Travis handed Katie a beer and slid into the chair next to her. She was sitting with her feet hooked up on the balcony rail, her lean legs looking tan and fit in the waning sunlight. Dinner was sitting nice and filling in their bellies. Sitting out on their balcony seemed like the right way to end an evening.
Travis stretched out his legs in front of him and stared at his bare feet. They ached, just like the rest of him.
Katie tapped her beer against his and took a swig. “Jenni's okay now. I called Juan while you were in the shower. ”
He looked toward her. “She took it hard, huh?”
Katie pulled on her shorts a little, still trying to get comfortable.
“Yeah. Once she saw Jason, it was a little better. I think she understood why she flipped out so bad after awhile. ”
“She's still not talking about the boys, huh?”
“Sometimes I wonder if she ever will. I feel so bad for her. She says she sees Lloyd every day now, out of the corner of her eye, or standing in the shadows. She's ignoring those visions. That's good, but she's not dealing with any of it. ”
“We're all fucked in the head cause of all this,” Travis decided.
“I've been hearing a few things around the fort. ”
“Like what?”
“People seeing ghosts, for one. Or hearing their voices. ”
Katie nodded. “Me, too. ”
“You dream of Lydia. ”
“I miss Lydia,” Katie reminded him, then slightly shrugged. “But I do have to admit that, sometimes, in my dreams, I feel her presence.
Or at least I think I do. Most of my dreams about her are just like flashes of memory or something along those lines. But, sometimes, I dream about her and she feels…real. ”
Travis' brow puckered as he considered this. “I can't say I do believe in ghosts exactly. But considering that we got the living dead running around, I can't really discount stuff either. Maybe Jenni's
asshole husband really is haunting her, trying to finish what he started.
I don't know. But I do know that until she deals with what happened with those boys, he's gonna be able to get to her. Ghost or not. ”
Katie sighed and ran a hand over her blond curls. “Yep. I agree.
Do you see ghosts? Dream them?”
Travis shook his head. “No. But I wasn't exactly close to anyone when it went down. My parents died in a car crash a few years back. I don't have siblings. My fiancee and I were over. Being in Ashley Oaks to help with the restoration was my new beginning in life. Juan was the one who got me out here. He was the one person in my life giving me any sort of grounding, I guess you could say. ”
“You're kinda like Jenni that way. This whole thing going down gave you a new lease on life, too. ”
“It gave me you,” Travis answered, taking her hand. He looked at her. His emotions were very close to the surface. It was never easy at the fort. There was always hard work to be done and problems to sort out. He spent long hours planning with Eric and Juan on the fort expansion, long hours with Nerit on fort defenses, long hours with Peggy and Bill on the internal workings of the fort. He wasn't officially mayor yet, but everyone was acting like he was. Some nights he was so exhausted all he wanted to do was lay in Katie's arms and listen to her breathe.
She ran her fingers over his. “Did you know that today is the first day of August?”
Travis laughed and shook his head. “No. No, I didn't. Hell, we missed the Fourth of July, didn't we?”
“Uh huh. ” Katie looked toward the Texas flag in the distance, most likely over the library. There was a huge one that flew over city hall.
“We can't miss out on other holidays. That's not right,” Travis decided. He held her hand as he lifted his beer with his other.
“Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. Once we handle the bandits, maybe we can start looking forward to those. ”
“We should have enough food to get through the winter and beyond. The hunters are bringing in plenty of venison and beef right now. We got that garden planted. Things should be okay. The well is good, got generators the ready for back up, firewood in case of power outages-”