_a/n: it's been awhile. this is by far the longest one shot ive ever written in my life. college essays have changed me

anyways. this is an adventureland!au. alternate summary being: two kiddos learn the beauty and burdens of falling in love while working at a theme park. yikes.

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keep your heart open in this hellhole
Even angels fall.

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So she's blonde. Incredibly short. Cute ass. He didn't notice that one, he swears. (That's a lie.) She almost always has her hair up in this higher than the heavens ponytail and it's always most likely bouncing with every step she makes in those dirtied not so white anymore Converse. She calls them Chucks, says her mom would call it that and her grandma would, too, and apparently her great grandma hooked up with the very guy, but there's no proof; just her word. When she tells him this, his breath hitches because this is the most she would have ever spoken to him in the two weeks he's been around here and he still doesn't know her name. Will he ever? All he would have said prior to her idle ramble is a statement, more of a claim. Not really a compliment, like he initially intended. Oops.

"Those are some nice Converse."

Goddammit, he'd always been so lame.

Before his conscience berates him over his troublesome inability to simply structure a positive sentence toward a person of insufferable physical attractiveness, her voice intoxicates the air (that he needs to breathe—fucking breathe, Lucas. Jesus Christ).

Oh right, and before he can even respond (to get her name, for she to get his name—as if she cared), she walks off, twirling the yellow Escapade lanyard around her fingers. He sighs as he stocks back to his cue behind the counter of rigged carnival games, before glossing over the way her silhouette blends into the lights and buzz of the rest of the amusement park.

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He's Games. Along with most of the other newbies or the anti-social dweebs that would probably fuck up some meal order if they'd been under Snacks—that, or just by their face, they'd so obviously couldn't handle the roaring crowd if placed under Rides. Which is completely arguable, Lucas thinks.

"It's a hierarchy, my friend," the guy dealing with rings and bottles and prizes having to do with a pet goldfish explains to him on the first Tuesday Lucas starts working at this crummy theme park. He's got a blue shirt, identical to Lucas's, with games games games printed from larger to smaller navy text. "It starts with us. Games. We're the lowest of the low here at Escapade. Primarily for three reasons: one) no one wants to be in Games, which branches out in a few other sub-reasons. A) they're rigged. Also known as, B) Kids never win. Also known as, C) Angry parents. Two) We make the lowest money, anyway. Nobody's gonna pick throwing a hacky sack into a hole over watching the light show. Three) The gaming tents are literally the furthest away from every component in the park."

Lucas nods. He knows if he even tries to interrupt in the slightest, this kid would just go on robotically. His name's Flake or something. Anyway.

"After us: Snacks. Who the hell in their right mind would want to serve greasy hot dogs to prepubescent boys who can't chew with their dog-breath mouths closed? Next comes Repair and Technology. Tech for short. They may be handy and programmed to fix, but believe me, nobody wants to be the one running around for tools and being responsible for that chance a roller coaster stops midway through a loop. Next are Lights; they go hand in hand with Tech, for the most part. That's where I wanna upgrade to. Then there's Water, for all the water-involved attractions. Log drops, river-rafting, the wave-pool, that entire shebang. You'd think it'd be the top: bikini bods and getting wet, but let's not also forget the ten year old pissers and occasional balls of hair in the drain. Disgusting, I know. And then there's Music—"

At this point in time, Lucas's focus shifts over to the popcorn stand, to one of the teenage boys in Snacks struggling to get the kernels to pop. He watches in amusement as he fails to get the machine to work, before the Snacks guy is intruded by a girl with sun rays for a ponytail unwind the topping dispenser and disentangle the oil tube in the way of the process. Lucas, then, continues to watch the small girl help herself to the largest bucket of popcorn before spinning around on her heel in search for something. He catches sight of the text imprinted on the bosom of her light pink t-shirt.

"What about Rides?" he asks, looking up, to which the other Games member pauses.

"Highest in the entire arena," he breathes, landing his eyes on the girl who happens to steal everyone's pupils too effortlessly. "They run this place."

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Lucas learns several new things in the following week while at this summer job he had absolutely no choice but to take for the sake of money his parents refused to loan him. It was: no job, no college at this point. He learns that not only are the games rigged in a way where pins necessary to be knocked down are super glued along the boards they stand on, the edges of the holes where a customer is supposed to throw balls into contain a hidden magnetic force that repels said balls, but the prizes are literally hooked onto the headboards of the tents. It is literally impossible to give them out—stuffed animals ranging in the size of his palm to the size of him, pinned down and unremovable from the entirety of every wooden panel of the Games' tents. He learns that the other Games kid (the one that talks and talks and talks, shit can the boy talk) is actually named Farkle. Which is actually worse than the name Lucas had originally thought it was because it's actually not a nickname, his parents actually named him that. But on another note, he comes to learn how this kid has a way of getting under his skin.

Apparently Farkle has been working here every summer since he'd been fourteen. He's good friends with the manager's daughter. That, or he claims to be, or used to be—because for some reason, he's still deemed unqualified for any position above Games. He's just waiting for the day they let him take Lights. Ironically enough, Lucas doesn't mind being Games too much. He doesn't have enough drive to be motivated to advance into any other technical locality. As long as he's being paid, he's good.

And apparently he isn't the only one who doesn't give any batshits on Escapade's chain of command.

Her name is Maya, and she introduces herself a few days after the chucks incident. It's her second year working in the theme park and according to many working there, her last. He hears she's waiting for the day she turns eighteen before she walks. Other times, he hears that she's simply waiting for the end of the summer.

They call her a runner—whatever that means. A heartbreaker—reasonable. Kind of a loner—he sees that. She's outgoing, though, he acknowledges from his own experience. Not your typical mystery, as his coworkers presume for some unearthly reason. Lucas figures she might look celestial, but deems that she's just one of those teenagers that aren't afraid to show that they're sick of everyone's shit. There's beauty in the degree of nonchalance she exhibits. That's probably what captivates them in the first place, forcing them to label her as their stereotypical Mary Sue. But she's not quite that. She's not an iconic, peculiar perfection to which should be placed on a pedestal by the losers that work with him. She's got an attitude as fierce as the bulls he'd been forced to ride by his Pappy Joe during early teen years. Not to mention that she's a bit rude, too. Maybe blunt is a better word.

He knows this only by their second interaction, only four seconds after he gets her name.

He hesitates, embarrassingly so, at her presence. (It's those eyes.) He regrets it instantly. (He supposes it's better than stuttering.)

"What, your momma didn't inform ya about filling in awkward silences back at the ranch?" she clasps her hands together and mocks his pause. "That, or you're just terrible at keeping conversation. But then again, I shouldn't expect much from someone who's friends with horses."

He's told her he's from Texas once. She continues to lick her lollipop. He groans.

"You learn that from the cattle?" And her laughter is almost sweet.

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Lucas only has the pleasure of learning her last name when she invites the entirety (minus the catty girls of Water because they're gossipy and blegh, Maya would describe) of the workers at Escapade to a party (a shindig, she calls it) at her place after her folks had left for the weekend. He reads it on a plaque on one of the walls in her living room: Kermit Hart. He also finds himself eyeing the picture frames along the fireplace and noting the modern furnishings that make up the majority of the downstairs. Her house wasn't large, but it did contain several ornaments that lit up every corner of the household worth more than everything his parents had ever owned and deemed expensive. Everything seemed delicate, but she didn't seem to care if something ended up broken or dirtied, allowing anybody to eat and drink anywhere.

His living room wasn't nearly as prettied up as her's, but if he were to dare to step foot onto the oriental carpet with a glass of orange juice, his mother would whip him, he's sure.

He'll wonder why she hates it here, but he'll accept that he'll never be one to know. Instead, he trudges toward the kitchen, where Billy, one of the staff members he's become acquainted with recently pops him a beer. He's not much a drinker, passing on the lethal shots of Jameson and cheap pineapple infused vodka. At his fourth bottle, barely enough for him to start feeling shooting stars in the spaces between his ribs, he catches sight of the host slowly disentangling her scrunchie from her blonde waves as she heads through the back door. His fingers enclose around another bottle of inebriation before following her to the pool.

"Maya," he smiles instinctively as soon as their eyes meet. "Cool party."

As if he were to know what a "cool party" is like. There was nothing like this in Texas. He takes a look around at the groups of partial nudity and rowdiness, deciding it was just like the movies.

"Thanks," she replies when she grabs the beer. After sipping, she adds, with a hand on her hip as she glazes over her pool. "I've become known for trashing my dad's. It's actually quite an accomplishment."

He takes a seat by the edge, enough for the water to swallow the majority of his calves. "I can help you clean afterward."

"Not needed, Hop-A-Long, but thanks for the thought."

Instead of plopping down beside him to dunk her feet, he watches as something falls to her ankles beside him. She kicks off her shorts before snickering at his cherry faced expression.

Without any consideration for his very dry well being, she leaps in, with no grace, no elegance, and a smile so wide it'd put the moon to shame. "Care to join me?"

For a split second, he forgets about shitty situations and being in debt and working twelve hours on blistering hot days in a theme park so unorganized thanks to apathetic parents who used his college fund and fucked his future up. At that moment, it is just this girl and him. All he sees is some girl who knows absolutely nothing about him, who asks him for nothing, who is simply just there looking like glimmering wet marble surfacing from a blue pool that's nothing in comparison to her eyes. And he smiles in return, falling right into more than just chlorine infiltrated water.

It is only hours after splashes and serene states lying atop the bed of water to view a starless sky when they decide to come back in and dry off. Maya leads him up the spiral staircase and down a dim corridor where some of Snacks take turns inhaling a joint. The beautiful irony. She pivots her neck in his direction when they pass wisps of smoke.

"Sorry if you're uncomfortable," she considers. This is as kind as she gets. "Dunno if you're into this stuff."

Lucas shrugs. "I don't mind."

And he doesn't. What he does mind is how drenched he is still, for the matter. He doesn't fail to take note of how much wetter she is. Long hair and all. Dripping against the soaking white shirt that clings to her like a second skin. He's trying his hardest not to notice this factor. To escape the slightest thought of Maya Hart soaking wet without an outside source besides his fingertips does awful things to his groin. To remove it instantly, he moves his gaze from her to the walls surrounding them, to which he notices pictures of a couple.

"Your parents?"

She twists the knob of the last door at the end of the hallway and gestures for him to enter her bedroom before making a gagging expression in response to his question. "My dad and my step-mom. She's an absolute sociopath."

"Really?"

She gives him a look before tossing a shirt she rummages for in one of her drawers. "Of course not, but she is a total cunt. Anyways, that's one of my step-brother's old shirts. Don't worry about giving it back. He lives states away."

"Thanks," he says, observing the washed out band logo similar to shirt she had just been wearing. He glances upward to compare the one she's wearing to see it halfway over her head. Before he recollects himself, he catches sight of the pale blue expanse of her bra. He turns on his heel less than a second later, missing her smirk at his stupid rotation.

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Lucas will get the urge to kiss her that night, but he won't follow through with it. She would have ushered him out the door once the majority of partygoers were on their leave, a half-assed peace sign as her adieu.

He'll fall asleep thinking about her hair's swift ribbon-like movements while they'd been head deep into her pool and how he'd been flashed by the way she opened her eyes to him in her own sea. He will fall asleep warm, knowing just how whipped he is over a girl he doesn't even know.

He won't know that when the crowd finds their way through the exit, she'll grab the hand of a boy in a leather jacket some years older than she and she will kiss him against the door she shuts. He's one of the managers at Escapade, Lucas will come to know with time.

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This is a secret.

They are a secret; she is a secret. But she is in love with Joshua Matthews and always has been. It's a shame for his wife.

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He's hooking stuffed toy bananas along the prize panel of one of the contest booths when she finds him and tells him she's stolen a handle of whiskey from her step-mother's most prized collection of alcoholic beverages. Since they're both scheduled for mid-shift and will be able to clock out around five p.m., she shows him one of the broken rides near the back exit of the park. The process she forces him to endure with her involves climbing over a railing structure and squeezing past the false boulder entrance of a faulty used-to-be roller coaster based off Jurassic Park. It supposedly used to take people along the ruins of society before indulging into the entire roller coaster concept. It even had dinosaur attractions that have somehow lost most of its coloring.

Maya takes him to a platform that has an unfastened roller coaster cart, where she finally takes her seat and motions her arms behind her. Lucas breathes in the heightened air, before sweeping his pupils over the the glittery view of Escapade. They aren't any higher than the ferris wheel, but they are able to see the complete park from where they sit.

"Wow," Lucas exhales without thinking.

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They end up never touching the drink that night. They don't talk for the most part, actually. Lucas is comfortable with that. Yeah, he wants to get to know her. He'd like to know more than his assumptions and observations from their small interactions. He's dreamed of learning her quirks—what makes her want to bite her lip and what annoys her enough to make her toes curl. But he'd be okay with not knowing anything. If she simply was not the type to share her life, or even, cared enough to share it with the likes of him, he thinks it would be okay. He'd be okay with anything. (He'll take what he can get.)

It's just a summer job, anyway.

And she's just his coworker.

After they watch the lights of the park start turning off one by one—firstly, the surrounding lights around the pillars of the entire park, secondly, the larger numbers: Top Gun and Medusa, the highest attractions, and then slowly, the race car arena, the carousel, the gaming center. One by one, the lights begin to lose its shine, and for a moment, Lucas wonders why Farkle wants to control that of all things.

"What're you thinking about?" Maya asks, dusting off her lap.

He shakes his head, caught in his frivolous contemplation over something that didn't seem to matter too much. "One of the Games guys in the booth beside me wants to be in Lights. I don't really see the appeal."

She shrugs, zipping up her sweater and clicking on the flashlight she'd brought. "Maybe it reminds him of somebody special."

"What do you mean?" It's gotten pretty dark around them at this point, a natural blue glow adjusting his vision.

"I don't know," she guesses. "Maybe it reminds him of someone that lit up his life."

"So someone who made his world brighter," he clarifies.

"I mean, if you wanna get all Edgar Allan Poe on me, I suppose so," she smiles. "You never know."

"I prefer John Keats," he pointedly remarks. "And I suppose you're right."

Before trudging back toward the way they had come from, Maya places the untouched handle into bottom compartment of the run-down roller coaster seat—the one used for personal belongings: bags, sunglasses, sunscreen, and all those that would inevitably fall out during the ferocious velocity of the joyride. "We can save it for a rainy day," she tells him, and he doesn't try to conceal the smile that urges the corners of his lips to curve over the fact that there will, indeed, be a next time.

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The days Joshua Matthews brings his wife along to work with him, Maya pretends to forget about the nights that were drugged of promises that reeked of forever. She tries to find faults in every memory she has had with him, ranging from when she'd been an infatuated eleven year old to the time he had kissed her at age fifteen toward the time that he had stolen her adolescence at age sixteen.

But the day Lucas has the chance to meet the very boy that fucked up her life in the minutes before clocking in at the control station, is the very day she calls in sick. The slight vision of the two interacting and becoming friends made her sick to her stomach—her excuse not much of an excuse anymore.

During her next shift, Lucas finds her at the bumper cars, collecting tickets and slipping them into her fanny pack from the bustling passerby.

"I met that manager, Josh," Lucas informs in good spirits. "What a guy."

Maya nods while concealing her uneasiness, "Uh-huh."

"You know he's a musician?"

"Yup."

"Like, he's in a band. And he's married. I mean, he's so young, but it seems like this lifestyle is really working for him. He seems pretty happy," Lucas says, watching as the customers choose which colorful car drew them. Some had been arguing over specific seats. "I know he's not much older than us, but he seems like he's already gotten life in the bag."

"I see," Maya responds. To hide her leaking uncomfortable state determined by her lack of verbal expression, she proceeds to turn on the ride's microphone to announce the regulatory rules and instructions of the competitive sport that is bumper cars.

"He talked about you," Lucas mentions, obliviously tensing her muscles without an effort.

"Did he?" she asked whilst activating the contraption that energizes the mini cars in front of them.

"It's because I mentioned who I got along well with here. Said he doesn't know you too well, though. Just knows of you."

"Is that so?" Maya manages to voice. Lucas wouldn't ever know the pain that conjures up in her insides as the aftermath of his statement, twisting and twisting until her face yellows until she has no choice but to go through the measures of calling in a substitute Rides employee to take her place so she can vomit in the nearest restroom.

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Maya offers to drive him home one of the nights they close together. It's a Saturday, practically Sunday, and this is the first time he'll be seated in the passenger's side of her hand-me-down station wagon.

She plays Oh! Darling by The Beatles on high after rolling down her window and goddamn, he literally, quite physically, fucking seriously cannot take his eyes off her the entire time. It's all in the way her lips move as she sings the chorus and the strands that have been left out of her ponytail dance in the wind the gap of the window allows to peak into the car. The song, by far, is not helping at all cost, since every lyric seems like the thoughts pouring out of his very brain and drowning the oxygen he's, again, forgetting to breathe. (The hopeless boy.)

At one point, he decides to do something that may or may not inaugurate his next death. By her hand. With one flick of the wrist and an ounce of spontaneous courage, he brings the volume of her radio down with one twist at the very end of a verse, only to be graced by the sound of her voice demolishing the chorus with a voice so velvety he feels his knees go weak. To his pleasant surprise, she doesn't get pissed off at the way he had practically cornered her singing.

"Got tired of McCartney's voice?" she asks, peaking at him with a half smile. She's making his stomach jump without her own knowledge.

"I heard someone better," he assures honestly. He doesn't miss the tint of pink that blossoms on the apples of her cheeks.

When she stops in the middle of street to drop him off, he does something he's been curious about doing for awhile now.

"Can I kiss you?" Lucas asks.

He can tell she's taken off guard by him—maybe by the unexpectedness of it all, he acknowledges. (When in reality, she's more surprised by his manners. She wasn't used to this level of respect—respect that should have been known as common courtesy. Ah, well, blame the men—man—she's been involved with.)

"You know that I'm leaving for New York in September," she replies, an answer he hadn't been expecting in return. "Or, well, I'm going back home there. I've been accepted into the city college. It's not as pricey as NYU, so it'll be fine for what I've made so far. I just know I'm most definitely not spending the rest of my life in this shithole with an Ursula of a step-mother and a brainwashed father."

"Maya."

"Before you know it, I'll be gone," she adds realistically. "Knowing all of this, would you still want to kiss me?"

"Yes," Lucas murmurs without the smallest of hesitation.

"Persistent," she comments. "These Texan folks."

"Being around you feels right," he says, feeling a little dumb for being unable to conjure his feelings into a single sentence. He'll try his best, though. "And maybe the future holds something else, but for the meantime, I want to make sure you're happy."

"And you think you kissing me will make me happy?" Maya raises a brow, skeptically. "Who is to say I'm not?"

Fuck, he screwed up, mentally reprimanding himself. In another life, he'd be Mr. Perfect. Probably. He clarifies, "That's not what I meant. I just think... I think we could be fun. Who doesn't like fun?"

Without another word and barely enough time to keep him surprised, Maya unfastens her seat belt, leans over, and steals the next breath from his lips.

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She's witty. Quick on her tongue and on her feet. She likes to have powdered mini doughnuts and a bottle of Coke on her twenty minute breaks (that ever so easily turn into thirties) while listening to a Rolling Stones cassette tape her mother had given her on her eighth birthday. Apparently she passed away a few years ago, hence why she had come here from New York, a minor transferred to a new legal guardian, the very Kermit Hart. Her middle name is Penelope and for an absurd reason he'll never understand, she loathes it. These are things Lucas continues to learn about her.

Maya's a candy over chocolates person, enjoying things sour—peculiarly, her reasoning because that she finds the tangy sting it gives her tongue appealing (Lucas remembers this when her's slips into his mouth and he tugs with his teeth)—except for lollipops. Always lollipops. She's into sucking. She's good at it, too. (Lucas learns this the blissful way when she pulls away from bitten lips and slides down his abdomen and settles herself between his legs.)

She's initiative and awful dreamlike. There are times when he feels like he's in a movie, a camera rolling in the distance for unrehearsed lines to capture a moment that seems too surreal to be a part of his old, calloused, ranch-style, Texas life. It's funny, the way he's found an escape while working at a place called Escapade. Who would have thought he'd find an angel in this hell?

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The night she calls it quits with Joshua Matthews, she shakes (and shakes and shakes).

(Oh, how she dreads who she'd become when she'd been with him.)

"Is it because of that new Friar kid?" he'll ask her, drinking his usual scotch in a wife-less apartment. She'll have been out teaching yoga. Because she's not only this extremely attractive red-headed bartender, but she's also a yoga instructor Thursdays and Fridays. Those are usually the nights Maya gets a call for a drink or two or six accompanied by lips and thrusts.

Maya motions the glass he offers her away before keeping her arms crossed against her chest to keep them from vibrating. She's physically shaking, but if the timbre of her voice does so, she won't be able to speak coherently at all. "I'm just really starting to fucking hate myself."

He runs his hand through his dark locks before settling it along the patch of scruff along his jaw in thought. After studying her eyes, Josh pushes his weight against the counter behind him and lets the palms of his fingers linger near her waist. Seeing as she hadn't pulled away or repelled backwards, he pulls her closer to him in all her shameful, teary-eyed glory.

"I like myself when I'm with him," she informs, letting her first love's fingers curl into her scrunchie before freeing her hair loose along her shoulders. He runs them through the smooth tresses, knowing that in times of stress, hands in her hair are the best way to soothe her. It has been this way since she had been twelve years old. "I always remember there's more out there for me in the world."

"Besides this," he accepts, although there are parts of him that feels as if they're deteriorating.

"Besides this," Maya repeats, engraving it into every memory that had lacked self respect, lacked selflessness—every kiss that had to do with the boy in front of her.

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"You're in love with her?" Farkle asks, a mischievous glint in his large aegaen eyes. He's flaunting his new and improved, upgraded Lights t-shirt with poorly hidden pride. They're in the break room, snacking on a box of Cheez-Its they had happened to find in one of the managers' cabinets.

"I am," Lucas nods in a hundred and two percent sureness.

The Minkus boy pats nonexistent dust off his uniform, using the table in between them as a footrest as he leans on his chair. "That's good. Love her as much as you can. You never really know when it'll be taken away from you. And Maya's great. She really is, man."

"You know her?" the blonde's eyebrows scrunch in recollection of a time of mentioned romance poets, an afternoon where they'd spent hours in silence, watching the lights of the park lose its brightness at closing time.

Farkle nods, a tad startled at how clueless and in his own world Lucas had been. "Yeah, she's a good friend."

"Oh," Lucas throws himself back into the pinnacle of thoughts permeating havoc in his head. "I guess I've just never seen you guys hang out... Or even talk."

"You don't need to physically be with a person to maintain a good relationship with someone," Farkle states and Lucas knows he's right.

He contemplates over the memory that seemed too vivid to be from over a month ago, remembering things that Maya had said regarding the coworker determined to leave Games. "Farkle, why do you wanna be in Lights?"

"I knew a girl who'd been in it before I even worked here. She was so...happy. She glowed. She really did. She'd put the lights to shame." He smiles this soft kind of smile that Lucas had never witnessed before. He doesn't expect him to go on, but he does. "Never into me like that, but I'll always be in love with her."

"Where is she now?" Lucas's curiosity gets the better of him.

"Don't know. She left when she was sixteen. Had some self-esteem issues is what I was told. Cracked under pressure of living up to the legends that were her parents." Farkle leaves out the fact that they're currently their managers. He deems it unnecessary information.

"So she ran away?"

"More on a path of self-discovery," Farkle says. "She'll come back. She'll come back."

He repeats it, fragile and tender, almost as if he's still trying to convince himself that she will one day.

Lucas can't help but feel stones filling his stomach.

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"You didn't tell me you knew Farkle Minkus," Lucas announces suddenly while walking Maya to her car after one of their closing shifts.

Maya shrugs. "I haven't told you a lot of things."

And she's right.

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He doesn't find out from her. He doesn't find out from the man involved, either. Directly or intentionally, that is. Lucas thinks that that is probably the shittiest part of it all.

He's collecting lazily crafted basketballs (because this place is so cheap that they don't even provide working, legitimate basketballs for fuck's sake—that, or it's all part of the manipulative scheming that has to do with how winning is never allowed. Or he's fired.) during after hours because a few jackoff kids messed around and threw the balls in a variety of locations. When he just about finishes placing all twenty-eight of them into the correct Games stand, he heads toward the managers' office to clock out before he hears a familiar voice on the phone. It's Josh. He decides it'd be best if slipped in and slipped out quickly, instead of intruding on a seemingly intense conversation with whoever had been on the other line. He enters quietly and grabs his clock in sheet, having it stamped without the manager's notice. He's facing the opposite wall and from his fluctuating tone, Lucas can tell he's in obvious distress.

He doesn't mean to eavesdrop. He's missed most of the conversation he could have heard, anyway. Only one word—a name, to be specific—captures his attention.

"Maya," Josh says. "Her name is Maya."

He pauses. Lucas listens.

"Sweetheart—"

It's his wife.

"It was only once."

Another pause.

"I'm not lying. Honey, I swear—"

Pause.

"Y-you... set me up? You put a camera in our bedroom?"

A gulp.

"It didn't mean anything. It never meant anythi—"

Lucas leaves before his ears could indulge in finishing that conversation, feeling a sudden weakness spreading from his chest to each limb of his body in an agonizing numbness he's never felt before. He lets himself cry before he even makes it to the exit of the park.

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He doesn't see her until their next shared shift together. Except he's not there to work. Instead, he quits; no reasoning mentioned. He decides this shitty place isn't worth what he's making and well hey, now at least he has the character-building experience (Christ, all he hears is his mom's voice) needed for other jobs.

His next stop is her station, the carousel, today. He doesn't greet her, doesn't offer her the slightest of smiles. Instead, he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a faded, greying band t-shirt, leaving it in her outstretched hand before looking up to see confusion leaking into her face. Mostly her eyes.

"He was married," Lucas mutters, watching how the simple fact steals her breath and exerts pain noticed in both of their eyes. With that, he turns and finds his way out of the park.

This is the last time he ever needs to exit the hell that had always been Escapade.

Without turning back, he remembers that even angels fall.

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She calls every day for three weeks.

He knows that the season is nearing an end.

He doesn't pick up the phone.

She doesn't leave any messages.

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On the fourteenth of September, Lucas finds himself pondering over previous conversations between members of the amusement park team—Farkle, in particular, and of cliff-hanger love stories lacking closure, lacking happiness—before he makes a choice that may or may not determine the direction his life will be going in.

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It is significantly colder in New York, and Lucas hadn't even thought to consider the change in temperature. He had other things on his mind.

Despite the chilly atmosphere, he waits outside the greying brick apartment, certain that after multiple phone calls and quick questions as research (her father and multiple tenants of this building) that this had been Maya Hart's current abode. She comes around the corner at half past eight and when her eyes flare at the sight of him, he knows it isn't a good sign.

"Woah," she replies, agitation evident. "What are you doing here? Texas didn't want you back?"

Although he admires her lighthearted tone to try to hide everything she means to say, he doesn't comment on it. "No."

"What do you want, Lucas?" she asks, tone shifting.

"I wanted to apologize. I... I never gave you the chance to explain."

"I don't think I need to," she answers frankly. "Anymore, at least."

His breath leaves smoke in the air. "Why?"

"Look, Lucas," she begins, digging her hands further into her jacket pockets to occupy herself. "What we had in the summer was fun."

He swallows. More than disappointment is apparent on his face. His voice, becoming thick and heavy slices through the cold air between them. "Just fun? For a girl on Rides, you are real fucking good at playing games."

Her throat strains and for some awfully stupid reason, it's getting really fucking difficult to look in his eyes. "What do you want from me? For me to admit that I fucked up? Because I did. I fucked up. I'm a fucking homewrecker with zero self-respect, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? Or did you want this: that getting to know you, that being with you, that being yours wasn't just the best part of my summer. It was the best thing I've ever experienced."

"I always deserved the truth," he says, and he watches as tears fill her waterline. He keeps his hard, despite it being the most strenuous task to do while knowing this is the first time he's ever seen her cry.

"I know," she breathes, unable to project her voice. "I know."

They're still standing by her door, their only source of illumination being the lamp post a few feet away from where he'd been standing. He waits for her to recollect herself, phased by the sight of her in this state.

"I didn't tell you about him because I ended it before we became exclusive," she confesses. "And it's not something I'm proud of. It's not something I wanted you to ever know about me. It was in the past. He and I...are in the past. I didn't—for a person who acted as if pasts didn't matter, as if the only thing that mattered was the now, the present, the future—I—I didn't think you would have cared so much about mine. I wouldn't have wanted you to. I never asked about yours. It wasn't my business. And this wasn't yours."

"I—"

"I'm sorry that I hurt you," she tries to smile in a bittersweet way but the moment she does, another tear rolls down her dusty-pink cheek. The gesture is bittersweet in itself. "I fucked up a marriage and I fucked up what we had. So much for just trashing my dad's place, huh?" She starts to sob mid-smile and his first and primary instinct is to approach her and pull her into him. So he does, gently calming her body's uncontrollable trembling.

.

.

.

He spends the night with her.

She makes the two of them tea after she lets him in, and when they both find each other atop her single mattress, he places a comforting kiss on her forehead.

"Why did you come here?" she finally manages to ask.

"I—" he meets her dilated pupils, both their heads facing each other on her one pillow. "—wanted to make sure we ended up okay."

She nods slowly, shutting her eyes for a period of time. When they open, Lucas learns something new: he is drawn to how her eyelashes flutter. It reminds him of wings.

"You're not staying, are you?" Maya murmurs.

"No," he almost whispers. "Someone taught me that there's still a little bit of the world out there for me."

"And someone taught me that there's still bits of me that I need to figure out," her smile shares a landscape of teeth, and Lucas would still bet that this beautiful, crescent shaped smile's a better view than the moon.

"Someone also told me that people don't need physical communication to stay close," he remarks with a curve of the lips identical to hers.

"Farkle would be correct," and the laughter that erupts has never been sweeter.

.

.

.

In the morning, she'll wake up to sporadic sun rays painting his shoulder blades and arms around her waist.

She'll kiss him apologies, kiss him promises, kiss him good morning.

They may not have forever, but they'll have that moment and everything that moment brings.

And it will be enough.

.

.

.

fin.

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.

_a/n: i am so sorry if there are typos or stupid grammatical issues. ill fix them one day

i am also sorry i have been completely inactive in the writing department. life has been buuuusssyyy because trying to balance school and friends and a boyfriend and SLEEP is actually the most difficult thing :)