A/N: THIS IS THE 2ND PART OF A TWO CHAPTER UPDATE.
Apologies that I have not responded to you guys yet! I fell behind and decided to clean slate and start over in 2018 because I lost track of everything. Thanks for your patience! This story is going to be finished this year for sure, and definitely before March.
Thank you sticking with me through this, loves! ^^
Disclaimer: I don't own GMW or A Walk To Remember.
"Are you warm enough, Maya?" Lucas asked, shifting the space heater closer to Maya so she could feel more warmth. It was hard enough getting Katy to agree to this activity; the last thing he wanted was for Maya to get sick from the cold weather and then be permanently banned from hanging out with her. "Should I go grab another blanket from downstairs? How about—"
"Stop fussing like a mother hen, Lucas," she interrupted dryly, shifting the camera around her neck and picking up her thermos of hot tea to take a sip. "I'm just highly susceptible to the cold. I don't need a caretaker."
"Sorry." He chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his head. "I just don't want your mom to kick my ass if you get sick, as she so kindly put it."
"She won't. Because she's so happy I'm getting a chance to get out of the house for a bit."
Maya leaned her head on his shoulder, snuggling up next to him and his heart immediately began to double time. Slowly, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tucking her into his side and making sure she was completely comfortable. Not for the first time that week, he was glad that Farkle and Riley weren't there.
Don't get him wrong. He liked Farkle and Riley and definitely considered them good friends now, but with Riley gone to Philadelphia for holiday break and Farkle off to some business convention with his father in California, it meant Lucas pretty much had Maya during the break all to himself. She wasn't always in the mood for fulfilling her bucket list tasks, and some days she didn't plan on going out at all so they chilled at her or his place, but just getting to spend more time with her was enough for him.
He enjoyed the activities they got to do together. Walking the high line, watching an outdoors theatre performance, getting gelato. But his favourite were the days he spent hanging out with her in her living room, just watching her paint peacefully. It was like she was in another world, focusing solely on her art, her eyes glazed over in concentration, a tiny, relaxed smile on her lips as she did what she enjoyed. It was when she was painting that Maya always looked her happiest. And Lucas was content just sitting beside her. Hell, he was content just being near her, even if she didn't realise how much he liked her. He valued her friendship. She made him feel at peace too, like the weight on his shoulders had been lifted.
Lucas skimmed the list again, counting how many things Maya had left. "Have you ever shared this list with anyone else but me?"
"No. It's not something I want the closest people to me to know."
He frowned. "Why not?"
"Because they would worry about me."
Why they would worry about her having a list of things she wanted to complete in her life, Lucas didn't understand. These were all pretty harmless goals, so he didn't see what would be the harm in letting them know. But Maya did value her privacy, so he wouldn't question the answer behind that weird reasoning.
"Well, now we can check off this one too. That leaves only ten more." He took his pen and struck out 'watch the sun rise from the roof and paint it' and then wrote the date beside it. "This is one of the easier things to accomplish though. Why haven't you ever done it?"
"You ask a lot of questions, Lucas. Just enjoy the scenery…" she murmured with a sigh of exhaustion.
"It's kind of hard to enjoy the scenery when it's sub degrees temperature outside." A bit of wind blew by, slapping them square in the face and making Lucas shiver a bit. Despite being bundled up in full winter wear under two blankets with a heater blasting on them, it was still cold up on Maya's complex's roof. But he would endure it if it meant being able to watch Maya's face light up when the sun rose. "But seriously. The last time you finished something on this list was last year."
She shrugged with a soft hum. "I wanted to share all my moments like these with people I care about. But I couldn't tell them about the list and continually asking them to do stuff like this with me would have raised some alarms. So at some point, I just stopped working on the list. Plus, I felt like I would never get it done, so it was mostly a lost hope kind of thing."
"Wait, so who was with you during this skinny dipping one?" he asked curiously.
It didn't seem too farfetched to him that Maya would skinny dip since she definitely seemed the type who might take risks like that. But he couldn't envision who she could have convinced to join her for something that daring.
"You would ask about that one." Maya rolled her eyes. "Perv."
"Inquiring mind wants to know," he said cheekily.
"Inquiring mind needs to stop asking so many questions because they won't like the answers." Her face pinched up. "It happened freshman year. This was while I was dating Brandon."
"Okay… I do regret asking now." Not to mention it irritated him thinking that Brandon had seen that much of her.
"You should." She punched him playfully on the arm. "Idiot."
"But you know, some of them don't have to be an issue now. I mean, you can wait to get married in later years, right?"
She didn't respond to his question for so long that he thought maybe she hadn't heard him. But when he glanced down at her, Maya's brows were knit together in a scowl.
"Maya?"
"You're wrong."
"I'm…?"
But he tapered off, his gaze shifting down when something started trickling out of Maya's nose. It was blood.
"Umm, Maya, you're bleeding," he said in alarm. In all his time hanging out with her, she'd never gotten a nosebleed before.
She blinked at him in confusion for a second, but then her eyes grew wide as she brought her fingers to the underside of her nose. She stared at the blood on her fingers and then exhaled slowly, looking terrified all of a sudden.
"Shit…" she muttered.
"I have a napkin here." Lucas pulled it out of his pocket and tried to hand it to her, but she ignored him, her eyes still on her fingers. "A blood vessel must have popped in your nose or something. Or maybe it's because of the cold."
She swallowed thickly. "That's not it. Lucas, you should go home."
Surprised by the sudden darkening shift of her mood, he frowned, staring at her. "What?"
"I don't want to watch the sunrise anymore." She averted her gaze to the side, something that Lucas had recently discovered she did whenever she was lying and trying to evade conversation. "Go home."
"What the hell are you talking about? You've been excited about today for a whole week, and now you're telling me you suddenly don't want to watch the sun rise?"
"I said go home, Lucas!" she snapped at him angrily.
"And I'm saying no! Tell me what's wrong," he growled in frustration.
"Fine! If you won't leave, I'm going." She shoved the blankets off of her and shot to her feet.
Lucas jumped to his feet too and took her wrist to stop her from running off. "Maya, why are you—"
"Ow dammit!"
She ripped her arm away from him and from the bit of light shining on the roof, Lucas could make out the imprint of a few fingertip-like bruises above her gloves from where he'd taken hold of her wrist. He instantly felt horrified and even more so when Maya released a shuddering breath and pitched forward woozily. He caught her carefully by the shoulders and steadied her.
"I'm so sorry," he apologised, horrified with himself for being so careless. "I didn't mean to hurt you. Ae you okay?"
"It wasn't you. I just feel faint is all…" she murmured, burying her face in his sweater and taking deep, labouring breaths.
"Maya, I'm really concerned about you. You're not okay."
She didn't answer.
"Easy bruises, feeling faint, your joints hurting, missing school. And now this nosebleed." He rubbed her back gently as Maya continued to wait out the wave of dizziness. "You're ill, aren't you? And this has to do with why you're always so secretive about everything, doesn't it? Is it anaemia?"
"Lucas—"
"Just tell me the truth, Maya. Tell me what's really going on with you."
"I don't…" She stopped talking and then sighed. "I really don't want to tell you."
"Do you trust me?"
"I do… But that's not why I don't want to tell you."
"Maya. Please," he said softly.
Maya still didn't respond for a few minutes after that, still using Lucas as a support as he rubbed her back. He was almost settling into the idea of being ignored again until he felt her pushing against his abdomen to step away.
"…don't freak out." She backed away a few paces, chewing on her bottom lip as she stared up at him in trepidation. "I don't want to tell people simply because of the fact that they always act so strange about it."
"I won't freak out." She hesitated, but he gave her a reassuring smile. "Promise."
"Lucas, I have leukaemia. Six years running now, even though the doctor said I would only have five years to live. It's not spreading outrageously fast, but I don't know how much time I have left. But one thing I do know for sure is that I've been getting worse."
With each word she revealed, Lucas' smile slowly dropped from his face until he was staring at her with eyes wide in dismay.
"…what?" he whispered in disbelief.
But she only continued to watch him, her gaze steadfast and expectant. And suddenly everything made total sense.
"That's why you miss school so much and why you're always in the nurse's office."
She nodded.
"And not being able to eat sometimes?"
"Medication."
"Fuck…" Lucas said as he ran a hand down his face, dread twisting sharply in his chest. "The deadline for the list… That's why…?"
Even without asking the question, Lucas knew the answer to that.
That forever look of melancholy in her gaze, her friends worrying about her every turn of the second, Maya's mother's odd comments, Riley and Farkle acting weird about the questions Lucas would ask, the secrecy, how she never talked about or even thought about the future, all those cryptic comments about time and moving on and forgetting the past, Nadia and the hospital. The whole bucket list was things she wanted to do before it was all over. The more Lucas thought about it, the more the pieces of the puzzle began to gel together. And the more it gelled, the more it sank in. The more it sank in of what was happening to Maya, the more disparaging it became.
He couldn't really describe what it felt like when the news settled, but his stomach twisted in knots and all of a sudden, it felt like he'd been mauled over by a truck. His heart hurt and his lungs felt like they were constricting in his chest. He didn't even hear the rest of what Maya was saying because he was in shock.
"W-why aren't you in a hospital?" he stammered. "So you can get better?"
"You know damn well we can't afford it," she snapped, roughly wiping her bloody nose with the back of her coat's sleeve. "We don't have insurance, and we don't have the money to pay for the procedures and examinations. We can barely even afford the medication I'm taking now. My first round of chemo years ago crippled our bank account, and we still are paying off hospital bills now. We're in major debt we can never seem to get out of. Why do you think my mom is a call girl? She doesn't even have a high school diploma, and at least the pay is enough for us to buy groceries and pay rent."
"I can't believe you've been living with leukaemia for six years. Shouldn't you be resting at least?" he said urgently.
"I'm not going to spend whatever is left in my life lying in a bed. What's the point? I'm going to live the remainder of my life out to the fullest," she answered sharply, glaring up at him in irritation.
"But what about—"
"You see? This is exactly why I don't want to tell people about my cancer in the first place! Because they always act like this!" Maya spat, shoving him away from her. "Just stop! Don't you see I've gotten over it already? I know, okay? I know. But there is absolutely nothing I can fucking do about it, Lucas. It's a miracle I'm even alive. So I'm counting my blessings and finishing out my last few goals in life so I can go with no regrets. That's it. I've already made my resolve. So you need to get over it and now, because I'm not going to put up with you coddling me."
"How the hell am I supposed to get over it?" His voice cracked and his eyes felt like they were watering, but he didn't care. "Maya… You're dying."
He knew it. She knew it. But saying the words out loud still wrecked him. Knowing that her body was slowly breaking down, slowly getting weaker. Knowing that he was slowly losing Maya hurt so bad.
Her eyes grew glassy too as she averted her gaze to the horizon. "And now you know."
At that moment, the first rays of sunlight peeked out, turning the early morning sky a faint orange mixed with a shimmering gold and a bit of radiant purple. But Lucas couldn't focus on the beauty of the sunrise at all. It was like some sick joke. The morning being all gorgeous and cheerful after such a horrific revelation.
Maya was dying.
And there was nothing Lucas could do about it.