Page 129 of The Baller

My gym bag dropped with a thud. I shot a glare – one I’d only learned from her – in her direction and stayed where I was.

“What are you doing here?”

Her shoulder lifted along with a cautious smile. “I wanted to meet Lux, see if he was everything you said he was.”

It was probably the shock of having my mom standing in my boyfriend’s apartment, the New York skyline behind her, that stopped me feeling in the forgiving mood just yet… but also there was no way she’d come to New York to meet Lux when she wouldn’t let him come over for dinner last night.

“I don’t even know how you got here, but it wasn’t to meet Lux, so maybe tell the truth.” I marched over to the kitchen, desperate for some water, but I also wanted her to really see me in Lux’s space.

I wanted it to look like I was at home here, at home in New York. That I had the confidence she’d decided I lacked, even though my hands were kind of sore from boxing, and every single muscle in my body was trembling from the drills Jake had put me through,andI was struggling to walk.

Even with all those things, I still needed to exude confidence.

I opened the cabinet, praying it was the right one. It wasn’t, it was the one which housed all the cereal, so I grabbed a cereal bar. Yeah, way to save face, Radley.

The next one had the water glasses in it.

“Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t finish the year in a fight with you, Radley. I’m your mom, as much as you might not like that fact right now.”

“I don’t hate you being my mom.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” She huffed out a smile, her tone full of sass. “Radley, I came to see you.” She reached down and lifted a bag,mybag, onto the counter. “And I brought your things back.”

Biting into a cold, leftover pancake I found on the stove, I leaned back. “Thank you.”

“I packed your diary in there too.”

My brows drew together. “My diary?” I didn’t have a diary.

She shrugged. “A notebook… you’d written in it?” Sheslowlyeased back onto the stool, and I had to hold in my laughter. My mom did nothing slowly, but from the pace she was moving, I’d imagine she hoped I wouldn’t notice, therefore wouldn’t be scared off.

“Did you read it?” I mumbled through another bite. Even cold, these pancakes were good.

“No, of course not. I saw the first page, is all.”

“It’s only the first page.”

“Oh,” she replied, but from the way she was rolling her lips, I could tell she was holding something back.

“Spit it out, Mom.”

“Well, you know… what was it? If you want to tell me.”

I smiled, and flicked on the coffee machine. “Lux gave it to me. It’s a notebook, and that first page is a list of everything I want to do.”

“Have lunch?”

“Did you memorize it?” I shot back.

“It’s one page. There wasn’t a lot on it, Radley.”

I turned back to her, one brow raised. “It’s a work in progress. The lunch is for me to have by myself, without being scared of being alone, panicking about what to do if someone tried to talk to me, or what if someone noticed me.”

She nodded her head like she understood, but from the perfectly straight little line forming between her brows, it was clear she didn’t.

“It’s my life list. Mygeta life list. I want my life back, Mom,” I sighed, like it should have been obvious. But maybe to her it wasn’t, because she’d never been a person worried about being by herself, even before it became impossible for her to go anywhere alone. “I don’t want to be scared anymore, Mom. I want to live like a normal almost-twenty-year-old, who’s in her first year of college. What I did… what happened… I’ll regret it every day, but I can’t keep saying I’m sorry because I’ll never moveon. It’s what Doctor Jessops has been trying to drill into me.”

While I’d been speaking, I’d kept my eyes trained on thedrip dripof coffee hitting the bottom of the cup. I didn’t want to see her reaction to hearing I was scared of being on my own. It wasn’t new news, but it was exactly why she was increasing my security. But when she still hadn’t replied, I glanced up to find her wearing an expression that could only be described as trying to hold her shit together.

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