Page 68 of Grown-Up Second Chance

He tilted my face toward him and kissed me. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, more the dot at the end of his sentence.

I let out a breath, then turned away. I’d planned to make it perfectly clear that we were not a couple, had only ever been friends, and were not destined for the great happily-ever-after.

I was failing miserably.

We went back to looking at the lake while I tried to remember the good, solid reasons this was impossible.

“I’m thinking about staying for another week,” Joe said. “Someone cancelled, so they have the room. My son might come down and join me for a bit, get some fishing in.”

“He likes it as much as you do?” I asked.

“Let’s say that for some strange reason he likes to spend time with his old man. He tolerates fishing because that’s the way to do it. He’s an avid hiker and cross-country skier.”

“Dillon’s a good place for him, then.”

“Suits him. In the winter he plays bass for a string band.”

“Violins?” I asked, trying to imagine Joe’s son in a suit playing chamber music.

“Fiddles,” he replied, and the image of blue jeans and flannel shirts clicked into place.

“It would be fun to hear them some time,” I said.

“That could be arranged.” He looked over at me. “If you decide to stick around, that is.”

There was nothing to say.

“Well, we’d best be headed back before it gets too dark. Don’t want to hit a bison on the road. If we time it right, we should hit the Upper Geyser Basin at just about sunset. I understand it’s really beautiful.”

“Sound nice.”

As we drove south from the hotel along Yellowstone Lake, I told him about my one and only trip to Yosemite, hoping to stay away from uncomfortable topics.

“Some friends and I decided to go camping. Larry wasn’t interested, which was fine with me,” I began. “It had been a long while since I’d gone camping, and some of them had never been, so there was a lot of new equipment and new routines.”

“Could be interesting,” Joe said.

“That’s one word. One guy brought along bear spray. We weren’t planning on doing any back country hiking, but he insisted on carrying it anyway.”

The accountant had never been in the woods before, thought a lot of himself, and figured going on the trip would be a great way to convince a young woman that he was date-worthy material. From the sparkling condition of his gear, and the well-used patina of hers, I’d figured he’d made a bad choice.

“We were hiking up to Vernal Falls when we ran into trouble. True to form, he had all his gear with him: carved and polished hiking stick, shiny hunting knife in a stiff leather sheaf, a Patagonia vest that still had its fluff. And the bear spray.”

“Patti and I took a trip down there once and hiked that trail. It’s pretty steep.”

“Yep.”

“Let me guess,” Joe said. “New hiking boots.”

“You got it. Pretty soon he was hurting. No one had a lot of sympathy because he’d already demonstrated what a blowhard he was. But the woman he was after took pity and stuck with him at the tail end of the group.

“All of a sudden we heard shouting. I turned back and saw her screaming at him. She flailed at her skin, coughed, and swiped at her eyes. A nearby ranger called it in, and she was whisked to emergency services.”

“Was she okay?” Joe asked.

“Yes.”

“So how did he manage to do that?”

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