“Yeah. The closest. We talk every day.”
“Tell me more about her.”
I think of how to describe Wren. “She’s smart and curious. Everyone that meets her falls in love with her. She’s easy to talk to and she can make anything fun. She loves learning new things, which is why she keeps changing her mind on a major.” I stop myself from rambling on and on. “If she were the older one, I would have spent my life living in the shadow of my much cooler sister.”
That pulls a laugh out of him.
“She’s coming to visit me for a weekend over her semester break. Or us, I guess. Is that okay?”
“Of course. I’m excited to meet her.”
“Are you close with your parents?”
I feel as if I can sense the answer before he shakes his head.
“Or grandparents, aunts, uncles, whatever,” I add in case he had a situation like me growing up and his parents weren’t the ones who raised him.
“No, I’m not close with any of my family.”
Despite his tensing earlier, it’s not how I would have imagined. Travis is just so happy and playful. I pictured him with a doting mom and a dad who took him fishing and taught him to play catch.
I want to ask why but that doesn’t seem appropriate, so I just say what I’m thinking. “That surprises me.”
He removes his hand from mine and sits forward, elbows on his knees, looking ahead instead of at me. “My parents weren’t really interested in doing the whole raising a kid thing. My dad took over my mom’s family’s development company after her dad died. I think I was five or six. But honestly even before that I don’t remember spending a lot of time with them. They had other priorities and I just sort of managed myself.”
“At five?” I try and fail to conceal my outrage at the thought of him being on his own at five. I remember all too well how Wren was at that age when our parents died. I know it isn’t the same, but she needed them. And I have to believe Travis needed his parents too.
“I had babysitters, and I did a lot of sports and other activities.”
My face must be talking for me again because Travis gives me a quick half smile.
“Don’t look at me like that, babe. I had more than most kids—house, food, money for whatever I needed.”
“What about love and attention?”
He laughs softly but the sound is hollow. “There wasn’t a lot of that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I have great friends and teammates, a hottie wife.” He winks. “We can’t have it all, right?”
“I guess not,” I say, not truly believing it and having a million more questions. “Do you keep in touch with them?”
“No.” His voice is harder now, more definitive. “We haven’t talked in years.”
My chest is tight as I digest all this and adjust the mental picture I had of Travis. We’re more alike than I thought, through very different circumstances.
“I’m still sorry. That must be hard.”
He says nothing and I can feel his need to change the subject. I take a breath and push away all this new information for now. I can figure out what it all means later.
“So…” I angle my body so that my knee rests against his thigh. “Speaking of this hottie wife of yours…”
One dark brow lifts. “Yeah?”
“I was thinking about what your friends said.”
He takes my hand again, letting his thumb linger in that spot below my ring. I wonder if it’s as comforting to him as it is to me. “You’re going to have to be more specific. They yap constantly.”
