"because best friends don't look at each other the way we do!"
in which maya is so in love with
riley that it's making her sick.
The Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from unrequited love, where the patient's throat will fill up with flowers, they...
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"Why didn't you tell me sooner, Maya?", Riley shouted, turning around to face her long term best friend. Her eyes held so many different emotions that it was hard to pinpoint just one. Anger. Betrayal. Sadness. Pain. "You know I would have helped you!"
"I didn't tell you because I knew you would react like this!", Maya huffed, throwing her arms up. "You always over react to things!"
"You think I'm overreacting?", Riley scoffed, furrowing her brows. "You just told me you're dying and it's my fault! How can you expect me to not react like this?! What did you think, I was just gonna say 'okay' and go on about my day?! That's not how it works, Maya! That's not how any of this is supposed to work!"
Maya was stunned into silence by Riley's outburst.
"Riles, I know you're upset with me", Maya began, swallowing thickly. "And I know I messed up, but you really should calm down. It's not good for you to be so worked up like this."
"Calm down? Calm down? I can't calm down! And when you were keeping this giant secret from me did you ever once stop to think about how I might feel? Once?"
"I always think about how you feel!", Maya shouted, defending herself. "All I ever think about is how you feel! Everything I do has been for you and I—"
Maya's words died in her throat the moment Riley presses her lips against her own, soft and gentle and everything that kissing a boy wasn't.
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Maya Hart day upright in bed with a start, placing a hand over her still heaving chest as she gasped for air. A thin layer of sweat glossed over her, loose tendrils that escaped her ponytail sticking to her pale skin.
A dream.
It was only a dream.
Had she really taken up dreaming about Riley now? About kissing her? About how soft her lips felt? God, she was in deep.
She had it bad for Riley Matthews.
She was deeply in love and she hated it. She hated every single bit of it. Maya flopped backwards onto her bed with a grown, placing her pillow over her face as she thought back to what she had said to Farkle a few days ago. "She does love me... just not the way that I love her." And, strangely enough, even that wasn't enough to keep her dreams away. It wasn't enough because Maya realized that she didn't care. She was content with having her heart broken over and over again by Riley as long as her best friend was always happy in the end.
