As I turned to go to the house, I was confused by the presence of my own car in the driveway, parked next to Mayra’s car. While I tried to figure out just how it had managed to appear there—it was certainly not there when Mayra and I first pulled up—I heard a sound to my left.
Travis was leaning against the hood of the car with his arms folded over his chest and his eyebrows raised. There was a bit of a smirk on his face as he looked me up and down and scratched the back of his head with his fingertips.
“Having a good day?” he asked with a snicker.
I couldn’t really deny it, so I took a deep breath and faced my uncle. Before I could say anything, Mayra’s voice distracted me.
“Oh my God! My hair is a disaster!”
Mayra laughed as she climbed out of the car and tried to smooth the hair on the back of her head with her fingers. It really was all over the place, which made me think of my own, untamable hair. She moved around the front bumper, whe
re both her steps and her laughter stopped abruptly as she looked up with her wide, brown eyes into my uncle’s wry grin.
“Oh shit,” she said softly.
“Sounds about right,” Travis replied. “Must have been difficult driving with all that fog on the windows, huh? You want me to have your defroster checked out?”
“The defroster doesn’t work,” Mayra responded with her eyes still bugged out. She glanced sideways at me and bit down on her lip. “It’s hard to find parts for that model.”
“Well, you’re in luck.” Travis chuckled. “Matthew is great at looking up ‘parts’ on the internet. I’m sure he can locate just what you need eventually.”
Mayra turned bright red, but I wasn’t completely sure why. Travis looked back at me, and I didn’t understand his expression as he shook his head and motioned us both inside. Mayra looked hesitant, as if she might bolt for the woods, but she dropped her gaze to the ground, and we all went inside. I could feel heat in the tips of my ears and tried to decide what was causing it.
“I was supposed to find out for Beth if you managed to ask Mayra out,” Travis said quietly as we walked into the living room. “I guess we’ve already moved past that, huh?”
“Um…” I didn’t really know what I was supposed to say at that point, so my next words ended up sounding like a question. “We’re going to have dinner tomorrow?”
“You’re supposed to do that first.” Travis snorted.
Mayra plopped down on the couch, her face still red but her eyes now narrowed. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at Travis as he kept shaking his head at her and snickering. She huffed out a breath and turned her eyes to the coffee table in front of her.
“I guess you two really are connecting.” Travis laughed. I didn’t think I had heard him laugh quite like that before. He didn’t sound amused at all.
“You know, I’ve had about enough of your insinuations!” Mayra suddenly yelled loud enough for me to startle a bit. “It’s none of your damn business anyway!”
“Whoa!” Travis’s eyes narrowed as well, and he took a half step toward the couch. “You are the one who said you just wanted to make friends with my nephew, and I do believe I called bullshit on you then. What’s your story now? This still a science project for you?”
“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!”