“No, they just made me realize if I didn’t ask you if I could stay, it was one more thing about you I’d miss.”
For a second, I forget how to breathe. The way Maya’s looking right at me now—steady, unflinching—I can feel my heart shift to make room for her.
Permanently.
“Maybe if I add a few more to the mix, I’ll figure out a way to ensure Thanksgiving’s worth staying for,” I murmur, the corner of my mouth lifting.
“As tempting as that is, I always spend that holiday with my parents and my girls.” Her loyalty rings true in every word.
There’s nothing I would do to make her break that vow, but that’s not to say I can’t work the clock.
Maya might spend every Thanksgiving with her people, but this year, I’m going to do my damndest to give her a reason to start new traditions.
Because the thought of being without her feels like a loss I haven’t even earned yet.
30
HURRY-UP OFFENSE – QUICK PLAYS TO CONSERVE TIME.
Iforgot something critical in my battle to convince Maya to make a space for me in her heart.
My mother.
Other than the one run-in with each other, my parents have been surprisingly absent from the villa. I should have predicted I’d hear from them the way I did.
Mama:
Dinner tonight.
Bring Maya. 7 p.m.
No arguments.
We look forward to getting to know her.
I know this isn’t a summons to be ignored. For little boys who grow up to be men that fail to seek their mother’s approval, they forget these are the women who cut up orange slices while nursing paper cuts. These were the women who cheered their names over a crowd without megaphones. They gave zero fucks if they wore makeup amid entire towns, all while waving plastic pompoms. They’re more vicious towards referees than any actual coaches, yet they still cleaned uniforms back to regulation white using some magical voodoo—the same kind that also informs them when you’re exactly thirty seconds late for curfew.
Yeah, there was no way I was going to disrespect my mother by ignoring her “invitation” to dinner. Still, I need to prepare Maya for what she might be facing. I bounded up to her room to hear her roaring with laughter. “Stop, Amy. You’re killing me.”
I knock on the door, and her head whips around. An evil smile spreads across her face. She beckons me forward. “Hold on, my friends. You can ask him yourself.” Maya takes out her earbuds and adjusts the speakers.
Uh-oh. “Maybe Pompeii erupts and saves me?”
At that, all four women burst into laughter. A woman with thick dark hair and a familiar face teases, “It’s not like we haven’t met, Troy.”
“Christin, we just haven’t met him withintention,” another woman with daring purple streaks in her hair reminds her.
“That’s true, Amy,” a third, with straight caramel-colored hair, concurs.
Maya saves me from having to remember her name. “The last who spoke was Emery. They’re my closest friends and helped me escape from the party that night before parts of it went viral.”
My appreciation of these women immediately overrides any anxiety I might have facing them like I’m about to become their target at a firing squad. Wrapping my arm around her, I declare, “Thank you all for what you did for my Maya that night.”
Maya softens against me. But these women, they make me wonder if the intimidation gene isn’t grown through motherhood but is part of the double X chromosome by the way they immediately put me on the hot seat.
Christin catches my possessive word use. “YourMaya?”
Emery huffs, “She’s been ours a lot longer than yours.”
