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Carmen gave the hand she was holding a squeeze. “Don’t be like that. I want to meet them!”

Shaking her head, it was obvious that Lola wasn’t even considering it. After just a few weeks of therapy, she’d set very aggressive boundaries with her mother and brother. Lola had only started talking to her about it, but she didn’t think she wanted to cut them out of her life completely.

“You have no idea what they’re like,” Lola explained.

Every time she gave Carmen a glimpse into who they were, it was easy to see why Lola believed the entire world and every human interaction in it was dog-eat-dog. Why everything felt like a fight for survival to her.

“And you know, I’ve realized something else.” Lola took a deep breath, her fingers tightening around Carmen’s. “I’m so much happier without them in my life every day. I’m a lot less stressed and it’s like… I don’t know. I feel so free to be myself. To live my own life without worrying about coming to the rescue of adults who feign incompetence so they never have to grow up. I don’t know that I want them in my life at all. They don’t bring me a single positive thing.”

“Wow, that’s huge.”

“I’m sorry. It’s your birthday—”

“Oh, please. I stopped counting birthdays at twenty-one,” Carmen said with a weak smile, more concerned about Lola’s revelation. “Is it something you worked out with Jenny?”

Lola nodded. “No one gets to treat you like crap and get a pass because you share genetic information.”

Carmen resisted every single instinct to say something likebut it’s your mom. Lola was right. Family wasn’t an excuse for shitty treatment — it was a call to do better. She trusted that Lola was making the right decisions for herself and she had Carmen’s complete support.

“Your family is cool though,” Lola said after a beat. “Your mom is kind of badass.”

Carmen ran her palm over the sleeve of Lola’s blazer. She’d be happy to share her mother with her. She’d never found her particularly warm and fuzzy, but that wasn’t what Lola needed. She needed someone to believe in her. To be her champion. And Carmen had to admit that her family was good at fighting for the underdog.

“My mother is obsessed with you,” Carmen said with a chuckle. “I’m sure she wishes she’d given birth to you instead.

“She’s really proud of you,” Lola countered with a grin. Before Carmen could object, Lola continued.

“You don’t have to say that,” Carmen scoffed.

“I sure don’t,” Lola agreed, “but it’s the truth.”

Carmen waited for Lola to say more. Looking at her in the darkness of the car illuminated only by her dashboard, Lola still didn’t look like the kind of person that would say anything just for the sake of being nice.

“She said you’re a better lawyer than she is—”

“Oh, now I know you’re lying.”

Lola cleared her throat. “She said, and I quote,I used to worry about her soft heart in this profession, but she’s proven that empathy can be a strength. She connects with clients, understands their struggles. And she never loses her drive to do right by them.”

Slumping in Lola’s passenger seat, Carmen shook her head. “She didn’t.” Carmen absorbed the image of herself through her mother’s eyes. For so long she’d felt invisible to her mother, like her achievements went overlooked and uncelebrated. No matter how hard she worked, how many cases she won, her mother always seemed to look right through her.

“She did,” Lola vowed. “She also told me that she worried you were only becoming a lawyer because of your family history, and that she worried you’d be miserable until the first day she saw you walk into some bond hearing for some white collar dude and shine.” Lola shrugged, but her eyes were gleaming. “Said from that moment on, she knew you were born to command a courtroom. That you didn’t need her holding your hand. You were off to the races.”

Carmen shook her head again. Her mother hadn’t been there for her first time in court. Carmen would have noticed her, wouldn’t she? The courtroom had been packed, but… had she really not been on her own? Reframing the memory was too much.

“Why’d she tell you this and not me?”

Lola shrugged again. “I don’t know, but she loves you to teeny tiny pieces.” She smiled. “And she may have said something about me being good for you or whatever.”

Overwhelmed by too many revelations, Carmen laughed. “Or whatever, huh?”

Lola couldn’t shed her smile. Couldn’t pretend she didn’t care that she had the official stamp of approval.

When they pulled into Carmen’s driveway, Lola didn’t immediately get out of the car.

“Would now be a good time for your birthday present?” Lola asked, beautiful face obscured by shadow.

“You don’t have to get me—”