Chapter 23
Travis
I park my car in the driveway and the phone rings right away. When I see it’s her, I can’t help the way my chest contracts when I see her face. "Hey," I answer after one ring. The smile fills my face as I get out of the car. Pushing my shoulder up to hold the phone, I take out the flowers that I stopped by to get for her.
"Hi," she says and she sounds exhausted. She’s been on call for the last ten days; I look at my watch and see that it’s past 7:00 p.m. "I just got out of surgery." I stop walking midstep when I hear those words.
"Weren’t you supposed to be on your way here?" I ask her. The last text I got from her was, “leaving in an hour” and that was at three.
"I was and then I got an emergency call and I had no time to text you." I close my eyes and then turn to sit on the front steps. "I’m so sorry."
"It’s been over two weeks," I remind her and I’m pissed that our plans have changed yet again. Last week I tried to get out to see her, but then shit came up and I had back-to-back emergencies, so I just couldn’t leave. We’ve been talking about this weekend for the past week. I didn’t even make any plans except to get food in. I was going to lock the door and only open it when she had to leave. I missed her more than I could put into words, and every single day I was getting crabbier and crabbier, to the point where they were scared to talk to me.
"You don’t have to remind me, Travis," she says, and I can hear that she is pissed also. "I know exactly how many days it’s been," she huffs. "Even if I forgot, you would remind me." I drop the flowers on the steps beside me. "I have to go and take a shower. I’m covered in guts and shit."
"Fine," I snap out. "Call me after." I look down at the phone and see my screenshot, which is the picture that she sent me this week. She was sitting in the middle of the field with her hair piled on her head. With one eye closed, she looked more beautiful than she ever did before.
I grab the flowers and head inside, slamming the door behind me. I toss the flowers onto the counter next to my keys and my phone. Pulling open the fridge and grabbing a bottle of beer, I twist open the cap, throwing it into the sink, not even giving a shit. I walk over to the couch and sit down, kicking off my shoes. Grabbing the remote, I turn on the television and just flick the channels while I finish my bottle of beer.
So much is going through my head, it’s like a spinning merry-go-round. I finish the beer in three gulps and get another one. "I really fucked things up," I say to the television, taking another pull of the beer. "Should I have just asked her to come with me?" I look at the bottle in my hand. "I fucking hate this shit." I look at the television, not even knowing what I’m watching.
Playing the scenario in my head over and over again. Asking her to come and then wondering if we would be married by now. For sure we would be, I would be begging her to marry me. Would we even be living in this house? Get up grabbing another beer and then checking to see if she called me, I think about calling her but I’m afraid that she might have fallen asleep and I’ll wake her.
The whole night I drink beer after beer while I make myself almost crazy with questions about what would have been. I lie on the couch sometime after eleven and my eyes close for a second. I hear the soft knock and my eyes flutter open to see the television still on. My head feels all groggy when I pick up my phone to see that it’s just after 2:00 a.m. I see that there isn’t a text from her, nor have I missed a call. My stomach sinks knowing that she is probably mad at me for what happened before. I contemplate getting up and going to sleep in my bed when I hear the knock again. I sit up, looking back at the door and getting up. I take four steps to the door and then hear a soft knock yet again. "What the hell?" I say to myself as I grab the door handle and the phone rings in my hand. I look down seeing Harlow’s name at the same time that my hand opens the door. My hand stops halfway to my ear when I see her standing there in the middle of the porch with the phone to her ear. "Harlow," I whisper, and I wonder if I’m dreaming about her again. I blink a couple of times to make sure that I’m really seeing her.
"Hi." She holds up her hand with the phone in it. "Surprise," she says, opening her arms and my phone falls to the floor and I rush out to her. My arms wrap around her waist as I pick her up. She wraps her legs around my waist at the same time she grabs my face with both hands and lowers her lips to mine. I slide my tongue into her mouth and the both of us moan out. I turn around, walking back into the house, closing the front door with my foot.