by Shay Savage
“Deep breaths,” she said, reminding me.
The smell of the baking cake was a good reminder, too. I could almost taste it already.
“She makes me feel…calm,” I whispered.
“Calm is good,” Beth said with a nod, and I agreed. “Travis said you talked to her about your mom and dad.”
“A little,” I admitted. “She asked.”
“And you were okay talking to her about them? And Megan?”
I nodded.
“Is that how you ended up half-naked on the couch with her?”
“We weren’t,” I said. “I just…I was hitting the heavy bag, and I took my shirt off. We were on the couch, and we fell asleep.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Travis is an idiot,” Beth said with a laugh. “He had me thinking you guys were about to get it on. Let’s step back, okay?”
“Step back?”
“Have you been on a date with her?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Bethany sounded surprised.
“On a date, you go out to dinner and a movie,” I said. “You’re supposed to pay for the girl, and I don’t have that budgeted.”
“Is that all you got?” she said through pursed lips. “Nineteen-fifties dating references? You don’t have to pay.”
“I would want to.”
“Would you?”
I thought about it for a minute.
“No,” I said, revising my statement. “I guess not. I don’t want to go out anywhere. I don’t like being around that many people, and there are always a lot of people at the movies. Besides, the only places to eat in town are bars and that Mexican place. Either way, there will be students everywhere, and they’re loud.”
“Not overly romantic places,” Beth agreed, “but there are better paces in Cincinnati.”
“We would have to drive for over an hour,” I told her.
“So?”
“What would we talk about?”
“What have you talked about before?”
“Our ecology project,” I said, “but I don’t think she’d want to talk about bees for a whole hour. You have to talk at dinner and on the way back, too.”
“What else does she like?”
“Um…soccer, maybe?”
“Why do you say that?”
“She plays on the soccer team.”
“So, maybe you could ask her about soccer,” Beth suggested. “You never played, did you?”
I shook my head.
“So she could explain the game to you,” Beth said, “and then maybe you could go watch her play. You would know the rules and what to expect then. Instant second date.”
I was surprised at how much sense that actually made.
“All you have to do is figure out a couple of other things she likes,” Beth said, “and then you would have dinner conversation, too.”
“I’m not any good at conversation.”
“You are better than you realize,” Beth countered. “We are having a conversation now, and you are barely hesitating to answer. Besides, when you are out with a girl, it’s important to listen more than you talk.”
“It is?”
“Yes, but you also have to really listen. You have to stay focused on her and what she is saying.”
“How do I do that?”
“Lean toward her,” Bethany said. “Make sure you look at her when she’s talking. Listen to her words, and ask her questions.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” I said honestly. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t think I could.
“You can,” Bethany said quietly. “If you really want to, Matthew, you can. Do you want to get to know her better?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you want to have a chance at something like this? A relationship with a girl?”
I nodded.
“Then you can do it.”
“I don’t want to see a movie in the theatre,” I reminded her.
“Then don’t,” Beth said. “Just dinner.”
A dark, crawling feeling slid over my skin.
“I can’t date her,” I said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because I would have to ask her to go out with me,” I explained. “I really don’t think I can do that.”
“Do you remember when you couldn’t order pizza over the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do that now?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I have to work up to it a little.”
“So we’ll work on getting you ready to ask Mayra out the same way we worked on ordering pizza. I’ll be Mayra, and you ask me. We’ll keep doing it until you think you got it.”
“But…” I hesitated.
“What is it?”
“But the pizza place never says no.” I closed my eyes, and my heart started to pound. My head started getting foggy, and my vision blurred as I thought about asking Mayra out and having her say no. The next thing I knew, Beth was on her knees in front of me and talking me through some deep breathing until I relaxed. When I had calmed, I glanced at her blue eyes.
“I’m proud of you,” she said softly. “You come back so much faster now.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Less than a minute,” she said. I thought she was probably minimizing, but I knew it hadn’t been very long.
“I won’t be able to do it,” I said again.
“You will,” Bethany told me. “We’ll work on it, okay?”
I just shook my head.
“We will,” she insisted. “Now come on—you’ve earned some cake.”
As always, the cake was what I figured heaven must taste like. I didn’t even mind that the cake hadn’t cooled completely before Bethany frosted it. I ate the first piece in about twelve seconds and then polished off a second before I remembered it was Thursday. I needed to get the trash collected and out to the curb. Bethany waited in the kitchen while I hauled the trash outside. Once I was done, I sat across from her at the table and looked at the rest of the cake.
I swear it was calling to me.
“It’s late,” Bethany said. “I need to get home to Travis, but we’re not done talking. You got it?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t eat all of that cake tonight, either,” she said. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and you can earn another piece.”
“Can I have one more?”
“All right,” she said, “but no more after that!”
Bethany smiled, and I watched her bouncy hair swing around her shoulders as she stood up and headed to the door. She had just picked up her purse and her keys and started to leave when I suddenly remembered something.
“I thought we were going to talk about sex.”
“Oh, Matthew, honey,” Beth said as she walked through the door and onto the front porch. She shook her head slowly and reached out to tap my nose with the end of her finger. “We have been.”
She turned her back to me and sauntered down the walkway to her car. I watched her get inside, wave, and then back out of the driveway.
I was left confused, so I went back to the kitchen for more cake.
No matter what else happened, cake days were always a win.
Chapter 6—It’s a Family Thing
A slight jerk whips my head forward, and I feel a sense of dread and panic come over me as I realize I’ve been hit. I take ten deep breaths before opening the car door and stepping around to see the damage to the car’s bumper…
Shortly after five in the morning, I sat straight up in bed.
My heart was pounding, and in the wake of the dream, a variety of recent memories rushed through my head like a flash flood: the guy who rear-ended my car; the scrap of paper he shoved at my chest as he took off; the crumpled edge of the lottery ticket as I tossed it into the trash; the voice on the television saying a ticket bought in Millville was the winning ticket.
&nbs
p; There was no way.
People were more likely to be hit by lightning twice.
The trash was at the curb, and the garbage trucks usually rolled into the neighborhood before six. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only a quarter after five. I stared at the red numbers until they changed to twenty after, just trying to figure out what to do.
I thought about the garbage from the kitchen and how near the bottom of the bag was a folded lottery ticket, the same ticket my hit-and-run driver had shoved at me. It was now in the larger can outside, sitting at the curb and waiting for the collection truck to come around and add it to the landfill north of town. Retrieving it was ridiculous. There was no way the numbers on the lottery ticket would be the winning ones even though the license plate of the car had been registered in Butler County, which meant the guy was local.
There was just no way.
Besides, the ticket was at the bottom of the trash bag. Duck sauce and fortune cookie wrappers and greasy napkins surrounded it. Searching through the garbage would be completely disgusting, and there was no way I would ever touch it. If I did manage to find and pick up the presumably filthy ticket, the act would be pointless.
There was just no way in hell.
Disbelief continued to wash over me as I sat in the center of my bed and let the possibility unfold. I hadn’t taken the time to look closely at the ticket itself, nor had I paid much attention to the news reports on the television to know what the numbers were. I had no idea if it was the winning ticket or not. The likelihood of the hit-and-run guy living in Millville was nothing more than coincidence.
I heard the distinctive rumble of the garbage truck coming down the street and bolted straight out of bed. I ran down the stairs, flung over the front door, and didn’t stop until my fingers were on the handle of the large trash bin, and I was hauling it away from the curb.
The truck was parked at the house next to mine, and the driver gave me a weird look as he watched me pull the trash away, but he didn’t say anything. I opened the garage door and pulled the trash can into the middle of the floor and then sat down and tried to catch my breath.
I stared at the bottom of the large, black trash bin for several minutes without the slightest idea what I should do next. I got up at one point and took the lid off, but I quickly replaced it again. I leaned against the door between the garage and the house and stared at the large bin, which seemed to grow larger as I looked at it.
The adrenaline in my system was going sour and leaving me shaky. Deciding the bin and its contents were safe for the moment, I went back inside the house to contemplate and dropped down on one of the chairs in the kitchen.
The odds against the winning lottery ticket being inside my trash were astronomical. If the ticket were in there, it would be totally covered with scum, and I wouldn’t be able to touch it. There was also no way I was going to get the bag out of the bin and open it up to look.
I closed my eyes for a few minutes, and when I opened them again, my gaze fell on the small pad of paper for messages and such that sat next to the phone. I could see rather unfamiliar writing on the pad, and I remembered whose phone number had been scribbled there recently.
I stood up, still feeling like I might be dreaming, and walked to the other side of the kitchen. With shaking hands, I picked up the phone out of its cradle and looked down at the pad of paper next to it. A phone number was still on the top page.
I called Mayra.
“You want me to do what?”
Mayra stood in the center of my garage with her arms crossed over her chest. She was tapping one foot against the concrete floor and looking back and forth between me and the large, open trash can between us.
“Maybe just…dump it out?” Apparently, my suggestion that she dig through the plastic bag of kitchen garbage hadn’t gone over so well. It was possibly my refusal to tell her what I was looking for—on the grounds that I would sound like an idiot—wasn’t making it any easier.
Maybe I was an idiot.
I wrapped my arms around myself and wondered if it was physically possible to hold myself together.
“You want me to dump out the whole trash can full of garbage?” Mayra asked.
I nodded.
“On the floor of the garage?”
“There isn’t any room to spread it out anywhere else,” I said, hoping at least that much sounded reasonable.
Mayra shook her head.
“But you aren’t going to tell me what we’re looking for?” she asked again.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
I didn’t answer. My eyes were drawn to the top of the trash can and the bit of plastic bag that was sticking out. I tried to convince myself to take a step forward and maybe at least open the bag, but I couldn’t. No one was supposed to open trash bags after they’d been tied closed.
Mayra let out a long sigh and shook her head at me. Mumbling under her breath, she turned to the can and grabbed hold of the top of the plastic bag, hoisted it out, and dropped it on the floor. That made me jump. She rolled her eyes and wrinkled her nose as she crouched down and tore it open.
Tore it.
“Couldn’t you have just untied it?” I asked with a cringe.
“Heard the line about beggars can’t be choosers?” Mayra said, her frustration evident. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Mayra turned over the bag and let everything fall out. Seeing all of the trash on the floor was just about enough to make me nauseated, and suddenly the idea of any amount of money being sufficient to compensate for the mess seemed ridiculous.
“My God,” Mayra grumbled, “I hate Chinese food.”
“You do?” I asked, momentarily distracted by the idea that anyone could hate Chinese food and grateful for the diversion.
“Yes,” she said. “The smell is awful.”
“It is now,” I agreed. “That’s why I can’t touch it.”
“But I can?” Mayra raised an eyebrow at me as she kicked some of the trash around with the toe of her shoe, spreading it out. “You going to tell me what the fuck I’m looking for now?”
My eyes scanned the floor, but I couldn’t focus on any of it. It was too disastrous, and I was thinking about what Mayra said and realizing just how fucked up it was to call her in the first place.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I mumbled under my breath. I grabbed my hair and tugged hard as I dropped down to the ground on my ass and wrapped my arms around my knees. “I’m sorry!”
“Don’t do that,” Mayra sighed. I could hear her walking toward me and felt her presence next to me as she kneeled. “It’s okay, really.”
“I didn’t know who else to call,” I whispered. “Your number was there…by the phone. I shouldn’t have called…I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”
“Stop,” Mayra said, and I did. “It’s okay, really. I just…I don’t know what we’re supposed to find.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It was stupid. I’m sorry, Mayra. I never should have called. I won’t do it again—”
“Matthew, cut it out!” Mayra said. I jumped a little when I felt her hand against my shoulder. She didn’t take it away but only touched me lightly. After a minute, I relaxed into her touch, and she spoke again. “I have to admit this was not the sort of thing I was expecting when you called saying it was urgent, and I have no idea what is going on here, but it’s obviously important to you. I just don’t know what else I can do to help.”
“Nothing,” I said quietly. “I don’t want you to look.”
“I’m already here,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
I heard Mayra let out another quick breath, and then she pulled out her phone and pushed a button. The front of it lit up her face.
“Shit,” she mumbled. “You need to get going, or we’ll be late for school.”
I realized at that point that I was only wearing the lounge pants Bet
hany bought me for Christmas—the ones with red and green M&Ms all over them. I hadn’t even thought about getting dressed for school, and suddenly I was fighting a panic attack over being late. I didn’t get too deep into it before Mayra told me the actual time, and I knew I could get ready without having to rush too much. Rushing put me on edge and screwed up my whole day.
I showered, dressed, and gathered up my book bag. Mayra was in the kitchen when I came downstairs, holding a napkin wrapped around two pieces of buttered toast.
“I don’t know what you usually eat for breakfast,” she said with a shrug. Her cheekbones turned pink. “Toast okay? We really need to get going.”
“Yes,” I replied as I reached out and took it from her. I looked from the toast to her face, and for a moment, our eyes locked together before I looked at the toast again. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome!” Mayra beamed.
We walked out the garage to head to Mayra’s car. As we walked past the mess, I cringed and shook my head. I was a total moron, no doubt about it. I was just glad Mayra didn’t seem to be too pissed off at me. As I stepped carefully over the mess, I saw a small rectangle of paper, folded neatly in half.
I couldn’t be late for school, so I spent the whole day wondering about it. I couldn’t focus on anything in my classes, so the school day was a total loss.
~oOo~
“Have you tried Szechwan?” I asked.
There is nothing better for combating an obsession than fighting with another obsession. The only thing that kept me from freaking out over the state of my garage and the folded-up ticket in the midst of it was Mayra’s apparent abhorrence of all things Chinese. Well, at least food-wise. I had been questioning her about it all day.
“I don’t know,” Mayra said as she turned the corner and headed toward my street. “All of it is just nasty.”
“Even eggrolls?” I reached out and poked at the little scrape mark on the inside of the passenger door of Mayra’s car. It was kind of shaped like a fish.
“Ew,” Mayra said as she wrinkled her nose. “Breaded, fried cabbage? Really?”
“What about fried rice? Or lo mein?”
“Matthew, you already asked me about those.”
“But it’s just rice or noodles with some vegetables mixed in with them.”
