had started to go out more. First it was college parties, but now, she spent most of her weekends at whatever club her uncle was at. She managed to skirt around the ID check with him in tow, and he never once reprimanded her for it, because he understood that she was going to do it anyway. It might as well be somewhere that he could keep an eye on her.
When she felt Maya stumble beside her, Riley opened her eyes. The blonde had managed to recover, but in the process of trying to regain her footing, Riley’s balance faltered.
It happened in a flash. Just as she expected to hit the floor, she felt a pair of arms reach out for her. Still incredibly buzzed and positively gleeful that she hadn’t cracked her head on the floor underneath her, she giggled before she finally opened her eyes.
The moment she looked at her savior, her laughter slowly faded. Had she died or something because there was no possible way that this was reality. As she stared into the green eyes that bore into her, she knew that she had to be dreaming. There was no way that her estranged boyfriend had showed up.
//Let’s go out in flames so everyone knows who we are
‘Cause these city walls never knew that we’d make it this far//
Lucas quickly checked to make sure she hadn’t hurt herself before he slowly stood her up. She seemed completely dazed as she refused to tear her eyes away from his. She was still trying to figure out if this was all some dream or not when Maya finally turned around and spotted him. “Cowboy,” she squealed before she hopped down from the table and threw her arms around his neck.
Lucas hugged her back even though his eyes remained locked on Riley’s. He was more than a little surprised by her appearance. When Zay told him they were at a club, he thought that it would be something more low-key. This didn’t seem like the type of place his girlfriend would hang out in, let alone choose to celebrate her birthday at. The way she swayed on her feet indicated that she was more than a little drunk.
As he took in her appearance, he knew that he would need a lot of alcohol to avoid doing the one thing he swore he wouldn’t do on her birthday—get into another fight.
As if he read his mind, Zay appeared next to him with two shots. Lucas wasn’t sure if Zay meant to keep one for himself, but he quickly reached for both and quickly downed them. The last thing he wanted to do was to fight with her, so he knew he had to join in.
“Lucas,” she finally said after he handed Zay the shot glasses. He was actually here? “What are you doing here?”
He gave her a small smile. Reflections of the girl he fell in love with were lost somewhere underneath the layer of alcohol that shone through her eyes. He missed her. Even if this was the version of her he would be with tonight, he couldn’t help but to be grateful for his professors to let him take his finals early. All of that time studying was well worth it now that he could actually spend her birthday with her. “I wasn’t about to miss your birthday.”
She furrowed her eyebrows as she looked at him for a long moment. “But you missed the last two,” she laughed ironically. “I figured you’d miss this one too.”
He sighed. He quickly reminded himself that it was the alcohol talking. The girl in front of him wasn’t his Riley. She was just drunk. “I talked my professors into letting me take my finals early so I could come back and help you celebrate your birthday.” He reached forward to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. “I’ve missed so much. I didn’t want to miss this too.”
She swayed slightly as she looked at him. Her features softened as she slowly smiled back at him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Really?”
She launched forward as she wrapped her arms around him. She buried her face in his neck as she took a moment to breathe him in. She hadn’t seen him since August and even then, they didn’t leave one another on the best of terms. The chasm between them seemed insurmountable, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t insanely happy that he showed up. God, she missed him more now than ever, and he was literally in her arms.
Lucas’s smile widened as he held her. This was what he wanted. He wanted her to be in his arms. He wanted to feel every ounce of love they shared. He wanted to know that everything was going to be ok. He wanted to know that there would be an infinite amount of tomorrows between them.
He wanted to be reassured that they still belonged to one another.
//We’ve become echoes, but echoes are fading away
So let’s dance like two shadows, burning out a glory day//
As the night wore on, Lucas realized that he definitely needed to drink more to dull the edginess that he felt. Their hug was good, reassuring even, but they didn’t kiss. They didn’t immediately sneak off into a corner so they could greet one another without a hundred people surrounding them. She wanted to stay with all of her friends. She wanted to dance with him. She wanted to let the pulsating music of the club take her far away from where she was.
The problem with that was that he had flown two thousand miles to be where she was.
So, he drank. He promised himself repeatedly that he wasn’t there to fight with her. He wasn’t going to do that to her on her birthday. He loved her too much to do that to her. He was hurt that she didn’t want to spend even a second alone with him. He was frustrated that he couldn’t immediately give her his present, but this was her night. He was merely a guest amongst a hundred of her closest friends at NYU.
Zay kept the alcohol coming as Lucas tried to push away the recurring doubts in his mind. He was finally in the city. There was finally a light at the end of the tunnel. She didn’t know it yet. That’s all it was.
They danced til the club closed. For a second, he thought that their group would simply migrate to Maya and Riley’s apartment, but much to his chagrin, they merely relocated to one of the frat houses where they continued the party—at 3 AM.
There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to keep Lucas from getting more and more frustrated as time ticked on by. He busted his ass to get through his exams so he could be here and he couldn’t help but to wonder if she was avoiding being alone with him. What was she so afraid of? He had never seen her drink a drop of alcohol before, but tonight he had seen her drink more than half the people he knew.
He tried to be easygoing about the whole situation, but as dawn quickly approached, the remnants of his patience disappeared with the stars.
Finally, around 7 AM, he managed to corral Maya and Zay before he finally pulled Riley away from the still partying co-eds.
He knew that she would be mad, but he didn’t care. She stayed out all night. She never stopped drinking. It felt as if she had been avoiding him all night. He couldn’t take it anymore.
She said nothing as they walked the few short blocks to Maya and Riley’s apartment. Zay quickly crashed on the couch and Maya made it to her room as Riley and Lucas made a beeline toward her bedroom. The moment the door clicked behind Lucas, Riley spun around. He could tell by the look on her face that he would have to break the one promise he made to himself about this entire trip.
They were about to have their biggest fight yet.
//Devil’s on your shoulder
Strangers in your head//
“Lucas, you have no right to pull me away from my own birthday party!”
“Riley, it’s 7 in the morning! You need to sleep it off. Are you trying to get alcohol poisoning or something?”
“I’m not going to get alcohol poisoning, ok? And newsflash, you can’t tell me what to do.”
He sighed. “Riley, I don’t want to fight with you, especially on your birthday.”
“We fought last year on my birthday. You don’t remember that? What’s so different this time?”
“I told you repeatedly that I was sorry about that. It’s just…”
“It’s just what?”
“It’s hard being away from you, ok? It feels like you’ve been slipping away from me for the last year and there’s nothing I can do about it. I came here tonight because I thought that maybe…maybe being here would help. Maybe you could see how much I’m trying, how much I love you, how much I want to make this work.”
She looked at him for a moment. Her head was spinning and she wasn’t sure how much of it was from the alcohol and how much of it was from the fact that everything she had feared would happen was happening. As she stared at him, she remembered every single thing that made her fall in love with him. He was one of the kindest, sweetest guys she had ever met. They could make this work, right? They could face this. They just had to work a little harder, try more to be there for one another. She couldn’t give up on them. Not now. Not ever. He was Lucas and she was Riley and they were meant to be forever.
Her eyes welled with tears as months of tension and arguing bubbled over in her intoxicated mind.
The moment he saw the tears in her eyes, his anger dissolved. He could never handle seeing her cry. Not when they were in middle school and not now. Slowly, he closed the space between them before he wrapped his arms around her.
//As if you don’t remember
As if you can forget//
Riley cried into his chest for a while as the weight of their distance pressed down on her. She knew that they were slipping away from one another, but she had never felt so powerless to stop it.
Lucas rubbed her back as he listened to her cry. He wasn’t sure why, but he thought back to a conversation he had with Maya eight months ago. She was worried about Riley. She told him that Riley had started going to more parties and that she was drinking more and more. Lucas dismissed it. They were in college. There were supposed to cut loose a little and have some fun. While Maya agreed, she insisted that she thought Riley was using alcohol as an escape mechanism.
As Lucas continued to hold his weeping girlfriend, he slowly realized why he felt the need to move closer to home. Even though he refused to believe that Riley was spiraling into some depression, it wasn’t long after that conversation that he began to seriously think about transferring schools. He told himself it was because he wanted to be closer to her, and while that was true, seeing her tonight put everything into perspective.
She was miserable. The Riley he knew would never get this drunk. He couldn’t fathom his Riley going out every night and getting completely hammered, but as he thought back to that conversation with Maya, it was apparent that was exactly what she was doing. She knew everyone at the club and the fraternity house. If this was a one-night event, she would be throwing up in the bathroom right now, but she wasn’t. She was here. She only seemed moderately drunk after an entire night of drinking.
As he scanned her small bedroom, he finally noticed it: a half empty liter of vodka perched on her desk.
God.
How long had this been going on?
//It’s only been a moment
It’s only been a lifetime//
When her cries began to subside, the permanent pit in Lucas’s stomach expanded. He never wanted to hurt her. He never wanted to them to end up like this. He never wanted to see her fall like this. He had been so preoccupied with trying to keep things perfect that he didn’t understand that his girlfriend was buckling under the pressure—the pressure that he put her under. He tried to replay every conversation they had over the last few years as he searched for any sign of this, of her obvious downfall into depression.
His throat ran dry when he thought of a number of conversations where she emphasized how much she missed him. He remembered her asking him if he thought he was missing out on anything because his girlfriend was across the country. He cringed when he remembered that conversation eventually turned into an argument because of course he didn’t feel that way, but her hesitation in her answer when he asked the same question hurt him. It hurt the perfect vision he had had for their relationship.
Him. Him. Him.
As Lucas continued to silently console his girlfriend, he realized that the last three years had been all about him. His need to go to school in Texas. His need to make sure things between them were always perfect. His need to make sure she was still his girlfriend, because he knew they were meant to be.
Somewhere lost in dreaming about their future, he failed to see what was going on in the present. He failed to see what their relationship was doing to her.
He had failed her and in doing so, he had failed in their relationship.
“Dance with me,” he whispered to her.
Riley sniffed as she lifted her head. “But there’s no music.”
He gave her a small smile. “Has that ever stopped us before?”
//But tonight you’re a stranger
Some silhouette//
While Riley seemed confused by the gesture, Lucas held her left hand in his right as he kept his left arm around her waist. She leaned her head against his shoulder as they swayed to the beat of a song only they knew the lyrics to.
Lucas had to remind himself how to breathe as they swayed together. With every passing second, his racing thoughts headed toward a conclusion that he had never even considered before.
The girl in his arms. The girl who used to be so vivacious, whose laugher could make even the most miserable person smile, had become the saddest person he had known. She was using alcohol to escape from the depression she was obviously in. While Lucas had channeled his loneliness into his schoolwork, Riley was only able to deal with it by trying to forget it. He hated that he focused more on her going out every night instead of trying to figure out why she was doing it in the first place. He hated that he fought with her about it instead of really listening to her when she tried to explain it to him.
When they became a couple, Lucas just knew that they would be together forever. There was no other option, but with every sway, he knew that in order to save her from herself, he would have to let her go.
//Just hold me//
Even if he went to Cornell, even if he was only four hours away, they would face a similar problem. He knew it would be impossible to see one another every weekend, and what about the weekdays? She seemed so far gone now that he wasn’t sure if the real Riley would ever come back. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if her spiral downward worsened. Deep down Lucas knew that closing the distance between them wouldn’t magically solve the problems that had taken root between them.
They were both changing. They were growing up and in spending three years away from one another; it was obvious now that they were growing apart.
//Just hold me//
She would never admit that he was the reason why she was going out so much. She’d never confess that he was the reason why she had a half empty liter of vodka on her desk. She’d never tell him that he was slowly destroying her.
Moving closer to her wasn’t going to fix her. He needed to create more distance from her. He needed to allow her room to grow in the right way, away from drinking so much, away from the constant arguing. He needed her to not worry about the state of their relationship all the time.
But he knew her. He knew that she would fight him over this decision, that she wouldn’t believe him if he told her that he didn’t want to be with her. He had showed up for her birthday for crying out loud.
Oh God.
Tears slowly filled his eyes. That was it. He wouldn’t be able to enjoy a few more days with her. He would have to do it now. If she got mad at him, if she believed that he was a complete asshole, then she would let him go.
//Just hold me//
God, he didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay. He wanted to fight for them. He wanted to get her back. He wanted to pull her out of the darkness she had slipped into, but he knew that he was the cause of her problem, not the solution.
He slowly inhaled as he tried to push away the wave of tears that pricked the back of his eyes. He had to be cold. He had to act like this wasn’t destroying every single atom of his body. He had to act like he wasn’t about to change his entire life to be close to her. He had to act like he didn’t care.
He closed his eyes as he prayed for the strength to do what he had to.
“Riley?” His voice seemed so steady for a guy whose heart had just imploded.
“Yeah?” Her response came out in a breathy sigh of pure contentment.
Her tone made it ten times harder than before. Lucas could feel his heart race as he took a deep breath. “I think we should break up.”
//Just hold me//
Riley opened her eyes. She was still buzzed. Maybe she misheard him. She had to have. There was no way he said what she thought she heard. She looked up at him. “What?”
Lucas clenched his jaw. She didn’t deserve this. Not here. Not now, but all he had was now. He had to make it seem like he was the biggest asshole on the face of the planet. She wouldn’t give up on him any other way. He slowly untangled himself from her. “This,” he gestured between them, “it isn’t working out for me anymore.”
Riley heard him that time, but for some reason, perhaps the alcohol, made it difficult for her to comprehend what he had said. Was she dreaming? “What?”
“You know, we tried to make it work, but it’s not working out for me anymore. All of my friends at school are dating around and having fun and I…I want that too.” His words came out in a rush. He couldn’t slow down his speech even if he wanted to. God. Everything hurt. His soul ached. He wanted to take it back. He wanted to lay down with her and hold her all night. He wanted to worship at her feet, but as he looked back at the bottle of vodka on her desk, his resolve strengthened. He couldn’t be selfish with her anymore. If he was, she would eventually fade into nothingness.
//Devil’s on your shoulder
Strangers in your head//
“You don’t mean that,” she responded as she took a step away from him. This had to be some horrible prank, right? She knew that he was mad that they had stayed out so late, but it was her birthday. Surely that wasn’t grounds for breaking up with her right? “Come on Lucas. Let’s just get some sleep and then we can talk—“
“No, it’s one reason why I came,” he swallowed harshly. “I wanted to do the right thing and do it in person.”
She stared at him for a long moment as she desperately searched for any sign that he was lying. Finally, tears welled in her eyes. “Th-The right thing,” she sputtered. “It’s my birthday!”
“I know the timing is bad.” His response was hollow, but he couldn’t answer in any other way. His soul and heart had completely detached themselves from his body. All that remained was his physical form and his stubborn mind. He could trick his mind into believing that he was ok. After all, it was his mind that told him that he needed to do this. His heart and soul would fight him tooth and nail over it. So, it was an easy decision to shut them out and completely shut down emotionally.
“The timing is bad,” she echoed. The sound in his voice seemed so foreign to her. It was ice cold. It was unlike anything she had ever heard from him before. “It’s my birthday, Lucas. Are you kidding me?”
The strain in her voice immediately brought tears to his eyes. God, he couldn’t do this. It hurt too much. Maybe they could fix it together? He shook his head as he bit his bottom lip in order to hold back the wave of emotion that rippled through him. That was the problem. He would be pressuring her again. He would be trying to project his perfect reality on her. He would be setting her up to fail. “No,” he finally answered as his voice shook.
//As if you don’t remember
As if you can forget//
The room started spinning—slowly at first, but with every millisecond that passed in silence, it began to spin faster and faster. Riley backed away from him further as she placed her hand to her forehead. She could almost see her entire future crumbling in front of her. “I don’t believe you,” her shattered voice nearly cried out. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t possibly be true. He had always held out hope for them. He was the one who carried them through the last three years. It was his optimism that had held them together. Everyone always thought she always saw the world through rose-colored glasses, but when it came down to it, she was the one who had doubts about their future, not him. Never him. Oh God. This couldn’t possibly be real.
“I’m sorry,” was his hollow reply. He watched as the reality of his words began to physically affect her. Up until that moment, he had never considered jumping off a building, but he’d gladly take the fall if it meant that he didn’t have to see this. Her face slowly contorted as a string of pleas for him to reconsider came from her lips. She promised to be better, to be happier, to be whoever he wanted her to be. She swore she would act like the girl he fell in love with. Though the emotion behind her words sliced through his entire being, what she was actually telling him only reaffirmed that he was making the right decision. He had pressured her so much to maintain their sense of normalcy that now she was promising to be the girl she used to be.
That wasn’t what he wanted. He only wanted her to be happy. He wanted her to be happy in her own skin. He wanted her to live the life she deserved and not be forced into pretending to be someone else to hold onto a relationship that was unraveling every single day. Lucas realized that in her quest to be the Riley she once was, she had completely lost herself. As he watched a wave of tears fill her once bright eyes, he knew that she drank in order to escape reality—the reality that she wasn’t the same person she was in high school. She had changed just as he had, and as much as he loved her, as much as he wanted to fight to keep them together, he knew that wasn’t what she needed.
She needed to be free.
//It’s only been a moment
It’s only been a lifetime//
It was driving her insane that he wasn’t saying anything. He was just standing there while everything she had ever known fell apart right in front of her. He was breaking up with her because she wasn’t good enough. She had failed him. He needed her to be who she was, but she wasn’t sure who she was anymore. She was caught in between the past and future and she wasn’t sure if the person she was becoming would be someone that he would want to be with. She had been worried about this moment for the last three years. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this day would come. She knew that he would wake up and regret ever being with her. Caught in that constant fear, she found different ways to escape, to temporarily relieve the self-inflicted pressure she put on herself.
She wasn’t good enough. She’d never be good enough. She had never lived up to the expectations she had set for herself. She was never the girlfriend she wanted to be. She tried to make it work. She tried to hold onto him, but it was in holding onto him that she lost him.
Who could possibly ever want to be with her? She was a complete disaster—a living shadow of the girl used to be. Why would he ever want to be with her? She was two thousand miles away. She had no idea if she was in the right major. She had no idea what she was doing in most of her classes. Her grades had been declining since her first semester at NYU and it had finally gotten to the point where she didn’t even care anymore. She found it increasingly difficult to care about much of anything anymore.
Except him.
She never stopped caring about him. She loved him more than she ever thought she could love anyone.
But here they were.
He was breaking her heart.
And he didn’t even seem to care.
//But tonight you’re a stranger
Some silhouette//
Was this hell? It sure felt like it. He couldn’t think of a worse fate than this: being forced to stand in front of the only woman he had ever loved and being completely unable to console her because he was the one to break her. He watched as she covered her face with both hands before she slowly lowered herself to the ground. Lucas slowly inhaled as he looked up at the ceiling. Tears filled his tired eyes, but he knew he couldn’t release them. If she saw him crying, she would know that he didn’t mean it. She couldn’t know that. She couldn’t know that he was dying inside. He couldn’t let on that every tear that slipped from her eyes was seared onto his rapidly hardening heart.
It wasn’t fair.
None of this was fair, but God, he needed her to find her way back to herself. He needed her to enjoy life again. And he knew that meant that he had to step away, but God, he wasn’t sure if he could force himself to leave. He knew that when he left, it would be over. He wouldn’t be guaranteed a chance to see her again. He wouldn’t be guaranteed another chance to fight for her, to make it work. He wouldn’t be guaranteed anything.
His body physically trembled at the thought of never seeing Riley Matthews again. It didn’t seem possible that there was any life to be lived without her. It was hard for him to remember a time in his life without her in it. Now, he was the one who was forcing himself back into that world, but this time, it would be as someone who had been in heaven for the last nine years, who knew what the world was like with her in it.
God. Why did he go to Texas? Why didn’t he stay in the city with everyone else?
//Only been a moment
It’s only been a lifetime//
Riley curled herself up into a ball as she hid her face from him while she sobbed. She didn’t want him to see her like this, but she couldn’t help it. Everything hurt. Her head hurt. Her heart hurt. She wasn’t even sure if she had a soul anymore. Everything felt so broken. She halfway hoped that he would at least console her. That he would hug her one last time as he told her that everything they were to one another was real, that the breakup wasn’t her fault.
But it never came.
He never moved from where he stood. He didn’t say a word.
Once Riley was able to catch her breath, once she realized that the guy in her room wasn’t the same guy who left the city three years ago, her mind went into self-preservation mode. Her Lucas wouldn’t just stand there. Her Lucas would have at least said something. It was obvious to her that he didn’t care. If he didn’t care, then why should she? Why should she be the only broken heart in her room?
She couldn’t help the bitter chuckle that passed through her lips as she finally lifted her head and wiped her eyes.
Lucas’s frown deepened at the sound. He blinked away the tears in his eyes. Was she laughing?
Riley shook her head before she slowly looked back at him. “Get out,” she demanded darkly.
//But tonight you’re a stranger//
Her tone took him completely off guard. He didn’t move an inch, even after she scrambled to stand up. Her eyes appeared as hollow as he felt at that moment. This was it. She was about to throw him out of her room and out of her life forever. His heart quickened its pace. Oh God, he couldn’t do this.
“You heard me,” she went on to calmly state as she slowly walked toward him. “You come here on my birthday…what I thought was a nice surprise…just to break up with me? Why…because it’s not working out for you anymore? I mean…we’ve been arguing for a long time now. I don’t think this is anything that couldn’t wait until a better time…like say Christmas? So, what is it really, Lucas? Is it someone else?” Her steady tone completely contradicted the hurricane that raged inside of her small form. Her sorrow melted as a fury she had never quite experienced before ravaged her body. Her heart hardened with every word she uttered.
Lucas swallowed as she inched closer and closer to him. She didn’t stop until her face was mere inches away from his. A surge of weakness overcame him. He lifted his hands to reach out for her until he stopped himself. He couldn’t do it. He was only one word away from setting her free. He had to. “Yes,” his voice cracked.
//Some silhouette//
Riley immediately laughed at his answer. It was unlike any type of laughter she had ever had. It was purely hysterical as she doubled over. The absurdity of this entire situation had finally hit her and she couldn’t believe that any of this was real. At the same time, she had dreaded this exact day for three years now. She knew it would come. She knew they would end, but she never knew that it would be because he had found someone else. At the same time, of course he would find someone else. He was a catch. During her hysterics, she briefly wondered if he had cheated on her. Although Riley had allowed her anger to take the reigns over this entire situation, she knew she could never actually ask him that question. She was too afraid of the answer. He wasn’t her Lucas anymore. He was someone else entirely. She wasn’t sure who this guy was. He was obviously someone who was willing to break his girlfriend’s heart on her birthday. Who knows what else he was capable of?
Her laughter slowly faded as she looked back up at him. “Get the fuck out,” she said matter-of-factly.
//But tonight you’re a stranger//
That was his undoing. Lucas took a step toward her as he tried to find the words to explain everything that had just transpired between them to her.
Only Riley didn’t want to hear it. She lifted her hand up to stop him. He had all the time in the world to say something to her. Now, she didn’t want to hear any of it. There was someone else in his life now. She didn’t want to know the details. He had told her everything she needed to know. He had met someone else. They were over. End of story.
“Don’t,” she commanded when he opened his mouth to speak. She cut her eyes to the door. “Get out before I make you.”
He inched closer towards her. “Riley, I—“
“No!!” Her eyes widened as she rushed toward the door.
He was behind her in an instant. When she tried to open the door, he pushed it close. He had to explain to her what he was doing. He had to tell her that he loved her, that he would wait for her. He had to tell her that they could find some sort of way to work through this together. He couldn’t leave now. He couldn’t risk never being able to see her again, to never having the chance to fix this. “Riley, please just listen I—“
“Get out,” she screamed as she pulled against the door with every ounce of strength she had left in her. She didn’t want to hear any more. He had given up on them. He had found someone else. He had smashed her heart to smithereens on her birthday. He had all the time in the world to explain it to her, but he didn’t. He just wanted her fall apart. Well, he wasn’t going to get the chance to twist the knife in her heart. They were done. It was done. “Get out,” she said more calmly as tears filled her eyes once more. “Please,” she quietly begged as she closed her eyes. “Just go.”
Lucas could hear her ragged breath as she pleaded for him to leave. His heart completely shattered in his chest. He knew that he had to go. He knew that if she were to have any chance to pull herself out of the darkness, he would have to leave her apartment and not turn back. Distance wasn’t going to fix her. Setting her free would give her room to grow, to figure out who she wanted to be. He couldn’t be selfish with her anymore. Being selfish with her was killing her.
He looked down as his previously unshed tears reappeared in his eyes. He held his breath as he quickly walked around her and out of her room. He never stopped, even as Zay asked them what was wrong, even as Maya opened her bedroom door at the sound of Riley’s screams. He didn’t feel anything as he forced himself to leave her apartment, her floor, and finally, her building.
It wasn’t until he rounded the final turn toward his parents’ apartment building that he felt the acceptance letter to Cornell burning in his pocket.
A very short little drabble that came to me earlier today. Lucas writes a letter in the midst of the drama that is “Girl Meets Texas Part 3″. Angsty.
Word Count: 563 (officially the shortest thing I’ve ever written haha)
‘Riley,
Please talk to me, and not as your brother, not as someone you feel like you need to avoid, not even as a friend. Talk to me as we’ve always talked to one another—as Riley and Lucas.
I don’t know what’s going on right now. I don’t know what happened in Texas. Part of me wishes that we never even went in the first place because now we’re in this new world where I’m reduced to writing you a letter because we can’t seem to talk to each other about anything.
I know that you’re probably avoiding me because of what you said that night by the campfire. If that’s really how you feel, then that’s how you feel. I thought that we were on the same page about everything, especially after the semi-formal, but I guess I was wrong.
I feel lost right now and the only thing I want to do is talk to someone about it. The only person I want to talk about it with is you, and I can’t because you won’t let me.
I know you’re probably getting ready for your big date tonight. I guess I need to do the same, but I had to take a few minutes to let all of this out.
Please don’t go out with him. Riley, please. He’s a good guy. I know that he is. He did everything right when he asked you to go to the semi-formal with him, but truthfully, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand seeing you two together.
I am so confused. I don’t know what to do about anything anymore. I’m not even sure who I am anymore. I know that we’re all growing up and relationships change and I know that they’re supposed to, but I can’t help but to wonder if what we’re doing right now is wrong.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s because I’m still reeling from what you said that night. Maybe I’m having a hard time getting adjusted to my new role in your life. Or, maybe it’s because I feel like I can’t breathe when I think about seeing you with him. Some of the best times I’ve had since I moved to New York were spent with you, but now he gets to experience all of that. He gets to have that and there is nothing I can do to change it.
I guess you’re the kind of girl that’s hard to get over.
Don’t worry about me. I think all of this is just going to take a little more time to get used to. I’ll do everything I can to push on because sister Riley in my life is better than no Riley.
I know that these are just a bunch of words you’ll never read, but I had to get them out before I see you with him.
Above everything else, Riley, at the end of the day, I need for you to be happy. I need to see you smile, even though it’ll hurt to know that he’s the one who put it there.
Lucas’
Lucas glanced over the letter twice before he quickly balled up the piece of notebook paper. “Auggie’s right,” he mumbled. “She’s definitely not my sister.” He sighed as he tossed the letter into his trashcan. “And I will never be her brother.”
Third installment to the Serendipity/Amaranthine universe. How far would you go in order to protect someone you love? WARNING: as with the first two parts in the series, there is an overall trigger warning for abuse (physical, mental, emotional). That, combined with the adult themes in this fic (alcohol, language, situations, etc), are the reason for the rating. Primarily Rucas.
Rating: M
Soundtrack (not at all in order and will be edited as the story progresses)
Word count: 8,935
A/N: I should have read this over one more time in it’s entirety, but I didn’t because I’m really struggling with a lot of insecurity right now (not to mention the numerous rewrites I’ve done to this chapter), so I’m sorry if this is God awful and makes no sense.
Prologue | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine |
Elysian
Chapter Nine: The Moirai
The Moirai were the three goddesses of fate in Greek Mythology. They controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. They were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
It was a question Riley asked herself a lot when she applied to various colleges during her senior year of high school. She even had to answer that question a few times as she filled out her essays. Every single one of them contained this well crafted answer that encompassed all of her professional goals. She wanted to act. Broadway, she supposed, would be the ultimate accomplishment, but she would be more than happy if she could find steady work doing what she loved. Her ten year planned consisted of four years of undergraduate studies, several internships at various theaters in the city (if she was lucky), which would lead to being cast in the chorus or perhaps a minor role in a production. She anticipated being in the background for a while, but that maybe, perhaps, with a little talent and a lot of luck, she may eventually get a starring role sometime.
That was the dream, anyway.
As she reflected on the past week, she realized that not once, in all of those essays and considerations, did she think about what her personal life would be like in ten years. Yes, she had dreamt of a life with Lucas and their three hypothetical children, but in all of her conscious planning, she never planned for their actual future. He was always just there, by her side.
Until now.
Until she realized why she never discussed their future with him and why she never even considered answering that question about her personal life.
For a week, she subconsciously did what Jessica asked her to. She watched him. She watched every single emotion that graced his face. And now, here she was—sitting alone on their hill while everyone else peacefully slept at the house.
The party had lasted all night, just as Lucas predicted. Everyone finally crashed around dawn, around the time Pappy Joe was just getting up for the day.
Riley tried to sleep. She knew that maybe if she slept, she wouldn’t feel quite as off kilter as she felt all night. Two hours later, she was up and wandering around the property. Sleep didn’t help her at all. She couldn’t turn her brain off from everything Jessica had told her. It was as if Lucas’s ex-girlfriend had pulled back this veil Riley had thrown over her entire relationship with him. Had she been wandering around in a dream world for the last two years? Was that her way of trying to protect their relationship from the world around them? They had finally found one another again—after Charlie, after the issue with her father, after the fight with Farkle—after all of that, they had chosen one to be with one another. They loved one another. They were right for one another. They made each other better. With him, she never felt more like herself. She had learned how to forgive and move on because of him. She learned how to trust again because of him. She wasn’t weighed down by the past anymore. He gave all of that to her.
But now, she realized, overcoming the past didn’t automatically mean that their future together was set in stone.
She felt the color drain from her face as she watched the water ripple across the lake. She knew she needed to have this conversation with herself before she had it with him. She had to face this reality before she could attempt to put all of it into words.
She took a deep breath as she closed her eyes. The first image she saw was the smile on his face when he talked about those piglets. As much as she loved him, and as much as she loved that smile, she knew what that smile meant. It meant that this was his happy place. This was his home. This was where he felt free. This place, this beautiful farm, his incredible family—all of it—helped to make him who he was now. She had never seen him as happy as he appeared to be this week.
She slowly laid down before she opened her eyes. He had helped her find her salvation—her way out of the darkness that had strangled her for months. He had always been there for her, even after she pushed him away.
He loved her.
She loved him.
She knew that he would deny the fact that they had a problem. She knew that he would insist that he would be more than happy to follow her to the ends of the earth if she wanted him to.
But, that was just it.
She didn’t want him to.
She wanted him to be happy. She wanted him to always feel as happy and as free as he seemed to be this summer. She wanted him to continue to rebuild his relationship with his father. She wanted him to be able to be near his family in case Pappy Joe needed him. She wanted him to be able to take care of the farm if Pappy Joe was ever unable to. She didn’t want him to compromise any of his dreams for her.
She knew that Lucas would never ask her to give up her dreams to move here. As Riley looked up at the crystal clear blue sky above her, she knew that she would never ask him to do the same. In fact, she would do everything in her power to ensure that he ended up exactly where he was meant to be.
Even if Charlie was being paroled at that very minute, even if the thought of him wandering around as a free man scared her, it was nothing compared to the fear that washed over her at the thought of Lucas being pulled back into that world. After all, it wasn’t a matter of if Charlie was going to be released; it was only a matter of when. Some day, maybe today, he would be released, and according to Lucas, he would happily seek him out in a misguided attempt at revenge.
Had Lucas changed in the last four years? Absolutely. But, it wasn’t as if he was magically cured from all the anger that he once held. Yes, he had let go of a lot of his rage, but Riley knew that part of who he used to be would always be contained within him. Had he learned how to control it? Absolutely, but when Maya brought up Charlie, Riley could see that unresolved anger flash in his eyes. She could practically feel it roll off of him. He had let go of a lot of things over the last four years, but Charlie was still an unsettled issue for him—one in which Riley knew wouldn’t be resolved in the same way as it was done with Lucas’s father.
Charlie wasn’t worth it. Riley knew it, but Lucas was still completely unreasonable with it came to the subject of Riley’s ex-boyfriend. If she couldn’t convince him to let go of his hatred, then the least she could do is protect him from it. He had always protected her and she had always protected him—even if it meant protecting him from himself.
The thought of Lucas going from blissfully happy to murderously angry made her skin crawl. She couldn’t do that to him. Charlie was never his problem.
So, no matter when it happened, whether it was today or whether it was seven years from now, she knew that she would do everything in her power to shield Lucas from diving back into the world they managed to walk away from.
As she wandered back toward the main house, she was nowhere closer to figuring anything out. All she knew was that her future was in New York. Her family was there. Her friends were there. Her, hopeful, career was there. His future was here. His family lived here. Most of his friends lived here. He was happy here.
What were they supposed to do? For as long as she could remember, she was taught that love could help overcome anything, but this—she wasn’t sure how it could overcome something like this. What kind of life would they be able to have if one of them gave up their dreams for the sake of the other? Jessica was right. They would grow to resent one another.
Something like this, she couldn’t hide from him. It hurt too much to think about. She had happily remained in denial land for years now, but after last night—after the last week—she owed it to herself and to him to talk about it. They hadn’t discussed their future at all, but now, it was all she could think about. She didn’t even think about Charlie as much as she thought she would because even that seemed to pale in comparison to this.
They had no future together.
She spent the entire week trying not to think about it and the entire night last night coming up with a hundred different possible scenarios about their future, but not one of them ended in a ‘happily ever after’. They all involved one of them making some kind of sacrifice for the other.
She knew that she needed to talk to him about it. She knew that this was something too important to discuss over the phone when she got back. If she waited until he returned to the city, she knew that it would completely consume her. She was already barely speaking to him because of Charlie. This was something she wasn’t even sure she could keep to herself. At the same time, how could she even begin to bring this up? She knew what it would lead to. She knew what opening her mouth would do to them, but wasn’t the whole point of bringing it up now was so they could somehow figure out what their next step was—if there was even a next step they could take?
God, there had to be something. There had to be some kind of way for each of them to get what they wanted out of life without having to sacrifice each other. Surely they didn’t go through everything they did in high school just to fall apart due to forces beyond their control? They were stronger than that, weren’t they? Couldn’t the love they shared for one another overcome any obstacle—even their own conflicting dreams for the future?
She felt nauseous. She felt like she was going to pass out. As she walked by the stables, she briefly wondered if this was it—if this was the last time she would see this farm, these stables. Would tonight be her last time on the hill with him?
It couldn’t be. No, that wasn’t a possibility. They had survived so much. It couldn’t just end. Could it?
It was already mid-afternoon before the others woke up. By the time Riley had arrived back from her hours long walk around the property, everyone else had just gotten ready for the day—what was left of it anyway.
The moment she entered the house, Lucas could tell that something was wrong. Truthfully, he noticed that she seemed preoccupied the previous night, but had managed to convince himself that she must have just been tired. They had a really long day yesterday and staying up all night probably didn’t help anything. He realized that his own exhaustion from the previous night must have clouded his judgment, because after being able to sleep for about eight hours, he immediately sensed the heaviness that surrounded his normally cheerful girlfriend. This was different than how she had been for the last month. She seemed more out of sync, more contemplative, depressed even. He had never seen her look like that before—even when she went through the ordeal with Charlie, even when she saw him at his absolute worst when he got into that fight with Farkle. This was something completely different, and it scared the shit out of him.
One look at her boyfriend, and she knew she was going to fall apart. She felt the tears immediately sting the back of her eyes as they looked at one another. She knew her face had already given herself away. Charlie she could hide from him, but this? This was something else entirely.
He wanted to go to her. He needed to find out what had happened, but he was petrified to say anything. His legs felt like lead as he stood in the middle of his grandfather’s living room.
Someone had to say something. Someone had to ask the obvious. Someone had to make some kind of move.
“So, Chubbie’s for our last night here, right,” Maya asked as she breezed into the living room.
“I’m down for that,” Zay responded as he entered the living room from the boys’ room.
Riley was the first to break eye contact as she forced herself to glance at her best friend. “Y-Yeah,” she stammered before she cleared her throat. “It’s…tradition…for the last night.”
“Did someone say ‘Chubbie’s’,” Farkle asked as he entered the living room.
Maya laughed. “Anxious to dive into another plate of ribs?”
“Well, you know, it’ll be the last time I can get them for awhile, so I might as well, right?” He glanced at Lucas. “What time do they open?”
“Around 4,” he absentmindedly answered as he continued to stare at his girlfriend. That one look from her had completely changed his entire mood. Something was very, very wrong, and while he knew he needed to know what it was, he dreaded hearing the answer.
“It’s nearly 3:30 already,” Maya noted. “Geez, time flies when you sleep all day.”
“Yeah, I hate that we slept most of the day,” Zay began as he sat down on the couch, “but last night was worth it, wasn’t it?”
Maya laughed as she sat down next to him. “I have to admit that it was probably the best 4th of July celebration I’ve ever been to…and it wasn’t even the 4th.”
“Yeah,” Zay nodded, “It’s a pretty awesome tradition. I’m glad you guys were able to experience that—at least once anyway.”
Maya glanced at Riley. “Are you about ready to go get something to eat?”
“Sure,” she answered with a small smile. “Are you guys?”
“Absolutely,” Farkle answered.
Riley barely touched her food. She merely spent thirty minutes pushing it around on her plate so the others would think that she had eaten something.
Lucas wasn’t fooled. His gaze never wandered very far away from Riley ever since she came back from her walk. With every passing second, he became more and more concerned. He had tried to be patient and wait for her to come to him, but his patience was non-existent now. There was no way she was going to get on that plane tomorrow without telling him what was going on. It wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t fair that he had to watch her pretend that nothing was wrong when in reality, it looked like the entire world had ended.
He didn’t eat. He couldn’t even pretend to eat. Every single thought he had revolved around her. He knew that she wouldn’t say a word about it around the others and not while they were out in public. He also knew that they were going to sit around a campfire later on, and if he had a chance of talking to her alone, that would be time to try to get her alone. They had only spent one night stargazing since she had arrived. He didn’t really question it until now, but as he stared at her, he knew that it was more than just fatigue that kept her away.
She was pushing him away.
He had to know why.
He deserved to know why.
“It’s a million degrees out here,” Maya whined as she watched Lucas and Zay stoke the fire in front of them. “Is the fire really necessary?”
“It’s starting to cool off a little,” Riley told her. “Besides, we wouldn’t have been able to make smores without it.”
“And you didn’t even eat one of them,” Lucas muttered before he stood up. Riley loved smores. They were one of her favorite things about campfires. It was one reason why campfires became a last night in Texas tradition for them. She could devour a whole bag of marshmallows on her own. Like with dinner, Lucas had watched her slide marshmallow after marshmallow on her stick. She went through the motions of placing it on the graham cracker with a piece of chocolate on top, but whenever it came to actually consuming the treat, she would look at it for a long moment before tossing it into the trash bag. He knew that none of the others had noticed--all too absorbed in their conversation about the past week—but he had noticed.
Riley furrowed her eyebrows as she watched him walked a few feet away from them. He had his back turned to the group as he crossed his arms over his chest. She was certain that the others hadn’t heard him, but she had. He knew something was wrong and she knew that there was no way she would be able to avoid the conversation she had spent the last hour trying to talk herself out of having with him.
“They’re messy, but they sure are delicious.” Zay pulled out the nearly empty bag of marshmallows from behind Maya. He turned to Farkle. “Want another one?”
Farkle’s stomach lurched. “No, I’m ok. I think I ate enough tonight to last me for the next month.”
“Are you feeling ok,” Maya asked him when she noticed how pale he seemed.
“No, I—“ his stomach rumbled. “I…better go. I don’t feel so good.” He clutched his stomach as he stood up. “I’m…sorry.” He didn’t wait for anyone to respond to him before he made a beeline back to the house. He swore to himself at that very moment that no matter how delicious they seemed, he was never going to consume another rib for as long as he lived.
“Good night,” Zay called out as he watched Farkle sprint toward the house. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him run that fast.”
“Poor Farkle.” Maya took a bite of her marshmallow. “Some people just can’t handle three racks of ribs.”
“I’m not sure where he puts it,” Zay chuckled.
“I’m not so sure he was able to put it anywhere,” she pointed out. “I think that’s why he’s halfway back to the house now.”
While Zay and Maya resumed their discussion about the best part of their week, Riley’s gaze shifted back to her boyfriend. Through the light the campfire emitted, she could see the tension between his shoulders as his arms remained folded across his chest. His head was slightly bowed, which meant his gaze was fixated on the ground rather than anything off in the distance.
She wasn’t how long he stood there before he suddenly spun around to face the group once more.
He took a deep breath as his eyes locked onto his girlfriend’s. “Do you want to go on a walk with me?”
Riley glanced at Maya and Zay for a moment before she turned back to Lucas. “Uh…yeah.” She swallowed before she stood up. A wave of panic slowly rolled through her as she walked toward him.
Maya and Zay silently watched the couple leave.
“Is something wrong with Riley,” Zay asked. He wasn’t the most perceptive person in their group of friends, so he knew that if he had sensed the obvious tension between the couple, then there must be something to it. “She’s seemed…off this week.”
Maya laid her stick down next to her as she tried to think of some excuse to give Zay that wouldn’t exactly be a lie. “She’s just…stressed right now. She doesn’t want it to ruin the trip, so she’s trying not to think about it.” There. Let Zay come to his own conclusion about what it was. She knew that he would probably assume that it was the apartment search, after all, they all knew how stressed the brunette had been about it.
Zay sat his stick down next to Maya’s. “Well, hopefully this week helped clear her head a little bit.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, content enough to watch the flames flicker in front of them. Maya bit her bottom lip as she looked at Zay out of the corner of her eye. She knew that this would be a completely off the wall question, but she wanted his honest opinion and perhaps the best way to get it would be to take him by surprise. “Can I ask you something?”
He turned toward her. “Sure.”
She took a deep breath. Was she actually about to bring up something that happened in high school? Before she could second-guess herself, she continued. “It’s something I’ve been wondering about lately. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can ask you anything, right?”
What on earth could it possibly be that she had to preface it like that? “Yeah. Of course.”
“Ok…so…um…when we were in high school…when Lucas first came…he…he said that you used to refer to me as ‘the blonde beauty’.” She cleared her throat. “Um…what did that mean exactly?”
Zay chuckled nervously. “Still remember that, huh?” He had hoped that time would have been on his side and she would have completely forgotten about it by now, but of course she didn’t. He wasn’t that lucky.
“Well, it’s a little hard to forget.” She clasped her hands together as she felt a wave of anxiety flow through her. “Did that mean that it was all I had going for me?”
Zay’s smile faltered. “No. No. Maya, I never meant for you to take it like that.” It was quite the opposite actually. Lucas had only told the group one thing he said about Maya. Lucas, thankfully, never told the group everything Zay had confessed about the blonde who currently sat next to him.
“I’m not so sure how else to take it, Zay.”
“Maya, you’re beautiful…yes…but you’re so much more than that. I told Lucas that when I first met you guys. Ever since then I’ve…” he sighed as he felt his heart begin to race. “You’re one of the smartest people I know. You can turn a blank canvas into a masterpiece. You would do anything for your friends…you even proved that when everything happened between Lucas and Riley in high school. You have more talent in one finger than anyone else has in their entire body. God, I feel like I could listen to you talk about paint drying and be completely enraptured…” he let his words hang in the air as he watched Maya lift her eyebrows in surprised. Oh God. What had he just done? “I…might have said too much.”
Maya bit her bottom lip to keep herself from smiling. “Was it…true?” Did he really see her like that? Was she really more than just a face to him? Did he really think that she was smart and talented?
He nodded. “Of course it’s true. It was true then…and it’s still true now, but…”
“But?”
He took a deep breath. He wasn’t at all prepared to have this conversation with her. “I’ve always…had a crush on you,” he confessed. “Even when you were dating one of my best friends. I hated myself for it, but it never…went away.”
“Really?” She couldn’t believe it. He had a crush on her? And it never went away? Did that mean that he, maybe, still had a crush on her now?
“Yeah. Why do you ask?” He hoped that this wouldn’t make things awkward between them. He had gotten pretty good at hiding his feelings for her—especially after she started to date Farkle.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I feel like…like maybe we’ve gotten closer over the last few years.” She wasn’t sure what it was, or how it really happened, but while the entire group recovered from everything that happened in high school, she found herself spending more time with Zay. He had turned into her art museum buddy and in return, she went with him to various dance performances in the city. They had really bonded over their mutual love of the arts. She found herself looking forward to spending time with him, and if she was being perfectly honest with herself, she knew that she was going to miss him a lot over the next month.
“Yeah. Me too.” She wasn’t completely freaked out by his confession? Was he dreaming?
“Do you…still like me?”
He looked into her eyes for a long moment. “Yeah. I think that’s the only thing that hasn’t—“
He was unable to finish the rest of his sentence as Maya pressed her lips against his. He ran his hand through her blonde curls as he softly caressed her cheek. He must have dreamt of kissing Maya Hart off and on for the last seven years. Now, here he was, kissing the girl of his dreams.
Only, there was still the very real issue of Farkle Minkus that immediately came to his mind. He slowly pulled away from her. He knew he couldn’t do this.
“What,” she asked as she slowly opened her eyes. She was completely confused. That was easily one of the best first kisses she had ever had. Did he not feel the same way? “Was it…not…”
“No,” he shook his head. “That was…incredible. I just…what about Farkle?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s throwing up in the bathroom and swearing that he’ll never eat ribs again. Why?”
“You and he dated for a really long time.”
“We dated in high school, Zay.”
“Yeah, and do you remember what happened when you guys broke up?” It was two and a half years ago, but Zay knew he’d never forget the aftermath of that breakup. He was the one who was there for Farkle after the fight with Lucas. He was the one who listened as Farkle went over every detail of his relationship with Maya as he tried to make sense of where he went wrong. As much as he liked Maya, Zay knew that he had to take Farkle’s feelings into consideration.
Maya sighed. “He doesn’t…he isn’t…he doesn’t like me like that anymore.”
“I’m not so sure that’s true, Maya. I see the way he looks at you.”
She frowned. “So, because my ex-boyfriend looks at me…it means that I can’t…we can’t…maybe go out on a date or something?”
Zay shook his head. “We’re finally all ok after what happened senior year. I can’t risk that.”
Maya looked down as she watched the fire slowly die down in front of them. He had a point. She wouldn’t want to risk her friendship with Farkle, but at the same time, she felt something when she kissed Zay. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.” She slowly looked back up at him. “But…you know how they say ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?’”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you think that it could work for any destination…like say…Austin, Texas…by a romantic campfire under thousands of stars?”
He swallowed. “You’re not making this easy.”
“All I’m saying is that…I felt something. In a five second kiss, I felt something and I’m not sure what it is, but we’re both adults. Who knows? It could just be a physical attraction.”
“What do you propose?”
“It’s my last night here. Riley and Lucas are off on a walk…probably at the hill. Farkle is…back at the house. All I know right now is that I want to spend my last night here with you. You’re going to be here for the next month. Maybe we can get this out of our system now…and not wonder ‘what if’…and by the time you come back to the city, we can just continue being friends.” She placed her hand on his knee. She had never proposed anything like this before, but there was something about all of this that felt right. Was it just the setting? She wasn’t sure, but she knew that she needed to find out. “Zay, come on. We’ve all dated around. What’s so different about this?”
Yes, they had dated around, but this was different. He knew that if he went down this path, Maya Penelope Hart would take up a permanent residence in his heart. They were by a romantic campfire, under a million stars, and he knew the moment his brown eyes met her blue ones that he wouldn’t be able to deny her anything she asked of him.
“I feel bad just leaving them back there,” Riley began as she sat down at the very spot she spent most of the day at, “but I definitely wanted to get a little more of this view before I leave tomorrow.” Small talk. Small talk was good. Small talk could cut down on the tension that had been building between them over the last few hours.
“You really love this place, don’t you?” He released a breath he didn’t realize he was holding as he sat down behind her and wrapped his arms around her. Maybe he had been wrong? Maybe she was just stressed about everything going on back in New York. He knew that she didn’t eat much when she was stressed. Maybe he had overreacted?
“So do you,” she answered solemnly as she looked up at the same sky that always seemed to give her strength. It seemed fitting that the clouds above them had prevented her from seeing the countless stars that normally hung overhead. She closed her eyes when she felt his lips brush against her shoulder. He wasn’t making this easy, but she knew that she had to say something. They had to talk about this before she left because not knowing what to do was slowly destroying her. “Do you…do you think you could see yourself here in a few years…once you graduate?”
He smiled against her shoulder before he placed another kiss against it. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly as he lifted his head to rest his chin on her shoulder. “I haven’t really thought about it.” He looked at the scenery around them. It would be easy to picture them sitting in this very spot in fifty years. “I love Texas, but I want to be wherever you are.”
“That’s just it, Lucas.” She craned her neck to look at him. This was it. Everything she had been thinking, feeling, and denying was about to come out. “What if where I want to be and where you want to be places us on opposite sides of the country?”
Lucas frowned. Where was any of this coming from? They had just finished their sophomore year in college. They had plenty of time to figure out where they were going to live. Was this what had been on her mind? He nearly sighed in relief as he buried his head in her neck. He waited a brief moment before he placed a gently kiss at the base of it. “Riley, I want to be with you.” He lifted his head as he tightened his grip on her in a non-verbal attempt to reassure her. “I don’t care if I have to live in a cardboard box in a dark and damp alley for the rest of my life…as long as I can be with you, ok?” He kissed the top of her head. “All of this means nothing to me unless you’re here too.”
Riley slowly inhaled before she pulled away from him. She turned her head back so she could look him in the eyes. Everything he had said so far was exactly what she knew he would say. It only strengthened her resolve to continue this discussion. “What about your career? Lucas, I can’t let you give all that up for me.”
“Who says I’m giving it up? There are veterinarians in the city.” He narrowed his eyes. “Riley, where is this coming from?” The moment she pulled away from him, Lucas knew that this wasn’t some moment of panic about where they would end up in two years. This was something that she had spent considerable time questioning.
As she watched the seriousness of their conversation slowly dawn on him, she knew that she had to get this out while she still had any kind of strength to. “It’s coming from the place inside of me that knows that we want to share our lives together, but at the same time, when you really think about it…one of us is going to have to sacrifice what we want in order to do it.” She swallowed. She wasn’t sure if she was making any kind of sense, but she knew she had to keep going. “I love acting. Tisch has offered me the chance of a lifetime to get my foot in the door so I can really pursue this. I can’t…I don’t know.” She sounded completely selfish, and maybe she was. Maybe she was scared that this whole time he assumed she would move to Texas because she was ‘just an actress’ and that career path wasn’t nearly as significant as being a veterinarian.
“You can’t give up all of that hard work just to come live here. Riley, I’m not asking you to.” He knew that they had all the time in the world to figure this out, but as he watched the tears slowly form in her eyes, he knew that she had already spent a considerable amount of time doing just that. Judging by the look on her face and the growing pit in his stomach, he knew that she had already made up her mind about it.
She slowly looked up into his eyes as the first few tears slid down her cheeks. “I’m not asking you to stay in the city.”
“You don’t have to ask.” His voice felt raw as he tried to decipher everything she wasn’t telling him just yet. The look of defeat in her eyes was more than enough to shatter the protective wall they had built over the last two years to keep the world—and all of its attempts to pull them apart—away from them.
She had to press on. She had to make him see that they had a problem—a very real one—that couldn’t be resolved in a five-minute conversation. She had already tried to figure it out on her own, and she couldn’t find a single alternative that didn’t end in at least one of them hating the other. “What about school? You can’t study veterinarian medicine in the city.”
He knew that. He had done the research. He knew that he would have to go away for that part of his education, but he always thought she understood that. He thought that she would be ok with having to pursue a long distance relationship for a while. After everything they had been through, surely distance would be the last thing to ruin them. “Riley,” his voice slightly quivered, “do you want to break up?”
Riley shook her head despite the fact that tears were freely flowing down her cheeks. That was why she wanted to talk to him about it. She didn’t want to break up. She didn’t want to give this up. She needed his help to figure all of it out. “No! I just…maybe this is why I haven’t…why we haven’t talked about our future. The next two years seem perfect, but after that, no matter what scenario I try to consider, we end up in different cities, and I’m not sure how we’ll ever live in the same city.” Verbalizing it, admitting that their future seemed cloudy at best made it all seem real—too real.
He looked at her in complete and utter disbelief. The hopelessness in her tone only drove home the fact that she had already given up on them. “Are you saying that we have an expiration date?”
Her bottom lip trembled at the mere suggestion that someday, everything with him would end. “I’m saying that…that…maybe I was wrong. Maybe we don’t need to talk about this now.” She wiped her eyes as her eyes fell to the ground next to her. “All I want to do is lay here with you and look at this sky and memorize every single second of it because…because this is what’s going to carry me through until you come back next month.” She shouldn’t have said anything to him. She should have kept it bottled in until she had some sort of plan figured out.
This whole conversation had taken him completely by surprise. How long had she thought about all of this? Why hadn’t she talked to him about it before now? Why did this feel more like an ending rather than some small bump that they would figure out together? He slowly stood up. He had to move around. He couldn’t sit still any longer. All he wanted to do at that moment was run away—from the hill, from her, from a future that apparently didn’t include her. “You’re saying we have an expiration date.”
Riley watched as he paced in front of her. She wanted to lie to him and tell him that it wasn’t what she meant at all, but now that it was out there, she couldn’t take it back. “Lucas, I don’t know.”
It felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. He stopped pacing as he tried to absorb what the woman he loved was trying to tell him. She didn’t know if they were going to last? After everything they had been through, after everything he had told her, after every touch, every kiss, she didn’t know if they were worth fighting for? “Is this why you’ve been distant from me this summer?”
Her eyes fell to the ground. She couldn’t tell him about Charlie—not now. Not when she didn’t know what had happened at his hearing earlier in the day and not while they were still trying to figure this out. “I’ve been in New York and you’ve been here. I think it stands to reason that we’ve been distant.”
Lucas scoffed as he placed his hands on his hips. He looked up to the sky for a long moment before he glanced down at her once more. “Don’t,” his voice was deep, pained. He noticed her flinch at the heaviness of it. “Don’t play it off. We both know that you’ve been pulling away from me. I knew you were hiding something.” He shook his head. He wasn’t prepared to accept the reality of their conversation. “I just didn’t think it was something like this.”
“Lucas, all I’m saying is that maybe…maybe we’ve been avoiding talking about it because it’s…it’s a big decision that we have to make. I think that maybe…now that it’s out there…that it’s something we need to start thinking about.”
He fell to his knees as he found himself a few shallow breaths away from begging for her to reconsider everything she had just told him. He cupped her face in his hands as he looked into her bloodshot eyes. He wiped away a few of her tears as he silently begged her to tell him that everything was going to be ok—that this was all some test, just another little bump in the road to their happily ever after. “What is there to think about,” he asked softly as he continued to brush her tears away. “I want to be with you. Anywhere. Always.” What else mattered? They needed to fight for this. They needed to figure it out—together. God, he’d literally go to hell if it meant they would be able to be with one another. How could she not understand that they could get through anything as long as they were together?
She closed her eyes when she saw the desperation in his eyes. She knew that was exactly how she must have looked last night after her conversation with Jessica. As much as she wanted to reassure him that everything was going to be ok, she wasn’t convinced that it would be. It wasn’t an easy fix. It wasn’t something that could be resolved in one conversation. It was going to take time and a lot of soul searching to figure it all out. When she opened her eyes, she noticed that his eyes had filled with his own tears. “I want to be with you, too,” she began as she desperately tried to bite back a sob, “but Lucas, this is…I don’t know what to do.”
He leaned forward as he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Please stay,” he softly pleaded as he rested his forehead against hers. “We can figure this out. Please stay. Please. One month. Riley, please.”
“I can’t,” she bit out. “Lucas, please. Please don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
He leaned back from her. “What can I do? Riley, please tell me what I need to do.”
She wiped her eyes before she ran her fingers through her hair. “I think…I think that we both just need to…to take some time and think about this.” Her voice shook as she looked up at the sky. “I think that maybe we…we take the next month and…think about it…apart from one a-another.”
“W-What?” His heart dropped at her words. What did that even mean ‘think about it apart from one another’? Two thousand miles apart wasn’t enough? She wanted more space?
“I don’t know,” she finally cried out before she forced herself to stand up. “I thought that maybe since you’re here and I’m there that it would be a…a good time…to just…take the next month and…and maybe not talk to one another. M-Maybe we can figure out…what we really want…and maybe figure out a way to get it.”
“A break?” He stood up before he closed the space between them. “You want a break from us?”
“We need to figure out what we want.”
“But I know what I want.” He cupped her face in his hands once more. “I want you, Riley. Nothing else matters if I don’t have you.” He lowered his head as he brushed his lips against hers. The moment he felt her kiss him back, his opened his mouth as he quickly deepened their kiss. He was more than desperate for her to know just how much he needed her. They didn’t need a break. They only needed each other.
It would be easy to give in. God, how she wanted to forget it all and give into this. They could spend the next two years avoiding this entire conversation, but she knew it would be pointless. “Lucas,” she gasped as she pulled back from him. She gently nudged him back from her. They had to talk about this. They couldn’t just ignore it.
His desperation and despair slowly turned into anger. How could she dismiss their relationship when he had given everything to her? He was prepared to give it all up—everything he had dreamt for himself—just to be with her and she wanted a break from him? “Fine,” he said as he turned away from her.
She could feel the anger rolling off of him, but he had to understand. “Lucas, I just want us to figure out what we want apart from one another. Maybe then we can figure out—“
“Nah, I get it,” he crossed his arms over his chest as he turned back around to face her. “But what’s the point in waiting?”
Riley frowned. Waiting? This wasn’t waiting. This was a break so they could figure out what they wanted outside of their relationship. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t understand the point in waiting for a month.” His voice shook, but he only saw one resolution. “You’re right. It would be easier to do this now…while I’m here and while you’re in New York. I’ll be gone for four more weeks, and…I think you’ve already made up your mind. I don’t think a month is going to change anything. You’ve clearly been thinking about this for a while now…what’s a month of not speaking to one another really going to do other than to delay the inevitable?” He swallowed. “We’re already having this conversation, so why not finish it now? Why wait?” What the hell was he even saying? Did he just tell her that he wanted to break up with her? He didn’t want to break up with her. He didn’t want a break from her at all! Less than 24 hours ago, he was begging her to stay and spend the rest of the summer with him. God, he couldn’t imagine a few weeks without her, let alone forever.
Riley felt the air around her completely evaporate as her mouth fell open in shock. “Are you…are you breaking up with me?”
“Haven’t you already broken up with me,” he challenged as he finally allowed his anger to control his emotions. It was easier this way. It was easier to hide behind the fact that she had made this decision for them. Waiting a month would only delay the inevitable. He knew that. She knew that. “I feel like you’ve been thinking about this for awhile,” he added as he ran a hand through his hair. “What’s one month of not communicating going to do? We’ll be right back here…having this same conversation again. Why not rip the Band-Aid off now?”
Her throat ran dry. This wasn’t what she wanted! “I thought…I thought I could tell you anything and that you would…that it would…that we would…”
“That we would what? You’re right, Riley. We don’t know what’s going to happen after we graduate, so it’s better to just…save ourselves the trouble of wasting two more years on something that’s…that’s always been doomed.” God, it hurt. Everything hurt. His head hurt. His chest hurt. His whole body ached, but none of it compared to how badly everything felt on the inside. It was all crumbling around him. Everything he had worked for. Everything they had survived. It was all in vain. All of it was for nothing. He loved her. He loved her more than he would ever love anything. That’s why the thought of being in limbo for a month—of being scared every single day that his worst nightmare would become a reality—would be too much for him. He couldn’t live like that for another month. He had already been living like that for most of the summer. He loved her. He’d do anything in the world for her—even if that meant letting her go. He had done it once, he could do it again, although this time it was ten times harder—because he was at least ten times more in love with her than he was back then. “I’m giving you want you want,” he paused as he stared at the patch of grass next to her feet. “What you really want, but are too nice to actually say. You…don’t have to worry about it anymore.” He cleared his throat. “You can go back to New York and just focus on getting your apartment with Maya. You don’t have to worry about this anymore.”
Tears cascaded down the brunette’s cheeks as she stared at the ground. “Good thing I’m leaving tomorrow then, huh?” Was this actually happening? Some part of her knew that this would be inevitable, but did the inevitable have to happen now? Everything around her felt like a dream—a complete and utter nightmare. Would she wake up soon? God, she hoped so. She couldn’t stand the thought of having to exist in a world where they weren’t together.
He knew that if he looked up at her, whatever fragments of his heart that remained would completely shatter. Always a glutton for punishment, he forced himself to slowly look up at the only woman he knew he would ever love. Seeing the tears in her eyes and hearing the quiver in her voice made him want to take back every single word, but he knew he couldn’t. Was this what she had been thinking about for the last month? Was this what she had kept from him? It sounded like she had made her decision long before she even asked him about it. What was the point in waiting? What was the point in torturing himself for the next month—the next two years—about it? God, this was it. This was what she had been hiding from him all along.
She wasn’t sure how long they stared at one another in complete silence. All she knew was that everything around her seemed thick—so thick that she had a hard time even breathing. She could hear her heart beat throb in her ears. This used to be her safe place. It was where she first told Lucas everything that happened to her that night at the ski lodge. It was where they decided to be together. It was where he took her almost every night she was in Austin over the last few summers. It was their place. It was their oasis.
But not anymore. The fairytale had ended. The magical spell of the hill had been broken, because while it’s nice to think that there such a thing as a safe place in the world, the truth is that there isn’t. At any given moment, your entire world could crumble and all you’re left holding are the fragments of a world you used to know. Her eyes fell to the grass once more. “I knew something bad was going to happen,” she murmured.
“What?” He heard her, but he wasn’t the one who did this. She was the one who had decided their entire future, or lack of one, without him. That hurt more than anything. She had decided that there was nothing to be done. She had chosen this. He was just the one who had the guts to pull the trigger. She wanted them to think about this for the next month, but as he stared at her, he knew—he knew that wouldn’t have changed anything.
“Nothing. I…um…better go…pack. It’s going to be morning…soon…and I don’t want to…to…umm…bye.” She wasn’t even sure if she had made any sense as the rush of words that poured from her. She took approximately five steps away from him before she paused. She took a deep breath before she turned back to look at him. She wanted to stop everything—rewind time and ignore everything she had been feeling—but she couldn’t. She slowly turned back around before she quickly left him behind as she began to navigate the path back to the main house. If this had happened two years ago, she knew she would’ve gotten lost in the darkness, but the path from the house to the hill was one Riley now knew by heart. ‘This might be the last time I’m here,’ she thought as tears continued to stream down her cheeks.
She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to break up. She wasn’t sure what she wanted, but it certainly wasn’t this. This was why she didn’t want to talk about their future at all. She wasn’t sure where it would lead, if anywhere. Apparently, he didn’t even want to try to work through it. Maybe he knew all along that they were simply a dead end.
Lucas slowly sat down as he replayed their conversation. It was over. Just like that, the last four years were gone. He knew he had made the right decision by ending it now instead of waiting until he got back to the city. He knew that the distance would help him adjust to this new world he was now forced to live in. He knew he couldn’t wait another month just to go back and have the same conversation with the same resolution. She was right to force him to face their reality instead of getting swept up in their feelings for one another. Even if they had tabled the entire conversation, what would happen in two years? He was prepared to follow her anywhere she wanted to go, no matter where that was, but she didn’t want him to do that. She wanted to live her life and she want him to live his life, and for some reason, their professional dreams seemed to be on completely different paths, at least according to her.
Was there another reason why she brought all of this up now?
Was there someone else?
God, he couldn’t even think about that right now. His heart had already been pulverized. If he knew there was some other guy waiting for her in New York, he might not ever leave Texas.
