I’d forgotten all about Steve and his promise of steak until he yells good-naturedly that I ought to come on over.

Steve blinks the smoke away and offers me a plate.  “I took a guess that you’re a man who likes his dinner well done.”

“You guessed right,” I say and confess that once I’ve got the juicy rib eye under my nose I’m suddenly hungry as a bear.

Steve’s wife, Michele, perches on a footstool and eats daintily while asking me polite questions.  The boys, who I have started thinking of as Aden 1 and Aden 2, toast marshmallows and make charming messes of their faces until Michele sighs and escorts them to the campground bathroom to get cleaned up.

“You’re not here with any friends?” Steve asks, blotting his dripping chin with a paper napkin.

“Nope.  I tend to travel alone.”

Steve doesn’t say anything and I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about inviting some sketchy loner to hang out with his family.  He doesn’t let on if anything’s bothering him though.  He just starts gathering trash in a plastic bag while I chew my steak.

“First time at the Canyon?” he asks.

“No.  You?”

“Drove up here once before, years ago.  Day trip.  Asked a girl to marry me that day.”  He pauses and smiles wistfully at the memory.

“I hope she said yes.”

“She did.  I’ve got the boxy minivan to prove it.”

“We should all be so lucky.  I just lost my girl.”

What in the god almighty hell made me say that??

Steve is looking at me now.  I wonder if he drugged my steak with some sort of suburban truth serum.  That doesn’t make any sense though. Especially because what I said isn’t even the truth.  Ren hasn’t been ‘my girl’ for a long time. The shit that happened between us during my brief Atlantis intrusion sure can’t count as a relationship. I’m just dehydrated or something.

Michele returns with the two boys, who are now dragging their feet like they are in the throes of a sugar crash.  She stands behind Steve’s chair, rests her soft hands on his shoulders and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek.  “I’d better get these two rascals off to bed.”

“I’ll be inside in a little while,” he tells her and she blows him a kiss before disappearing behind the tent flaps with the kids.

Steve leans over, opens a red cooler and withdraws two dripping cans of beer.  He tosses one to me and I’m happy to catch it.  It only takes me a few seconds to drain the whole thing.  Steve, on the other hand, takes one careful sip and lets the can rest on his knee.

“Sorry,” he says, “about your girl.”

I feel like I ought to correct my earlier statement, about how I didn’t really lose a girl because she wasn’t mine in the first place.  But I don’t.  I just sigh and lower my head.  “Eh, it was my fault.  This time anyway.  Just couldn’t get out of my own way.”

“That sounds like a bad case of regret.”

I think about the look on Ren’s face when she first saw me pull up to Atlantis.  I think about how I played it like a cocky fucker right up until the end even though all I wanted to do was talk to her.  It’s never made any sense to me, the way she turned away from everything we had. I have no doubt her parents made some threats but that wouldn’t have stopped the girl I thought I knew.  Yet when I finally sought out the chance to get a real answer I couldn’t seem to say one single honest thing. So of course neither did she.

“Yeah,” I admit slowly.  “I’ve got a few regrets.  She might have some too. But I guess there just comes a time in every doomed relationship when you’ve got to cut the ties for good, you know?  Move on.”

  Steve doesn’t respond right away.  He takes a long gulp from his can of beer and glances at the tent when the sound of a giggling child filters out.  A vague smile crosses his face and then disappears.  He looks at the ground and keeps his voice low.  “I’ll tell you something. We’ve had our moments, Michele and I.  We were young when we met, about your age.  My frat boys were giving me a time about being pussy whipped.  Said there’d be plenty of more chances to find something just as good or better.”

“Obviously you knew they were full of shit.”

Steve nods.  “I know that now.  Back then it took me a little while to locate my brain.  We were apart for a year.”  Steve frowns, perhaps remembering what it was like to nurse a huge hole in the heart for a while.  “I wish I could say that I came to my senses overnight but in truth it was a slow process.  Had a lot of growing up to do.  I don’t know why she took me back.  God knows she could have done a thousand times better.”

“Well,” I say because there’s no non-corny way to respond when some dude spills his guts over a campfire.  “Looks like it all worked out pretty smoothly.  You guys seem like you’ve got the dream.”

  He leans back in his chair and sighs.  “Oz, you’ll probably never meet a happier man but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to work at it.  Even if it’s the best kind of work it’ll still twist your heart into knots sometimes.   All I can do is try to be worthy.  And let me tell you, I’ll try every day until I run out of days.”

While I mull over Steve’s words he finishes his beer and carefully places the can in the garbage bag.  Suddenly he lets out a small chuckle.

“Forgive me if things took a turn for the heavy handed.  I’m not really in the habit of dispensing random advice like the wise old man cliché at the end of every story.  Just hate to see a young guy like you all lonely and defeated if you’ve got someone worth fighting for.”

Lonely. 

The word tugs at me.  Am I lonely?  Seems like a weak question, a question for guys who wax their forearms and shiver when it’s seventy degrees out.  I’ve always thought of myself in solitary terms.  Never as part of anything.  Well, never except for those few ancient months I was with Ren.  And however that turned out, it was special at the time.  Maybe if the world had just tilted a little bit differently it could have been something that lasted.  Maybe I could have been like this guy, a vital piece of a bigger picture.

“Not sure if there’s enough left to fight for,” I tell him.  “At this point we’ve done things to each other.  Hell, we might both be tired of fighting anyway.”

Steve tilts his head back and peers at me shrewdly.  “Are you?  Are you tired of fighting?”

I think about the question for a long time.  “I thought I was.  But maybe not.  Maybe it’s a little closer to the truth that I haven’t even started fighting yet.”

Steve seems pleased with my answer. “That’s how you know it’s not over, buddy. That’s how you know.”

I sit there grappling with the idea while Steve ties the corners of the trash bag together.  The sounds of the campground are softening as the night settles.  There are low voices and the faintest wisps of music.

The flap of the big tent opens and Michele pokes her head out.  “Babe, can you bring me some water when you come inside?”

Steve winks and reaches over to dig around in the red cooler.  “I’ll do better than that,” he says and triumphantly produces a bottle of wine.  His knees pop when he stands and he turns to me with a raised eyebrow.  “You planning on sticking around tomorrow, Oz?”

I was planning on it, but now I’m not.  “Actually I think I’ll be heading out before dawn.”

“Ah, hitting the road early.”

“Yep.  Want to be well on my way before the crowds get moving.”

He stretches his torso, twisting first one way and then the other before extending the hand not holding the wine bottle.  “Well buddy, best of luck to you in your travels.”

I shake his hand gladly.  As he disappears behind the tent flaps I have to wonder what it’s like to be him, to be a man who the world would count as unremarkable yet has everything.

And suddenly I know that if I could choose one destiny I would choose that one.