Someday: A Collection of Joshaya One Shots

A Leap of Faith

Josh's POV

I'm living in a nightmare. Tens of people have showed up to this goddamn engagement party all with their smiling faces and congratulatory well wishes like any of this is okay.

I take a swig of my beer catching Maya's gaze as I lift the bottle to my lips. I don't dare break her eye contact, not allowing her even the slightest bit of pride to know that I'm affected by any of the pomp and circumstance surrounding me.

I won't let her know that since receiving the invite to this preposterous party that I've spent every single day imagining how things could've been different. What I could've done to make her stay.

"Hanging in there?" My niece suddenly appears at my side and I cast my sidelong gaze onto her, narrowing my eyes.

"Hanging in there?" I echo, "as if this is that insufferable?" It is.

"Josh-." She begins but I've already decided that I want nothing to do with this conversation and coming to such a conclusion, I don't waste another minute listening. Instead, I head to the kitchen to retrieve another beer, emptying my current one on the way.

"Another, seriously?" The bartender, a shapely brunette, asks, seemingly amused by my consistent trips to the bar. But lucky for me, she's not getting paid to judge me. She's getting paid to serve me drinks.

"Seriously" I deadpan, slapping a five dollar bill on the counter. She sighs, sliding it across the wooded surface but annoyingly, it's intercepted by a manicured hand...a blinged out, manicured hand. Glancing up, a lump forms in my throat. "Maya." I manage, swallowing past my nerves.

"Three is enough." She snips, knowing from experience. I couldn't count the amount of times we'd gotten wasted drinking past our limits. I miss those days. "What are you doing? Trying to get my attention?" She asks accusingly, her ocean eyes blazing into mine.

"Your attention is the last thing that I want." I retort, snatching the drink from her hands and bringing it to my lips. "Goodbye Maya. Enjoy your life" I add, exemplifying what I thought was perfect nonchalance.

However-. "Enjoy my life?" She follows after me. "After years that's the goodbye that I get? Are you fucking kidding me?" Looking around, I've realized that we've drawn quite the crowd, not that Maya seems to care. "Josh, you can act like none of this affects you, but I know you. I know you care. So why keep up the act? Why not tell me how you feel?"

Unable to keep it inside anymore, words spill out of my mouth on their own accord. "Tell you how I feel?" I exclaim questionably. "Maya I tried that, or have you forgotten the night that I proposed; making my intentions quite clear only for you to tell me that you weren't ready and that you needed more time...or how I respected you enough to wait until you were ready only for you to break up with me and find the man you were ready for?"

My chest heaving, I don't realize until the words end, and I taste the salt on my lips that I'm crying; sobbing actually over the reality of all that I've lost.

My only real shot at happiness.

"Josh." Trying to take a step towards me, I retreat, rushing out of the room and out into the dark where I'm free to let out every emotion I've been squandering all evening, allowing the last of my heart to shatter and disintegrate into a pile of dust.

Surprisingly though, I was followed but not by who I was expecting. "You know, she's never going to get over you." Looking up through tears, I take in Maya's fiancé; a well-established lawyer from Riley's firm that makes more figures a year than I'll ever see in my lifetime, standing vulnerably in front of me with his hands shoved into his tailored suit pants. "Have you ever asked her...why she left?" He asks, swallowing hard.

"She didn't want me." Sniffling and trying to stand on my shaky legs, I stare into the man's eyes. "Isn't that why you break up with someone?"

"In some cases. Not this one." He breaks our gaze to stare at the concrete beneath our feet. "She loves you. Always has and always will. Trust me on that."

And then he's disappearing into the house.

My head reeling with his words, I start towards my car, wanting to get as far from this place as possible when I hear her. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe I was scared?" Turning around, there she is.

My Maya with tear tracks stained onto her cheeks and her hands thrown into the air in frustration. "My mother and father married young, had me and broke up. They deem their entire relationship a mistake. What if that happened to us? What if I said yes? What if we married and had a beautiful baby and realized we despised each other? I-I couldn't chance it. I couldn't lose you."

Stalking towards her, my voice heightening, "but you lost me anyway! Maya," I trail off, reaching out to take her face in my hands. "Why wouldn't you have just told me-?"

"Because you would've insisted we were different."

"Damn right I would've" I reply, reveling in the sound of her laughter. "Maya Penelope Hunter, we are not our parents or their mistakes. But this, marrying someone you're not afraid to lose...it's stupid and playing it safe will never make you as happy as taking a leap of faith."

"A leap of faith, huh?"

"Yea" I chuckle, "you jumping or not?"

"I missed you Josh."

"I missed you too" I murmur, crashing my lips onto hers and in that moment, everything is exactly perfectly right...apart from the engagement that Maya is definitely going to need to call off now.

Especially because there was another ring still nestled in my dresser with her name on it.