Status: Chapter 25 to come!

Reach for the Sky

Fallbrook.

I narrowly managed to snatch my bags out of the back of the truck before Travis could take them from me; Renner had parked an enormous Silver Chevy Silverado in the grass beside his long driveway, and before I proceeded up the length of it, I stopped to observe the sheer amount of land Ronnie owned.

“Achilles is going to be in hog heaven,” I murmured, as I set my gear bag on its wheels on the concrete.

“Race ya!” Travis blew past me, dragging his gear bag on its front instead of its wheels behind him as he carried his duffel bag. Usually, I would have shouted something insulting about his gimping stride or actually participated in the “race,” but Tommy was dead and I hadn’t been able to summon any sort of happiness from our visit to California just yet. It seemed like everything that could have gone wrong did, too - we almost got into no less than seven car accidents on the way out from LAX (Renner chalked that up to the drivers of Los Angeles), we had a flat tire on the trailer on the highway and had to fix it ourselves (meaning I directed the pair of decidedly non-mechanical boys), we narrowly avoided a collision with a deer on the forested road to Renner’s…

“It’s two in the morning Travis, you win.” With a sigh, I followed Ronnie and Travis up the long driveway through the garage and into the quiet house. After he set his bag down in the living room, Ronnie stuck his head in the stairwell, and shouted as loud as I had ever heard from him.

“Lucy, I’m home!”

Instant chaos.

Renner’s two young boys thumped out of their beds above our heads (separate thumps, one was much lighter than the other), and made a mad dash toward the stairs, their elephant-like pounding drowned out his girlfriend’s light steps. Travis and I stood off to one side as a little blond boy in Spiderman pajamas shot out of the stairwell, followed by a taller brown-haired boy in Dinosaur footies came together to tackle their father in the legs.

The display sent my head reeling, and I quickly took a seat on the nearby plush leather couch before my knees could crumple. With a raised eyebrow and a concerned look, Travis followed to stand with a hand on my shoulder as Renner’s dark-haired girlfriend showered the man with kisses. It was almost too embarrassing and sappy to watch.

“Scottie, Travis, this is Gretchen, Nathan and Joshua. Guys, meet Scottie Finnegan and Travis Pastrana.”

After introductions had been made and a little wrestling done (Travis had really hit it off with the little boys, he was much better with children than I had ever expected), Gretchen showed us to the guest room before she and Renner went to sleep.

“What happened to you?” Travis’s intense whisper probably could have been heard out in the hallway, but he didn’t seem to care as he carefully closed the door behind himself. I made an attempt to parley his request by beginning to undress for bed, but the gangly brown-haired boy saw right through me, as usual. “Scottie, don’t you filibuster me.”

“I dunno, I’m just all emotional. It’s not a big deal.” Cheesy. But Travis didn’t press the matter further as we laid down to try and fit in a few hours of sleep before the sun rose. Silently I curled up into a ball on my side of the bed, and nearly flinched when Travis wrapped his arms around my shoulders.

“Scottie, it’s ok,”

“I know.”

The next morning, I perched on a stool with a cup of black coffee, watching as Renner enthusiastically made pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs for our ragtag group, which disappeared as soon as he put them on a plate between Travis and the pair of young boys.

“Come on, Scottie, eat up.” Ronnie dumped a load of eggs so huge I wouldn’t have been able to finish it on a normal day, as it were I was having difficulty keeping the piece of bacon I had eaten down while I began to lace up my tennis shoes.

“I don’t normally eat before I run…”

“You did an awful lot of running around last night,” I was surprised Travis managed to speak through an enormous mouthful of scrambled eggs.

“What?”

“You had one of those freaky-deaky night terrors, or at least that’s what Travis said. Never seen anything like it, I didn’t know you could climb so high.” I raised an eyebrow at Renner, then directed my gaze back to Travis, begging for more explanation, which he was happy to give.

“You climbed straight up the bed post and perched on top of it like a damn gargoyle, it was really impressive. But, ah, you kind of scared Joshua a little bit, and Gretchen thinks you’re on drugs now. Otherwise, two thumbs up, fantastic TP impression.” As I finished lacing my tennis shoes, I managed a weak smile.

“Well that’s fantastic. Great.” Bouncing on my feet now, I looked to Renner. “So where should I run? Do you have any trails?”

“Dirt Bike Trails…”

“That’s fine. How many miles?”

“The biggest loop is, like, twenty-four miles. I haven’t run it in a few months though, so that one’s probably pretty overgrown. The smallest is ten miles, just keep making right hand turns and you’ll come back to the house. Watch out for dirt bikers,”

“Ok, Dad. Geeze.” I shot the dark-haired man a good-willed smile, and thanked him before I proceeded out onto the driveway to begin stretching. After a few minutes alone, a pair of clown-sized tennis shoes entered my line of vision - Travis had stood pretty close so I could see him with my face down on my knee.

“You want to come with?” His heavy hand descended on my back, flattening it out so I could stretch just that little bit further; I took his silence as confirmation.

The trail we took would have been fantastically challenging on a quad due to its width, and probably pretty easy on a dirt bike, but it was brutal on two feet. Travis and I tripped several times each as we pressed on in silence; we ran on the brink of a sprint for me, which meant Travis had been sprinting the entire run. After a while, he dropped back for a slower pace, which allowed me to push myself without his judgment.

I could ignore the pain I felt for the loss of one of my closest friends by focusing on the pain in my sides. So I pushed until I was sprinting.

“Scottie? You alright?” Hands on my shoulders, Travis easily lifted me into a sitting position before he began to brush the thick California dirt off my back with his hands.

“I… I think so. I must have tripped.”

“Passed out is more like it.” Well, duh, of course that was what happened - Travis’s dad had always said (in the few months I had known him) that one can never know how far they can push themselves if they don’t pass out. Gingerly, I held a long red ponytail off my neck with my free hand, still slightly dazed from the fall and how hard I had pushed to get where I was. “Come on sweetheart, you gotta get up. Can’t sit here all day.”

“But I’d like to. Sit with me,” Travis chuckled as he helped me to my feet, and allowed me to lean on him until I could finally control my breathing.

“You alright?”

“Not really,” He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and sighed as he attempted to run his fingers through my matted curls.

“I figured. You know, it’s alright to cry about it. I promise I won’t tell all of your tough dirt biking friends.” I smiled into his chest, knowing that he wouldn’t hold it against me if I didn’t choose his shoulder to cry on.

“You’re too good to me,”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Race you.”

“You’re on.”

By the time we got back, Renner was already talking about leaving to go retrieve Jolene and Achilles and drop the lot of us off at Twitch’s house (who had more spare rooms and a bigger foam pit). Travis was having none of it, and I joined his argument against Ronnie driving us all over.

“Honestly, RenRen, we’ll just rent a truck. You don’t need to be driving all over for us, you’ve done enough for us already!” Travis had stuck his head under the faucet in the kitchen sink and shook like a dog - much to Gretchen’s distaste (which was another reason we were being sent to Stenberg’s) - leaving me to pick up the argument. It was feeble.

“No. I have, like, three trucks laying around. I can’t drive them all at once. Just pay for the gas. No, that’s it. No more arguing, you’re taking the Ford, ‘cause I hate Ford anyway.” As a Ford girl, I was truly hurt by his last statement, but Travis and I accepted the keys and after a pair of quick showers, we packed up our things (a quad and a dirt bike in a truck bed was a tight squeeze, but we managed) and said our goodbyes to the Renner clan so we could go retrieve Jolene, Travis’s specially-made X-Games dirt bike (he had something up his sleeve) and my beloved hound.