Someday Never Comes

Chapter Nineteen

"Man," I said, catching his gaze; returning his grin. "You have it bad."

"Damn straight."

---

"So, Florida," I said.

We'd tossed a blanket down on a lichen covered outcrop of rock overlooking the valley and began unpacking lunch. The air was still; thick with the sharp, tannic scents of ponderosa pines and juniper.

Connor grimaced. "It was a phase," he admitted. "A very long phase. I spent every last minute of my teen years hating Durango and chomping at the proverbial bit to get out."

"Literally and metaphorically?" I ventured, only half joking.

He didn't look up, but I caught his answering smirk. He was bust assembling chorizo, goat cheese and a selection of sundry greens atop slices of sourdough bread.

No wonder he'd stared at my granola bar like it was a poor relation.

"That was part of it," he agreed. "Or maybe that was the underlying affliction and everything else was a symptom of it. I had it in my head that if I were just somewhere, anywhere that wasn't backwards-ass rural Colorado, that I would magically make sense to myself. So...Florida."

"Orlando?"

Another grimace. "Tallahassee."

"Ah," I said. "Good old Florida State."

"Yep. Of course, it didn't work," he added, handing me a sandwich. "I was still me. Just sweatier and sunburnt."

"Still," I said. "It can't have been all bad. I wouldn't call Tallahassee a liberal Mecca, but compared to..." I gestured with my sandwich to indicate the state at large.

He raised one shoulder in a lazy shrug. "Yeah, but I was still trying to reconcile who I was, all the pieces. Sexuality, religion. Not exactly something a simple change of scenery could fix. And at the end of the day, it just wasn't home, you know?" he said. "That was the big irony. I spent all those years hating it here, only to realize that I couldn't stand to be anywhere else."

"You and your mountains," I said.

He spread his hands, wordless and unrepentant.

"And so you came back," I said.

"And so I came back," he agreed. "Finished up my degree at Mesa State, got a job, settled down."

He didn't add that he'd figured out who he was along the way. Didn't have to. I'd seen that the moment I'd met him. It radiated from the guy like an aura.

"Why child psychology?" I asked. "And don't give me that line about a shorter degree."

He was silent for a moment, brow scrunched up in consideration. "I suppose that was part of the whole reconciling religion thing. Growing up, it was the answer to everything. Depressed? Pray about it. Failing at school? Pray about it. Don't fit in?"

"Pray about it?" I concluded.

Connor nodded. "Even at that age, I knew there had to be better answers out there. Don't get me wrong," he said. "My faith is still very important to me. But faith can't be the one and only, be-all, end-all solution to every problem."

"Don't send god to do Zoloft's job?"

He let out a short, sharp laugh. "Not exactly the way I'd have worded it, but."

We talked in fits and snatches after that, content to hike and let the silences stretch until something that seemed worth saying popped into our brains. A story Connor had heard on the news, a ridiculous anecdote I'd remembered from the bar. I discovered that he could cook, but didn't particularly like to, that we both loved soccer, and he wanted to try coaching Cortez's summer rec team, but was afraid of how the parents would react. That he liked microbrew and Tai food and could afford a house, but lived in an apartment because he didn't have time to shovel sidewalks or take care of a lawn. In turn I told him safe, impersonal things about the Olympic Peninsula and Seattle and all of its post-Woodstock eccentricities. And he was as good as his word, never bringing up my aborted career or my rumored penchant for back alley trash fires. Not exactly fair play, but in that moment, I couldn't bring myself to feel all that bad about it.