“Megan,” I said softly as I held my wrist back up to her ear. She turned and grabbed at it, holding it to her stomach and pulling me onto the bed beside her.
“Not right,” she said again. For a brief moment, she looked up to my face. Her focus was on my mouth or chin, not my eyes, but it was pretty close for her. She spoke very, very softly, so no one else could hear her. “You’re supposed to give her a ring, not a watch.”
I couldn’t believe my ears, so I just laughed.
Spending time with Megan was always a win day, but it was also over too soon. I said goodbye without Megan even acknowledging me and started to head out.
“Matthew, do you have a minute?”
I turned around and saw Dr. Harris standing in the doorway to her office. We were almost to the lobby and the doors that headed to the parking lot. I glanced over at Travis, and he nodded.
“We’re not going to get back until late anyway,” he said with a shrug.
I followed the doctor into her office and sat down in the chair on the other side of her desk. Something about Dr. Harris’s office always put me on edge. Maybe it was because we always talked about Megan here, and it wasn’t always good news, or maybe it was because I knew I could have ended up in the same place—locked away from the rest of the world the same way Megan was.
Warm guilt slid over my skin at the thought, and I wished there had been some way for me to keep Megan at home with me. There wasn’t. Even if I didn’t have my own issues, I couldn’t take care of Megan and go to school at the same time. The only other option we had briefly considered was having Bethany or Travis quit their jobs to care for Megan, but there was just no way to do that and get the bills paid.
With these thoughts in my head, I rubbed the pad of my right thumb over each fingernail on my left hand—swooping over them from cuticle to edge. Once I had gone over each one, I switched to my left thumb and right-handed fingernails. I went back and forth until the doctor spoke.
“How are you, Matthew?” Dr. Harris asked.
“Fine,” I replied.
Dr. Harris had never been my actual doctor, but over the years of treating Megan—first as an outpatient and then here at the center—she knew as much about me as my other doctors did. I hadn’t seen any other doctors since Mom had died, and Dr. Harris knew that. When I came to visit Megan, she always wanted to know how I was doing as well.
“Just fine?”
I glanced up at her briefly and saw her smile. I went back to rubbing my fingernails.
“Mayra seems nice,” Dr. Harris prompted.
I nodded.
“Will you tell me a little about her?”
A thousand different things went through my head about Mayra. I thought about how patient she was and how she would wait for me to be ready whether it was to say something, to go inside a new place, or to take our relationship further. I thought about how good it felt to have someone who would listen to me without being obligated to do so and without getting tired of waiting for me to get to the point. I thought about how she didn’t seem to mind some of the weird shit I did, even when we both knew it was weird, and how it felt when she ran her fingers through my hair and laughed at the same tele
vision shows.
“She plays soccer,” was what came out of my mouth.
“She’s athletic, then.”
“Yes,” I replied with a nod. “I watch her team practice.”
“That’s a new activity,” she said. “What was it like to do that for the first time?”
I thought about it for a while, the memory of pacing back and forth at the back doors of the school, looking out the window at the girls on the field, and not knowing for sure if I could go out there. Then I had seen Mayra run by in a tight T-shirt and a very short pair of shorts, and I managed to convince myself that I would have a better view from the stands.
“Mayra makes new things…a little easier.”
“You seem very close,” she said, and I nodded. “She seems very attentive and protective of you, as well.”
I nodded again.
“You’re also protective of her,” the doctor said. “You made the papers here in Cincinnati, you know.”
I felt my neck heat up and dropped my gaze to the floor. There was a little piece of paper—the wrapper from a piece of candy, maybe—on the floor under the doctor’s desk. I tilted my head a little to see if I could read what was printed on the cellophane.