Page 63 of Fa-La La-La Land
The city is only forty-five minutes away, but it’s on the other side of a winding, two-lane road through a canyon that can be treacherous on icy roads.
“A little snow can’t stop me. I want to get everything done before you leave on Sunday. Seb’s been too busy with his own house to be much help,” she says decisively, and I know there’s no talking her out of the trip.
My only consolation is that Seb will be with her, and we have friends she can stay with in Florence if the weather is too bad to drive through at night.
“Now, Rhys, you go rest while Stella and I make dinner. No arguments.” She shoos him out of the room with little resistance from him. He shoots me a smug smile as he takes the steps two at a time. Not a minute later, I hear the shower turn on.
I follow Mom to the kitchen. I could use a shower and a rest myself, but Mom and I haven’t had any time alone, so I’m happy to help her.
“I like him,” she says, handing me an apron. “He’s good for you.”
I sigh. I should have seen this conversation coming. Now I’m caught in it, and I’m not getting out until Mom’s satisfied she knows everything about Rhys and me.
“I like him too. A lot. Maybe too much.” I don’t bother tiptoeing around what I know she’ll get out of me eventually.
“What do you mean, too much?” Mom scoffs and puts a pot of water on to boil. “You can’t love too much.”
My stomach twists. “I didn’t say love, Mamma. I saidlike.”
She laughs and crosses the kitchen to pinch my face between her fingers. “And I see love written all over your face.”
I shake my head loose from her grip. “Don’t tell me that, Mamma. I’m not ready to be in love.”
Elvis woo-woo-woos over my assertion, and Mom laughs again. “It’s not about being ready to fall in love. It’s about being ready to love any time you get the chance.”
“I’m too young.” I shake my head but stop when I realize I’m shaking it in time to “Blue Christmas.”
“Too young to fall in love?” She tsks and goes back to the stove to dump a can of crushed tomatoes into a pan. “That’s ridiculous. Age has nothing to do with it. I was only twenty when I met your dad.”
“And look how that turned out,” I blurt.
Mom stops stirring her tomatoes long enough to look over her shoulder at me. There’s hurt in her eyes, but I don’t stop the words I’ve held back for years.
“Five years was all you had with him. That’s it. Then you were stuck in this little town. You never got to travel like you wanted. You didn’t get to have the job you wanted. Overnight, your whole life went from being full of possibilities to being limited to what Paradise had to offer.”
Slowly she turns to face me, and I bracemyself for her anger. Instead, she hurries over to sweep me into her arms and press my head into her shoulder.
“Nothing turned out the way your Dad and I planned, but I’ve never regretted loving him or leaving one small town to end up in an even smaller one halfway across the world. I’m right where I want to be,” she says, stroking my hair.
“But falling in love meant you didn’t get to make that choice. You didn’t want a small life, and you ended up with one because you fell so hard and fast for Dad.” I bury my head in her neck and squeeze back tears. Mom doesn’t like crying over Dad.
“You think my life is small because I live in a little town?” She pushes me up to look in my eyes. “Where you live isn’t what makes life small or big, Stella. Your life in LA will be small if you don’t make room for love. You live small when you don’t grab onto the biggest things. You think it’s not the right time to fall in love? You don’t get to choose when it’s the right time. You only get to be ready to jump in when it comes your way.”
I stare back at her. The sharp, sweet scent of tomatoes and basil fills the kitchen with a story so warm and familiar, I should feel safe. I’m home with Mamma, who knows exactly how to solve my problems and wipe my tears away.
But her words have brought to life my biggest fears, forcing me to face them with no armor. “I don’t know how to get ready,” I cry. “I don’t know how to prepare myself to love someone so much that I live in constant fear I’m going to lose him.”
Mom leads me to the table, where we sit opposite each other. She stretches her arms across the table, beckoning me to put my hands in hers, waiting until I do before she speaks again.
“Fear has no place in love. Just acceptance. Youwilllosehim. Or maybe he’ll lose you first. You’ll hurt. You’ll misunderstand each other. You’ll have hard times, whether you’re together for five years or fifty. Once you accept that all of that will happen, you don’t have to be afraid of it, as long as you remember to hold on to every minute you have the chance to love another person the way I loved your dad and he loved me.”
I squeeze her hands in mine. “I want everything to be okay. I don’t want to hurt like you did. As happy as you tried to make my childhood—especially at Christmas—I’ve always sensed a sadness that Dad’s not here.”
Mom tips her head and smiles. “That little bit of sad is how I know what happy is.”
I let out a hard laugh. “I don’t need to feel sad to know when I feel happy.”
“If you want to feel all the good things,” Mom answers firmly, “you can’t hold back from feeling the hard things. Rhys understands that. It’s what he sang about last night. Love is what you hold on to, even when you’re afraid.”
