Page 40 of Keeping Secrets

"Don’t I know it," Keely said.

Chloe followed Nick into the kitchen.

"And then there were two," Travis said, sounding a bit nervous.

She pulled the beanie from her coat pocket and offered it to him. "Here. Thanks for lending it to me."

"Keep it," he said. "I have others. Anyway, it looks better on you."

She felt her cheeks color. "Thanks."

"Trivia night will be fun. I can make you a mocktail."

She looked up at him, surprised. "Okay. Thanks."

"I’m sorry that I’ve been so weird and distant lately. It was never about you. I just had a lot on my mind."

"With Scot’s health troubles?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah. That’s been rough."

"I get that. I can’t imagine my dad going through something like that. He’s like Scot. Such a rock."

"I know." Travis met her eyes and smiled. She thought of all of the sleepovers when they were young, the times that Nick would begrudgingly let her join them in a board game or a movie and popcorn. Travis had been in her life as long as she could remember, and it was a relief not to feel like things between them were strained.

"We should probably leave soon," Chloe said as she walked back in.

Travis looked at the time and flinched. "Shoot, yeah. I’m due to pick Scot up." He looked at Chloe. "Meet you guys there?"

She felt her cheeks turn pink again, which only made her blush harder. She looked down to grab another cookie. "Yeah. See you there."

He left, and when Keely looked up, Chloe was grinning at her with a knowing glint in her eyes.

"What?" Keely said.

"Oh, nothing." Chloe grinned. "Let’s get ready for trivia night!"

CHAPTER 13

The previous week’s trivia night had gone pretty well, but having Keely there sent him right back to feeling as anxious as he had then.

Scot had used his time in the hospital to write a whole stack of questions and answers for Travis to use that week, completely ignoring the suggestion that they could take a week off from trivia night at the Bottlenose.

To Scot, canceling trivia night was unthinkable. It was a Pelican Point tradition, part of the backbone of the restaurant bar that was his whole life. So Travis had gone along with it. Anything to keep the old man happy.

He had pushed back again when Scot said that he intended on coming, but eventually he relented. Better to drive him there than to have Scot try to make his way down to the bar himself, half-healed and probably still feeling the effects of his concussion.

So Travis brought him to the bar early, and he overrode Scot’s protests enough to install him in a makeshift throne using an old leather armchair from a corner of the bar and a table with a pillow of clean bar rags so that Scot could elevate his injured ankle.

The bar filled up early with teams and pairs of people eating dinner before trivia night kicked off. Keely was there in the corner, sharing a platter of nachos with Nick and Chloe. Travis was tempted to take the empty seat at the table, but just when he had worked up the courage, Ali came in and joined her team. Travis retreated behind the bar and busied himself with his usual work, even though there was another bartender on duty that night.

Just before trivia night kicked off, he made good on his promise to make Keely her own mocktail. He remembered that she had loved mango juice as a kid, so he made her a sparkling drink with mango simple syrup and a generous squeeze of lime, then garnished it with a thin slice of lime and added a bright green straw.

He walked across the restaurant and handed it to her silently as the conversation at her table continued. When she looked at him and took a sip, the rest of the crowd faded away. All he could see were her leaf-green eyes and the light dusting of freckles that adorned her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Then she gave him a look of such surprise and gratitude that he nearly floated up to the front of the room.

"Trivia night starts in five minutes!" he announced. "Claim your table, claim your buzzer. Let’s go!"

Nat and her boyfriend were there, sitting at a table with her landlord and another familiar face, someone that Travis had seen around the bar and at CPR projects but whose name he couldn’t place.

---