Page 45 of Maybe We Can Fake It

Nope.

Not going there. As if that would ever happen.

Meanwhile, I’m over here looking like a bum in maroon lounge pants and an old Skyler James concert tee. May insisted we both get them when I took her to his show years ago. I’m not that obsessed, I swear.

After he scoops out the cookie dough and sticks the sheet in the oven, we hang around here. He grabs himself a water bottle out of the fridge—and no, I didn’t know I had those in there—while I get a pot of coffee going.

“You know drinking coffee in the evening really isn’t good for your sleep,” he says.

“It won’t keep me up,” I tell him, filling my mug. “My body’s so used to it.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “That’s not how bodies work. Even if you don’t have trouble falling asleep, it’s still in your system and it will affect the quality of sleep you get.”

“Should I start calling youDoctorGrumptopus?” I tease.

He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, I’ll keep my mouth shut and not worry about your health.”

He’s turned away from me, taking a seat at the table, so thankfully he doesn’t catch the way I get stuck for a fewmoments, frozen in place, hand around my coffee mug. His words hit a strange place inside of me that I wasn’t aware of. A place that might appreciate having somebody actually worry about me. Somebody besides my daughter.

Last night I told him I wanted a partner I could depend on. Maybe he’s just playing the part. Worrying about my health kind of falls into that category, right?

I shake myself out of it and join him at the table. Quietly, I tell him, “In case I haven’t said it enough, thank you. For doing all this.”

He chuckles. “You’ve thanked me about a hundred times.”

“Well, consider this one hundred and one.”

Leaning in closer to me and keeping his voice down too, he says, “I’m still not sure I understand where your anxiety with the two of them comes from. They seem nice. Different than you, sure. But they obviously love you and May.”

“They love May.”

His eyes peer into mine, making me feel like he can see all the way inside me to the vulnerable squishy parts. “You don’t think they love you?”

“I think...” Unable to articulate what I think, I take a sip of coffee instead. But he doesn’t stop looking at me in that imploring way, so I have to continue. “They care about me in the sense that they know I’m raising and loving their granddaughter. I don’t think they approve of a lot of my choices, though, and in the beginning, they wanted to fight me for custody. But April, May’s mom, had all the paperwork done up legally, and I had the money to support a child from my parents’ deaths, so they knew they didn’t have enough of a case. They let it go and tried to be civil because they were probably afraid I’d cut them out of May’s life entirely.”

Travis reaches out and takes my free hand, the one not gripping my mug like a lifeline. “That sounds tough. But I don’tthink it means anything negative against you. I’m sure most grandparents in that position would’ve done the same thing. It’s unusual for a mom to choose a non-relative to raise her child, but it shows how much your friend trusted you, how she knew you’d be everything May needed.”

April knew I’d need May just as much as she needed me. And she was right.

I keep that thought to myself. Even if I’ve already shared it in a moment of weakness with him before, I don’t need to remind him how pathetic I am. Instead I stare, transfixed, down at our hands.

Giving mine a squeeze, he says, “I’m sure now that you’ve all been in one another’s lives for so long, they love you like family.”

“But I’mnotfamily,” I whisper.

“I think they see you that way. Maybe you just don’t realize it because you’re too caught up in the assumptions you’ve made about them.”

Yikes, that kind of makes me sound like a jerk.

I’m at a loss for how to respond. It’s possible there could be some truth to what he’s saying. But how would he know? He doesn’t know them like I do. He hasn’t experienced years of these awkward visits. Hasn’t watched the way they criticize everything I do.

But he’s been around a lot these last few days, and maybe it takes an outsider’s perspective to see things clearly. Or maybe he’s wrong. I don’t know.

“Well, isn’t this cozy?”

I jump at Elise’s voice, tearing my hand from Travis’s on instinct. Although, we’re supposed to touch, so I don’t know why I feel like I got caught doing something scandalous. “Sorry,” I say.

“No need to apologize, hon,” she replies. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. It just gets boring watching those two play that game.They take it so seriously, both staring at their letters so hard I’m afraid they’ll set the tiles on fire.”

---