“You all ready to go?”

Hunter was practically bouncing from foot to foot as he waited for us to get ready, and finally, I laughed and ruffled the top of his hair.

“Yes, we’re finally ready to go,” I told him. “Raymond? You got the keys?”

“Sure do.” Raymond held them up. I would have laughed at him in his goofy fisherman’s gear if I hadn’t already seen it on him a dozen times before. A couple of times a year, the three of us would go fishing down by the lake outside the city, and Raymond would take it as an excuse to put on waders and a giant hat like he was about to go diving in the lake and then scaling a mountain straight after. Truth was, he would probably crack a couple of beers by the side of the water while we caught up on things and maybe caught a fish or two. We rarely came away with anything. Even if we did, Hunter was getting to that age now where he wanted us to throw them back. But I didn’t mind that. It was the chance to spend some time with two of my favorite people in the world, and I appreciated any chance I got.

“You boys make sure to stay safe, now,” Olivia fussed as we prepared to head out the door. “I can trust you to take care of them, can’t I, Hunter?”

“Of course, ma’am!” he replied, saluting her playfully, and I could see the delight on her face at his sweet old-fashioned manners. If there was one thing that had been a nonnegotiable in raising him, it had been making sure that he was the most well-mannered kid on the block. Manners could get you a hell of a long way if you used them in the right way, and judging by the amusement with which she was looking at him right there, I would have said he was learning what that way was for him.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Raymond pointed to the door, and I grabbed a cooler full of food and drinks and heaved it up to take outside. We had already loaded up the car with fishing stuff, and we were soon ready to go.

Hunter always slept on car journeys, which gave Raymond and me a little time to catch up on what had happened over the weekend. I knew he had been itching to ask me about the blind date they had set me up on, and I couldn’t wait to tell them what the hell had really happened that night.

“So you going to tell me how things went with that woman?” Raymond asked keenly, and I grinned and shook my head.

“All right, I admit it. I had a good time,” I began, and his face lit up.

“Are you going out with her again?”

“No chance.” I shook my head. “Well, not as anything other than a friend anyway.”

His face dropped once more, and he furrowed his brow, keeping his eyes on the road.

“What do you mean?”

“That friend of Olivia’s friend you set me up with? Yeah, turns out she’s Hunter’s teacher—the one who gave me the chewing-out the week before about him being too solitary, you remember?” I finished up, and Raymond’s eyebrows shut up.

“Holy sh—” He trailed off, eyes going to Hunter in the back seat. “Holy snacks, Holden. You sure?”

“Certain,” I told him. “And I swear to God I was about to get up and walk out of there, but then she came over and said she wanted to apologize for how things had gone down between us, that she was wrong to confront me in front of Hunter and that she should have given us all a little space.”

“Well, that’s good news,” he remarked. “You said you had a good time anyway?”

“Yeah, I ended up having a really good time.” I smiled, remembering how fun that night had been once we had got past the initial difficulties. “I mean, it was a little awkward at first, but we rolled with the punches, and when the pressure was off, I wound up having a good night.”

“And what about her? What did she think?” Raymond asked.

“She seemed happy to have someone to work out her dating stuff on again,” I told him with a shrug. “I mean, say what you want, but both of us had been off the scene for a long time. I guess it was nice to hang out with someone else who was as useless as we were.”

“And nothing happened?” he asked, glancing at me incredulously in the mirror. “Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all,” I replied firmly. I knew what he was angling for, but that was the truth. Sure, Autumn was cute and all, but she had made it pretty clear that night that we were about as far removed from each other as it was possible to be, and I wasn’t going to go and dissuade her of that opinion when it was so obviously true. She was a teacher, good with kids but not quite there with adults, smart and driven in a completely different direction from me.

“Hmm.” Raymond tapped his fingers on the wheel. “So, you said you might see her again?”

“I think I will,” I agreed. “She said she would keep an eye out for friends to set me up with, you know, now that we had the practice date out of the way.”

“Don’t get me wrong. That’s a very mature way to look at it,” he conceded. “But it sounds like you guys had a fun date together. What, was the physical chemistry just not there or something?”

“Oh no, she was—” I stopped myself before I came out with anything too lewd in front of my son, even if he was sleeping. “She was beautiful. But I don’t…”

I trailed off and tried to find the words to describe what was running through my mind. Raymond watched me for a moment as we pulled to a stoplight, and I could see a hint of amusement on his face.

“She’s not my type, that’s all,” I finished up. There, he couldn’t possibly need any more explanation than that. There was nothing you could do about a difference that fundamental, could you?

“Right.” He pulled the car away from the lights and raised his eyebrows. “Are you trying to convince me of that or yourself?”

I ignored him and turned the attention to fishing as we finally made it out of the city and headed down to our usual spot. It was a little cold at this time of year, but that meant it would be extra quiet around these parts, and we would get all the space and time we wanted to fish and chat and drink root beers together.

I woke Hunter up when we arrived, and he hopped out of the car and helped us get everything set up. He was well-practiced in this now, and every time we came down here, I would marvel at how much bigger and stronger he had gotten. I often forgot, seeing him every day, the changes he went through seemingly overnight sometimes. It was wild, noticing those changes come to fruition, how he could easily carry a cooler full of food or sling a couple of fishing poles over his shoulder when the same time last year, he would have struggled to even think of doing the same.

The place was as beautiful as it had ever been. Raymond and I had first come down here the week after I started the business, when I told him I needed nothing more than to catch a break from computer screens and stare at something beautiful for a while. He had taken me down to this lake he and his dad used to frequent, and I had fallen in love with it on the spot. Pine trees climbed up mountains around us, and there was a town on the other side that we sometimes stopped at for hot food if things were getting a little too chilly for my liking. The water was crisp and clear and rolled on for miles, and, in the pale, watery sunshine that was managing to come down that day, I just let it take me away. It was good to be out of the city. It had been a stressful week, for one reason or another, and I had sorely needed this break.

We headed down to the lake and took our normal spot there, Raymond and I sipping on a cheap beer and Hunter on a root one. I chatted to my son about what had been going on at school, and he filled me in on all the gossip I needed to know, who was friends with who, who had fallen out with who, who was having their birthday party where. It was fun, the small-stakes stuff, especially because Hunter treated it with such utter and deadly seriousness.

“Oh, hey, I think I got a bite,” Raymond told me suddenly, cutting me off midsentence as his line began to twitch erratically. I got to my feet and went to help him, but before we could pull anything up, it got away.

“Ah, well, maybe next time,” I said, slapping Raymond on the shoulder. He shrugged. The beer took the edge off any disappointment he might have felt for that, I found.

Hunter headed out to the edge of the water to inspect the stones and rocks there, and as I watched him, Raymond began to grill me once more.

“So you don’t have any feelings for this teacher of his?”

“I already told you no.” I glanced at him. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you spent this whole day asking him about school.” He nodded to my son. “You’re trying to find out if he approves of her.”

“All right, and where did you get your degree in psychology?” I shot back, glancing over at him. “I really don’t feel anything for her. Things aren’t that way between us. It’s that simple. I liked her, sure, but that was it.”

“What was her name?” he wondered aloud.

“Autumn,” I replied at once. “Autumn Becks.”

And I realized I was speaking the name with some kind of reverence, as though I was worshipping at the altar of the sound of it on my lips. I rolled my eyes, scolding myself for letting the beer get to me and conjure up feelings I was damn sure I didn’t have. I tossed one of the empty cans back into the cooler and decided that would be my last one. When I turned back to check on Hunter, he was standing a little closer to me than I thought—and he had probably heard me talking about going on a date with his teacher. To my surprise, instead of acting freaked out or weird, he had a big-ass smile on his face, as though all of this was somehow going exactly according to plan.