Disclaimer: I don't own GMW.
Okay guys, last chapter! Let me just say I am so grateful for all of you readers and all your wonderful comments. I would not have continued this story if it wasn't for you guys. I'm really proud of how much this story has evolved and everything. I'm so sorry for the long wait, especially with Winter Break come and gone.
So thank you so much and I will talk to you guys, soon!
Seven months later, Farkle Junior Minkus and Ciara Sarah Friar was born.
"They're destined to be together!" Riley, the ever present one to want hers and her best friend's children together. "Then we'll sort of be in-laws!"
"Riley, they won't end up together. At most they'll be best friends who've known each other forever, but not get married," Maya pointed out as the two were sitting in the Friar apartment while the boys were at work and the three babies were sleeping in Jackson's room.
"You weren't so against it seven months ago."
"Yeah, well, pregnancy changes you."
"You and Farkle knew each other forever before you guys started dating."
Maya looked at Riley with that sarcastic look she often gave Lucas.
"Knew you were going to pull that card," she said, taking a sip of her coffee. "Anyway, how is everything? Getting enough sleep?"
"Nope. You?" Riley answered.
"Barely any. Farkle is keeping me up all night."
"Which Farkle?"
"Exactly."
Riley smiled as Ciara started crying. She got up and went to change her daughter.
Fifteen years later, Jackson was driving Ciara and Farkle Junior (FJ) everywhere. All three were now best friends. It was very rare to see one without at least one other. They had other friends of course, but their parents called them the new Cory/Topanga/Shawn trio. It was no surprise when Ciara and Farkle Junior had started dating (though it did get awkward when Jackson drove the two to dates. Nobody was more relieved than he when they both turned sixteen and got their licenses so he didn't have to make sure neither had their hands where they shouldn't or start making out in front of him). Actually, everybody had started suspecting it from when they started having feelings for each other at age twelve.
"Guys, we're dating!" Ciara had come through the kitchen at age fourteen, towing Farkle Junior into her apartment.
"You know Lucas is going to hurt me," Farkle Junior said, stopping just inside the doorway, not letting his girlfriend drag him further inside the familiar living space.
"He's not going to hurt you. He loves you."
"He does once he finds out I'm kissing his daughter."
"Come on, he knows Jackson's kissing that Mariana girl he's dating and he likes her," Ciara countered. "Come on."
Well, it took about fifteen more minutes of convincing, but Ciara had gotten the Minkus son at least to the kitchen before he stopped at the gaze of Lucas, who had immediately welcomed him to the family (more than he already was) and warned him to wait until a few years after graduation to pop the question.
Farkle was not surprised when Maya said one child was enough, and he supported her decision. She loved her son, but she said she could only handle one she thought along with her job as a social worker. As for Lucas and Riley, the two only had Jackson and Ciara. All four were very content with their jobs and children, and they couldn't have asked for anything more.
The proposing advice was not advice that Jackson took. He pulled a Topanga Matthews nee Lawrence at the time and proposed at his and Mariana Bowman's joint graduation party. She immediately said yes. The two waited until they were both twenty-four and had steady jobs and a house together—much like both of their sets of parents—until they decided to marry. Two years later they had a baby named Victoria Anna Friar.
Farkle Junior did take his father-in-law's advice. He waited until they were twenty-five to propose and they were married the next year. At thirty, they had their first child, Jason Minkus.
"That's an interesting name," was the first thing out of Farkle's mouth when he heard his newborn grandson's name while sitting with his daughter-in-law in the maternity ward. Riley, Lucas, Mariana, Jackson, Farkle Junior, Maya and Ciara all looked at him. "What?"
"Jason's a common name," Mariana said.
"My first name's Farkle," Farkle responded. "Jason's name is interesting to me."
"Dad, I love my name, but Farkle the Third was not going to happen," FJ said to his father.
"Darn it."
The couple went on to have three more children (Sandra, William and Alexander). Everybody in their family was very sad when they decided to move to Pennsylvania, but that had more charm to them than the large city they had grown up in. They moved just after Alexander had been born, when Jason was nine, Sandra was seven and William was four.
Mariana and Jackson moved to the complete other coast to the state of California. Both had always longed to be somewhere warmer. Too sick of the cold the couple and Victoria left New York when Victoria was eight.
When Lucas and Riley looked back at their life, they loved to go back through their first meeting, their first kiss, date, Lucas's proposal. They were not so fond of going through Cory or Topanga's deaths. They were not so pleased at the prospect of burying Auggie first, leaving Ava a widow at age fifty with a child just about to enter college.
Riley was first, at age ninety, to go. Lucas, Maya and Farkle were not expecting her to be the first to go. For the two weeks before they buried her, Maya and Farkle stayed with Lucas, knowing that looking at her seat at the coffee table was just enough to set his tears off. But whenever they talked and sat around that table, one person was missing.
Their bubbly friend who wanted the world to be good and never said a bad word about anybody..
You know that old saying that people say? Something about how one person would want to die first so they wouldn't have to live a day without the love of their life? That proved true for Riley, but only for two weeks. The morning after they had buried Riley, Lucas was found by his great-grandchildren dead (heart attack, doctors said of the autopsy. People that knew the two liked to say it was of a broken heart).
Some would say that Romeo & Juliet was the best love story ever told. Others would say that Cory and Topanga's was. But, no, for Maya and Farkle and all the Minkus/Hart and Friar/Matthews descendants, none was the greatest love story than Riley and Lucas.
And Lucas's last thought as he drifted off to sleep the night he died was, "That decision was the best I ever made".
Fin.
Didn't expect that sad ending, didja? I actually got choked up writing those last few paragraphs, and since it's 11:00 at night and my roommate is in the room, I couldn't physically break down in tears or else she'd think something was absolutely bonkers with me.
I love you guys and thank you for reading my story.
Adios, amigos!