Hold You Down

19| Epilogue

6 months later

"Why you so happy today, kid?" A colleague questioned Travis upbeat mood that he had displaying all week.

"I'm going home in a hour or so. Haven't seen my fam in a long time. Being on this base with y'all squids everyday is draining." Travis admitted while walking beside the fellow sailor.

"Stop lying. You love us."

Travis chuckled and shook his head. "Something like that I suppose."

"Don't have too much fun without us kid," the sailor joked as they both arrived to their respective berthing spaces.

"I'll definitely do that just because you said not too," Travis hollered one last thing to his acquaintance before lying down on his bunk to wait for his departing call.

He had been waiting forever to get these two weeks of leave to see his family for Thanksgiving and now he could finally enjoy them.

"Thompson, report!"

Travis rose from his bunk quickly and grabbed his bag to leave. A huge grin was plastered on his face as he walked from the station to land.

When arriving where he was supposed to for the driver, he was met with someone else. Travis appeared suspicious about why the car service had not sent a vehicle.

"Capt, what's going on?" he casually asked, looking around to see others boarding their station again.

"Thompson, you've been denied leave right now because we're expecting some movement and we need all of our men. I'm so sor--"

"Yeah, I've heard this before," Travis groaned lowly while mentally rolling his eyes. He tugged his bag a little tighter and started to head back on the ship.

"Wait..." Captain Grant called out to him and got a hold of his wrist. Travis arched his brow and waited for his colleague to let it go.

"Sir, we're in public," he reminded his captain, not trying to draw any attention. Captain Grant slowly let his wrist go.

"Sorry," his captain mumbled.

Travis nodded and sighed deeply before responding sarcastically. "It's cool...maybe Christmas."

Captain Grant started to speak, but glanced around their surroundings and decided against it. He simply mouthed words to Travis.

'I'll call you later.'

A crooked smile formed on Travis' face, signaling that he had got the message before leaving to get back on the ship. When he got back on, all Travis could think about was how he was going to miss out this year's festivities.

It was bad enough that he had missed out on certain things like seeing Sky run in her college race or his mom get out of the medical center, but he was looking forward to whatever the big news is that his dad and Bahja had for him.

Now, he has to call and cancel those plans as well. Just as he picked up his phone, Tevin's number popped up on the screen. Travis sighed before answering.

"Hey pops," he uttered into the phone.

"Sup, Trav. What time should I pick you up from the airport tonight kid?"

"Umm, yeah about that..."

~

Brooklyn clicked through the channels on the hotel room's television and sat at the little desk, observing her own sketches for error. This weekend, she was meeting with an art buyer in Manhattan and she wanted everything to be just perfect.