Page 119 of Travis
“How could we not? Travis pretends they’re an inconvenience. Last Tuesday I found him asleep in his chair with the gray one on his chest and the other two tucked against his leg.”
Lark grinned. “I knew it. I knew the moment I dropped them off.”
“You know everything. It’s very annoying.”
“It’s a gift.” She stirred her coffee. “Have you told your parents? About Travis?”
One thing I’d learned about Lark. She had a way of circling toward the thing you weren’t saying and landing on it with the gentleness of someone who understood that some questions had sharp edges.
“Last week. Video call. My mother needed about forty-five seconds of silence, which is a personal record for her.” I traced the rim of my mug. “She said she needed time to process it. My father asked if I was happy. I told him yes. He said that was enough for him.”
“Mom didn’t take it so well?”
“She’ll get there. It’s complicated for her. Naomi is still the center of a lot of things in that house.” I looked at my hands on the table. “But I’ve stopped apologizing for being happy. That took me a while, but I got there.”
Lark studied me for a moment. “Good.”
“Naomi would’ve had opinions about it. Loud ones. She had opinions about everything.” I said it with a smile that felt different from the ones I used to wear when I talked about my sister. Softer. Less guarded. “But I think she would’ve come around eventually. She loved Travis. She loved me. She would’ve wanted us both to be okay, even if the path there would’ve driven her crazy.”
“Family,” Lark said, and something in the way she said it made me think she understood more about complicated family than she let on. “They can be a… mess.”
The bell above the door chimed.
Lark’s gaze shifted to something over my shoulder, and a slow smile spread across her face. I turned.
Travis stood in the doorway of Deja Brew. Dark jacket, jeans, his hair pushed back from his face. He looked like a man who’d walked into a coffee shop, which was exactly what he was. This was also the most extraordinary thing I’d ever seen him do.
The bruising from six weeks ago was gone. The stiffness in his left side had faded to something only I would notice. But his jaw was tight, and I could see the tension in his hands, the fists he’d made and then released as he scanned the room. His body cataloging exits, sight lines, every face in the space. The wiring that never turned off.
He found me. The jaw loosened. Not all the way, but enough.
I raised my mug. “There’s a latte with your name on it. Well, my name on it. But I’ll share.”
He crossed the room and stopped at our table. Lark was already standing, pulling on her jacket.
“I’m being summoned. I can feel the animals from here.” She hugged me, tight and quick. Then she looked at Travis. “Take care of my friend.”
“I plan to.”
Something passed between them, a look I couldn’t fully read from my angle. Then Lark was gone, the bell chiming behind her, and Travis slid into her empty chair.
“How are the hives?” I asked.
He pushed his sleeve up. Faint pink welts along the inside of his forearm, already fading. “Present but manageable. I’m choosing to interpret that as progress.”
“It is progress.”
He stole my latte and took a sip. Made a face. “This has sugar in it.”
“That’s because it’s mine, not yours.”
He took another sip anyway. Set it back in front of me. Then he reached over and took my hand.
“Are you ready? I don’t want to rush you.”
“No, I’m done. Had a good time gossiping with Lark, but I’m ready to go home.”
“I want to take you somewhere first.”
“We’re not going home?”
“Not yet.”
He led me out the door.
