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Maya is good with words in ways Lola isn‘t. She knows what to say when Lola is feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, when to push for more information and when to divert to safer topics. Her near unshakeable calmness is a source of endless fascination, presenting a stark contrast to the fast currents of Lola‘s mind.
Sometimes, during restless nights when sleeplessness creeps up on her like an unwanted visitor from a past life and Lola finds her mind going in circles, she debates whether something solid invariably is more brittle also. She likes to reach out then, snake her hand under Maya’s singlet, feel the softness of her waist, the firmness of ribs underneath skin.
~~~
The first few weeks after Lola’s hospital release are almost tentative, full of shy glances and brushing hands and the occasional quick kiss whilst trailing behind their friends during one of their many urbex sessions. Their tension-filled courtship is enough to make Max roll his eyes at them with increasing frequency, and Lola catches him muttering “Just shag already” under his breath once, which makes her break out in the kind of breathless laughter that even Jo looks at her strangely for.
Even so, it’s already October by the time a quick peck to the corner of Maya’s mouth turns into something with more intent and neither one of them feels the need or want to deescalate the situation. It feels strangely different compared to their first time, and halfway through she realises that it’s because she feels no fear this time - not of screwing up and ruining everything, not of Maya leaving her because she’s too broken.
Afterwards, with Maya placing tender kisses along her jawline and the enormity of the situation dawning on her, she starts to cry. She wonders what it is about humans that seems to inspire fearlessness in moments of great vulnerability, and how contradictory and dangerous that seems. But when Maya starts wiping away her tears with such tenderness in her eyes, Lola can’t help but surrender to this utterly ridiculous concept that is love.
Maybe all she can hope for is that they won’t break each other.
~~~
They spend countless hours like this, curled up on Maya‘s sofa, talking about everything and nothing, sometimes wound together tightly, sometimes on opposite ends when discussing more sensitive topics, the distance both comforting and temporary.
A lot of the time, though, they are quiet, existing together in comfortable silence, and it’s perhaps this that surprises her the most. She spends long afternoons doing homework at Maya's, with the latter engrossed in a novel, her feet on Lola's lap. Once, Maya spends the better part of four hours creating banners and placards for an environmental protest she is due to take part in the following week. Spotify is long finished with the playlist Lola has created for days like this - low fi beats that add just enough ambience without distracting her from her studies - instead playing random songs deemed stylistically adjacent by its algorithm, and Maya hums along to all of them. Lola can tell she doesn’t know most of them by the fact that she’ll strike a wrong note occasionally, pausing shortly to reassess the direction the music’s taken, before continuing without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. She catches herself staring at her in awe, and she thinks that she has never adored Maya more, nor understood her less.
~~~
She allows herself to look at Maya properly now, without the presence of unspoken feelings and mutual uncertainty looming over them.
She marvels at the way the older girl can laugh whole-heartedly, eyes glistening, teeth bared. It’s a level of joy Lola may never be able to fully relate to, but being around it makes her feel a warm pressure in her chest that is almost uncomfortable, but close enough to something Lola likes to think of as happiness.
Whilst neither one of them is a great cook, Maya’s vegetarianism has at least led her to develop a certain proficiency in the kitchen. Lola doubts she’ll ever get tired of watching her girlfriend create neat little mounds of thinly sliced vegetables, brows furrowed in concentration. Sometimes she goes over and stands on her tip-toes to press a kiss first against Maya’s frown, then lower on her lips, until she can feel Maya smile and put down whatever kitchen utensil she was previously wielding, and gently rest her hands just above Lola’s hipbones.
She notices the way her lips curl up at the edges when Jo is engaging in antics she doesn’t want to necessarily encourage, but is nevertheless amused by.
Sekou, who exasperates the best of them with his propensity for info-dumping, actually has a lot in common with Maya in some ways. They both love to read anything and everything, and Lola sometimes finds them deep in conversation about topics ranging from philosophy to LGBTQ+ rights or, once, even bloody gardening. It was so bizarre that Lola stopped only to take a quick picture, making a mental note to tease Maya about it later, before leaving them to their own devices.
Out of the three of them, there’s a certain tenderness she reserves for Max. Although she knows better, Lola can’t help but feel slightly envious of their closeness. For her, Maya is the singular point of reference for many things. She doesn’t quite know how she fits into Maya’s story yet. But she is certain it’s not in the way that Max does, so seamlessly and without any effort, all inside jokes and profound conversations and trust. Maya once told her - during one of their more serious talks - that she put Max down as her emergency contact when she started applying for jobs, and how ludicrous it seemed for a 17 year old to hold that role in her life. Whilst she is glad that Maya has someone she can depend on, she can’t help but worry that she may never be able to be that person for her. But then Maya will notice her withdrawn look and reach over to grab her hand, squeezing it reassuringly, and Lola knows in her heart that she will find out one way or another. As it is, she will sometimes catch Max glancing at them from across the room, and despite how much closer they have grown over recent months - their shared care for Maya creating a natural core - she suspects that part of him is waiting for the day when he might have to pick up the pieces.
~~~
Occasionally, Maya will talk about her mother. They are practiced remarks, sanitised anecdotes, delivered in Maya’s usual measured and collected manner. Lola wonders whether seven years will transform her own grief in similar ways.
She will talk about foster care when prompted, words carefully chosen.
She doesn’t talk about her father at all.
~~~
They haven’t broached the topic of love since Lola’s floundering confession in the supermarket, even though several months have passed since then. She sometimes questions if it’s strange that she doesn’t feel more insecure about Maya’s lack of romantic declarations, but it’s difficult to when she wakes up in the morning to the other girl tracing shapes on the exposed skin of her back, fingers barely grazing skin. At times she catches Maya looking at her slightly too long, slightly too intently, the way she tends to do when she’s leaving things unsaid.
Maya is great with words, until she isn’t.
~~~
Lola still has her down days, despite all the progress she has been making in therapy, despite all the positivity in her life. There are times when she prefers to be alone, and Maya respects her decision, checking in every few hours to let her know she’s thinking of her, make sure she’s okay. During other’s Maya will come over and knock on the door until Thierry or Daphne let her in and lie down behind her, encircling her waist her and pulling Lola in until she can feel her relax into the embrace. Sometimes Lola talks, sometimes Maya, and sometimes neither one of them does.
She wishes this could be something that can be fixed; for herself; for Maya.
On her worst days, when resentment starts to creep in, she’s envious of how easy it all seems for the other girl, how composed she is in the face of a past that in many ways objectively surpasses Lola’s own trauma. She knows she’s being unfair, that Maya is highly - and annoyingly - selective about which information she relays, that her methods of self-preservation are simply different to her own. She also knows her dreams don’t end with a career in customer service, that her circumstances have forced her to develop the sort of pragmatism and maturity that set her apart from her friend group. She suspects there’s a reason why Maya doesn’t ever lose control in the ways Lola does, why she prefers to lick her wounds in private the few times they have had a disagreement, resurfacing only once she has had time to calm down and process her feelings. Why she is the first to console her friends and offer advice, and the first to retreat when the problem hits closer to home. Why after all these months together Lola has still yet to see a single picture of her parents.
Lola likes to compare the many conundrums of Maya’s character to a puzzle she can’t figure out how to put together right. She even told Maya this, once, during a more light-hearted moment, and Maya had simply laughed and taken her hand, kissing her knuckles one by one, and Lola had laughed too.
But on dark days like this that all just frustrates her more somehow.
~~~
Maya is with her on a chilly Saturday afternoon when Lola is leafing through the disorganised depths of her wardrobe to find a suitable jumper to wear over her thin vest. Instead, she finds one of her mother’s summer dresses at the very back, clearly too out of place to have ended up there randomly or by mistake, like the times Daphne’s socks appear in her drawer. She wonders if her mother put it there on purpose, and the realisation that she will never know why hits her suddenly, and she is reminded of countless letters at the bottom of trash cans, wilting Freesias on the widow sill. Maya looks at her strangely, an indecipherable expression on her face.
There’s a certain intimacy that exits between people who have experienced loss to the degree Lola and Maya have. Despite this, Lola often thinks that the sheer weight of their grief - sprawling, peculiar, personal - doesn’t necessarily facilitate the level of openness she is trying to work towards during her weekly sessions. She once describes it to her therapist like two blocks of wood from the same tree, but different shapes.
But when Maya drapes a strong arm around her shoulders and allows her to let the moment pass without any pressure to find words for feelings that are still too muddied, too complicated for her to verbalise, she can’t help but think that they get it right more often than not.
~~~
“That night your sister called me after you disappeared ... I have not felt that way in a very long time”. She says it so quietly that Lola, whose head is on Maya’s lap and is close to nodding off, almost misses it entirely. When she twists around until she’s lying on her back, looking up at her girlfriend, Maya refuses to angle her head towards her. Lola can just about make out the sadness etched into her features, so very unlike her normally calm facade.
They had talked about that night before, after their romantic reunion had turned from hours of frenzied kisses into something more slow, intimate. They had talked about it, but not like this.
“I’m sorry”, she whispers, in lieu of anything better. Truthfully, Lola knows how to apologise. She’s not so sure about other things. What she really wants to do is promise Maya that she will never again cause her that much sorrow. But they both know that such promises would be empty, muttered in moments of emotional grandness, easily ruined by the next drunken night; a heart lacking the strength to go on beating; a car wrapped around a concrete pillar. So instead she reaches up to caress Maya’s face, feeling a slight dampness on her cheek.
She thinks back to how she once told Maya that she was used to people giving up on her, leaving her behind. She always thought that the anger she saw flicker across the other girl's face for a split second then was directed at the questionable veracity of her statement. Now, with the gift of hindsight, she can’t help but think about Thierry and Daphne, her imperfect family. Full of edges that sometimes draw blood when handled too roughly, making them recoil in pain, but solid nonetheless. And then she pictures the bright lights of the hospital, no parent there to hold your hand and tell you it’s going to be alright. She pictures years of transient homes, the soft warmth of a group of people brought together by genuine love and affection, and the uncertainty she sometimes detects in Maya when Max talks about university, when Sekou recounts the countries he wants to visit, when Jo’s energy can seemingly hardly be contained by the city of Paris alone.
She feels foolish then.
Maya turns her face to nuzzle her hand, pressing a gentle kiss to the centre of her palm, and she’s brought back to the present moment. She’s not great with words of comfort, but what she does tell her is that Maya means everything to her. They both know she can’t promise that she’ll never leave her, so they let the unspoken meaning hang in the air between them. Maybe Maya doesn’t quite trust her with her heart yet, but Lola sincerely hopes that one day she will. All she can do is show up day after day. It’s a tall order, and Lola would be lying if the gravity of it didn’t scare her. The prospect of failure is never far from her mind, like a niggling voice at the back of her head. She knows she is likely to screw up now and again. But she has learned to accept that setbacks are not failures. That she can love and be loved in spite of them.
~~~
Sometimes, when Lola is feeling exposed in the way that tends to make her vindictive, a part of her wants to lash out, elicit a response from Maya that Lola can relate to. She wants to find out what it would take to make her angry, for her to unravel at the seams like Lola has done countless of times. But she knows better now than to act on her darkest impulses, so she simply wonders.
~~~
Maya shaves her head in December. It’s three days after Lola invited her to spend Christmas with her, Thierry and Daphne, and two days after Maya politely declined in favour of her usual volunteer work. They don’t talk about how her refusal hurt Lola deeply, or how Maya’s lack of explanation further adds to the reticence that governs parts of their relationship. She’s afraid to probe and risk the utter dejection she would feel if Maya refused to confide in her. And if she is truly honest with herself, she is even more fearful of what she might learn, of what beasts she might unleash. Because Lola isn’t great with words of consolation or comfort. She hasn’t yet learned to be the dependable one.
So they both stay silent.
~~~
On Christmas Eve, Lola finds herself reminiscing about the day she went to see Maya at the supermarket, how nervous she’d been, how brave. Maybe, she thinks, bravery is easier to muster with your back against the wall and nothing to lose.
At the end of the night, Maya texts her. Lola replies with a simple heart, because she doesn’t know what else to say.
~~~
It’s Max that ends up telling her.
They are all hanging out at Sekou’s place two days after Christmas. Maya is still noticeably MIA, but Jo is chasing Sekou around with a mistletoe branch and Lola can’t help but smile despite her irritable mood, snide remarks constantly at risk of escaping past her lips.
He mentions it casually, like it’s something that Lola should already know, which is perhaps why it stings all the more that she doesn’t. She guesses it makes sense that it’s the anniversary of her parents’ death, that it explains the tension between them for the past two weeks, the lack of communication. She’s furious that Maya didn’t tell her, furious that she didn’t dare ask. Max picks up on her shift in mood, and he realises his mistake, clearing his throat in discomfort.
“You know, she doesn’t really talk about it. I only know because her foster parents would make a big deal out of it”.
He fidgets nervously, his awkward attempt at consoling Lola not coming naturally to him at all. Maybe the both of them are more similar than Lola had realised.
“I don’t know how to do it. Be there for her. I mean, I know there’s more to it than simply being there physically, but it’s like she’s waiting for me to do something, and I’m waiting for her to tell me how to not suck at this thing”, she says eventually, and Max turns to look at her, considering her for a long moment.
“Yeah, your execution sucks.”
Lola punches him in the arm and laughs.
~~~
Maya is immediately remorseful when Lola confronts her about it, later that week, but she doesn’t offer up many answers either.
Some would call what ensues an argument, but it’s mainly Lola pacing around the living room airing her frustration, with Maya sat on the couch, hands folded neatly on her lap, quiet. It feels a bit like release, the words streaming out of Lola’s mouth, and she suspects that tomorrow she might regret some of them, question the severity of her tone. But she knows how to do this, how to voice her insecurities through hurried statements and stomping feet, and she takes solace in that.
Once the stream turns into something more akin to a trickle, Maya ends up walking over to her, various emotions fighting for dominance on her face, and the sight is enough to stop Lola dead in her tracks.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this.” Her voice cracks halfway through, and she is looking more vulnerable than Lola has ever seen her. They are not the words she was hoping for, but she can sense that it’s all Maya has to offer for now, so she relents. When they embrace, she can feel the taller girl shaking in her arms, and part of her thinks the universe must be having a laugh at her expense, matching her with the one person who makes her feel whole and at an absolute loss at the same time.
Maybe Maya hasn’t quite learned how to share those parts of herself yet, and maybe Lola doesn’t yet know how to ask the right questions, say the right things. Maybe they’re both just fools in love.
~~~
Lola‘s grief rests on the tip of her tongue in the form of angry words and violent outbursts. Maya’s grief lurks at the back of her throat, a small pause in a sentence, words caught just in time.
~~~
They don’t say much for the rest of the night, too exhausted for words. Instead, Lola manages to cobble together one mug of hot chocolate with the little amount of soy milk left in the fridge, and they pass it back and forth between them in silence. Maya doesn’t exactly ask her to stay, but by the time the clock marks the start of a new day they both crawl into bed.
Maya’s teeth are chattering from the cold, and Lola moves closer, shy in a way that feels almost foreign. After a while the taller girl nestles into her, her arms snaking around her waist, and Lola strokes the prickly expanse of her shaved head until her breath evens out and she can feel the warm, humid mist of Maya’s exhale against the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck.
She wants to tell her she loves her then, but for once it feels like no words are needed.