Win Some, Lose Some

mach feel weird.

Mayra moved her head to look up at me, which made her hair go up my nose. It tickled, and I flinched a bit. Mayra bit at her lip and looked somewhat upset. I pulled her a little closer to let her know it was okay—I didn’t mean to flinch away from her. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to kiss her again, but kissing her with Travis and Bethany in the room didn’t feel right at all.

“She must like you to get so close to that stench.” Beth chuckled as she walked past me and over to the table where Travis was sitting.

“Sorry,” I mumbled to Mayra as I took a step back. Mayra indicated that she didn’t care, but she was wrinkling her nose a little bit. “I need to get in the shower.”

“I need to get home and feed Dad,” Mayra told me. “I wanted to make sure you were okay first, though.”

“I’m all right,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. Really, I didn’t. He just made me so…”

I glanced up at Travis as Mayra’s voice trailed off.

“He didn’t mean it,” I said.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Mayra said with a huff. She looked back up at me and gripped my arms. “Are we still going to dinner tomorrow?”

“If you still want to,” I replied.

“I do,” she said. “Where shall we go?”

“I thought maybe we’d go to this Italian place near Northgate,” I said. “You, um…you said you liked Italian food, right?”

“I love it,” Mayra said with a smile. “Are you going to pick me up?”

“Sure!” My heart started beating a little faster, and I smiled at her. My eyes focused on her left cheek but kept drifting back to her lips. “Maybe about five o’clock? That way we have plenty of time to get there.”

“Great!” Mayra beamed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

She stood up on her toes and pressed her lips against the edge of my jaw before she looked over her shoulder at Travis. Her eyes were narrowed at him as she walked around me and headed out the door. I turned to go up the stairs for a shower, and Travis followed me.

As I pulled towels out from under the sink in the master bathroom, Travis dropped down on the chair where my mom used to sit and tie her shoes, backed up to the side of her old dresser. He leaned over and rested his elbows on his knees and sighed.

“I didn’t mean to be shitty to your girlfriend,” he said. “I just…I worry about you.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say, and I was still a bit ticked off at him.

“Your dad…he was always so great with you. He always knew what to say and how to get you motivated to do stuff. I don’t know what to do with a kid, and you’re not even a kid any more. Maybe that’s why Beth and I haven’t had any yet.”

“Are you still trying?” I asked, distracted by the turn in the conversation. “I thought you were going to stop trying and just see what happens or something.”

“Well, yeah—I guess we are,” Travis said. “That’s been a while, though. We don’t talk about it much.”

I squeezed the towel between my fingers and tried to determine if I was supposed to say something. I probably was. I usually had this weird little ache at the bottom of my throat when someone was talking to me, and I didn’t know how to respond. It was as if there were words there that wanted to come out, but my brain didn’t know what they were.

“I’m surprised Kyle and Tiffany even let me babysit you,” he eventually said. “Do you remember when I would do that?”

“Usually when they had to take Megan to an appointment.”

“Yeah.” Travis nodded.

Megan would go to a doctor every month to be checked out. She would never complain if there was something really wrong with her—like if she felt sick or something. Once she had a bad ear infection, and Mom didn’t realize it until it was in both ears.

“I don’t know if you even remember this,” Travis said, “but when you were about nine, and Megan had the flu, I took you out to the park for a while to give your parents a little break.”

“We went to the park by the elementary school,” I said, remembering the scene. “They had just put down new mulch, and it smelled weird.”