Sometimes, the way he and his sister had turned out struck him as strange, since she, too, was in no hurry to marry. Their parents had been married for almost thirty-five years, and Travis could no more picture either of them single than he could picture himself flapping his arms and zooming into the clouds. Sure, he’d heard the stories of how they’d met on a church group camping trip while they were in high school, how Mom had cut her finger while slicing a piece of pie for dessert, and how dad had clamped his hand over the wound like a surgical bandage to stem the bleeding. One touch and “Bing, bang, boom, just like that,” Dad would say, “I knew she was the one for me.”
So far, there’d never been a bing, bang, boom for Travis. Nothing even close, for that matter. Sure, there was his high school girlfriend, Olivia; everyone at the school seemed to think they were perfect for each other. She lived across the bridge in Morehead City these days, and every now and then he’d run into her at Wal-Mart or Target. They’d chat for a minute or so about nothing important and then amicably go their separate ways.
There had been countless girlfriends since Olivia, of course. He wasn’t clueless when it came to women, after all. He found them attractive and interesting, but more than that, he was genuinely fond of them. He was proud of the fact that he’d never had what could even remotely be considered a painful breakup for either him or one of his exes. The breakups were almost always mutual, petering out like a soggy fuse on a firecracker as opposed to the big kaboom of fireworks overhead. He considered himself friends with all of his exes-Monica, his latest, included-and figured they’d say the same thing about him. He wasn’t right for them, and they weren’t right for him. He’d watched three former girlfriends get married off to great guys, and he’d been invited to all three weddings. He seldom thought about finding permanence or his soul mate, but in the rare times he did, he always ended up imagining finding someone who shared the same active, outdoor passions he did. Life was for living, wasn’t it? Sure, everyone had responsibilities, and he didn’t mind those. He enjoyed his work, earned a good living, owned a house, and paid his bills on time, but he didn’t want a life where those things constituted all there was. He wanted to experience life. No, change that. He needed to experience life.
He’d been that way for as long as he could remember. Growing up, Travis had been organized and capable when it came to school, getting good grades with a minimum of fuss or anxiety, but, more often than not, just as happy with a B instead of an A. It drove his mother crazy-“Imagine how well you could do if you applied yourself,” she repeated every time a report card came home. But school didn’t excite him the way riding his bike at breakneck speed or surfing in the Outer Banks did. While other kids thought about sports in terms of baseball and soccer, he thought of floating on air on his motorbike as he soared off a dirt ramp or the rush of energy he felt when he successfully landed it. He was an X Games kind of kid, even before there was such a thing, and by thirty-two, he’d pretty much done it all.
In the distance, he could see wild horses congregating near the dunes of Shackleford Banks, and as he watched them, he reached for his sandwich. Turkey on wheat with mustard, an apple, and a bottle of water; he had the same thing every day, after the exact same breakfast of oatmeal, scrambled egg whites, and a banana. As much as he craved the occasional adrenaline rush, his diet couldn’t be more boring. His friends marveled at the rigidity of his self-control, but what he didn’t tell them was that it had more to do with his limited palate than discipline. When he was ten, he’d been forced to finish a plate of Thai noodles drenched in ginger, and he’d vomited most of the night. Ever since then, the faintest whiff of ginger would send him gagging to the bathroom, and his palate had never been the same. He became timid about food in general, preferring plain and predictable to anything with exotic flavor; then gradually, as he grew older, he cut out the junk. Now, after more than twenty years, he was too afraid to change.
As he enjoyed his sandwich-plain and predictable-he wondered at the direction of his thoughts. It wasn’t like him. He usually wasn’t prone to deep reflection. (Another cause of the inevitable soggy fuse, according to Maria, his girlfriend of six years ago.) Usually he just went about his life, doing what needed to be done and figuring out ways to enjoy the rest of his time. That was one of the great things about being single: A person could pretty much do what he wanted, whenever he wanted, and introspection was only an option.
It had to be Gabby, he thought, though for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why. He barely knew her, and he doubted whether he’d even had a chance to meet the real Gabby Holland yet. Oh, he’d seen the angry one the other night and the mea culpa one just a little while ago, but he had no idea how she behaved under ordinary circumstances. He suspected that she had a good sense of humor, though on closer reflection, he couldn’t pin down the reason he thought so. And she was no doubt intelligent, though he could have deduced that on the basis of her job. But other than that… he tried and failed to picture her on a date. Still, he was glad she’d come by, if only to give them a chance to start over as neighbors. One thing he’d learned was that bad neighbors could make a person miserable. Joe’s neighbor was the kind of guy who burned leaves on the first gorgeous day of spring and mowed his lawn first thing Saturday mornings, and the two of them had nearly come to blows more than once after a long night with the baby. Common courtesy, it sometimes seemed to Travis, was going the way of the dinosaurs, and the last thing he wanted was for Gabby to feel any reason to avoid him. Maybe he’d invite her over the next time his friends came by…
Yeah, he thought, I’ll do that. The decision made, he gathered his cooler and started back toward his truck. On tap that afternoon were the regular assortment of dogs and cats, but at three, someone was supposed to be bringing in a gecko. He liked treating geckos or any exotic pet; the idea that he knew what he was talking about, which he did, always impressed the owners. He enjoyed their awed expressions: I wonder if he knows the exact anatomy and physiology of every creature on earth. And he pretended that he did. But fact was a bit more prosaic. No, he of course didn’t know the ins and outs of every creature on earth-who could?-but infections were infections and pretty much treated the same way regardless of species; only the medication dose was different, and that he had to verify in a reference book he kept on his desk.
As he got in the car, he found himself thinking about Gabby and wondering whether she’d ever gone surfing or snowboarding. It seemed unlikely, but at the same time, he had the strange feeling that, unlike most of his exes, she would be up for either of those two things, given the opportunity. He wasn’t sure why, and as he started the engine he tried to dismiss the notion, doing his best to convince himself it didn’t matter. Except for the fact that, somehow, it did.
Five
Over the next two weeks, Gabby became an expert in making a covert entry and exit, at least when it came to her house.