Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time he sees the notebook is a few weeks after their date on the subway.

The yellow front is doodled with hearts and it says ‘Riley loves Lucas 4EVER,’ several times over, and he can’t help but smile. She’s sitting in the bay window, absentmindedly covering it in red hearts, and he knocks on the glass. Riley looks up at him and grins before throwing the notebook under a cushion. “Hey,” she says breathlessly. She expects him to just respond 'hey' back; it’s what they’d been doing ever since they kissed on the subway, and the awkwardness between them had only increased the longer they ignored the big elephant in the room.

Instead, he sits down in the seat next to her and leans over, sliding the notebook out from under the cushion. “New notebook?” He glides his thumb over the handwriting on the front, and Riley looks completely embarrassed.

“That’s Auggie’s,” she automatically protests, and Lucas grins at her in amusement.

Riley, however, is panicking, afraid that he thinks she’s a silly little girl with a stupid crush, and she reaches for her notebook. “Give it back, Lucas, it’s stupid,” she promises. He pulls away from her and is still staring at the cover of the notebook. Her cheeks heat up, flushed, and she feels a lump rise in her throat as his eyes are still glued to the cover. How stupid of her to openly doodle on a notebook about Lucas when her friends could walk in on her at any moment!

“What’s on the back?” Lucas abruptly asks, and Riley is snapped out of her thoughts. He flips it over. The back is much less enthusiastic than the cover, and he mumbles the words aloud. “Riley and Lucas: we’re just friends.” He seems worried as he glances over at her, and her humiliation simmers down a little bit.

They both sit in silence before he speaks again. “I like the front a lot better.” His green eyes sparkle and he seems sincere as he says it.

“Better?” Riley confirms surprised. She surely thought that he would run away in embarrassment, but here he is, doing the exact opposite.

“Yeah,” he smiles softly, and her heart clenches at the fact that it’s the first real conversation they’ve had in weeks that didn’t consist of repetitive ‘heys.’

The second time he sees the notebook, it’s after the drama of his past dies down a little. He grins as he sees the familiar cover of the notebook and the pretty smile of the brunette next to him. “Still writing in the front?”

“Of course,” she smiles, pausing to look at him. “I knew you were worth it.”

Something flutters in Lucas’s chest, something he’s always and only felt for her, and he sits down. “What do you write in there, anyways?” His tone is curious. He’s always kind of wondered.

“I might tell you,” she decides, “someday.”

He knows at that moment that ‘someday’ would be a long time from then.

He doesn’t care. As long as she keeps writing in the front of that notebook, he could wait forever.

The third time he sees the notebook is after the semi-formal. Things with him and Riley are still weird; the miscommunication between them is still puzzling Riley and Lucas a week after the dance. They aren’t exactly mad at each other, but things aren’t normal, they haven’t been since the yearbook, and he’s still upset that Charlie Gardener saw the notebook.

One evening after school, he finds her in the library. He sits down next to her, and she looks up at him startled. She’s not doodling in her Riley and Lucas notebook, in fact it’s a completely different notebook with a question mark on it.  This doesn’t sit well with him for a very valid reason, and he knows it’s because of that dance and how he stupidly didn’t ask Riley to go. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to the dance,” he says softly. She averts his gaze, and he wants nothing more than to look up into her big brown doe eyes.

“I shouldn’t have expected you to ask,” she responds, turning her focus back to her stupid question-mark notebook.

“Riley,” he says more urgently. “I’m sorry.”

She gives him a confused smile. “Me too.”

The fourth time he sees the notebook is far too long since the last time, and when he does, he wishes that the encounter had never happened: he sees her writing in the back of the notebook.

It’s a day he’s been dreading since she told him he was her brother, and he’s been expecting it for a while now. They work on their project for Mr. Matthews in silence, sitting at the counter at the bakery. She taps her pencil against her paper in thought, and they talk about Thomas Jefferson, but he can barely focus when she’s writing in the ‘Riley and Lucas: we’re just friends’ section of her notebook. When did she stop liking him? It makes no sense, but their relationship has been downward spiraling ever since that stupid yearbook came out. He is confused about the whole Maya situation, and he wishes that they could go back and fix the yearbook. None of this would have happened if they hadn’t been voted Cutest Couple, he’s convinced.

She writes something down in her notebook as they sit at the counter, and he finds himself asking what it is. She seems startled at the question. “Just notes for the project,” is all she says, and it’s more than she usually says anymore. He senses that it’s a lie, but doesn’t say anything. After all, it’s not like he can talk to her like that anymore. She only claims sibling feelings for him, and he should respect her feelings.

Even if it leaves him with a sinking feeling in his chest.

The fifth time he sees the notebook, it’s during the puzzling triangle between him and two of his best friends at the beginning of their freshman year. It’s in the only class he shares with her alone: Animal Science. She claims to want to learn more about the farm animals from her favorite movie, but he suspects a bigger reason behind her actions. The funny thing about it is that she had known he was taking the class before he had even told her; she seems to do that a lot.

They both decide to pair up for a class project, and they scoot their desks closer together. Both of them are already sitting up in the two front seats, and they have some free time at the end of the period. She grabs her notebook from her stuff and opens it to the front pages, and his heart feels like it’s soaring. It’s the first time he’s seen her write in the front of the notebook for about a year now. She flits to an empty page and starts drawing in the margins, and he reaches over   and scrawls one word in the corner of the notebook: “hi.” She gives him a small smile before responding with a greeting of her own, and his smile grows wider. Maybe it’s only a few words, but it feels like it’s the first time they’ve talked in awhile, even if it’s on a sheet of paper.

Either way, he doesn’t care. He knows it’s always been her, not her best friend.

And all he wants to do is know what’s in that notebook.

The next time he sees the notebook is his favorite memory of seeing it. He’s chosen her, and the triangle’s over. And the best part? She chose him right back. He smiles fondly as he looks at her; they’re sitting in the bay window similarly to the first time he’d seen the notebook. She’s writing in it again, and his curiosity gets the best of him. “What do you write in there, anyways?” he asks her, not unlike the way he had the first time, and she smiles as she drops her pencil. “Is it someday yet?” Lucas continues, hoping he can finally see the contents of the mysterious notebook she’s been carrying around with her for two years. She moves to hand him the notebook, but he stops her and pulls out something of his own from his backpack.

It’s a notebook similar to hers, but his is blue instead of yellow, and doodled on the front is ‘Lucas loves Riley 4EVER’ with hearts adorning the words. “So I started my own notebook,” he smiles, “and it’s not much so far, but I hope that I get to fill it up with all of my favorite memories of you.”

Riley beams and flips to the back, and she’s surprised to see that it’s decorated with ‘Lucas still loves Riley 4EVER’ rather than ‘Riley and Lucas: we’re just friends.’ She can feel her heart flutter at the sweet gesture and she flips it back to the front, opening the front cover.

Only the first line is filled so far, but what it says holds more meaning than anything else he could’ve written would. “I love you,” is scrawled on the first line in his handwriting, and she feels tears well in her eyes.

Riley wordlessly thrusts her notebook into his lap, and he smiles as he flicks through the pages, his grin brightening as he continues to read the pages. She leans her head on his shoulder as he reads. Each page is an account of their adventures together over the years, and when he finishes, he flips to the back of the notebook. All of a sudden, he wonders if maybe what she wrote for their project back in the eighth grade is still there….

He folds back the thin cardboard of the notebook and only two sentences are written there. “We’re not just friends,” is scrawled on the first line. Underneath, the words 'I love you' are written.

He stares at her in disbelief, and they both embrace in a loving kiss at the remarkable milestone in their relationship.

All Lucas knows is that he is sure that he has never appreciated notebooks as much as he does in that moment.