Page 111 of The Lost Book of First Loves

“What about the ranch?”

“What about it? Pat Bailey ran The Painted Sky while your dad was alive and he can certainly go on doing the same thing. You have your grandmother and Beck to look after the ranch, too. After you pass the bar, why not take a break? You’ve earned it. Go out and see the world, Al.’’

She was stunned almost speechless at the idea. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

He smiled. “I can point you to three hundred hours of content that might help you come up with a decent plan.”

She had to return his smile. “Not a bad idea. It’s definitely something to think about.”

She liked the idea of traveling far more than starting up her practice right away. She knew it would be kicking the can down the road, but perhaps some time away would help her be more enthusiastic about the career course she had set for herself.

“Maybe I’ll come join you on your travels and we can spend a year in India together.”

He grinned. “I can arrange that.”

She imagined all the possibilities while he took some video and stills of the sun setting over the lake in vibrant colors, and then more footage of her leading the horses down to drink again and then taking them back up, along with buckets of water to hold them overnight.

He carefully started a small fire in the camp ring they created from rocks, and they roasted marshmallows and talked while watching the stars pop out overhead.

A shooting star arced across the sky and she gazed up, enchanted by the sheer unbelievable beauty of a night in the mountains.

“It takes my breath away up here at night,” she said. “How do I always forget the impact of seeing all those millions of stars together, without any light pollution to interfere with the view?”

“It’s truly stellar, isn’t it?”

She made a face at his bad pun. “How does our Wyoming night sky compare to all the others you’ve seen on your travels?”

“It’s definitely up there. I haven’t been to many other places that compare to this. Maybe that time we went on a camel trip into the Sahara Desert in Morocco might be close.”

She was again awestruck at everything he had seen and done.

“Tell me something funny that happened to you on your travels that you never put in one of your videos.”

He grinned. “Did I ever tell you the time I was attacked by a bee and nearly fell down a mountain?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “I would have remembered that.”

“I was in this gorgeous village on the Amalfi Coast in Italy and thought I would shoot drone footage of me walking through a terraced vineyard at sunset and looking pensively off at theocean. You know, something super cinematic. All was going great until a bee landed on my face. No big deal, right? Except this was the biggest bumblebee I had ever seen, and it would not leave me alone, no matter what I did.”

“I guess you must have smelled too sweet,” she said.

“Something like that. So there I was waving my arms like I was directing traffic in Naples, trying to look cool for the camera while not being stung. The bee would not give up. He kept dive-bombing me no matter what I tried to do. And in my wild frenzy, I tripped over a fence post and tumbled about ten feet down the terraced slope. And of course the drone kept recording everything—my panic, my flailing arms, my graceless fall. It was all priceless. And my mic was still on, which recorded me pleading with the bee to leave me alone and then a long string of swear words as I fell.”

She laughed hard, imagining the scene vividly. “You have to show me that footage. I hope you didn’t erase it.”

“I still have it. I’ve been thinking about posting a blooper reel.”

“What else would be on it?”

While the fire crackled and the stars continued to gleam above them and the breeze rustled the leaves of the aspens, he told her story after story about his experiences. Some of them were poignant, but most were so funny, she laughed so hard she almost couldn’t breathe.

“We’ve had very different lives the past three years, haven’t we?”

He rose to add another small piece of deadfall wood to the fire. “Mine isn’t necessarily better. Only different. I’ve been deeply lonely at times when I’ve been traveling.”

“You have?”

“Yes. Even with technology connecting you to the world, there are times you simply long for home.”

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