He Bet I'd Still Drive Them to the Airport, So I Did novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Patio Door
Althea overhears Travis give Shelby her anniversary seat and bet $500 she will still drive them. She takes the bet, and the booking says Honeymoon.
On Thursday evening my husband gave his best friend my seat on our anniversary trip.
I heard him do it through the patio door, which he had left open a hand's width.
"Don't worry about the money, Shel," Travis said, easy and kind. "Althea won't mind. You get the seat, and she can drive us to the airport."
I stopped on the back step with my purse held against my stomach.
Inside the purse were a white clinic envelope and a pair of tiny cream socks.
I had bought the socks at the pharmacy next to the clinic, because I had been walking on air and had not known where else to put it.
The envelope said I was six weeks pregnant.
We had been trying for two years.
I had come home early to cook the good pasta and tell him over dinner.
"She won't actually drive us," Shelby said. Her laugh carried across the patio. "That's too much to ask."
"Five hundred says she does."
"You're on."
"She always does," Travis said. "She'll even pack us snacks."
I looked at the grill we had bought together, and the two chairs we had bought together, and the table where I had written our wedding place cards five years ago.
The trip was five nights in Lisbon, leaving Saturday at 10:40 in the morning.
I had paid $6,214 for it out of my grandmother's money, and I had put the booking in my name because I wanted to hand him the folder myself.
I hadn't even told him the hotel yet.
He knew the hotel.
I could hear it in how easily he said, "the room with the balcony."
I could have gone in then.
I could have thrown the envelope on the patio table and watched his face change.
Instead I stood there and thought about the two years.
Every appointment I had driven to alone.
Every cup and every needle and every waiting room full of couples.
Travis had not come to a single one.
He said he couldn't sit in those rooms, that they made him feel useless.
Since March he had gone quiet and changed the subject whenever I said the word doctor.
I had thought he was grieving with me.
I took one breath, pushed the door open and walked in smiling.
"Hey, you two."
Travis jumped.
Shelby stood by the grill in her scrubs, her dark ponytail swinging, holding a beer she had clearly taken from our fridge.
"Althea!" she said. "Oh my God, you're home early."
"I heard the end of that," I said.
Nobody moved.
Travis put his hand on the back of his neck and tried to look sorry.
"Babe, I was going to tell you tonight," he said. "Shel's had a terrible year. Her mom's sick, her landlord is selling her building. She needs this more than we do."
"You're right," I said.
His eyebrows went up.
"Shelby should have my seat," I said. "It's a beautiful hotel."
Shelby put her hand over her heart.
"Althea, no, I couldn't."
"You can. I'll drive you both to the airport on Saturday."
I turned to Travis.
"Five hundred, you said?"
He stared at me, and then he laughed, relieved and a little too loud.
"I told you," he said to Shelby. "I told you she would."
"I'd like it in cash," I said. "At the curb."
"Done." He kissed my cheek. "This is why I married you."
Shelby hugged me hard and said, "You're the best, you know that?"
She smelled like my own vanilla lotion.
I let her.
That night Travis fell asleep with the TV on and his phone face down on the nightstand.
I sat in the bathroom with the door locked and opened my laptop.
I told myself I was only going to look at the booking.
I wanted to see what a seat looked like when it belonged to somebody else.
The confirmation had a button called Manage Passengers.
It also had a field I had never filled in.
It was called Occasion.
Someone had typed a single word into it, and the entry was ten weeks old.
The word was Honeymoon.
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