Flight Risk

51 - Along the Red

With the sun shining, I couldn't resist spending more time outside, so Trevor and I took our drinks to-go from the cafe near his apartment and walked to an unassuming park behind a few local businesses. It was a stretch of riverbank with a couple of benches and beautiful trees, too small for the city to bother naming, but it was quiet. He and I used to hang out here with a blanket on warm days or use it as a pathway to the river to skate when it froze up in the winter.

So much for finding a place with no memories of our relationship.

As we stood in silence and avoided eye contact, he coughed and apologized. "I came here out of habit."

"I always loved when the maple trees changed here in the fall."

His lips twitched into a small smile. "Me too."

He sipped his iced coffee as we headed for a bench facing the Red River. "How was the trip?"

The question seemed genuine, and I couldn't help but smile, which he mirrored.

"Amazing." I pulled out my phone to show him a few pictures of the wildlife highlights, spouting out dorky facts like a fountain, which made him chuckle.

My cheeks warmed, and I tapped my fingers against my phone partway through explaining about beluga calves. He was probably being polite, especially since we were friends, or I hoped we were.

Trevor raised a brow. "Why'd you stop?"

"You don't need to hear all of that rambling."

"I don't need to, but I want to. It's like one of your nature posts, but just for me."

My foot, tucked behind my other ankle, shook. I wasn't sure how to take that comment. Was it a friendly or longing comment? Most people didn't find animal facts romantic, so it was likely safe. I finished up my story but stopped there.

"Did Caleb enjoy the trip?" Trevor asked.

"It's hard not to enjoy all those wildlife encounters."

"Especially with you," Trev said softly.

A cough of surprise shot through my throat, and he tensed, his eyes widening.

"I meant how enthusiastic you get. It's contagious, good contagious, not..." He rubbed his short blond hair. "Like I've watched a bunch of ocean documentaries, or I used to when we kept in touch more."

From his rushed words to the lack of eye contact, I tried to brush off his anxiety. This whole situation rendered me restless as discomfort percolated through my skin, so it was understandable he was uneasy. Plus, anxiety and self-doubt were familiar traits for Trevor, but he used to be more relaxed in my presence. Keeping the topic more neutral and less linked to our past might help settle him out.

"Learn anything interesting?"

He nodded.

"Like?"

He paused and rapped the long fingers of his left hand on his knee.

"Clownfish start their lives all as males but can change their entire body to female to reproduce if the dominant female dies. Like she's the peak state to reach for that species."

His words made me grin. I often shared that fact with divers I led too. Sometimes it was fun to shock the conservative folks with it, and they'd either argue or look it up and get all quiet about their incorrect refutations.

"It is pretty cool. Especially that their brains can set off this reaction to shrink their male genitalia and activate the female side," I said.

"Sure," Trevor's voice had that slight raised edge most men got when considering pain to their sensitive regions. Not that I knew if the process was painful or not. "It makes all that protesting about the unnaturalness of sex changes seem ridiculous, if it didn't seem that way already."