Page 78 of Maybe We Can Fake It

His brow furrows and he gives me a skeptical look. “Can you even throw?”

“Well...”

May snorts, so I kick out at her ankle in retaliation.

“It’s not my strong suit,” I admit. “But surprisingly, I’m pretty good at catching.”

Travis makes a choked, strangled sound. It takes me a moment to mentally replay what I said, and...

“Oh my god! Not like—I mean, well, yeah, I—That’s not what I meant!”

He presses his lips together in what looks like an attempt to fight a smile. My face is flaming, but I’m also suppressing the urge to laugh. If Travis and I were alone, I’d probably think of something clever to say about how good I am atthatkind of catching. But my daughter and her grandmother are within hearing distance, so nope. We will not be going there.

Luckily, one of the event volunteers is currently walking in between the two lines of partners, passing out eggs from a wicker basket. She reaches May first, then me, and I focus on not accidentally crushing the fragile egg in my hand before we even start. Because that’s totally something I might do.

“We’ve got this,” I assure Travis one more time.

I’m not a super competitive person normally. And even though she ditched me, I’d be perfectly happy if May won instead of me. But standing in front of Travis like this, I realize how much I really want to win with him. Something tells me we’ll make a great team.

And something changes on his face, I think, when he catches the determined look on mine.

“We’ve got this.” He repeats my words almost like he can force them to be true. Maybe my hunger to win is contagious.

Of course, when Roddy calls out, “One, two, three, toss!” I panic and fumble for a moment, before I realize that I can, in fact, throw an egg three feet. No big deal.

Travis opens his hand and catches it like he didn’t even have to think about it. I give him a cheesy thumbs up, ignoring the way he rolls his eyes at me.

“This is kind of fun,” Elise says, when it’s their line’s turn to toss the eggs back. I shift my gaze to her briefly, but only after I’ve safely caught my egg. I won’t let her distract me into messing up. She and May could have planned to sabotage us. But she does look genuinely pleased to be standing in the grass in a T-shirt and jeans, in a line of excited townspeople and tourists.

I bet the novelty will wear off by the time she’s covered in egg yolk or grass stains though.

“Brenden!” Travis calls my name impatiently, clueing me in to the fact that everyone but me has taken a step backward at Roddy’s instruction.Whoops.

See? Sabotage.

The next toss is also easy enough and so is catching Travis’s. But it only takes a couple more rounds before things start to get dicey. There’s a delicate balance you need to hit in tossing your egg hard enough that it will make it all the way to your partner, while not tossing it so hard that it will break when they catch it.

We began with sixteen teams competing, and out of the corners of my eyes I notice a few teams already messing up and stepping out of the lines. I can hear the sounds of eggs cracking, but I keep my focus where it needs to be. Right on Travis.

He still doesn’t look like this is taking him any effort. Until my next toss is probably a little too rough and doesn’t go directly to his hand, so he has to reach out for it with panicked eyes.The look of relief that crosses his face when he catches the egg without it breaking does a funny thing to my insides.

It was like a chink in his armor, showing that he actually cares about the competition. And I know for a fact that winning the May Games has never even come close to being one of his ambitions, which means he cares about thisfor me. He cares about it because I do.

Shit. Focus.

I barely manage to catch his next toss. Taking a quick look around after I do, I see there’s only five teams left. Us, May and Elise, and three others. Excellent.

Each team gets a ranking for each event, based on what place they finish in. And then at the end, the five rankings are added together, and the team with the highest overall ranking wins. So unless one team wins them all, you don’t have to win every game in order to come in first place.

As we continue to move farther away from our teammates, the game gets harder, and I expect me and Travis to get knocked out, but we keep hanging in. He has great aim, so that makes it easier for me to catch. But what’s most impressive is how, even with my wild tosses, he manages to keep catching the egg gently enough to keep it intact.

Who knew, under all the gruffness and muscles and flannel, that he was capable of handling things so gently? It makes me want to know what it would feel like if he handledmelike that.

Okay, no, not the time for dirty thoughts. No distractions.

As I catch the next toss, I hear an egg crack right beside me, followed by a distressed sound from May. Turning to look, I find my daughter standing there with yellow egg yolk slowly dripping down her neck, and the laughter spills out of me before I can stop it.

“Mean!” she cries.

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