Chapter 18
Travis felt a twinge of embarrassment as he drove past Nick and Chloe’s place. He’d had the obligatory awkward conversation with his childhood friend to tell him that he and Keely were seeing each other.
Nick hadn’t made much of it. A look, a nod, a change of subject. He was a quiet person. And he knew – they both knew – how significant this was. Nick didn’t have to bluster. Travis knew how important Nick’s little sister was to him – and he had a feeling that Nick knew what Keely meant to Travis as well.
He parked in front of Keely’s place and walked up to the door. She opened it before he had the chance to knock.
She was dressed for adventure, in an old pair of jeans and hiking shoes. She pulled a canvas jacket over her wool sweater and pulled a hat over her red hair. His hat, the one that he had given her weeks ago to protect her ears from the fierce coastal wind. She would need it today.
“Ready to go?” he asked. “I packed lunch.”
“Yep!” She slung a backpack over her shoulder, then closed the door and locked it. “I packed dessert.”
“Awesome. I’ve got a thermos of hot tea in the car too.”
“Perfect.”
He opened the door for her, and she thanked him with a kiss on the cheek before she climbed in. They were quiet on the drive north, but it was a comfortable silence.
No matter how many times he drove this stretch of Highway One, the beauty of it always astonished him. There were dramatic views of the ocean cliffs on one side and rolling hills on the other, stands of wind-bent trees that hugged the road, and old buildings like a lighthouse that stood stark and white against the blue sky.
Keely had liked the bluegrass music she’d heard the last time she was in his car, so he was playing another album by the same group today. Between the sweeping ocean views and the lull of the music, conversation felt unnecessary.
The act of driving, the music inside and the beauty outside, Keely there next to him… all of it soothed his anxieties to the point that he was able to leave them behind, if only for a little while. For the first time in weeks, each breath came easily. He was content just to be.
Then he parked, and they stepped out into the whipping wind. Keely’s eyes met his over the roof of the car, and they smiled. The easy contentment of the drive shifted into a new excitement, an urge to get moving up the trail.
He shrugged on a thick jacket and pulled a hat down over his ears. “Ready?”
“Let’s go!”
“I have room in my backpack. Do you want me to carry your food and water?”
“It’s okay, I can carry it.”
“I know you can, but you might as well toss it in here. I don’t mind.”
“Okay.” She put three containers into the backpack – the desserts were bulky but not heavy – and slipped her water bottle into a side pocket. “Thank you.”
“Happy to.” He locked the car and clipped the keys onto his pants. “Let’s go!”
It was a long trek up the coast, moving parallel to the beach up a dusty trail lined with scrubby, desperate-looking plants. The wind whipped their words away, making conversation next to impossible, but he didn’t mind. He let Keely go first to set the pace, and her long legs ate up the level trail. He walked along behind her and enjoyed the view.
Finally they reached the elephant seals. Brown lumps in the distance at first, but eventually they got close enough to see them clearly. The trail dead-ended at a roped-off line meant to keep park visitors a safe distance from the gargantuan sea mammals. There were a few other tourists there, snapping pictures and bundled against the cold.
They were downwind from the seals, and the usual cacophony of noise reached them clearly. There was the drum-like sound of the males warning each other away across vast stretches of beach and the incessant squawking of the babies, like hungry hatchlings. The mothers were mostly still, basking in the sun, but occasionally one would get up and move in a prodigious waving motion, looking like water made solid as they wormed their way across the sand.
“They’re huge,” Keely breathed. She stood so close to him that her arm pressed against his.
“They don’t call them elephant seals for nothing,” he replied.
“I mean, I knew they were big, but wow. I thought the name was more about the crazy nose that the males have. I had no idea how huge they were. They must be bigger than walruses!”
“They’re nearly twice the size of walruses,” said a park docent who stood nearby. His dark blue windbreaker moved and crackled in the restless air. He looked close to seventy with a white mustache and wind-pinked cheeks. “Southern elephant seals can grow over twenty feet long. The northern ones we have here can reach about sixteen feet and five thousand pounds.”
“That’s amazing,” Keely said.
“The pups are nearly four feet long when they’re born.”
“Eesh.”
“They spend nearly all of their lives in the water, and they can hold their breath for over an hour and a half. When they’re at sea, they can swim up to sixty miles in a day and dive to depths of five thousand feet.”
“Five thousand?” a woman on the other side of the docent exclaimed.
“Yes ma’am, though dives of one to two thousand feet are more common.”
“How extraordinary.”
Keely bumped her hip into his, and Travis looked down into her bright green eyes.
“The seals are amazing,” she said, “but I can’t feel my nose, and I’m starving. Is there a place we can get out of the wind?”
“I know a place.” He took her hand in his and led her back down the trail. When he felt how cold her fingers were, he put her hand between both of his and rubbed some warmth back into it. Then he looped behind her and took up her other hand. “There’s a beach down here where we can find some shelter from the wind.”
They backtracked a little ways and then took a small trail that shot off of the main one. It was nearly invisible unless you were looking for it, and he was happy to see that the small cove down below was empty. They picked their way down the steep switchbacks and nestled into the northern end of the cove, where the cliffs blocked the wind completely.
There, out of the wind, the winter sun was warm enough that he took off his hat and jacket. They settled down with their backs against the sun-warmed rocks, nothing in front of them but a stretch of empty beach and crashing waves.
“This has been the best day,” Keely said.
“Agreed.” He pulled out the food that he had packed. He wasn’t much of a cook, and the food from the Bottlenose didn’t travel well, so he had essentially put together a charcuterie board… without the board. There was cheese and salami, crackers, apples. He felt a bit silly offering ingredients up to a chef, but Keely tucked in happily.
“This cheddar is really good,” she said between bites.
“Yeah, it’s my favorite.”
She sighed in contentment and leaned back against the rock. “I needed this.”
“Nature is medicine,” he said.
Then, without warning, she was crying. He looked at her in shock for a second, then dropped his food and put an arm around her. She leaned into him and put her face into the fabric of his shirt, then pulled away and shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said.
She buried her face in her hands. He didn’t know if she was still crying or just embarrassed, or both. He wanted to know why she was crying. He wanted to know what he could say to make it better. But he just sat there, feeling useless. After a moment, he reached out and put a hand on her back.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t know why I– God, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Please.”
“Talking to the detective yesterday, it brought up a lot of stuff that I’d buried. I thought I was okay. I thought I was past it. But I just… I don’t know. It was hard. It was really hard.”
“Do you miss him?” he asked quietly.
“God no!” She was so shocked – or maybe offended – by the question that she sat up straight and leaned away, her green eyes wide. A moment later, she settled. Shaking her head, she looked out at the ocean. “I just hate to think of… all the mistakes I made, I guess. The hell that I put my parents through, and Nick. It hurts to think about all of that, and so mostly I just… don’t. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid.”
She gave him a brief, grateful look and turned back toward the crashing waves.
A desperate curiosity bit at him, demanding to know what had happened in the interview, what she had learned about the investigation.
He pushed it aside.
“We all make mistakes,” he said softly.
“Not like this. I did terrible things, Travis. I stole from my own parents just to get my next fix. I don’t know how to reconcile that person with who I really am, who I am now, who I was before. I feel like I can’t fully trust myself, and that’s terrifying. Those aren’t normal mistakes.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Oh yeah?” she scoffed. “What mistakes have you made?”
“I got in a bar fight once, not long after I moved to Pelican Point.”
“And?” The word was a challenge.
“And he died.”
She turned to him, astonished.
“I didn’t mean to. I landed a punch, and he fell backwards, cracked his head, went down. It all happened so fast.”
“And what happened?” she breathed.
“Scot spoke up for me. The judge went easy. But I’ve had to carry that, always. Mostly, like you said, I try not to think about it. But it’s a part of me, a part of my story. I ended a life. Just because the guy wanted to pick a fight, and I decided that I should hold my ground instead of walking away. For no reason at all, really. I was just young and stupid.”
Her hand found its way into his. “I had no idea.”
“You never really know what other people are carrying,” he said softly. “Just try not to judge yourself too harshly. We all have our own demons. We’re all doing the best we can.”
“So I’m not special,” she said with a laugh that was halfway to a sob.
“You are. Just not because of that.” He put a finger under her chin, barely touching her, and she turned her face toward his. Her nose was still pink from the cold, and there were tears in her eyes, and she was beautiful. He leaned forward and kissed her softly. And then he poured each of them a cup of tea.
“Ready for dessert?” she asked. Her tone was one of bright determination, begging him to put down the burdens of the past and just be present with her here in the sunshine.
He was happy to oblige. Regardless of what happened, they would always have this moment: sitting here in the sunshine, just them and nature, enjoying each other’s company. “Always.”
“I went a bit crazy baking last night,” she said as she opened the first container. “I made piles of macarons, even though I don’t think I’ll do that for the event this weekend. It’s more of a Plan B.”
“Your Plan B is phenomenal,” he said through a mouthful of lemon macaron.
She laughed. “They turned out pretty good.”
“These are phenomenal.” He bit into a pink and green macaron. It tasted like the cake they had eaten on their first date, rose and pistachio. “These are the best macarons I’ve ever had.”
“Thanks.” She selected a chocolate one and bit into it delicately, which made him feel a bit self-conscious about shoving them into his mouth whole. Not enough to stop, maybe, but still.
“And this is only the first container?” he asked between bites.
“It’s probably the best one,” she said as she opened the other two. “These are some meringues that I was thinking of serving with lemon curd, like deconstructed lemon meringue? But they didn’t turn out like I hoped, not good enough for the event this weekend. And this box here has shortbread cookies, another piece of the same idea.”
“I bet Guillermo and Sunday would love deconstructed lemon meringue.”
“I think so too. If I can execute it well. It’s not quite there yet.”
“Keely,” he said after he had sampled both, “these are amazing. The meringues taste like roasted marshmallows, and these cookies melt in your mouth.”
“They’re not bad,” she acknowledged with a small smile, “but they’re not good enough. Yet.”
“Well, it’s all delicious. And like I said, your Plan B is amazing.”
“Yeah, right now Plan B is looking like my Plan A. But I don’t know, a macaron tower doesn’t feel good enough. Not for what they expect, for what their standards are. Every day that I get closer to their party without having a plan in place, I get more and more anxious.”
He ran his thumb across the back of her hand. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah.” She let out a huff of breath and picked up another macaron. “Thanks.”
They were quiet for a while, eating the treats that Keely had made.
He loved the white noise here, the steady crash of waves on rocks and wind whipping over the tops of the cliffs. He could even catch snatches of the elephant seals’ noises every now and then. Like the beauty of the drive, sitting on this beach with Keely kept his anxiety at bay.
“How’s Scot?” she asked after a while.
And there it was again. “He fears the worst.”
She sat up straight, eyes wide. “Like, terminal?”
“No.” He shook his head quickly. “I didn’t mean that. At least I don’t think – God, I hope not. No, but he’s worried that he’s not fit to run a business anymore. He thinks that he never will be again, that he’s only going to get worse.”
“He wants to sell the bar?”
Travis shook his head slowly. “He wants me to run it.”
“But that’s wonderful.”
He looked at her, surprised by her reaction.
“Travis, he wants to hand it over to you. It will still be there for him, but he won’t have to deal with the daily stress of it. Do you not want to take over the bar?”
“I want him to run it. I want him to get better.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” she asked in a gentle voice.
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“Will you do this for him?”
“I guess so. If he really needs me to, I will. Of course I will. I just… I don’t want to say yes yet. It’s like admitting there’s no hope. He’s still so young. I thought he would be there at the helm until he was ninety.”
She squeezed his hand and nodded. They sat there like that for a long time, hand in hand, watching the seagulls and the wild surf.