Page 93 of Take Her On

“…You.”

Maya cringed. “That’s so cliché.”

“It’s true.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Her mum pressed her lips together and exhaled. “Well. After what happened with your dad…I didn’t want a relationship. I’d just got you. I didn’t want to let anyone jeopardise that. I couldn’t risk it.” Her voice softened, and in the darkness of Maya’s bedroom, her mum almost felt like a different person. As though Maya had fallen into an alternate universe when she’d stumbled out of the Globe. “I shut myself off and threw myself into work,” her mum went on. “It was safer that way. More manageable. I thought I was doing what was best. For us. But playing it safe only takes you so far. If you never risk anything, you’re not really living.”

Her words tangled themselves around Maya’s intestines and squeezed.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” she continued. “But putting yourself out there in the first place is brave.”

Maya swallowed. “It doesn’t feel it.” It made her feel cowardly, like packing all her stuff into a polka-dot bundle and running far away. Twice she’d let someone close enough to hurt her. Carly wasn’t Jamie—not at all. But the result had been the same. She didn’t want to keep feeling like this.

“Did she hurt you?” her mum asked.

The tightness in Maya’s chest intensified. Her mum definitely knew about Jamie. “Yeah. I think I hurt her too, though.”

“Sometimes we hurt the people we love. We can’t help it. It doesn’t mean we’re bad people, just that we’re human.” She tapped her fingers on the duvet. “But being vulnerable is beautiful. Opening yourself up even when you’ve been hurt shows just how big your heart is. Don’t hide those parts of yourself away.”

Maya shook her head, not quite wanting to hear what her mum was saying.

“Do you remember Adrian? And Scott?”

She nodded. They’d been some of Mum’s boyfriends. She remembered Adrian always trying to talk to her about football, even though he didn’t really understand it or know any of the recent players. She didn’t know why either of them had stopped coming over; she’d never really given it much thought. “Why did you break up?”

Her mum gave her a sad smile. “I got too scared. Whenever they got close, I just…pushed them away. It was easier. Less risky.”

Maya understood that.

“But it was harder too. Living with the ‘what if’, with regret. I’ve no idea what could have happened if I’d just taken a leap of faith. But I was scared. I don’t want that for you too.”

Maya’s eyes prickled again. She and her mum were a lot more alike than she’d thought. Grandma was right. That news felt foreign to her. She didn’t know what to do with all this information.

“I’m sorry for pushing you away too, Maya.” Her mum sniffed, her voice wobbling. “I know that I’ve done that. Relied too much on my parents to pick up the slack.”

Her mum had been younger than her when she was pregnant, and being a single parent couldn’t have been easy. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, but Maya reached for her hand, a new wave of understanding dawning on her. “I’m sorry too, Mum.”

They spoke a little more. Maya told her about her feelings for Jamie, and the breakdown of her friendship with Carly. Then, when she couldn’t fight off her yawns any longer, they agreed it was time to go to bed.

“Mum?”

Her mum turned, a dark silhouette at the door.

Maya smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, love. Now get some rest. Or you’ll have an even nastier hangover in the morning.”

She closed the door, and Maya was enveloped in darkness. All she could think about was Jamie. She knew what she needed to do. Time for a leap of faith.

She just needed some sleep first.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Maya

Maya spent most of the next day in bed with the hangover from hell, rewatching The L Word on her old laptop. It brought a little comfort to know her life was never going to reach that level of Tibette dramatics—almost throwing up every half hour was quick to negate that relief, however.