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Travis lifted one shoulder in another shrug. “I just wanted you to know. You were always it for me.”
I reached over and squeezed his knee, touched and a little overwhelmed. “I hope I live up to the dream.” He stayed quiet, so I cleared my throat and stood. “Let’s hit the road, shall we?”
“That sounds like a plan.”
A half hour later, we were pulling into the state park. “I—did you need to pick something up at your office or something?”
Travis laughed and grinned at me. “Nope. This is where we’re headed.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You brought me to your office on a date? We gonna fuck on your desk or something?” I winked at him.
He snorted. “Hardly. You said to bring you somewhere special, and this is where we’re headed. I want to show you my favorite places in the park.”
“Thank God I changed clothes. Those shoes were way too nice to ruin by stomping through the mud in them.” He pulled into a parking space and when we got out of the truck, he went around back to drop the tailgate. “Oh no. No way we’re camping again.”
“You can’t tell me you hated that little impromptu camping trip.” He pulled a huge hiking backpack out of the truck and shrugged it on before reaching in the truck and pulling out fishing poles and a tackle box. “Can you carry the tackle box?”
I sighed deeply, trying to sound put out, but smiling at Travis at the same time. “I guess so. Wait—are weactuallygoing camping?”
He shook his head. “No. We’re going to hike that trail to the lake.” He pointed toward a signpost. “I’m going to teach you how to fish, and then I’m going to cook us dinner over a campfire.”
“A fish dinner?” I heard the skepticism in my voice.
Travis laughed and shook his head. “Don’t sound so horrified. I prefer to catch and release out here. Leave the fish for the park guests. I brought food we don’t have to catch, kill, and clean ourselves. That’s all in the backpack.”
“Don’t I need, like, a fishing license or something?”
He grinned at me. “I got one for you this week. No worries there.”
“Whatever you say, Smokey Bear. Wait, there aren’tactualbears out here, are there?”
Travis half-shrugged. “There are bears, but they rarely venture into the public part of the park. Usually, they stay to themselves pretty far outside of this area.”
We hiked in relative quiet out to the lake Travis mentioned, and it was clear once we’d arrived at the right spot. There was a clearing along the bank, with picnic tables and a fire ring set up. I helped Travis set up the tackle box and fishing gear by following his instructions exactly, considering I had zero idea what I was doing. When everything was ready to go, he cast our lines into the water one at a time and handed me a pole.
I stood there for a while, awkwardly trying to determine if a fish was on my hook, occasionally reeling in the line to find nothing. As a result, Travis would recast for me, smiling fondly and shaking his head. After the fifth failed attempt, he took the rod from me altogether.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“No, I like it. I just don’t know what I’m doing.”
He shrugged, but before he could react further, his bobber dipped below the water and stayed down for several seconds, his line going taut. I watched in fascination as he jerked the pole toward him and began reeling in.
“You got something?”
He nodded and kept reeling, shuffling a little closer to the shoreline. “Feels like it.” A moment later, a fish broke the surface, firmly hooked on his line, and Travis whooped in celebration. When he had the fish in hand, he held it up for me to see before he carefully removed the hook from its mouth and let it slide out of his hand back into the water.
“What is the point of that?”
His smile lit up his face. “It’s fun.”
“Doesn’t it hurt the fish?”
Travis put his pole down and dug through the container of worms to thread another one on his hook. “Probably a little. No lasting damage, though. Nothing that won’t heal. And I don’t keep them long.”
“You’re weird.”
He snorted. “You’ll have to show meyouridea of fun sometime.”
