“Babe, you can tell me anything. I am a judgment-free zone.”
She picked at the fabric of her sofa, her throat working as if against emotion that choked her.
Wanting to alleviate the tension, I offered, “I know a guy, and I’m not naming names, who let a lassie stick a Barbie doll up his arse, and his butthole vacuumed the doll right up there. Sucked it right in and they couldn’t get it out. He had to go to the hospital.”
Just like that, Maia’s eyes lit with shock and laughter. Her lips trembled. “You do not.”
“I fucking do. And until now, I’m the only one other than the doctors and his lassie who knows about it because”—I gestured to myself—“judgment. Free. Zone.”
Maia suddenly cackled, and I grinned as she bowed toward me with the force of her amusement.
“Do you know what’s even better?”
She shook her head, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
“It was Interior Designer Barbie.”
Maia howled and I joined her, rubbing a hand over her knee, grateful I’d lifted her mood. “I don’t think that’s quite the interior she had in mind for designing.”
“Stop!” Maia wheezed, shoving me.
“I don’t think she wanted to be quite as involved in the demo either. Especially anal demolition. What a stinkin’ mess.”
She pushed me even harder as she laughed and squealed, “I-I’m g-going to pee myself! Stop!”
“All right, all right. I’ll stop. But do you get my point?”
She nodded, removing her glasses to wipe at her eyes. Her long lashes spiked with the wet and made her irises look even more violet. Once she caught her breath, she smiled at me. Such a sweet, sexy smile. “Is that a true story?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got way worse than that, but I don’t want to traumatize you. My friends know I don’t judge and that they can tell me anything, so I get all the juicy stories.”
Maia considered me, a soft expression on her face. “Okay. Well … this isn’t quite ‘Barbie up the butt’ level of story.”
I waited patiently.
She exhaled but then began. “I grew up not knowing who my dad was. Mum finally gave me a name after years of me begging to know. By that point, she was addicted to smack. We lived in this terrible block of flats where people are just forgotten because it was the only placewe could afford. I was scared every day. Not only because of where we lived but because I’d taken on the role of parent and I was terrified of my mum overdosing. Also Mum always had some guy around who liked getting strung out with her. As I got older, that got more dangerous for me.”
The thought of anyone trying to hurt her like that … “My, I’m sorry.”
“People at school knew my mum was a heroin addict. And kids are not kind. I was bullied constantly. Other parents didn’t want their kids around me. I felt ashamed every single day of my life. I had to turn up at school in too-small clothes and I would steal soap just so I could get washed because Mum had spent her benefits on drugs.”
My stomach knotted and I slid my hand over her knee again, soothing, comforting her.
“When I was fifteen, one of her boyfriends tried … he tried to …” She looked down, picking at her nail nervously. “Well, you know.”
“Fuck,” I hissed out angrily, trying to contain the emotion.
“I got away. But when I told Mum, she slapped me. Told me I was lying. It broke something in me because I always made excuses for her because I loved her. I always had compassion for her, even though her addiction was ruining us. But when she hit me and didn’t take my back, something died between us. I told her she had a choice. It was me or heroin.” Maia’s lips trembled, and I saw all the agony in her eyes as she met mine. “She didn’t choose me.”
If I didn’t already know I was in love with Maia MacLeod, I would have known right then. Because my chest goddamnachedfor her.
“She didn’t deserve you,” I whispered.
“I know.” She nodded, reaching for my hand on herknee. “I know. But even knowing something doesn’t mean you can rationalize it quite that easily. Anyway, I took off. I went in search of my dad, and I found him here in Edinburgh. It was hard for him finding out he had a kid and had missed all this time with me, but he didn’t turn me away. He fought for me. He and my stepmum Grace tried to make up for the first fifteen years of my life.
“The most important thing for me was having people around who loved me and wanted the best for me. But I also noticed something that was a byproduct of that. I was now wearing decent clothes and had a good family at my back. People didn’t know about Mum. And they treated me so differently from before. I watched how they treated the kids at school who clearly didn’t have much. Not just like they had less than, but like theywereless than. They treated them like I had been treated in my previous life. Like I was nothing. Uneducated. Trash.”
“Then they were cunts.”
