Win Some, Lose Some

“I think this time it should be the other way around,” Beth said. “Let’s talk first, and then you can read more about it if you want.”

“No.”

“It won’t hurt.”

“It might.”

“I’ll make you dinner.”

I glanced over at my aunt, whose cooking rivaled my mom’s. She didn’t do it often, either, and when she did, it was usually a special occasion like a holiday or someone’s birthday. She made the best cakes in the world, too.

When Travis first met Bethany, neither Megan nor I would even acknowledge her. Megan didn’t like her because she didn’t wear a watch, and having someone new around the house set us both on edge. Megan would actually scream and cry when Beth came into the room. That all changed—for me, at least—the first time she took over my mom’s kitchen and baked a cake.

My parents started using Bethany’s cooking as a reward system for my therapy, which ended up being more successful than anything else my doctors and therapists had tried. My aunt and her cooking were a large part of the reason I was able to function in a mainstream school, and her cake had a lot do to with it. There wasn’t much of anything I wouldn’t do for a piece.

“Cake?” I whispered.

“Sure.”

“Chocolate?”

“If you promise to try to stay calm while we talk,” she said.

I thought about it for a while as we sat in the driveway in silence. The last time Beth had made a cake had been for New Year’s, and it hadn’t been a chocolate one. It was all white with sparkly fireworks in the frosting.

She knew my weakness, and with a sigh, I glanced over at Beth and nodded.

I couldn’t say no to cake, so I guess we would be talking about sex.

Even though it made me feel like a nine-year-old, I sat at the kitchen table and licked the drippy chocolate batter off the beaters. It didn’t even matter that I was still stuffed from dinner.

Beth was just finishing up so she could put the cake pan in the oven. I watched her smooth out the batter with a spatula, and the way her arm and the utensil moved together looked like a dance. She hummed while she worked, and I thought about my mom standing in the same spot, making dinner for me and Megan.

“You okay?” Bethany asked.

“Yes,” I replied automatically. It was one of the few questions I had been trained, for lack of a better word, to respond to quickly. Mom worked with me forever after I cut myself on one of Dad’s tools in the garage and just sat there bleeding while she waited for me to answer. Once she figured out I was hurt, she completely freaked out, and then she spent months making sure I would at least respond with a yes or no to those two simple words without having to think about it.

Beth opened up the preheated oven and slid the sheet cake inside while I finished licking the second beater. I groaned a little at the taste. It was just so good, I couldn’t help myself. My aunt snickered and folded her arms across her chest.

“I wish your sister took to cake as well as you did,” she said. The one thing you could always count on with Bethany was that she was going to say what she was thinking. Other people might hide their thoughts, but she never did.

“She never took to anything,” I said, “unless you painted numbers around your face and attached clock hands to your nose.”

She shook her head slowly.

“Come on,” she said. “No stalling. Tell me more about Mayra.”

I picked up the mixing bowl and beaters and took them to the sink. Beth sat at the table an

d watched as I washed everything. She didn’t wash or dry right, and she knew I wasn’t going to let her help. She didn’t bother to ask anymore. What she lacked in dishwashing skills, she made up for in patience. Beth sat and waited without talking until I had finished the last of the measuring cups.

“I don’t know what to say about her.”

“Tell me what she looks like.”

“She has brown hair and brown eyes,” I said. “She’s short.”

“She’s short or just compared to you?”