“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.”