“It has been so long since I’ve been fishing, I can’t believe I’ve missed out on this all this time,” I said.
“Well, you need to start coming along. I like to go most weekends when the weather permits, and Nick here, he’s pretty consistent in showing up,” he said.
“Consider yourself having a new crew member,” I told him, and he kissed me. I giggled again, kissing him in return before turning my attention back to the fish.
I had foolishly offered earlier that afternoon to cook up the fish we caught for dinner, then I realized just how many we were going to need. While we had a nice string of fish on the end of our line, I was beginning to see just how much work it would be for us to get them all cleaned and put over a fire.
Now, as I looked down at the string of fish, I was ready to call it quits.
“Are you sure we’re going to need to save all these?” I asked as I looked at them. “Don’t we have to gut them and clean them all before we can put them on the fire?”
“Yes, and don’t worry, there’s not as much there as it looks. Once we get in our system of cleaning the fish, we move pretty fast to get it over with. I’m not going to make you gut and cook them both. We each do our part,” Trevor said.
“Still,” I said as I looked at the fish. “You sure you want to wait around and risk how good I am cooking over an open fire? Or would you rather just catch and release today and we can grab something for dinner when we get back to town? I’m not sure I’m going to have much of an appetite to go from the pond to the plate in the same day.”
“What happened to the fresher the better?” Trevor asked.
“Well, that sounds all good and everything until you are the one who has to do all the work of getting it out of the water and into the frying pan. I feel like by the time I get to the point of sitting down with the fish, I’m not going to even want to look at the thing again.”
“You know, I’m really starting to feel like the third wheel over here,” Nick chimed in. “I thought we were going fishing today, bud, not that I was going to watch you and your little wife over there talk about how you’re going to get dinner when you get back.”
I blushed when he called me Trevor’s wife but gave him another playful look.
“I like your company here,” I told him. “All Trevor talks about is work.”
“I do not!” Trevor called out, and I laughed. I liked being able to tease each other. It was like we were friends on top of the fact he and I were interested in each other romantically, and I really appreciated that. I genuinely enjoyed being with him, and the fact that Nick was just as funny as he said he would be made me even happier.
“Try working with him. Then not only do you have to deal with the fact that he only talks about work, but you have to be at work while he’s doing it. I’m telling you, it gets old after a while.” Nick shook his head.
“Oh shut up, you are the one who never shuts up when we’re at the office, so don’t go crying about the fact I talk too much.”
“You just talk about boring things, I think that’s the problem,” Nick told his friend, and I laughed. Trevor told me on the way to meet Nick that the two of them had been friends since they were kids, and they remained close all through college and into their careers.
He didn’t know how long they would get to be able to work together, considering how much Trevor’s career was growing, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to stay close outside of the workplace. Even if Trevor did decide he was going to move to another hospital, he wasn’t going to stop hanging out with Nick as often as he could. He just hoped when the time came that he wasn’t asked to move out of the state.
“I hope so, too,” I said.
Not that it would be too much for us to handle, but the fact that we would have all that extra stress added onto the normal stress that went with dating relationships didn’t sound very fun. But, it would only be temporary. I could move with him. I could follow him down there.
Or, I could do the long-distance thing with him until we figured out what we were doing with our lives. Then I could make the decision as to what was next.
It was evident how close the two men were with the way they constantly bantered with each other. They teased each other relentlessly, and Nick liked to give me a hard time along with Trevor. I felt like I was entirely accepted by him as an extension of Trevor, and that made me feel good.
I didn’t feel like I had to perform to impress him or try to be good enough to be with his friend. It was as though he just took me as I was, and he was okay with that. If he knew his friend liked me, that was good enough for him. It was the same way with Raya and me, and I couldn’t wait for Raya to be able to meet Trevor herself.
It would be exciting enough to tell her that I got to spend the night with Trevor, then he went so far as to introduce me to his friends. That in itself was enough to prove to me that he was happy with the way things were going, and we were making strides in the right direction. We might not be moving very quickly, but we didn’t have to, either.
“Tell me what exciting things you want to hear from me, and I’ll be sure to do my research before I come in next week. How’s that?” Trevor asked, and Nick gave him a look.
“You know, I might just want you to start coming in with the random fact of the day, and it better be a real fact, because you better believe I’m going to be fact checking you,” Nick said.
“Hold on there.” I put my hand up to stop the conversation. “You mean to tell me that you are going to ask Trevor to come in to give you a fact of the day, then you’re going to go out and check to make sure that fact is real? Why not just go for your own fact of the day?”
“Because that just leaves him with his boring subjects of conversation, mostly. I’m doing you a favor here,” Nick said. “Just think of all the shit you will be able to talk about when he starts coming at me with these facts. And if they aren’t true, we can all marvel at the fact that the fact was in fact, unfactual.”
“If you ever say a sentence to me like that again, I’m drowning you,” Trevor said, and I laughed.
“All the same, I’m probably going to be done fishing at this point. I don’t know if I can stomach pulling something out of its home and having it on my plate that night. I’m still kind of a town girl I guess,” I said.