april 2018 : 2 years and 5 months ago

Liam and Lily kept seeing each other to work on their research paper, but it quickly became less and less about the paper.

They barely spoke to each other for a few days after that whole fiasco. Liam didn't know what her motives for keeping her distance were, but to him it seemed like the best way to let any awkwardness lingering between them fizzle out and help them go back to being just two classmates working on a project together. That's all they were supposed to be.

But the whole barely talking thing didn't last very long. There was one morning at the beginning of April where he got to campus earlier in the morning than usual. Jo had been gone all week with a cold and he was starting to crave some coffee that wasn't his own sub-par attempt at recreating hers, so he caved in and got up in time to go to Starbucks before Music Appreciation class.

Just as he was about to leave, he spotted her sitting at a table in the corner, her head bent over a book. He glanced at the time. They still had ten minutes before they needed to go to class.

You should leave her be. She's clearly trying to focus. But he couldn't stop looking at her. She was wearing a tan sweater and kept brushing strands of her dark hair behind her ear as it fell in her face. And there was an empty chair across from her.

His feet carried him over to her before he could change his mind. Her head shot up from her book when she realized that someone was approaching and she looked slightly surprised when she saw that it was him. Then again, he wasn't usually at Starbucks.

"Hi," she said softly.

Liam tried not to notice how pretty she looked today, but the way she'd done her eyeshadow made him want to sit there and look at her eyes. And he caught a hint of her perfume, something light and nice. "Is this seat taken?"

The corners of her pink-tinted lips curved up into a small smile. "I guess it is now."

They talked for a few minutes that day and walked together to class. And then he showed up slightly earlier on Wednesday. And she did, too. So that became their little thing: seeing each other for coffee in the mornings.

The overpriced Starbucks drinks definitely weren't any better than what Jo could make him, but he did it to see Lily. They were becoming friends and he genuinely enjoyed every moment they had together, even when it was just to work on that paper.

There was just the one giant problem: he was stupidly into her.

It was kind of ridiculous. It was far from just her looks, although it was kind of hard to ignore the incessant pattering of his heart that started every time he sat down across from her and saw her smile. But she carried herself through life with a certain lightness that concealed whatever dark parts might have been hiding underneath. She smiled a lot, she laughed a lot. She was kind. She had a lot of love for other people; she really liked talking about her friends and her cousin Henry. She talked about him in particular a lot, but Liam would have sat there and listened to her all day.

He liked her too much for someone he had only known for a month, so much that it should have hurt, especially on the couple of occasions he tried to subtly ask her out and she casually brushed him off. There was this one weekend where everyone from his music ensemble was going to Dave and Buster's and he asked her if she wanted to come along. She agreed, adding that she loved some "friendly competition."

But none of it hurt because being around her was still so easy. He hadn't realized just how long it had been since he could relax around someone outside of his own house. And then one day it dawned on him why he enjoyed spending time with her so much.

It was making him feel innocent again.

For the past year, everyone and everything had been forcing him to grow up so fast. With Caroline, there was the drinking and partying. This time last year was the lowest and scariest part of his life, trying to fight against a version of himself so unfamiliar that didn't even feel like him anymore. It was like being thrown into and locked in a dark, suffocating room with no instructions on how to get out or any idea how big the room was. But he got out. And stumbled right into Natasha. He didn't comprehend it at the time, but looking back he now understood that he had constantly been trying to act older than he was to try to catch up to her. It wasn't in the irresponsible way that it was with Caroline, but he was trying to be more mature than he really was, trying to have the answers to everything and see things from a perspective that he didn't yet have. He never gave himself permission to just...be himself.

But with Lily, it was all different. She didn't expect anything of him. He finally got to be a stupid teenager again who could do simple things like get coffee with a cute girl.

No matter where things went between them, he wasn't going to forget that she offered him that chance.

There was one morning around the middle of the month where he thought she wasn't going to come. There were less than ten minutes left until they needed to go to class and she still hadn't shown up. He thought about texting her to make sure she was fine, but he resisted. They had never actually verbally committed to this whole coffee rendezvous thing and he didn't want to sound too attached.

But a minute or two later, she rushed into Starbucks wearing a yellow sundress and carrying what appeared to be a ziploc bag full of sugar cookies.

"Sorry I'm late," she apologized as she sat down in the chair across from him, slightly breathless and rosy-cheeked as if she had rushed over here. "Katie's phone fell in the crack between the bed and the wall and we were trying to get it out for like fifteen minutes but then we finally reached it by grabbing onto it with her hair straightener and then our RA came around handing out these Easter cookies she made and I felt bad for keeping you waiting so I went and got an extra one for you and as I'm saying this out loud I'm realizing that I don't even know if you like cookies so you don't have to eat it but-"

He couldn't help but laugh a little bit as she began rambling. "Easy, Lils. It's okay."

They stared at each other for a second. Liam kind of wanted to die.

Where did that come from and how did he let it slip out of his mouth? Lils, really?

Her eyebrows shot up. "That's a new one."

It was so hard not to look away. Liam felt himself turning pink. "You can just kill me," he offered blankly. "Really, it's fine. I always wondered what death is like."

She shook her head. "No, I um-" She looked a little embarrassed and glanced down at the table, but he saw that she was trying not to smile. "It's sweet."

He had no idea what to say that wouldn't make him sound like even more of an idiot. "Oh."

She slid the cookie bag across the table and looked back up at him, resting her elbow on the table and propping her chin on her hand. "I guess I have to come up with something for Liam now."

"I'm sure Ezra could give you plenty of ideas." Ezra noticed Liam's amusement at the nickname Benny and had been trying to come up with an embarrassing nickname for him ever since. "On second thought, please don't ask him."

Professor Sullivan was nowhere to be found when Liam showed up to their ensemble later that morning - he was probably off somewhere trying to hunt down equipment that other students had taken without permission; it wasn't an uncommon occurrence - but everyone else was already there.

Ezra grinned when Liam arrived and sat down at the keyboard. "Okay team, how do we feel about Liamkins?" he proposed, met by a chorus of resounding nos.

"It doesn't roll off the tongue very easily," Robin pointed out.

"You guys don't like any of my ideas."

Adam, currently occupied with tuning his bass, glanced up at Ezra. "That's because all of your ideas suck."

Liam wasn't going to argue with that. Lilo and Leelee were bad enough, but Liamkins was only marginally better than his personal least favorite - Lima Bean. Ezra's shenanigans were completely innocent, but Liam was totally okay with the fact that none of his other classmates seemed interested in mortifying him and continued shooting down all the nicknames.

He was about to practice one of their songs until Professor Sullivan got there, but before he could start Izzy grabbed a chair and plopped down in front of his keyboard. He could tell from her curious expression that trouble was coming. She wanted some sort of information and she was going to pry it out of him.

"So Liam. Question. Do you or do you not like Lily?" she bluntly asked.

He did his best to hold back any visible reaction. He knew how girls and their herds worked. Anything he said to Izzy was absolutely going to get back to Lily and Izzy had probably already heard about his Lils slip-up from this morning.

"Why would I tell you anything? You're like her best friend."

A smug expression formed on Izzy's face. "You wouldn't have a problem telling me if the answer was no."

"Yes I would," he tried to argue.

"You should sing at our concert."

That was the last thing he expected her to say. He didn't think he was a particularly great singer. He was good, he supposed, but it wasn't something he ever worked at like piano. But more notably, he wasn't sure why Izzy was under the impression that he could. Unless...

"Who says I can sing?" he asked nervously.

"Um..."

Crap. He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. "What did you see?"

"I'm not saying I saw that drunk karaoke video of you from like a year-and-a-half ago, but I'm not not saying that," Izzy admitted sheepishly.

Ezra perked up from across the room. "What, I wanna see-"

Liam ignored him and tried to sound calm. "You didn't show anyone, did you?"

He didn't even care who she got that humiliating video from, just prayed that she hadn't sent it to Lily.

Izzy, understanding exactly who he cared about seeing it, smirked. "Of course not, I'm not that mean. My point is that if you sound good tipsy then you must be really good when you're sober."

Thoroughly uninterested in lingering on the topic of how he behaved while drunk, he attempted to nudge the discussion in a different direction. "The concert's in two weeks. Why add a song now?"

"Because I'll make sure Lily's there and it'll make you look good."

He was glad he could think on his feet when he wasn't a total anxious wreck. This was a chance to turn Izzy's tactic back on her. "Why would I need to look good if she doesn't like me?"

Izzy didn't comment and instead simply got up and grabbed her saxophone. That should have made him happy; she was obviously answering by not answering. But he held back a sigh.

If Lily liked him, then why did she act the way she did? It shouldn't have been a question of if he liked her back. He thought he had made that as clear as he could without jeopardizing their friendship.

She sent so many mixed messages. She played along with his flirting and acted as though she liked him back until he actually gave her the opportunity to go out and do anything with him, at which point she always made it abundantly clear that it was just as friends. He tried to keep it as low-pressure as possible. It wasn't like he had asked her to dinner and a movie. And she couldn't have been very annoyed with him hitting on her if she was still hanging out with him, right? He didn't understand. And he wasn't sure how to handle it.

Everyone else, of course, was listening in. Ezra looked like he had an idea. Oh no.

"Hold up, this is genius-" He went over to the whiteboard and started scribbling down song ideas for Liam to sing.

Everyone else started to look mildly intrigued as Ezra jotted down some songs that probably would have been fun for them to play, but the thought of actually going through with Izzy's scheme twisted Liam's stomach into a knot.

"Hear me out, I have a plan," Ezra announced, turning around from the board to look at Liam. "You're gonna sing that one from that movie-"

"How specific," Izzy noted dryly.

"Yeah, you know," Ezra prompted as if they did, in fact, know what he was talking about. "The one where the boring white dude saves jazz from John Legend?"

Robin snorted. "La La Land?"

"YES," Ezra exclaimed way too enthusiastically. "Thank you Robin. So hear me out dude, you're gonna sing that duet and ask for an audience volunteer-"

Everyone else was cracking up, but Izzy shook her head through her laughter. "As much as I want to bring this nonsense to fruition, I'm vetoing this one. She doesn't like to sing."

Ezra pondered this problem for a moment. "How easily can she be bribed-"

"Wouldn't her knowing mess up the whole plan?" Adam interjected.

"Fair point," Ezra conceded, thoughtfully tapping his Expo marker on the whiteboard. "Liam, how do you feel about 'My Heart Will Go On-'"

Someone cleared their throat from the doorway. All six of them froze as they realized that Professor Sullivan had been standing there watching this chaos unfold for who-knows-how-long.

In most instances, Liam would have been glad to see him. He was a cool guy. Liam was really nervous on his first day, but Professor Sullivan quickly took him under his wing and assured him that he had what it took to catch up. And it always helped when the professor wasn't that much older than you, although it was no secret that probably half of the girls on campus thought he was hot. His job position and appearance - glasses, usually-messy brown hair, neck tattoo - screamed of the angsty musician type that everyone seemed to be into.

He entered the room carrying the speaker that must have been the source of his tardiness. He nodded in acknowledgment to the mess that Ezra had created on the whiteboard. "Are we adding a song to the set?" he asked lightly, maintaining a great poker face.

"No," Liam blurted at the same time Ezra said, "Yes."

Bennett, who was almost completely silent this whole time, finally spoke up. "He's just being Ezra."

But to Liam's horror, Professor Sullivan wasn't quite ready to drop it. He sat down in his chair. "So fill me in."

"On...?" Adam questioned.

Liam did not at all like the amused expression that their professor had on his face. "Who this girl is."

Ezra dissolved back into laughter. Liam sort of wanted to slam his head into the piano.

It was a mild night on the precipice between spring and summer, one of those nights that begged you to do something wonderful with it. Where the bright full moon shone down like a beacon for restless souls and compelled them to look up to the Stygian sky so that they might find the adventure they were looking for right there in the stars. Liam could hear his classmates in the distance chatting and laughing and being otherwise rambunctious. But he wasn't with them. He was here, on the bench. With her.

"You were really good," Lily told him.

"Thanks."

It was the last day of April and they had just gotten out of his ensemble concert. He still had a couple of exams to go, but he definitely felt lighter now that the concert was done. Not that it was a burden. He thought it went well.

He was glad he said yes when Bennett asked him to join. He enjoyed himself and made some new friends along the way. Even Ezra, who had way more energy than Liam knew how to handle, was a lot of fun to be around. And they all felt like real friends. It didn't matter that he hadn't known any of them for very long. They still treated him way better than any of those people he hung around last year, the ones who tricked him into thinking they were his friends but weren't.

But above all of that, he was glad he said yes because it brought him to that party. To her.

He looked over at her. It made his heart beat faster, but he didn't mind the feeling anymore because when his heart sped up like that it meant he was getting to be with her. That was the only place he wanted to be these days. Talking to her, listening to her laugh. He didn't need to join his friends for their celebratory outing. He didn't know if there was an adventure in store for him tonight or not. But if there was, he wanted to go on it with her.

And maybe she didn't want everything with him, but she wanted something. Because even though Izzy was in the concert, too, Lily was here with him.

They were seated a neutral distance apart from each other on the metal bench and he wanted nothing more than to move closer and put his arm around her. For her to lean against his shoulder and finally let him tell her all these things he thought about her.

He was really going to have to find a way to control these feelings of his.

"Have you had dinner?" she asked him.

"No, why?"

"It just occurred to me that you probably didn't get the chance. You guys were setting up for a while before your concert."

His heart did a little jump in his chest before resuming its regularly-scheduled programming of thumping faster than it was supposed to. "Are you worrying about me, Lils?"

She lightly elbowed him and then looked down at her lap. "I worry about everyone."

It was the very first time he ever saw it. A glimpse of some darkness she was trying to hide. A tiredness to her body, like she was holding a lot of grief.

"That's not necessarily a bad thing," he quietly told her. "As long as you look after yourself."

If there was anything bothering her, she didn't want to talk about it. She pulled her eyes off her lap and back up to him. "So...food?"

He felt the edge of his mouth tug up into a grin. "Are you hungry?"

"No, but I thought you'd be."

"I'm not really," he shrugged. But he didn't want to leave her yet. And maybe he was just being hopeful, but she didn't look like she wanted to leave him, either. "Do you wanna go for a drive?"

Curiosity threaded itself into her voice. "Where to?"

He didn't need to think about it. "Wherever we want to go."

He would have gone anywhere with her. He couldn't say that - he didn't think he could - but oh how little he knew. As Lily silently answered by standing up and pulling him to his feet, she was realizing that she would go anywhere with him, too. 

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We have reached the part of the story where my fluffy writing brain is thriving :D Taking predictions now for how long you think it's gonna take these clowns to confess their feelings.