“My story, as well as everything else, is none of your damn business!” Mayra shouted. “You were the one who was practically proud when you thought you had caught him with me before!”
“Please don’t,” I mumbled, but it must have been too soft for them to hear me because neither of them stopped.
“Yeah, and I asked you then just what you were planning, and you were all wanting to be friends and shit. Now you’re doing it in the car in the driveway.”
“We were not!” she yelled back at him. “And even if we were, that is none of your damn business!”
There was definitely a theme to Mayra’s comments.
“He’s my nephew, and that makes it my business!”
“He’s eighteen, and so am I!” Mayra said. “Are you planning to treat him like a little kid forever?”
“What the fuck?” Travis growled back. “You have no idea what you are talking about. You don’t know anything about us, and you have no idea all the shit we’ve been through as a family. Shit he couldn’t talk to any friends about because none of you fuckers ever gave him the time of day before!”
“I didn’t know before!” Mayra yelled back. “What do you want me to do, apologize for not getting to know him sooner? Really?”
“How about apologize for all the shit you people have given him his whole life?” Travis shouted. “How about for the black eye he came home with in the third grade? How about the time someone swiped all the stuff out of his locker and threw it around on the floor? How about that shit, huh?”
“I never did any of that!”
“But your friends did!”
“I have no idea who did that!” Mayra said defensively. “And if I had, I would have stopped them!”
“Oh sure you would, just like you did when that asshole Lords was harassing him the other day! You remember Lords, right? One of your friends, right? As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure you used to go out with him, didn’t you?”
“That is none of your—”
“What’s your game, Trevino,” Travis asked, interrupting her, “because it’s gone too far!”
“You son of a…”
I turned slowly and walked out of the living room and down the stairs to the basement. I pulled off my shirt, pulled on my gloves, and stood on the mat. I took one, long breath and then beat the living shit out of the heavy bag.
By the time I stopped, my arms and shoulders ached, and I had a shooting pain through my hip. I probably went too long—I had done that before. At least I couldn’t hear any more shouting coming from upstairs. I took a couple of slow breaths to calm myself before stepping off the mat and leaning over to brace my hands on my knees.
“You okay?”
I raised my head and turned to face my Aunt Bethany, who was leaning against the wall just outside the exercise room.
“No,” I replied. “Where are Travis and Mayra?”
“Upstairs,” Bethany said, “in time-out.”
“Time-out?”
“Yes,” she replied, “and they are going to stay that way until they both stop behaving like children. At least she has the excuse of age.”
“I don’t know why they were so angry,” I said. “They wouldn’t stop.”
“Well, I can answer at least part of that,” Beth said. “They both care about you. They’re also both doing a crappy job of showing it right now.”
“Travis brought my car back.”
“Yes,” my aunt said. “I came to pick him up when I walked in on the two of them going at it. You want to tell me what happened?”
“Um…” I wasn’t really sure what to say.
Bethany snickered.
“I thought you were just going to ask her out.”
“I did,” I said with a bit of a smile. “She said yes.”
“So I gathered,” Beth replied. “Then what?”
I felt my face heating up and decided I didn’t really want to go into a lot of detail. I finally just told her Mayra kissed me.
“When we got out of her car, Travis was there.”
“And he got all protective, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I dropped down on a stool near the mats and started to pull at the Velcro on the gloves. “Why does he do that?”
“Because he’s torn,” Beth replied.
“What do you mean, ‘torn’? Torn by what?”
Bethany sighed and placed one hand on her hip.
“Torn between wanting to say something extremely inappropriate about how proud he is of you based on his own thoughts and wanting to say what he thinks your dad would have said at the same time.”
I peeled off my gloves and held them in my lap while I thought about that.
“He thinks Kyle would be concerned,” Bethany said, continuing. “He thinks your dad would have told you to slow down and think about it, make sure this is what you want. On the other hand, Travis wants to high-five you and shout, ‘Go get her!’”
I scowled a bit. I didn’t like the idea of Travis talking about Mayra that way.
“He wasn’t nice to her,” I finally said.
“No, he wasn’t.”
“I don’t want him to be like that to her.”
Bethany cocked her head to one side, and I tried to hold her gaze for a second, hoping she would know I was serious. I didn’t want him to talk like that to Mayra. I wanted him to be nice to her.
“You really like her, huh?” Beth said.
I lowered my eyes and shrugged. Then I thought about it for a minute and remembered what it felt like to be touching her lips with mine and how her body felt underneath me. I started to feel warm inside, and felt myself smile a bit as I licked my lips.
“You do,” Bethany confirmed.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“Why?”
I narrowed my eyes, but I knew Bethany wasn’t trying to be nasty at all—she just wanted to understand. To make her understand, I was going to have to figure it out for myself.
“She…she’s patient,” I told my aunt. “She doesn’t make me feel stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid.”
“I know,” I said, “but sometimes I feel that way, and sometimes other kids at our school try to make me feel stupid or weird. I know I’m not ‘right.’”
“There is nothing ‘wrong’ with you,” Bethany said vehemently. “You’re just different. It’s not bad; it’s just not the way most people are. Not everyone can deal with that.”
“Mayra can.”
“I could tell by the way she was ripping into your uncle.” Bethany laughed.
I had to smile a bit at that. Mayra certainly hadn’t backed down at all.
“You ready to go upstairs?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Put a shirt on,” Bethany said. “And for the love of God, I hope you’re going to head up and take a shower.”
“I will.” I snickered as I stood up and placed the gloves back on their little holding shelf before turning to my aunt. “She makes me feel normal. She makes me feel like maybe I can have what other people have.”
“You can,” my aunt said. “I always knew you could.”
I couldn’t wait to get back upstairs to Mayra, so I followed my aunt out of the basement.
As I came up the stairs and looked into the living room, I could see Mayra sitting on the far end of the couch with her arms crossed. Travis was sitting all the way on the other side of the room on the far side of the dining room table, scowling at the tabletop.
“Matthew!” Mayra jumped up from the couch and ran over to me. I took a slight step back but didn’t flinch as her arms wrapped around my neck. “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t thinking…again.”
She tucked her head against my chest, and I found my arms going around her as if they were on autopilot. I tilted my head down a little until it was resting against the top of her head. Her hair smelled good, and I closed my eyes and inhaled for a second. I didn’t really know what to say, and hearing her apologize to me made my sto
mach feel weird.
Mayra moved her head to look up at me, which made her hair go up my nose. It tickled, and I flinched a bit. Mayra bit at her lip and looked somewhat upset. I pulled her a little closer to let her know it was okay—I didn’t mean to flinch away from her. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to kiss her again, but kissing her with Travis and Bethany in the room didn’t feel right at all.
“She must like you to get so close to that stench.” Beth chuckled as she walked past me and over to the table where Travis was sitting.
“Sorry,” I mumbled to Mayra as I took a step back. Mayra indicated that she didn’t care, but she was wrinkling her nose a little bit. “I need to get in the shower.”
“I need to get home and feed Dad,” Mayra told me. “I wanted to make sure you were okay first, though.”
“I’m all right,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. Really, I didn’t. He just made me so…”
I glanced up at Travis as Mayra’s voice trailed off.
“He didn’t mean it,” I said.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Mayra said with a huff. She looked back up at me and gripped my arms. “Are we still going to dinner tomorrow?”
“If you still want to,” I replied.
“I do,” she said. “Where shall we go?”
“I thought maybe we’d go to this Italian place near Northgate,” I said. “You, um…you said you liked Italian food, right?”
“I love it,” Mayra said with a smile. “Are you going to pick me up?”
“Sure!” My heart started beating a little faster, and I smiled at her. My eyes focused on her left cheek but kept drifting back to her lips. “Maybe about five o’clock? That way we have plenty of time to get there.”
“Great!” Mayra beamed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
She stood up on her toes and pressed her lips against the edge of my jaw before she looked over her shoulder at Travis. Her eyes were narrowed at him as she walked around me and headed out the door. I turned to go up the stairs for a shower, and Travis followed me.
As I pulled towels out from under the sink in the master bathroom, Travis dropped down on the chair where my mom used to sit and tie her shoes, backed up to the side of her old dresser. He leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees and sighed.
“I didn’t mean to be shitty to your girlfriend,” he said. “I just…I worry about you.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say, and I was still a bit ticked off at him.
“Your dad…he was always so great with you. He always knew what to say and how to get you motivated to do stuff. I don’t know what to do with a kid, and you’re not even a kid any more. Maybe that’s why Beth and I haven’t had any yet.”
“Are you still trying?” I asked, distracted by the turn in the conversation. “I thought you were going to stop trying and just see what happens or something.”
“Well, yeah—I guess we are,” Travis said. “That’s been a while, though. We don’t talk about it much.”
I squeezed the towel between my fingers and tried to determine if I was supposed to say something. I probably was. I usually had this weird little ache at the bottom of my throat when someone was talking to me, and I didn’t know how to respond. It was as if there were words there that wanted to come out, but my brain didn’t know what they were.
“I’m surprised Kyle and Tiffany even let me babysit you,” he eventually said. “Do you remember when I would do that?”
“Usually when they had to take Megan to an appointment.”
“Yeah.” Travis nodded.
Megan would go to a doctor every month to be checked out. She would never complain if there was something really wrong with her—like if she felt sick or something. Once she had a bad ear infection, and Mom didn’t realize it until it was in both ears.
“I don’t know if you even remember this,” Travis said, “but when you were about nine, and Megan had the flu, I took you out to the park for a while to give your parents a little break.”
“We went to the park by the elementary school,” I said, remembering the scene. “They had just put down new mulch, and it smelled weird.”
“Yeah!” Travis laughed. “You wouldn’t walk where the mulch was, so you sat on one of the climbing playsets where there was one of those big tic-tac-toe games.”
“The ones you are supposed to hit with a bean bag.” I thought it was the only real way to play tic-tac-toe, which always ended up in a tie, assuming both players knew what they were doing. With the beanbags, there was always an element of surprise.
“Right!” Travis grinned. “You didn’t want the beanbags. You just wanted to make the X’s show up in front, and they all had to be lined up perfectly.”
“I had to keep doing it over again.” I scowled, recalling that I had ended up having a meltdown on the playground because the board kept getting messed up.
“It was that Lords kid,” Travis said with a growl. “Even at that age, he was an asshole. He kept coming up behind it and kicking it so you would start all over again. And Mayra dated that fucker.”
“How do you even know that?” I asked. I hadn’t really known. Suspected, yes, but I didn’t pay much attention to the social interactions of my classmates.
“I asked around,” Travis mumbled with a shrug of his shoulders.
“You checked up on her?” I asked with obvious shock in my voice. “Why did you do that?”
“Because you won’t let me protect you!” Travis suddenly yelled as he stood up. “You wouldn’t let me adopt you. You wouldn’t let me take guardianship. And you wouldn’t even come and live with us! I’ve got to do whatever I can to look after you, Matthew!”
My throat and chest seized up, and I found myself leaning back against the counter. I swallowed a couple of times just to make sure I could. The tone in Travis’s voice was not a tone I heard from him often. In fact, the last time was at Dad’s funeral.
“You don’t have to,” I whispered. “You don’t have to protect me.”
“I do!” he bellowed. He covered his face with his hands for a moment and then sat back down heavily in the chair. “I owe him that much. He was my only brother.”
“I know that,” I told him. “That doesn’t mean you owe me anything.”
“Yes, it does,” Travis said. He leaned his head back until it touched the side of the dresser behind him. “Even if it didn’t, you are still my nephew. I want to be there for you.”
“You are,” I said to him. “When I need you, you’re always there.”
Travis glanced over at me.
“Not always,” he said as he gestured down the hallway and presumably toward the driveway.
“I didn’t need you then,” I said. My face felt hot again. I twisted the edge of the towel back and forth between my fingers, trying to give them something to do before I headed back to the basement.
“I’m not so sure,” Travis mumbled. “If she ends up…”
“Ends up what?” I snapped.
“Hurting you,” he finally replied.
“Then what?” I asked. I rubbed my fingers against my eyes. “How would it be any different from any other kids that date? If it doesn’t work…well, it doesn’t. But you can’t just walk in and go at her because you think I need saving.”
Travis chuckled low.
“That’s what Bethany said.”
“Well, she’s right!”
“I know,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
I turned my eyes to my uncle and held his gaze as long as I could.
“I don’t want you to talk to her like that again,” I told him. “Not ever.”
My gaze dropped though I wasn’t trying to look away. It was almost a reflexive action. I tried to move my eyes back to his face—to focus on his eyes a little longer—but I couldn’t do it.
“I gotcha,” Travis said with a sigh. “I’ll try to play nice.”
Beth yel
led for Travis to come back down before she left him here, and Travis got up from the chair and walked toward the master bedroom door. Before he walked into the hall, he turned back to look at me.
“You really like her, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. I fiddled with the edge of the towel some more.
“And she likes you?”
“I think so,” I replied.
“I hope you are right,” Travis said. “I want you to have this. You know that, don’t you? I know I overreact, but it’s just because I get worried.”
“I know,” I told him. “I know you are just trying to look out for me, but Mayra…she makes me feel good.”
Travis chuckled.
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” He smiled and winked at me before he walked out.
Tossing the towels over the edge of the shower wall and my clothes into a hamper, I stepped onto the mat by the door to the shower. Twisting the knob, I got the temperature just right before climbing in. The shower was nice and steamy, which was just how I liked it, by the time I closed the door.
I couldn’t stop images of Mayra from going through my head, so I thought about kissing her again.
Turning my face up toward the showerhead, I closed my eyes and let the warm spray cover me. The heat from the water pushed away all the tension I had been feeling along with the soreness in my muscles from the workout. Tilting my head down, I took a long breath before I stepped out from under the direct spray and wiped my face with the towel hanging over the shower door.
I filled my palm with shampoo, rubbed my hands together, and then started scrubbing my hair. Usually I would count the seconds as I washed my hair, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking about Mayra.
How her lips felt against mine.
How she tasted when my tongue was in her mouth.
How it felt to have her body underneath mine, practically pinned below me as her hands gripped my back and shoulders.
I swallowed hard and tilted my head back into the spray, keeping my eyes closed as the suds cascaded over my face, neck, and shoulders. I wiped my face off again. I hated the thought of getting water or—God forbid—shampoo in my eyes. I added conditioner to my hair because Mom always insisted on it and then dumped a handful of body wash in my hands to work on the rest of me while the conditioner did its thing.