Maya stood near Sienna near the arts and craft table, handing out colorful paints and folded newspaper hats to a group of giggling toddlers. They were at the Kids Charity event again this weekend. Maya's smile was intact and her posture was composed, but Sienna, ever the sharp-eyed hawk, didn't miss the subtle daze in Maya's eyes. The way her gaze kept drifting to nowhere. The tiny, secret smile playing on her lips when she thought no one was watching her.
"Maya," Sienna said, her eyebrow raised as she handed a kid a crayon. "You're doing that dreamy sigh thing again."
Maya blinked out of her trance. "What dreamy sigh?"
Sienna leaned in and narrowed her eyes. "That dreamy sigh. You look like you just touched heaven and it touched you back."
"I am not-"
"You are." Sienna cut her off, placing her hand over her heart dramatically. "I know a woman reborn when I see one. Girl, did you finally let blondie ruin your life in the best possible way?"
Maya hesitated and as she looked down. Then laughed, half-giddy and half-terrified. "Okay. Fine. Yes. We...it happened."
There was a pause, a long pregnant beat.
"OH MY GOD!" Sienna squealed, loud enough that one of the nearby kids turned to stare. "You let Logan demolish your ovaries?"
"Sienna!" Maya hissed, turning red from the inside out. She scanned the area like the trees themselves might've overheard. "Can you not announce it to the whole state?"
"Oh, no, no, no." Sienna said, hands on her hips, practically vibrating. "You do not get to drop that nuclear bomb on me mid-volunteer shift and expect me to whisper like a nun. Tell me everything. Was it in his house? Did he throw you on the bed? Was there chest worshipping involved?"
"Sienna!" Maya was half-laughing, half-dying. "You are the worst."
"I am the worst. Now spill."
Maya looked around again, her cheeks still glowing, and then she leaned in like she was about to share top-level national security.
"It was intense," she admitted in a low voice. "Like I forgot where I ended and he began. And yes, it was at his place that night I got robbed. He iced my cheek first that night, but then, the next day in the morning, we kind of connected. It wasn't just sex. It was like something shifted inside me."
Sienna fanned herself with a paper plate. "Ohhh, yes. That's that Nora Ephron-grade soul-crashing passion. That man was brooding at you like he wanted to build a house in your heart. I knew it."
Maya covered her face again, groaning. "I wasn't supposed to fall for him like this."
"Well, no one plans to fall face-first into the love lava, Maya." Sienna nudged her playfully. "But girl, they way you've been orbiting him like a planet the past week? I'm surprised you didn't combust sooner."
Maya smiled, softly now. "It's scary, Si. I can't think straight around him. But when I'm with him, it's like everything slows down."
Sienna sighed, slipping her arm around Maya's shoulder. "That's not just lust. And you-" she pointed to her chest, "-you're in deep, my friend. But it's okay. I've got your back. Just don't forget to keep yours straight in class before Logan makes your GPA a tragic statistic."
Maya laughed bumping her shoulder into Sienna's. "I won't. I promise."
Sienna grinned. "Good. Now get back to gluing googly eyes on paper frogs before I tell the kids you kissed a boy and liked it."
Maya rolled her eyes and her smile stayed wider, brighter, and entirely uncontainable.
---
The rooftop, usually a place of structure and study, had become something else entirely, a safe liminal space where silence spoke volumes and glances held meaning.
Maya stood near the edge of the rooftop, the soft wind teasing strands of her hair.
Logan leaned against the metal railing, not too close, not too far. Just enough distance that the tension between them could breathe.
It had been days since that night, the night that still lived on her skin. Giving space a respectful sort of ache.
"I missed this," Logan said finally, his voice low and calm but with an edge of vulnerability that made Maya turn her head toward him. "Not just you though yeah, obviously. You. But just talking.'
Maya swallowed. "I did too."
He looked out at the skyline, his profile sharp and pensive in the late light. "There's something I haven't told you."
She waited as she held her breath because somehow, she knew this was a corner being turned.
"My mother died when I was eight," he said. "Cancer. It happened fast. One minute she was making pancakes, the next....hospitals and pain." He exhaled. "After she was gone, my father didn't know what to do with me. Or maybe he did. He just didn't want to."
Maya's heart clenched.
"He sent me off to a boarding school," Logan continued, not looking at her. "Year after year. I wasn't a bad kid. I wasn't acting out. I was just...there. And I think that scared him more than anything. That I reminded him too much of her."
"Oh, Logan..." Her voice broke around the edges.
He shrugged like it was no big deal, but his eyes flicked toward her. "He only ever reached out when I won something. A debate. A goddamn football trophy. That's when I got the pat in the back or the dinner at some fancy restaurant. But the rest of the time? I was invisible."
Maya moved closer, not because she thought she could fix it, that wasn't a wound you bandaged with words, but because she knew deep down, that being seen could be healing on its own.
"I didn't know," she whispered.
"I never told anyone," he replied. "I guess I thought if I said it out loud, it would become real again. Like I'd regress back into that kid who used to wait by the phone on weekends, hoping someone remembered that I existed."
She reached out, tentatively, placing her hand over his. "I see you, Logan."
He turned toward her fully then, something raw in his expression formed into words. "That's what scares me."
"What does?"
"You." He exhaled a breath that sounded like surrender. "The way you see me. Not the flirting, not the guy who pretends everything's fine. But me. And the more you see, the more I want you to see all of it. Even the ugly side of my life. Even the broken part of me."
Maya's throat tightened, emotion knotting itself around her words. "You're not broken."
"I've been trying to prove that to myself for years."
And there it was, the fear inside her unraveling thread by thread. Because suddenly, she didn't just feel for him. She understood him. The way his silences weren't empty but filled with words of pain. The way he held people at arm's length even as he made them feel like the center of his universe.
Her empathy grew into something larger and that frightened her more than anything.
Because loving someone like Logan meant stepping into his shoes, carrying the weight of them with him.
But her heart had never been taught to love someone without losing itself. And she wasn't sure if she was ready for that yet.
Still, she stayed.
And in that sunset-colored silence, with pain laid bare and hearts unguarded, something unshakable began to bloom between them.