Page 28 of Meet Me Back Here

“Like you’ve been handling it without complaint so far?” I tease.

Forrest shoulder-checks me. “Oh, shut up.” But he’s smiling as he holds open the hotel room door. “I just needed to get used to it.”

As I make the drive to Papago Park, Forrest looks up the hiking trails.

“I figure we’ll go to the botanical gardens first and then do Hole-in-the-Rock. It’s got a beautiful sunset view,” I say, reciting what I read online.

“Why aren’t we just hiking Camelback Mountain?” Forrest asks. “I figured it would be the obvious pick since it’s right next to the resort.”

“Because I don’t want you to die,” I say with a chuckle. When I’d looked up that option, I ruled it out very quickly. “And I don’t want to die, either. Camelback is for the pros. Papago will be much more our speed. Trust me.”

“I do,” Forrest says without hesitation, but it feels like he’s talking about more than just hiking trails.

I try not to overthink it. And fail.

To my delight, Forrest loves the botanical gardens.

“I’ve just never seen one in real life,” Forrest says with awe for what must be the fifth time as he stares up at a saguaro towering over the both of us.

When we get to a smaller, unassuming cactus made up of oval-shaped disk pieces, Forrest’s curiosity seems to get the best of him, and he reaches out to touch it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warn. “Even the ones that aren’t covered in spines could still have little stickers that’ll get in your skin and drive you crazy. It’s best not to touch most plants here. Arizona bites back.”

Forrest looks so young when he slowly retracts his arm with a pout, a wildly different look to the serious thinking face I so often see him wearing.

“Did you come here a lot when you lived here?” Forrest asks.

“Well… not exactly,” I admit. “Between school and work and a lack of desire to be outdoors for any extended period of time from May through September, I didn’t. I feel like I was constantly bouncing from one moment to the next back then, and something like a walk through a bunch of cacti wasn’t a high priority.”

I think back to how little I slept when I was a student and wonder how I survived. I did so much more than that, though. I thrived.

Now, quietly walking around is a perfectly spent afternoon for me. It seems like it is for Forrest too.

“Did you pick it today as the Arizona version of touching grass? Reconnect with nature? Get the ideas flowing?” he asks while we continue our lazy stroll.

“I—uh—I wanted to impress you,” I say, watching my feet as I walk along the dusty trail. This trip is about honesty, right? “It looked really pretty online, and I knew it would be something completely new for you.”

“Cam,” Forrest says, and I realize he stopped walking. I look back at him. “You don’t need to try to impress me. Everything about you impresses me.”

“You don’t like it?” I ask, disappointed.

“I didn’t say that. It’s beautiful in a way I didn’t expect desert plants to be, but you don’t need to work so hard with me,” he says, walking back up to me.

“Ok,” I agree, but I think he’s wrong. I’ll be working as hard as I can for a long time to apologize to him for everything I’ve done.

“Now, if there are things you want to do now that you didn’t get to do as a broke college student, that’s a different story. I’m always down for new adventures with you,” Forrest adds. “But promise me it’ll be our trip and not just things you think I want to do.”

I can see he won’t let this go, so I nod. “Deal.”

We keep going for a bit before Forrest speaks up again.

“Where did you work when you were here?” he asks, and I’m reminded just how little we talked about my time in Arizona—precisely not at all. I like that he really wants to know about it, about me.

“I had a few different part-time jobs at school, like desk jobs, that lasted a semester-or-so each,” I say. “But my best paying job was definitely at the tequila bar. It’s called El Lobo, the wolf. I could make rent for the month in one really good weekend.”

Forrest pulls up short once more. I seem to be surprising him a lot afternoon, I guess.

“You worked in a tequila bar?” he asks, his eyebrows nearly at his hairline.