The Story So Far

07. Mr. and Mrs. Bayarrd

    “I’m going to flunk my Math test tomorrow!” Travis threw up his hands in exasperation, his eyes closing.

     “No, you won’t,” I contradicted, flipping through my notes, poking his leg with my feet under the table.

            Travis leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, “Who thought that adding the alphabet with numbers was a great idea?”

            I laughed, “It’s not the bad,” I pried his hands away from his face, “come on! You have to ace this test.”

            He took a pencil and tried to solve the triangle, looking for its hypotenuse. He scribbled in the formula and started to solve for x. After a few minutes of solving for x, he looked up at me, “Is the hypotenuse 5?”

            I looked down at the paper, checking his solutions and answer. I looked back up at him and smiled, “You’ve got it!”

            He gave me a smile the made my stomach churn, “I got it!”

            I nodded, laughing at his enthusiasm.

            He cocked his head to the side as if in thought, still smiling, “I think we should celebrate.”

            “Yeah?” I asked, smiling.

            He nodded, taking my hand and standing me up. I scrambled to get my things inside my bag before heading out of the library, “I’ll cook dinner.”

            I gaped at him, “You—you know how to cook?”

            He smiled at my dumbfounded expression, “I took cooking classes for a year.”

            I gave him a once over look, “You? Taking a cooking class?”

            “Hey there now, Allie,” he warned me, giving me a stern look.

            I shrugged, surrendering, “It doesn’t look like you.”

            “Just wait until you taste what I’m making tonight!” he lead me to his car, opening the car door for me before getting into his own.

            He walked me to his front lawn, his house looked cozy and pleasant to the eyes. He unlocked the door, letting us both in, leading me by my waist.

            “Travis?” A high pitched singsong voice called up from upstairs, “is that you?”

            He planted his keys on the counter, “Yeah, mom.”

            I glared at him, “Your mom’s here?” I whispered.

            Travis nodded, going straight to the kitchen and washing his hands. He took out some cheese, chicken, bacon, peas, and potato, “Babe?”

            “Hmm?” I replied.

             “Go sit on the living room,” he splashed warm water on the frozen chicken and bacon, “this will take a while.”

              I nodded and headed to the living room where a flat screen plasma TV was looking back at me. I didn’t bother turning it on since I wasn’t a regular in this house, not wanting a bad impression. I took hold of the Glamour magazine and started flipping through the pages.

              The smell of cheese being stirred in with chicken wafted through my nose, making my mouth water. I looked up from the magazine, gazing at Travis’s shadow through the light of the kitchen.