"I didn't know you played."

Balancing the guitar on her knees, Maya turns around in her seat near the music room's window to see Lucas framed in the doorway. She shrugs, her fingers brushing across the strings lazily. "A little bit."

Last spring, she'd picked up the guitar at a pawn shop for cheap, and while the wood has a few scratches and needed serious tuning upon purchase, it plays good as new. She'd been teaching herself ever since from simple chords to songs, building up decent callouses on the pads of her fingers.

He crosses the room and sits in the chair across from her. "Play me something?"

She positions her fingers carefully for the opening chord and strums the opening notes to the always recognizable "Blackbird" by the Beatles. It's the first real song she taught herself to play, even though it's a bit cliché since everyone knows how to play the song, but is it really Paul's fault that he wrote such a great song? Maya likes to think not.

She watches her fingers dance along the frets and otherwise quiet as she plays, because while playing is one thing, she's not going to sing in front of Huckleberry. He hums along, though, and she glances up to see him bobbing his head along good naturedly.

Then again, everything is good natured about Lucas Friar from the way he throws around "sir" and "ma'am" and dispels her own biting comments with the tip of an invisible cowboy hat. He's polite to adults, friendly to everyone he meets, and so innately skilled at being The Good Guy without even trying, obvious to her even now in the way that he sits: a little too tall for the plastic chair he sits in, long legs stretched out in front of him, with one of his seemingly endless plaid flannels bringing out the same oceanic color in his eyes and his golden hair tousled just so, like a guy out of an American Eagle ad. Approachable yet unattainable. Lucas the Good.

His lips curl upward into a smile, and Maya realizes that she's been staring, dropping her gaze as the last note echoes in the empty room, save a dozen chairs and a gleaming piano in the corner of the room.

"That was really good. I love that song."

"Everyone does," she agrees with a half-hearted smile. She gently places her guitar in the case that lays at her feet.

"Have you ever thought about writing your own?" he asks.

She scoffs. "No. I'm an artist, not a writer. I wouldn't even know where to begin."

Anyone else might be a little offended that their suggestion is shot down so quickly, but Lucas shrugs (good naturedly, of course). "You got the chords. It's about finding a new pattern for them," he says then his smile shifts into a smirk. "And writer or not, I think we both know that Maya Hart always has something to say.

She tries figuring out a melody without realizing it. She's not even trying to write a song, really, but Lucas's words ring in her head in that annoying way his profound one liners in history class do, and she's playing something but nothing she's ever heard before. New patterns of chords. When her fingers stumble upon something she actually likes, she opens up her notebook in case she comes up with some profound words of her own. So far, the faint blue lines and clean white sheet of paper are only good to taunt her.

There's a light knock on her door and then her mom pops her head in. "That sounded good, honey," she says, settling on the edge of her bed. "What song is that?"

Maya lifts her shoulders. "Nothing," she says and leans her guitar against her bedside table. Her fingers sting from playing so long. "What's your favorite song?"

Her mom hums thoughtfully before answering, "Although you've given me the ultimate impossible question, I'd have to say Etta James's 'At Last'. I think it's the most beautiful love song ever written, and her voice is incredible. It's classic. Why?"

Maya shrugs again. "Not important."

"Alright," Katy pats her knee gently before getting off her bed and heading towards the door. "Dinner will be ready soon."

A love song? God, it seems like everything is a love song these days. Or a break up song. Or a make up song. And sure, Maya may listen to Taylor Swift when she's holed up in her room alone or maybe with Riley, but she doesn't want to write a Swift-esque song. Not in a million years.

She closes the notebook and shoves it off her bed.

It should have been simple. Writing a song for Riley's birthday seemed like a great birthday gift, something heartfelt and uncharacteristically Maya enough for her best friend to gush and potentially cry over, and there was no way someone would top it in terms of personalization, securing that Maya, for yet another year, would give Riley her best gift. She's nine years strong, and there's no way that she can relinquish the title now.

"I can't even think of anything to rhyme with Matthews," she complains loudly, her voice echoing in the empty music room as she scratches out yet another line in her notebook, and Lucas sees the page is filled with more scribbles than actual words.

"What about horseshoes?"

Maya shoots him a glare, because he cannot be serious.

He is.

"Okay, cut the 'horse' and just use 'shoes'," he says excitedly, sitting up straighter like he's got the best idea. "It could be like . . . uh, 'You're my best friend, Riley Matthews, and you let me borrow your shoes'."

Maya narrows her eyes at him. Boys are clueless. "We don't even have the same size feet."

She ends up buying Riley a dress from her favorite store. It's floral and pink and vintage, so obviously Riley loves it, but Maya can't help but think of the crumpled up pages full of scribbles and lame rhymes sitting in the trashcan in her bedroom.

Lucas sits next to her, balancing a paper plate of chocolate cake and pink buttercream on his lap. "Maybe next year," he says, knocking her shoulder gently with his.

He shows up next Wednesday. And the Wednesday after that. And then after that, and by that point, Maya finds herself watching the clock as she waits for him. They don't do much; Maya plays and Lucas watches and they talk a little and he walks her to the subway afterwards. It's been some weird routine for a month before Lucas takes the guitar from her hands and begins to play.

She rolls her eyes so hard that it hurts. "Of course you can play." She was silly to think he couldn't, because can't Lucas Friar do everything? Wasn't he just hit on his cherub baby head with a fairy stick that allowed him to be good at everything?

"My brother played," he says with a shrug, eyes trained on the strings as he picks out notes, "I picked up a few things." His fingers hit a wrong chord then, causing the two of them to wince at the unpleasant sound he produces. He hands the guitar to her with a sheepish smile.

"Are you still trying to write a song?"

With a sigh, she says, "Sort of." He raises an eyebrow in interest, and she continues, "I have the music. No lyrics. Whatever happened to me 'always having something to say'?"

He gives her a stupid grin, and she knows it's because she remembered what he had said so long ago, and she rolls her eyes again. "Do you think you'll perform at Topanga's open mic night?" he asks.

Topanga had been passing out brightly colored flyers for the past week about the upcoming event, and even though it wasn't for another two weeks, there was no way Maya would have a song ready. Her notebook was filled with pages of half written songs as evidence.

"Doubtful."

He looks like he's about to say something else, something entirely too encouraging, so she changes the subject. "My fingers hurt. We should probably go soon." She begins packing up her guitar, but he grabs her wrist, turning her hand palm-side up.

"My brother always had cool callouses like that," he says. "He said that only real guitar players had them." He smiles at that.

"Must mean I'm a real guitar player," Maya says quietly, not liking how dainty her thin wrist feels with his large fingers wrapped around it. She doesn't like that they're so close to holding hands, because that's just . . . weird. Definitely weird.

(Briefly, the thought that maybe she doesn't like that she actually likes the feel of his hand touching hers crosses her mind. Even weirder.)

She takes her hand back, slipping it out of his grasp, and grabs her. "Ready?

It just sort of happens.

Which is the lamest, most cliché line in the book, and Maya hates that she's letting herself use that for justification, but it's the only way she can explain it to herself. It's Wednesday in the empty music room, and she is playing a not particularly romantic Bob Dylan song and well, it just sort of happens.

She's talking about their book from English class, To Kill a Mockingbird, and how unfair the trial is, and she's midsentence about Scout's growth as a character when Lucas leans across the distance separating their chairs and kisses her.

Her first reaction is surprise, her hand fumbling with the neck of her guitar and lips remaining frozen against his. But he pulls her chair closer with one hand, the other slipping through her hair, and the movement kicks Maya into motion as a willing participant.

She keeps her hands on her guitar, cradling the instrument against her stomach, but moves her mouth against his, overwhelming her senses with how warm he is and how he smells like laundry detergent and fresh cut grass, and honestly, only Lucas Friar could smell like that when he lives in the concrete jungle.

Her guitar falls to the floor suddenly, and they spring apart at the sound. Maya gasps embarrassingly loud and rushes to pick up the instrument and check for damage. When it appears that none has been done, she looks over her shoulder at Lucas and sees his eyes bright and lips pink. Self-conscious, she smooths her hair.

"It's fine," she says, looking away. The longer she looks at him, the warmer she can feel her own cheeks getting. She shouldn't be embarrassed, though. He kissed her.

(But you kissed him back, an annoying voice reminds her. You kissed Lucas Friar. And liked it.)

"I should probably go," she says, placing her guitar back in its case.

His eyes furrow together in a look of confusion and, if she looks hard enough, hurt. But she doesn't say anything else, and she's already half way out the door when he calls after her.

When it's Maya's turn at Topanga's open mic night, she thinks she might hurl. She's never been one for stage fright – the number of melodramatic outbursts she's had in Matthews's class is evidence enough – but then again, she's never quite done something like this either.

She takes her place on the wooden stool in front of a microphone, doing her best to ignore how it shakes on uneven legs beneath her. The lights trained on the makeshift stage are bright, blinding, and she can just make out the people scattered on the couches and arm chairs. She sees her mom at the counter in the back, Riley beaming at her, flanked on either side with Farkle and Lucas.

Maya smiles softly at the sight, and her heart quickens as she says into the mic, "Hey, my name's Maya, and this is a song I wrote. Thanks to everyone who helped – you know who you are." She keeps her eyes on her fingers, settling carefully over the frets as if she doesn't know this song in her sleep by now. But if she looks up now, she might hurl. When she has to sing, though, words she's written, she doesn't hurl. Her voice is clear as it rings throughout the bakery.

I used to wanna be living like there's only me,
but now I spend my time thinking 'bout a way to get you off my mind.
I used to be so tough, never really gave enough,
and then you caught my eye, giving me the feeling of a lightning strike.

Look at me now – I'm falling, can't even talk, still stuttering,
And this ground I'm on keeps shaking, oh, oh, oh –
Now all I wanna be, all I ever wanna be, yeah, yeah, is somebody to you.
All I wanna be, all I ever wanna be, yeah, yeah, is somebody to you.

She lets her hand fall to her side after the last note, and she hears someone cheering loudly – Riley – before anyone else even has the chance to clap. Maya sees her best friend standing – no, jumping up and down in place as she hollers, hands cupped around her mouth, and Farkle claps, too, albeit with a little less enthusiasm than Riley.

Lucas remains seated, his hands resting on his knees. But he's smiling directly at her, and Maya smiles back.

a/n. because these two gotta hold on me before I even realized it. songs referenced include "blackbird" by the beatles, "at last" by etta james, and "somebody to you" by the vamps.