“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.