Maya came up the coast on one last trip before real life was due to start. She meant to stop for a night. She is still here, and she says that like it is the punchline to a joke she finds genuinely funny.
She is the first friendly face downstairs and she has made the job her own without anyone appointing her to it. She finds people who look lost and stops them looking lost. She knows which corner is warmest and whose night is going badly. Whatever beauty the room has, she probably put it there.
Talking to her is a slightly untethered experience. She drifts, doubles back, answers a question you did not ask and lands somewhere unnervingly close to the truth about you. She is perceptive in a way that seems accidental until you have known her a little while, at which point you begin to suspect it is not accidental at all.
Ask her why she stayed and she will smile and tell you that everybody finds their own room, that you get used to it, that you will see. She believes it. That is what makes her so persuasive, and it is why Reese likes her at once — Maya is what happens to someone who decides the road is worth following, and keeps deciding it.