Free Missed Connections by Tan-ni Fan Page B

her son was not there, but didn't offer an explanation, and Rob didn't ask for one.
     
    The big reveal?
    The next day was all organized hikes and games. The morning hike was organized by Charles, and included a great deal of mountain natural history and a little social history as well. Stanny refused outright to go. Any argument on Rob's part was forestalled when George showed up with a posse of younger teens and older children bound for a swimming expedition. Suddenly Stanny didn't have a heartfelt objection to going out in the potent Sierra sunlight anymore. That there was a girl carrying a backpack full of different strengths of sunblock and George was handing him two huge parasols to carry may have been part of the explanation. Especially, Rob thought, since the girl also had a couple of handheld games and encouraged Stanny to bring his phone with him with too.
    It was apparently because of Charles that the wedding was being held up here. It wasn't only the place of his life's work, it was also his childhood home. The high school era visit to the coast when he had inadvertently fathered Rab had been a rare occasion. "I can't say I regret every moment when I am not in the mountains," Charles said, "But I will say that I usually prefer the moments up here to the other ones. Usually, not always."
    It felt to Rob that they were stalling for time. Charles made them stand around for well over fifteen minutes, telling them pleasant but pointless anecdotes and fussing about their sunblock and water supplies. Finally he said, "Oh, here he is, we can go now."
    Rob looked around and saw Jack approaching. Rob scowled. He had successfully forgotten that the husband-to-be of his mother's best friend had been seen all over town with a fellow Rob's age, a fellow Rob harbored a bit of attraction to himself. Remembering it all again was not pleasant. Especially since the guy in question was looking at him like he was the one doing something underhanded.
    "For the new arrivals, this guy here's my son Jack," Charles said. "Lucky me, he's following in the old man's footsteps. We'll be seeing his name on our reports starting—when's that first one coming out?"
    "Next week, Chuck," Jack said. "Weren't we going for a hike about now?"
    "Just waiting for you, kid," Charles said. "Let's go."
    Rob fell into line with a sudden grin on his face. It was such a relief that he no longer had to think he was privy to intergenerational hanky-panky between his mother's best friend's husband-to-be and his own most recent crush. It was still a problem that Jack didn't like him, but not a serious one, as it would have been witnessing the groom and a grad student not even sneaking around on the eve of the wedding.
    But he didn't have to do any of it. All he had to do was enjoy this scorching Sierra day within yards of a guy he liked to look at—never mind that the sentiment was not returned—and listen to another very pleasant guy tell the story of the land around them.
    It was pleasant to show off a little himself as well. Charles seemed to be deliberately setting up the conversation to encourage it. Like when they were overlooking a slope covered in loose rock of varying sizes and Charles asked Rob what he'd expect out here. He couldn't very well just say marmots in an unembellished, flat way, could he? So he said "whistling pigs," and only followed it up with "yellow-bellied marmots" after it had a chance to sink in. Then he and Jack seemed to enter a competition over who had the most outrageous marmot story. Jack definitively won with a story about one that had hitchhiked all the way to a residential neighborhood in San Francisco, where it lived on scraps and garden plants for almost two months before being rescued and returned to the mountains.
    "Nope," Rob said afterwards, "I don't know a better marmot story than that. I shot my wad with the radiator hose feasts."
    "Should we be worrying about our cars?" asked one of Charles's friends.
    "No, they don't