“What?” she asked. She let me go. “You’re a dick, Travis. You just got your heart broken. By seeing your mother. The look on your face…”
“Don’t look then,” I said and started to walk.
A few seconds later, Willow caught up to me.
I stopped again.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’ll walk with you,” she said.
“Your car is here.”
“So what?”
“You’re fucking stubborn, bunny.”
“Yes, I am. Please, Travis. Just get in my car. I’ll drive you to my place and you can sleep there.”
I saw the worry on Willow’s face.
She actually gave half a damn about me.
She reached down and slipped her hand into mine.
“Travis, please,” she said. “Please.”
“You know what it did to me? Did to Julie?”
“I heard stories,” Willow whispered. “Believe me, I heard stories.”
I looked down at our hands together. Our fingers interlocked. Her fingers were skinny and short. Her nails unpainted. Most women I met had their nails done. And hair. And makeup. They looked a certain way to fulfill the part I needed them for.
But here, this was reality. This was life stripped down to the raw bone, to the bearing of the soul. And I was holding hands with Willow.
“Travis…”
I nodded. “Take me back to your place, bunny.”
13
Everything, Anything, Everyone, Anyone
WILLOW
I considered myself lucky that I got him to my apartment. There was this quick sense of fear, wondering how I left the apartment when I was last there. Was there going to be a random bra tossed on the counter? (Because, face it, who doesn’t do that?) Was there going to be dirty laundry on the bathroom floor? My panties just lying there for the taking?
None of it mattered though. This was Travis. The boy I first had a real crush on. The boy who gave me my first kiss, no matter how weird or cut short it had been. This was the boy who was always a man to me, and he needed me. He didn’t feel at home where he moved to after leaving this town, and now he was back.
“I can’t believe I have this,” I said as I put the bottle of whiskey on the table.
“You sure?”
“I don’t care. Bathroom’s over there if you get too wound up.”
Travis laughed. “I don’t get sick, bunny. Ever.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what that means?”
“Someday,” Travis said.
He took the bottle and helped himself. Watching him drink it like it was water made my throat burn.
“You know why I surf, Willow?”
“To pick up women?”
“I don’t need a surfboard for that. I started surfing by accident. I was on the beach one afternoon. Getting close to sundown. This old guy came walking along the beach. Really short guy. But built like stone. I was writing in my notebook and he walked up to me and just started talking. Turns out he lost his wife to cancer the year before. They worked their whole lives building up a real estate business. They sold it and made a bucket list. The third item on his wife’s list was to surf. He said they lived by the beach for forty years but only went there a handful of times. His wife died before she got a chance to learn to surf. So that’s what he did. He threw out their bucket list and surfed. For some reason, I told him about Julie and that I was sitting there just writing and figuring my shit out. He fucking leaves the surfboard on the beach and tells me it’s now mine. He said to meet him at sunrise for a lesson. Sure as shit, next morning, there he was. That’s how I learned to surf. His name was Wade. Coolest person I ever met. But we only met on the beach, each morning, to surf. He asked me about my notebook and I eventually showed it to him. That was the same day I hit a monster wave and rode it all the way out. First time I ever did that. I looked to Wade almost like a kid hitting a baseball in a game and looking to his father on the sidelines. He gave me a thumbs up. He asked me if he could rip out his favorite page in my notebook and make a copy. I said yeah. I never saw him again, Willow.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Travis said. “Maybe he felt he taught me everything. I don’t know. I couldn’t track him down either.”
“And he stole that page and never made a copy?”
“Yeah. You know, I still remember what it said too.”
“Oh yeah? What was it?”
Travis drank more whiskey. He put the bottle down and leaned forward. “You stare into silence, the rest of the world doesn’t understand this. You look up to the sky, where the boundaries aren’t supposed to be real. You’re supposed to fly and never stop going, breaking a line that we only believe in when we get too close to it…”
He slid forward some more.
He put the whiskey bottle down.
“My eyes can go blind, but I’ll never stop seeing what I know. The stale smell of the carpet in the hallway. The walls with webs in the corners. Where time is left with neglect. Where shadows will forever run…”
I inched toward the edge of the couch too. The only thing between myself and Travis was the table.
Travis took care of that as he stood up and walked forward. He slowly sat down on the table, now just inches from me. Our knees bumped together a few times as he stared at me.
“How can I get over this when I haven’t had the chance to say goodbye? How can I lie to myself when I already promised I would never lie to you? There’s a world where the sun rises. The man on the moon laughs with the dancing of the stars. Where the universe is limited. Where reality doesn’t ever feel real. I’ll never know what you know… and you… will always…”
Travis reached up and touched my jaw.
“… have…”
His fingers slipped to the back of my neck.
“… me…”
I smelled and tasted the whiskey on his breath as my lips started to part.
He whispered two more words to finish what he had memorized from his notebook.
“… always me…”
Our lips touched, whiskey laced, desire flooding, my heart racing and aching at the same time.
The kiss was anything but just a kiss as his fingers dug into the back of my neck, craving more. I gave him more, kissing back with the same force he offered me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a kiss like this. Better yet, a kiss that made me feel the way it did. My hands inched forward, and I rested them against his chest. I felt the definition of muscle and did all I could to not groan loudly and seem too pathetic and desperate.
Travis broke the kiss but didn’t move his hand from my neck.
He reached back and got the bottle of whiskey.
“For you, bunny,” he said and lifted the bottle.
It touched my lips and I put my head back. I was shivering as I waited for the burning rush of the drink. Travis was kind as he poured just a little into my mouth. My lips instinctively tried to close, and a small stream of the whiskey ran down my chin to my neck.
“Oh, Willow, we can’t waste that…”
As I swallowed the whiskey down with my eyes watering from the fiery taste, I felt Travis’s tongue lap against my neck, the tip of his tongue tracing a line up where the whiskey had run down. He didn’t stop until his tongue found comfort back in my mouth, kissing me wilder than just a moment ago.
The kiss ended for a second time, thus creating the second worst moment of the night so far.
I chased after Travis as he sat back a little.
He brought the bottle to his lips and took another big swig.
His eyes never left mine.
His eyes looked tired, full of pain, a second away from glistening over with tears.
“If I walked away right now, would you be disappointed?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Travis brought his hand from the back of my neck to my lips. His thumb traced under my bottom lip.
&nb
sp; “Now you know how I feel,” he said.
He stood up and walked away.
My mouth fell open and I sat there, not sure how to feel.
He walked across my apartment to the window and stood there, the bottle in his hand.
I licked my lips.
Whiskey and Travis.
Maybe the worst combination I could possibly experience.
I touched my knees and took a shuddering breath.
“I’m sorry, bunny,” Travis said from across the apartment. “Kissing you is one thing, but breaking your heart is another.”
He didn’t look back at me to see the look on my face or the tears in my eyes.
Travis had already broken my heart before.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Travis,” I said.
He hung over the whiskey bottle and gave a wave.
I could tell he was itching to have a smoke, but there was no way I would allow that in my apartment. He could walk his drunk ass outside and stand there in the cold air and smoke his brains out.
“If you need water or medicine or…”
Travis looked up at me. “She told me I was the oldest. I was the one in charge. She told me it was up to me to protect my little sister.”
His words were really slurred. His eyes half shut.
“She fucking said to me… right to me… this is on you…”
His eyes opened wider.
They were bright. For being such a dark color, they were suddenly really bright.
He was broken. He was spilling himself wide open right in front of me.
“She stood there and cried. She took all the fucking attention from it too. Letting people hug her. Shake her hand. Say nice things to her. And each time someone looked away, she would slightly grin. Because she loved the attention. She decided to become mother of the fucking year, but that only lasted a few days. Once the people stopped showing up with free food and free conversation, that was it. She left a note on the table and was gone again. That’s when I decided to be gone too.”
Travis lowered his head.
I didn’t know what to do at first. If it was worth risking getting close to him again. His kiss still lingered on my lips and it was like flirting with the devil. I could feel the sting of his flames, but I wanted more. It was ridiculous to want more. But Travis’s words floated through my mind. He wasn’t going to stick around here for long. He’d be gone soon, and I didn’t want to live with the regret of not knowing what it could have been like with him. Nothing serious. Those feelings were old, and even if they did kick up again, they could burn out like before. This would be about what I wanted. What I needed. Every fantasy I had craved for years.
I made the move toward him and touched his shoulder. He reached across with his right hand and squeezed my hand.
“I don’t know what to say, Travis,” I said. “I mean, I have plenty to say, but I don’t want you to get more upset.”
“I’ve worked hard to forget what I could,” he said.
“Sometimes that’s not always a good thing,” I said. “You think you forget, but you don’t. You just don’t remember.”
Travis looked up at me. “That’s the same fucking thing, bunny.”
“No, it’s not. Forgetting and not remembering are two very different things.”
“You’re trying to be poetic now, huh?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
He slowly stood up. I wasn’t sure how he could stand after all the whiskey he drank. Towering over me, his hand still holding mine. His lip curling with either anger or need… maybe both. I wasn’t going to back away though.
“I’m sorry for what she said to you,” I whispered. “That night… I was there. I was there, Travis. When she… I…”
Travis inched down and pressed his lips to mine again.
It was the quickest kiss of the three. Just enough to steal my breath and steal my words.
He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Go to sleep, Willow. You have enough hell in your life.”
I put my hand to his chest. “Show me a side of heaven.”
Travis chuckled. A drunk, sloppy chuckle. “You’re too beautiful. And you don’t even know it. You don’t even give yourself the chance to see it or believe it.”
As he inched away, I sank my nails into his arm. “Then make me feel beautiful.”
“All I can give you is more hell.”
“That’s fine.”
He gently touched my face. “I’m going to grab a smoke.”
“Really? You’d rather fucking mess with a cancer stick than with me?”
Travis moved fast, collapsing into me. Our bodies colliding so hard that I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I stumbled back a few steps and he stayed with me. His hands slipped around my waist to the small my back, pulling, forcing me to thrust my hips forward against his hard body.
“I would never touch a fucking smoke again if that meant I could savor your sweetness, bunny. But when you flirt with hell, dipping your toes into the flames to feel the warmth, maybe every now and again burning yourself, that’s one thing. But if you dive in head first, like your eyes are suggesting, you won’t get burned, you’ll be reduced to ashes.”
Travis moved down again toward my mouth but stopped with just a few millimeters to spare. He turned his head slowly, the tip of his nose pressing against mine.
I had butterflies in my stomach and firecrackers in my heart.
He made a quick move, turning me, letting me go, letting me fall to the couch.
The second I hit the couch, my hands touched the cushions, my fingers wanting to curl tight as my body was ready. So ready.
I watched as Travis grabbed his hoodie from the back of the couch and walked to his bag on the counter to fish out his smokes. He walked better than I ever expected, but he did have a wobble in his step.
As he left the apartment, he started singing a song.
“As she tries to be everything, making this her anything, looking around at everyone, always forgetting the anyone…”
The door shut, and I gritted my teeth hard.
I took a deep breath.
All I could hope for now… was that he would be gone for good… and soon.
I was sound asleep when my nose tingled with a smoky sensation. I moved my head and groaned, trying to chase away the yucky smell. My brain wrestled with itself, wondering if this was in my dream or real. If it was a smoke smell in reality, then I needed to wake up and check my apartment.
I felt someone touch my hair, a fingertip sliding hair out my face to behind my head.
The smoky smell was overwhelming, but when I realized it was Travis touching me, my body convinced my brain it was good. That the smell was really good. That the smell was sexy. That I enjoyed the smell.
I started to stir, wanting to wake up and see him.
I wanted to look in his eyes while he was in my bedroom and see what the moment would bring.
“Sleep, Willow,” his rough, whiskey and smoke laced voice growled. “Sleep tight and do everything you can to forget about me.”
I started to turn when Travis bent down and kissed my cheek.
It made me freeze.
He pressed his nose to my cheek and moved down, going for my neck. I groaned and moved so I could expose my neck for his taking. The tip of his nose slid down my neck. When he exhaled a breath through his nose, the air tickled my skin and sent pulses of heat to places I could only wish Travis would go to next.
His hand touched my body over the covers. Resting against my stomach.
My teeth chattered for a few seconds as though I were standing naked in the freezing cold.
Then it was all gone.
“Sleep, bunny,” he whispered as he backed away.
I opened my eyes and watched him leave the room.
He left the door open just a sliver.
My eyes shut again, and I drifted back to sleep, my dreams a mix of what could have been and what I really wante
d.
I woke up the next morning alone in bed, not that I was really expecting anything else. Even still, I put my left hand across the bed and felt around for any sign of Travis. The covers smelled like me. The pillows smelled like me. The room smelled like me.
I got out of bed and didn’t even care to look at myself in the mirror. I had nothing to hide around Travis. Bed head. Bad breath. Whatever. I wanted to see him sober and see what he had to say.
The second I stepped out of the bedroom, I sensed that something was wrong.
I started to run through my own apartment.
The couch was empty. His hoodie was gone. And his bag wasn’t on the counter.
“No, no, no,” I whispered. “Dammit, Travis, no.”
I started to run toward the door, but I knew that was pointless. If he was gone, he didn’t just leave a minute ago. He probably left last night. After coming into my room. After kissing my cheek. After messing with my heart all night.
I noticed something on the counter where his bag had been located.
A piece of paper.
Ripped from Travis’s black notebook.
Willow -
Thanks for the talk. Thanks for the couch. Thanks for your lips to remind me that I can still feel something. But I have to do this. Alone. Maybe someday I could make you understand. I’ll be in touch later.
FYI - I’m not leaving. At least not in the way you probably think.
I slid the paper across the counter and rubbed my forehead.
My bedroom may have smelled like me, but the rest of my apartment smelled like Travis. It was always the dumbest stuff that finally got to me. Like finding a random drawing by Max. Or when Max would spend the night, leave, and I’d find sticky and old cereal under the couch.
Or right now.
Looking at the door.
It didn’t make sense to compare everything that had happened in my life.
Travis was just another person I cared about that I lost.
14
Awkward Hugs
What You Don't Know (True Hearts Book 6) Page 12
