Brandon waved goodbye as Levi set off into the woods with his canoe, but he didn’t receive a wave in response. Levi marched grimly forward with the boat over his shoulders until he disappeared into the thick forest. Brandon refused to believe that it was the last time they would see each other, but he didn’t know how things would unfold the next time they were together.

For the rest of the day, Brandon moved through actions on auto-pilot. He visited Grandma Daley in the hospital. She took more steps along the path to recovery. While he sat by the side of her bed, she strung together short phrases of intelligible words.

Brandon covered for Levi. Grandma Daley wanted to know about him. She asked, “Levi where?”

“He had to check some things out at the cabin. He insisted on going this morning. I think he’ll be here tonight.” Brandon thought the chances of Levi coming back from the cabin on the same day were slim, but he didn’t want worry to sabotage Grandma Daley’s recovery.

After returning to Arrowhead Falls, Brandon dove into work at the Arrowhead Adventurers office. Elle said, “It’s all starting to pile up. I don’t want to interrupt that great new relationship energy with Levi, but the work won’t go away on its own.”

Brandon grumbled something about Levi that Elle didn’t understand. He also said, “I’ll get to it. Give me some time alone in the office. I have to focus. If you need to interrupt, send me a text message first. Otherwise, I’m likely to bark at you.”

“I want to ask you how the old woman is, and I sense something isn’t so great with Levi, but should I hold all that for later? I can do whatever is best for you right now. I don’t want to stop you when you’re in the mood to get work done.”

Brandon said, “I’ll talk about it when I’m ready. Right now hand me the stack of papers there in my inbox, and I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Brandon felt like he was building a brick wall to keep Levi out by barricading himself in his office behind a heavy load of work. Every time he started to think about Levi or saw his face again as he was leaving the cabin in the morning, Brandon grabbed a new set of papers or pulled up business email to shift his mental focus.

Late in the day, Elle poked her head into the office and said, “I know I’m not supposed to interrupt, but I’m getting ready to go home. Do you want me to lock the front door?”

“Yes, please do. If someone’s expecting late hours today, they’ll have to wait and come back in the morning. I can’t deal with customers today. There’s too much risk that I’d blow up and scare them away forever.”

Elle nodded. “We don’t need that. I’ve got one more thing before I go.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s none of my business if you don’t want it to be, but I haven’t seen you like this for a long time. I know something is up, and it’s most likely connected to Levi somehow. I want you to know I’m happy to listen, and it doesn’t impact how we work together at all. You’re a great friend, too, and listening well is what the best of friends do.”

Brandon nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. Tomorrow will be a better day. It has to be. I’m never down for long. I wrap all the painful stuff into a little box and shove it into a closet in the back of my mind.”

After he said goodnight to Elle, Brandon tried sending a text message to Levi, but he didn’t get a response. He wasn’t surprised. If Levi was at the cabin, he didn’t have cell phone reception anyway. Brandon lowered his head into his hands and tried to piece together a plan to deal with the situation. He came up with nothing.

Late in the evening with the sun’s rays waning and slowly disappearing from the sky, Brandon knocked on an apartment door in a complex at the edge of Arrowhead Falls. It was an old highway motel converted into multiple living units. The remodelers formed each apartment by tearing out walls and putting together three or four former motel rooms. The units weren’t luxurious, but they were cheap, clean, and furnished with new appliances. Elle said she felt like complaining some days, but she could imagine having to deal with much worse.

As she opened her front door, Elle exclaimed, “Brandon! Are you okay? I didn’t expect here. Gabe sometimes stops by to tell a juicy story after getting called to an accident scene, but you usually call ahead.”

Brandon sighed. “I thought about that, but then I decided that I needed to see you on the spur of the moment, so I decided to stop by.”

“Come on in. I’ve got beer in the fridge if that helps, but please sit down. I was watching food shows on TV. Once in a while, I toy with the idea of going to culinary school. It’s a whole lot of work, but I’ve never been afraid of that when I’m working for something that I want.”

“You would be a fantastic chef. I would miss you horribly, but yeah, I can see you doing that.”

Elle gestured toward the sofa in her small living room. “Please, come in and sit. Do you want that beer?”

Brandon nodded and pushed himself into a corner of the couch pulling his legs up tight toward his chest. “Yeah, maybe the beer will calm a few of my nerves. They’re pretty frayed. It’s been a bad day. It started out awful before the sun even came up, and it hasn’t gotten any better.”

“So what’s up? It’s Levi, isn’t it?”

Brandon struggled all afternoon with figuring out how he could talk about the sudden crisis with Levi without revealing information about the paintings in the shed by the cabin. He decided to avoid those specifics altogether. “Yeah, it’s Levi. We fought, and now he’s gone back to the cabin. I’m not sure what to do.”

“He’s gone without his grandmother? I didn’t expect that to happen.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be back to see her in the hospital tomorrow, but he’s not staying at my place anymore while she’s there. In fact, he’s angry. I’m worried that it could be the end.”

Elle stared at Brandon from the opposite end of the couch. He was worried that she would ask for more specifics, but instead, she asked an easy question. “You don’t want to lose him, do you?”

“Oh, God, no. We’re so good together. He’s the best paddler I know, and I love how quiet and mellow he is most of the time. Plus, did I say he’s handsome? Fuck, it’s like Ryan all over again. I can’t stand it when they disappear.”

Elle chuckled softly. “You know what’s going to happen down the road, don’t you? It won’t happen right now, but it may not be long in coming.”

Brandon’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“If you want him, you’ll have to commit. I don’t want to watch you go through something again like you did with Gabe. By the way, that was all your fault, but I think I’ve told you that before. You’ll have to decide whether or not Levi’s the one. It’s probably best to do it before you lead him down a path with too many expectations. Can you do that? If you know that you won’t be able to do that when the time comes, it might be best to let him go now.”

Brandon thought back to the days before he broke up with Gabe. He was pushed to voice his commitment, and he found himself riddled with doubts. In perfect 20/20 hindsight, he knew that some of the doubts entered his mind after the first few dates with Gabe. He could have stopped the snowball rolling downhill before it all got painful for both of them. The relationship with Levi was different already. Brandon didn’t see any red flags.

“I think he could be the one. In fact, I know that I want him to be the one.”

“Then I have only one thing to say.”

“It’s as simple as all that? You should be a therapist. You could get patients in and out with only ten minutes of discussion.” Brandon swallowed a mouthful of beer and watched Elle’s eyes.

“I don’t think that will happen. I’m the one who needs therapy, but yeah, I think it can be simple. Of course, I’ve had some bad luck with relationships in my life, so you might want to factor that into the equation.”

Brandon shook his head. “I don’t think those were your fault. What is the one thing? I’m pretty sure I know, but I want to hear you say it.”

“Go get him back, Brandon. Don’t obsess about it tonight. Get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning you’ll know what to do. Go after him.”