9. Maya
Maya
“Mom, I’m going to the beach for a little while,” I call down the hallway, slipping my feet into my sandals and grabbing my bag from the bed.
Footsteps echo from outside my room, my mother stepping through the door.
Her skin is tanned from living on the beach the last few years, and her hair is pristinely pulled up in a chic twist. She’s wearing a matching linen top-and-pant set, and looks as if she’s ready for a nice dinner and not a day of chores.
She eyes the swimsuit I have on under my forest green knit cover-up, and I brace myself for a remark about my body, but, shockingly, she holds her tongue.
“How long will you be out?” she asks instead.
I shrug. “Most of the afternoon, I think. I want to enjoy the warm weather and the sun before I go back to school.”
Mom nods and gives me a forced smile. “Well, be home for dinner, at least. Doug is going to grill tuna and asparagus.” Her expression softens slightly and she adds. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I wrap one arm around her slender shoulders before heading out the door.
I pop in an earbud as I walk. My mom and step-father’s house is a short trek to the beach, and the street lined with shops and cafes is picturesque. I stop at my favorite breakfast spot—a local family-owned bakery—ordering an iced coffee and a muffin, and finding a seat facing the cobblestone road.
Pulling out my sketch pad, I doodle as I eat, the sound of “Doors” by Noah Kahan playing softly in my ears.
Eventually I make my way to the beach, finding a secluded spot to lay out a towel and relax.
I have a love-hate relationship with coming down here to visit. On one hand, I love this. The beach. The weather. The atmosphere. On the other, though, seeing my mother is…taxing.
Some days, she’s wonderful. She’s fun, she wants to get margaritas or go shopping or talk about boys.
And other days, she’s intolerable. She criticizes everything I do, everything I wear.
She comments about the food I eat or the way my hair looks, as if I didn’t inherit my curls from her in the first place.
Some days, she acts like we’re best friends, and other days it’s like no matter what I do, she cannot be pleased.
Her and my dad split up when I was young, maybe four or five years old. Eventually, she met Doug, who has the personality of a wet paper towel, which might be why they work. She’s impossible to reason with, and he doesn’t react.
My father, on the other hand, never recovered after Lucinda passed. Even at seven—eight—years old, I could see how much he loved her. She died, Jamie was taken away, and Tom Winchester spiraled into alcohol and depression.
I spent a lot of time at my mom’s house during those days. I went through my pre-teen years with my mother criticizing my changing body, adjusting what I was eating, commenting when I’d get a breakout on my face.
Growing up the way I did—under constant scrutiny throughout my formative years—could’ve made me insecure, shy, self-conscious. Instead, I have Lucinda to thank for my strong sense of self-worth.
She told me every day how beautiful I was.
She helped me do my hair on day’s dad had to go to work early, telling me it was alright to wear my curls natural like hers and Jamie’s.
We would have girls days when Dad and Jamie were skating, and she’d let me pick out outfits I liked rather than picking things for me.
She was fierce in the way she loved her son, the way she loved my father, and loved me as if I was her own.
Whenever I’d go to my mom’s, and hear her talking about her weight or wrinkles or blemishes on her skin, I’d think about Lucinda’s genuine beauty and carefree smile, and I’d let my mother’s words roll off me as best as I could.
My father turned his act around after a few years, when I was twelve or so. He nearly lost his job as assistant coach, and he realized he’d been letting the people around him down. And he was losing his daughter in the process.
Despite what others may think, I didn’t hold his actions against him. I loved Lucinda, and the older I got, I realized just how much worse her death would’ve been for him than it was for me.
He was never a bad father. He simply became a shell of himself, and he would send me to Mom’s rather than let me see him break.
Now, though, we’re thick as thieves. He told me I was the reason he got sober—that he wanted to be better for me. And the only time he broke his sobriety was the day Jamie came back into his life.
Jamie.
His name pulls me from my spiral of thoughts as I stare out across the ocean waves.
The way his hands felt on my hips, his lips on my skin. It was electric, the way my body reacted to him.
Recalling the look on his face when he stormed out of the library is enough to make my heart sink.
I hadn’t meant to start a fight, and I made things between us ten times more tense than they already were.
He was already mad after Halloween, but so was I.
He had the audacity to start kissing someone else right in front of me.
But, then again, I should’ve told him who I was before we even got to that point, so fair is fair.
Either way, I should’ve handled that conversation in the library with more…delicacy.
Taking out my phone, I pull up Jamie’s social media.
Like all the hockey boys, most of his photos are of the team, him out with his friends, or him at the gym.
He’s also got a few here and there holding a guitar on-stage at his father’s shows, but never any of him playing on his own.
Studying his page, it’s like he plays for his dad, but clearly his real passion is hockey.
I’m full-blown stalking his page now, clicking through photos.
One of him and his friends on a snowboarding trip, one of him and Colton Crosby at the gym, one of him on stage singing.
There are photos from nights out at bars, photo dumps from vacations he’s taken.
The further I scroll, the more obvious it becomes that Jamie’s smiling for the photo, not in the photo.
Clicking off my phone, I decide to try to relax for the rest of the day. There’s nothing I can do to fix how that conversation in the library ended until we get back from break.
The rest of Thanksgiving goes about how I expect it to go. My mother cooks, saying she doesn’t want any help with the food preparation because I’m here as a guest, and then proceeds to complain about how no one helped her all day.
We eat the food she cooked, and then she comments on how big our portions are.
Obviously, there’s no dessert.
We go Black Friday shopping, and she buys me a cute new tote bag. She asks about my classes, asks how Dad is doing. We talk about her book club drama—those retried women are ruthless—and Doug’s job.
Saturday, I pack up to leave, and she cries when she drops me off at the airport. And when the wheels of the plane leave the runway, I’m finally able to take a full breath without my chest being constricted by anxiety.