༺ All You Had To Do Was Stay ༻
We had to leave early, mom has an emergency meeting in the morning so we had to catch the last flight out. I am so sorry, sis.
Megara scrunched her nose a bit quickly as she read the text from her younger sister, feeling a rosy feeling rising in her nerves. She didn't think she would cry in front of so many people, but she'd also been going through a lot of unlikely things going on lately. In reality, she was dumb to expect her mom to stay for as long as she said she would. Then again, Megara usually liked to give people second chances.
It was also the worst time to get emotional over your mom.
"You guys, the orchestra hasn't vamped this much since Bop To The Top," Carlos rushed to the back room where most of the cast was hanging around. This was supposed to be the climax of the show, owned by beauty and the beast and no one else. It was finally time for the scene they were the most nervous about, the scene Ricky and Ashlyn had broken their wrists over. But now that it was finally time, something was wrong.
"I know it's here," Savannah insisted. "I preset it."
Megara's eyebrow twitched. "What's wrong?"
"My harness is missing," Ricky answered quickly, turning to face her. This was a different Ricky than the one she had moments ago, the look in his eyes alone was apparent. They were widened, and in them, he looked lost and confused. That look is how she gathered just how serious this was to him. "The new one for the transformation."
"What?" she asked in disbelief.
"No, no, this can't be happening," Carlos shook his head. "It was here."
"What else can I use?" Ricky asked.
"For heaven's sake, can't you just jump off something high?" Miss Jenn yelled out, immediately catching everyone's attention. "Nope. Forget I said that. I will be not here."
"I don't know how we can forget that," Megara side-eyed Miss Jenn before realizing Rita was standing next to her. The two of them watched as various kids ran circles around them, most of them searching for the harness, others unsure of what to do next as the final scene was up and they were already late for it. Everything had been going perfectly right up to this moment.
"I knew something would go wrong," Rita sighed. "We can't get through one show without something going wrong."
"You're right," Megara agreed as they watched their classmates yell and point fingers at each other, all while a frightened Ricky stood with eyes popping out of his head until Carlos shouted out something to make them pay attention to him.
"Richard, let's just spin you around without the harness, you can toss the mask into the wings," Carlos said. "Okay? Just like rehearsal."
"Right! Which I never got right once," Ricky said. "And now I'm supposed to do it with one hand." Everyone stared at him for a quiet moment as his gaze fell to the floor. "Sorry. Second acts haven't traditionally been my strong suit."
Rita glanced at Megara, catching only a glimpse of all the emotion her dear friend was feeling. Little did Rita know just how much was bubbling under the surface. "First time for everything, right?" Rita asked, redirecting her attention back to Ricky. It seemed that Rita was best at redirecting, and ever since she joined the theatre, she'd unintentionally been doing that a lot.
"After this, we're done," Megara added. She wasn't sure where this newfound confidence came from, but she was glad she said something. When everyone looked at her, it just made it all the more real. "We have one more act and after that... well it's all over. We just have to make it out there for a little while longer. It'll go by in the blink of an eye."
Megara's own words sat with herself as silence overtook the room. They pierced right through her heart as if they were meant for her to hear. In a way, they were.
Almost wordlessly, everyone jumped to their feet and agreed to start helping out, offering things like throwing the snow and catching the mask Ricky would have to throw off during this new transformation scene. Funnily enough, her words were just the thing they needed to send them off into oblivion and finish the show, even if spirits were down. Sometimes they just needed a little push.
With the high from bringing their show to a close (no matter if it was good or bad), Megara let a million things slip her mind. Or at least for the most part. While she went onstage as part of Ricky's entourage (thankfully, she knew a thing or two about where she should stand and how she should help), it was hard not to glance at the empty seats in the crowd where her mom and sister were supposed to be sitting. But after seeing Ricky's smile, she forgot about the whole ordeal.
She also forgot about the other boy in her life, the reason she was going through all of this trouble for.
Phillip Cabot's smile should have brought her more comfort than stress, but all she felt as the curly-haired blonde made eye contact with her from across the room was a stomach filled with butterflies. Or anxiety.
"Lip, hey," Megara greeted him, briefly thinking back to the time he came to her house party and she was so nervous to see him. How she felt so happy he wanted to talk to her.
But now she was only thinking of what Ricky would think when she was stuck in the closet with Lip was the only thing that really clouded her thoughts.
"Meg, can we talk?" he said, and if it weren't for his heartwarming smile, she would have thought she was in trouble.
"Sure," she found it easy to return a smile back to him and let him lead her to the other room on the other side of the hallway, where they could be away from people and talk by themselves. She fought the urge to glance over her shoulder as she let herself be swooped away from the madness that was enveloping the students and (hopefully) the audience. But part of that madness included her own dramas and feelings, not to mention all the people she had mixed feelings for like Savannah, EJ, and most of all, Ricky.
She couldn't yet be sure just what her kiss with Ricky meant. Sure, it was more than she expected, and it was pretty much the only thing she could think about, but it was so much more than a kiss to her. How did it change things, if it did at all? Could she be so sure that it affected him the same way it did her? Was it just a fluke thing or months of pent-up tension finally getting an outlet?
When Lip and Meg were finally alone, and the room became quiet as Lip closed the door behind them, they both sighed. Lip's was slightly louder than hers, more stressed. She looked gorgeous in the blue-tinted room, leaning her hands against a table behind her as she looked at him. He looked down at her with an out-of-breath look (most likely from the show), and it was just then that Megara realized a pattern in the way that he looked at her; with some form of amazement. "Hey," he finally said.
Megara smiled. "Hey," she returned his greeting in almost a whisper.
"How are you? You looked like you were somewhere else all night."
Her eyebrows furrowed slightly. That was disappointing. She thought she'd hid it well enough. "How do you mean?"
He shrugged a bit sloppily. "Didn't really see you in between scenes and when we did, you just seemed a little out of it. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Megara felt incredibly guilty. She wanted so badly to feel her heart swelling in her chest at his words. In a way, she did. Lip had yet to fail her when it came to capturing her heart. He did all the right things and said everything she'd been ready to hear, and there was virtually no reason why she shouldn't like him. She shook her head, her gaze adverting to the floor. "Oh, I'm okay. Really. It's just been a long week and—"
"It's been a long week for a while now, hasn't it?" Lip asked. There was something in his voice like he was sincerely asking and not bringing it up just to throw it back on her. She was almost uncomfortable knowing he could see right through her. He stepped forward, brushing his knuckles against her forearms with a soft tenderness that should have bound her to the earth.
Instead, her head was in the clouds as she allowed herself to become engulfed by him. It all started happening so fast. One minute, she was nodding along slowly as she took his words in. It had been a long week, but more than that, she'd been struggling the whole semester. Not just with the show; with school, with the wedding, with her love life, with her family and friends. Even though she wasn't used to someone caring enough to downright point out that they could so obviously see her struggle, she kind of liked that someone noticed.
His eyes bore into her droopy ones as she watched him inch closer, and take her hands into his own like he was asking permission for something. And against her better judgment at the moment, she gave it to him.
Megara nodded once when he paused, his lips mere inches away from her own. She was struggling to remember a time when she had been vying for this moment, trying to remember when months ago she was standing in Big Red's basement and towering over Ricky, convincing him to help her out the way she did.
That's the thing. The only thing she really remembered from her last six months trying to win Lip over was just... Ricky.
She could feel her lips moving against his, but past that, she was searching for some sort of flame, some motion of desire that would let her know to keep going. While it was a great kiss, and they were both into it, she couldn't feel that flame despite being in a cold room, in the middle of winter in Utah, baring her soul. She felt more watching Jess's scenes on reruns of Gilmore Girls.
She pulls away, and there's a long pause before he opens his eyes and allows himself to come face-to-face with her. "It's still him, isn't it?" he finally said.
Megara feverishly shakes her head, the answer stuck in her throat as she looks at him confused. "What? No."
Lip presses his lips together tightly, perhaps afraid of saying the wrong thing. Maybe also the right thing? He grabs her hand with both of his. "Just tell me the truth. Is it him?"
Megara didn't think she'd have to confront this so soon. But she felt the longer she took to answer him, the more he was becoming convinced of the theory already in his head. He looked at the floor, and Megara grabbed onto his hands with her other, so now they were sitting inches away from each other's faces clutching onto each other's palms. "No, no, lip." She could feel her eyes gloss over and her vision was becoming cloudy along with her judgment. "I like you."
He chuckled bitterly. "You're a horrible liar."
She could feel the rose-colored glass in front of her eyes liquefy and turn into hot tears sliding down her perfectly painted cheeks. She was caught red-handed, blood from Phillip's heart smeared across the crevices of her gentle hands. She had tangled him in her web of lies, strung him up to dry, his hurt voice now a symbol of heartache. She shook her head again. "I am so sorry. I know everyone thinks we broke up, and in a way we did, but I have liked you for a long time and you were never supposed to find out like this and I—"
"Are you sorry that it happened, or sorry that I found out?"
"Both?" she shrugged. "That's the honest truth. I'm sorry, Lip, I really am. I like you, I really do."
"But...?"
"But what?"
A hearty sigh. "I need to hear you say it," he said quietly.
"But... I like him more."
"Who?"
Megara swallowed the lump in her throat, there was no going back now. "Ricky."
Lip slowly released his grip on her hands and let them return back to her sides. His eyes flickered towards hers a few times, but even she could see there was a burn on his face that she'd caused. Before he twisted the doorknob open, he managed to get a few more words out. "I'm sorry it wasn't me."
"I really wanted you to be," Megara said through a croak before he sadly nodded and left. As soon as the door flew shut behind him, dozens of tears dropped and hit the floor, but she couldn't hear them as she allowed herself to release a tight sob she'd been holding in.
So much for how to lose a guy in ten days. She'd lost him in under a minute.
While Megara was hiding her flustered self in the bathroom at work, the rest of the group was sitting in the dining area, collectively celebrating their victory. What was wrong with her? She had the guy she wanted in the palm of her hand and yet she couldn't bring herself to feel anything with him. So much for Operation Heart Stealer.
Without her knowledge of it, they'd let the night get the best of them and decided to throw the document that announced whether or not they had won the contest into the brick oven. Literally. Months of all that hard work were over like it was nothing.
When Megara finally cleaned herself up enough to her liking and put on her brave face, she joined the rest of them who were celebrating amongst themselves. Thankfully, no one noticed her long absence or the fake emotions sprouting from her.
She had just been drafting a text message back to her sister Rosetta — something along the lines of "it's not your fault" and "wish you could've seen that lowkey disaster of a show — when her silence was interrupted with Miss Jenn slamming her purse down in the booth across from her.
Megara wordlessly looked up as she watched her drama teacher struggle with opening a straw for her soda. The straw wrappers at Slices were infamously hard, which was why Megara's soda in front of her lay unoccupied. However, the soda would be the only thing she'd get to stomach that night.
Finally, after fully damaging the straw to get it open, Miss Jenn took a seat in the booth and fixed herself up with a smile. "Wow, you look incredibly happy for someone who just lost out in the Menkies," Megara noted.
"Well, Ricky sort of gave me his blessing," Miss Jenn admitted behind a sneaky blush.
Megara's mouth gapped open. "Blessing? Oh, for that? Oh my God, you're serious? You're going to go after Mr. Bowen? Miss Jenn!"
Miss Jenn clapped her hands together and nearly giggled. "I guess so. I was just so worried about Ricky. The last thing I want to do is upset him," the teacher said.
"He was just sad," Megara shrugged. When Miss Jenn gave her a questionable look, Megara nearly smiled. "I'm being serious. He just gets sad a lot because he has a hard time keeping up with all the changes going on around him. You know he doesn't like change. And I certainly don't help much, so it's partially my fault. And yeah, sometimes he can be a jerk. But you're his favorite teacher, and he loves his dad, so he'll come around."
"Thanks, kiddo," Miss Jenn's lips curled into a smile. "I guess it pays off to have friends in high places."
High places, by pretending to date the son of the guy her teacher liked? That was her! But still, Megara gave her the best and most genuine smile she ever could. "I guess it does."
Dramatically wiping under her eye, Miss Jenn carried on. "You guys did such a wonderful job coming together last minute, which comes as no surprise after last semester's productions catastrophe, but still. You guys are incredibly helpful, and make me the luckiest drama teacher ever."
"Aw, Miss Jenn!" Megara patted her on the shoulder as Miss Jenn clutched her heart fondly. "It was really a big team effort, competing with North High's high tech. I never thought I would be saying this, but even Ricky's been super helpful with it too."
"Yeah, he can be a smart cookie sometimes, can't he?" Miss Jenn asked. "I guess we should know that better than anyone."
Megara awkwardly chuckled. "What do you mean?"
"Some of his ideas are a little... wacky, but sometimes they're incredible. He was the one who said you should throw the basketball at the end of HSM to parallel Kelsi and Jason, you know, from the end of the movie?"
Megara felt her throat instantly run dry. Of course, she knew what Miss Jenn was talking about. HSM was after all one of her favorite DCOMS ever, and she had watched it over a million times with Ricky while they were rehearsing. This whole time, she thought Phillip had passed her the ball as his way of wiggling his way back into her life. Never had she imagined the idea actually came from...
"That's my favorite part," Megara said. "Of the movie. And it was my favorite part of the show, next to playing piano for Ashlyn."
Miss Jenn nodded. "Yeah, Ricky said something like that. He thought you might appreciate it, and we were both watching when you tossed the ball across the stage, closing out act three magnificently," she said in a dreamy tone as if replaying the events in her head over again.
"Rick was... watching me when Lip helped me throw the ball?"
Miss Jenn nodded again. "Yeah, he was looking for you. Something about a note for you?"
A note? Or a letter? Suddenly Megara was remembering how Ricky had told her about how he had written a letter for her once, could this be it? She could no longer hear Miss Jenn as her heart sank into her stomach and the once restless but now doormat butterflies there churned.
For the first time, Megara was realizing Ricky was not a liar, but the only time he ever did lie was to protect her or keep her happy. So technically while it was often, he was only looking out for her best interest.
He had tried to tell her when he found the letters she wrote, and even before then. Could it be possible that before HSM last semester, he wrote her a letter telling her about his true feelings for her? Could it be possible that he was really trying to kiss her after the show? The letter had magically disappeared from the pocket of her jacket, could it be possible that he swiped it sometime between then and dinner at Denny's?
"Honey? Are you okay?" Miss Jenn's eyes flashed with concern as she looked at the young girl sitting in front of her.
"I think I'm going to be sick," the Latina groaned. She knew her own heart and she knew she was into Phillip, but if most of her relationship with Phillip was based on the one that she had with Ricky...
"Megara?" Miss Jenn grabbed her shoulder to steady her and pressed a palm to her forehead to check for a spike in temperature.
The dark-haired girl drew in a long breath, readying her explanation. But what was there to say that anyone didn't already know? "I still..."
As Megara trailed off, seemingly in her own world, Miss Jenn asked, "Still what?"
"I still like Ricky Bowen."
"Then why did you break up?" Miss Jenn is genuinely confused.
Oh, where to begin explaining? How do you even explain it? Megara wasn't even sure of the moment where she feel for her partner in crime, the one boy she thought she'd never have a problem with falling in love. She was never supposed to fall for the boy who stole her Barbies and gave them makeovers with her Crayolas or the boy who heard her singing High School Musical when he came over too early for her family's barbeque. But Ricky wasn't just those things anymore, he was also the boy she made endless new memories with, evolving past a fake friendship and somehow an even more real agreement to pretend to like each other. Was it possible that they had been falling for each other this whole time?
But how could she still like him if this was the first time she'd been made fully aware of her feelings? She briefly thought over everything, vivid memories flashing in her mind. Her sitting in his lap, the kisses he'd leave on her cheeks, the way he'd slip his arms around her torso from behind and intertwine his fingers with hers, the way he constantly let her teach him how to cook, the way she liked seeing him riled up whenever she mentioned Lip, the way she searched for him in the crowd at the wedding, and finally, the kiss.
"I like Ricky," Megara came to her realization in a hushed voice, not answering her teacher's question at all. "I made a mistake. I never really told him just how much I liked him. We never talked about it."
Which wasn't necessarily a lie.
"Well, what are you doing? Go find him and tell him!" Miss Jenn said. "If there's one thing I know, it's that tomorrow is never promised and when you find that special feeling, you should do everything you can not to let it slip away."
Megara froze for three whole seconds before panicking, twisting around in a hurry. She had clutched the door to the entrance to the employees-only area (which was a lie, everyone was back there all the time) and thrown it open so quickly, Miss Jenn wasn't sure it was human. But Megara didn't care, only stopping when she got to the door to look back at Miss Jenn once to say, "Thank you. For everything. I mean it."
This meant more to Miss Jenn than Megara realized. Where Megara didn't have a maternal figure, Miss Jenn had limited opportunities to present herself in a big sister role outside of the theatre. She loved Carlos, Ashlyn, and the rest of the kids with her whole heart, but to her, it was really special knowing that Megara didn't have to open up to her but she continuously did.
When Megara found Ricky in the storage room, watching videos from the show on his phone, she felt like she'd been interrupting something. She knew Ricky had very few moments of solitude, and the last thing she wanted was to crush him with her weight.
"Rick?" she asked softly, announcing her presence in the room.
A slow chuckle emitted from his lips as he put his phone down and looked at her. "I don't think I'll ever get used to you calling me that."
Megara couldn't help but smile. She used to think it was because his own smile was so infectious, but she had now come to realize he had affected other parts of her, too. Ricky Bowen caused this smile. "What else am I supposed to call you?"
"Hm, I'm guessing sugarplum pie is completely out of the question?" he said, eliciting a few butterflies in her stomach. They usually remained doormat until he said or did something so totally dumb that it was sweet.
She laughed, this time with her whole chest. Secretly, he had loved it when he could make her laugh like this and on top of that, knowing he was the only person who could light her up like that. Which made his gut wrench into a knot.
Needing to change the subject and get back into what she came here to talk to him about, she took a deep breath and began saying, "Hey, I know things have been weird between us lately—"
"Understatement of the year," Ricky said quickly.
"Yeah..." Megara's eyebrow furrowed at his suddenness. Couldn't he see how nervous she was? She was standing in front of him playing with her own fingers and struggling to maintain eye contact, she might as well have had her tail tucked between her legs as she spoke. "I just really wanted to talk to you about, well, everything. We really have been through a lot together this year and I don't think it really sunk in until just now."
"Well, good thing the year is almost over," Ricky said with a sigh, but there was no sign of tension release behind it. If anything, he sounded more stressed. Megara liked to think she knew him enough to know at least that.
"Um..." a million thoughts flooded through her head, but she couldn't help but ask; "what are you talking about exactly?"
"I've just been thinking. We're about to go our separate ways for the summer. There's so much we can do again now that we're not, you know, tied to each other. You have Lip and I could always..."
Megara's heart sunk to the pit of her stomach as she thought of what Ricky was implying. Not only was he way off base about where she stood with Lip now, but nearly saying to her face that he wanted to see other people was disheartening. Was this how Lip felt just earlier this evening? She felt sick to her stomach.
Her throat was dry as she spoke, "I knew Lily was hitting on you."
Megara didn't know what to expect from the guy who openly bragged about hanging out with multiple girls last summer when Nini went away to camp. Ricky tilted his head and closed his eyes. "That's not who I was referring to."
"Lily or not, you are still saying we're on to other people now, and we no longer need each other, correct?" she asked.
Something in her hardened as she searched his eyes for any sign that he was kidding. If she didn't know the context then, she would have thought they were having a different conversation based on his face alone. He looked so soft and nearly distressed, too unconfident for someone suggesting they fully break up with one another.
"Meg... we're done with the fake dating. That's what you were coming down here to tell me, right? That you never really needed me in the first place. I was always something just slowing you down, bothering you. Yeah, we had a lot of good memories together. I'll never forget how you helped me with High School Musical, and how you and your dad let me back into your lives after being the brat I was."
She had a feeling there were a million other questions she could have asked, but the first thing that popped into her head was entirely different from the strong woman she wanted to be at that moment. "And the kiss?"
His eyes flickered over her face, deciding on his best possible wording so as not to further cause her pain. "We're allowed to make mistakes every now and then. Come on, we're Ricky and Megara. It's what we do."
Ricky turned me down. Hours after he had me in the dressing room in his Prince Adam costume, he turned me down.
The dark-haired girl nodded. She wanted to scream at him, tell him he didn't know what he was talking about, but she finally understood there was no point in fighting back. He'd already let go of his side of the rope, why should she hang onto it any longer? "You will never know just how wrong you are, Bowen."
"I wish I was, but I don't think I am," he said back, almost too quietly for her to hear. Both of them wished she didn't hear it.
And that's when she swore she could hear her own heartbreak, starting with little cracks at the edges. If Ricky of all people had no hope for her, then what was the point in standing by and waiting for things to worsen? She stared at him for a moment too long before deciding to leave out of there before any further damage could happen.
This was your own karma.
Thankfully, even though Megara's dad missed her performance, her aunt Carmen was in the crowd. After she grabbed her obviously distressed niece from Slices, they made a bee-line for Carmen's house, where they went to work busying their minds with rom-coms. While it was somewhat of a tradition between the two girls, it just dampened Megara's mood.
"Where's Megara?" her dad asked when he came to pick her up.
Carmen shrugged. "She's up in the treehouse, I think. She kinda disappeared up there a while ago. I was going to cut up some fruit and take her some if she didn't get back soon."
"The treehouse? Really?"
"Yeah, why?"
She never goes into the treehouse anymore. Everyone knows this. "No reason."
Atop the treehouse, in a makeshift desk that was nearly ancient by now, Megara sat with all the tools she'd needed for letter writing. As she started scribbling out her newest and final (she swore it was) letter, she was accompanied by a travel mug filled with hot mocha coffee, a purple ink pen, and an envelope addressed to her recent lover, and fiercest enemy. Ricky Bowen — I hate you.
Oh, Ricky, all you had to do was stay.
guys i am SO sorry for this lackluster ending :( all i can say was that the plan was always to have this ending for megara this season because it brings her full circle and forces her to evaluate her life choices and that it changes her growth for the third season (and also ricky's)
mickys! we lost the battle but we will win the war😣😣🤞😺‼
the beginning of the next book will clear up where megara stands with her friends because her core four is LACKING and needs a little bit of reshaping. but we know where meg is, ricky isn't far behind ;)
there was also a tiny emily henry easter egg/parallel in there but let me not get too ahead of myself (: