In retrospect, maybe telling Nat about what happened wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had.

“I mean, I don’t want to sound anti-love,” he began, and I groaned.

“Just say it,” I said.

“Did you ever see a toy that you wanted really badly as a little kid, and your parents wouldn’t get it for you, and so you saved and saved, scrimping your allowance, renouncing candy and comic books, until finally, you earned just enough to buy the toy--with sales tax included!--and you are so proud of yourself when you go up to the cash register, and you rush home, your heart nearly bursting with an ineffable joy, except that when you get it home you find out it looks nothing like it did in the commercials, and is, in fact, both more boring and more complicated than you realized, and your soul sinks inside you, the world grows dark and dim, and all your hopes melt away like a candle that burned too brightly for too long?”

I stared at him. “No, but I’m getting the sense that you did.”

“It was awful!” he cried. Isabel, who had been sleeping in his lap, perked up and looked at him. “It was the talking Bulldozer Bill, with Real Working Scoop, and on the commercials, the little boy had whole conversations with Bill, but in reality, he only said like four things and they all involved digging up dirt!”

There was a pile of clean towels and rags on my kitchen table, and I patiently folded them, stacking them neatly into the basket. The baby monitor was next to the basket, and I’d never been more grateful for its silence. “I sense there is a metaphor at work here,” I said.

“Sometimes we get blinded by our vision of the way things will be,” Nat said, calming himself. “We get so excited that we forget that real life has downsides and risks. Also, you’re staring at me like I was a puppy who just wet the rug. No offense, Isabel.”

“I know all that,” I said, trying to ignore the exhaustion in my voice. “I feel like I’m being pretty realistic. I’m keeping this purely on an enjoy-the-moment level instead of anything deeper.”

“I’m sure that’s the rationale people use when they start smoking, too.”

“How is it that you of all people are giving me this lecture?” I asked. “You do, in fact, sound anti-love. Not that I’m in love. I don’t have any illusions about that. This is just a fling.”

“It’s not even a fling,” said Nat. “It’s a replay of old emotions you last felt in high school.”

“As I recall, you were all excited when I kissed him the first time.”

“It was a kiss when we last talked about it!” he said. “A one-time thing. I didn’t expect it to go anywhere, certainly not to some sordid encounter the nature of which was so filthy you refuse to tell me a single salacious detail! You’re just setting yourself up to get hurt. There’s no relationship there...nor could there be. You have seen each other, what, three times in fifteen years?”

“But come on, who are you to judge, you met Owen on a reality show. You were fake boyfriends just to get on TV!”

“Yes, I’m aware of how my relationship with Owen began,” said Nat, a little diffidently. “I was there, after all. But look, we were lucky. We were so compatible, and things escalated quickly. Even so, several times it looked like we were just completely wrong for each other. Which is my point. We lucked out, but how often does that really happen, that things fall into place that quickly? Statistically speaking, love at first sight is bound not to work out most of those times.”

“I’m not saying it’s love, I keep telling you. And it’s not at first sight, either.”

“No, it’s even worse, it’s hindsight. In your eyes, he’s this dreamy combination of teen freedom and pop superstar. And that’s the part that really worries me about all this, because he is a star, while you’re--”

“Just a boring dad?” I offered.

“I’d never say just a dad. I don’t know if you realize this, but all of us look up to you. When you adopted Jojo, you took on a responsibility that nobody in our circle felt grown-up enough for. You work really hard at it. But...but Cave, Ransom is in a whole different world. An incompatible world. Just think, if this thing between you got any deeper, soon enough one of you would have to give up something. Something major, some huge part of the life you’ve built. What part of your current life are you willing to sacrifice for a shred of a chance with him? What part of his life, his wealth, his fame, do you suppose he’d be willing to sacrifice?”

“I know, I know--”

“Do you? Because it seems like there are only two options: reach the painful point of sacrifice, or, what may be worse, break things off before that point, and re-experience all the hurt he caused you the first time you broke up.”

I finished my folding and set the basket on the floor next to me. “You know, you’re really ruining what could have been a fun little brief affair for me. Honestly, you’re seeing danger where there isn’t any. Like I said, I don’t have any illusions about what’s going on. I know how to maintain a safe emotional distance. Come on, don’t give me the sympathetic eyebrows, I do know how.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll trust you.”

“It’s just...this life of mine isn’t exactly idyllic, you know? You and Owen jet off to a magical island for your wedding, all my friends get to go, while I stay home. I love what I have here. I love Jojo so much that it hurts. Even right this second, I look at the baby monitor, half-hoping he’ll cry so I’ll have an excuse to run in there and hold him. But you want to talk about sacrifice? When my mom dropped Jojo off, he was crazy, angry and sad at the same time over his teeth, because his ibuprofen had worn off. So I spent the evening with him crying, not allowed to set him down even once, even though I still had laundry to do, meals to make... I mean, Nat, I love my life. But sometimes it feels a little claustrophobic. I need a little something that’s just for myself, you know?”

There he was, giving me the sympathetic eyebrows again. “Just promise me you’ll be careful, okay? Take things slow, even knowing Ransom will have to fly back to his home planet sometime soon. Don’t rush. Don’t get hurt. I have seen way too many of my friends get hurt when things moved too fast,” he said.

I was about to promise, scout’s honor, when my phone rang. When I saw Ransom’s name on the screen, I showed it to Nat, and he made a face.

“Hey,” I said into the phone, tempering my excitement at his call so that Nat wouldn’t sit there judging me.

“Cave, how do you feel about mountains? Do you want to go on a trip with me? Just a little one?”

It came out before I had time to really think about my answer: “Why yes. Yes, I do want to go to the mountains with you,” I said.

Nat put his head down on the table and groaned. “And so it begins...”