Page 66 of Fake Date with the Mountain Man

As I make my way through the lobby and out to my work truck, I notice Emmett sitting at the front desk. He looks bored, as usual. With Kayla gone, he doesn’t get a lot of visitors at the front desk. Most of us avoid it like the plague. I know Emmett would too if he had any other options.

“Hey,” I say as I walk over to the desk.

Emmett perks up a little as he greets me. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“Good, man. I’m headed out to Eagle Ridge to check out an abandoned vehicle. Do you want to ride along?”

“Really?” he asks, even though he’s already out of his chair with one hand on his jacket.

“Yeah, someone else can cover the front for a while,” I say as I reach over for the phone and dial Marlow’s extension. She quickly agrees to send Jeremy up to watch the front desk for the rest of the day. Emmett and I sneak out before Jeremy has a chance to trap us with one of his long-winded stories.

Emmett got off to a rocky start here at the ranger station. He was a summer intern – one of the few that actually seemed interested in the job. I stuck him up at the front desk because we lost our admin around that time and Emmett seemed like the most capable intern when it came to interacting with the general public. Immediately, his interest levels plummeted. He did a fine enough job at taking calls and handing out maps, but any excitement he had over the internship evaporated into thin air. He hated being stuck at a desk all day.

When it came time for the summer interns to leave, Emmett asked if there was any chance he could stay on staff part-time. It shocked me, considering how unhappy he seemed there, but we still needed someone to cover the front desk and funds were tight. So, we let him stay. And he seemed more miserable than ever.

Eventually, I sat him down for a real talk about the situation. It turned out that the kid was just going through some shit. He’d been dating the same girl since their sophomore year of high school, but the relationship fell apart as soon as he moved out to Gatlinburg for the summer. Around the same time, his parents announced that they were getting a divorce now that his youngest sister was finally graduating and moving out of the house. And to top it all off, working for the Forest Service was nothing like he imagined it would be.

“I thought I would get to be outdoors a lot,” I remember him saying. “I’ve never been good at anything involving a desk. I sucked at school. I’m bad at sitting still. I thought the Forest Service would be the right type of work for me – probably theonlytype of work that I could ever be good at – but now I’m not sure.”

I told him to wait it out. A lot of us go through this in the beginning. You have to take what you can get to get your foot in the door. From there, opportunities will start to open up. Youjust need to wait for the right one. I started on the rec crew, building fences and cleaning outhouses with Hunter. After that, I was basically forced into the Volunteer Coordinator position (unofficially, since that position didn’t exist at the time in our district). I hated being stuck in the office, just like Emmett does. But I waited it out and now I’m finally in my dream job here at the Forest Service.

Emmett’s time is coming, but he just needs to stick it out a little longer. Eventually some extra funding will come through for a few more rec crew positions, and Emmett will be first on the list. Until then, I’ll do what I can to keep him in the game by getting him away from the front desk as much as possible. I’m not sure law enforcement is the right fit for him, but it can’t hurt to take him along on some of these easy calls.

“It’s weird that someone drove all the way out here,” Emmett says as we get closer to our destination. He has to shout over the sound of air rushing through the open windows of the truck and the crunch of dirt under our tires.

“Yeah, it’s going to be a pain in the ass if we have to get someone to tow this car out of here,” I agree.

We’re pretty far off the trail. We lost the small Forest Service road a couple of miles back. Whoever drove all the way out here seriously did not want to be found.

This sort of thing happens from time to time. Usually, the abandoned vehicles are a little closer to the main drag, but it’s not unheard of to find one all the way out here either. Sometimes it’s somebody trying to get off the grid for a while, and sometimes it’s someone who just sucks at using a map.

“Who called it in?” Emmett asks.

“Some AT hikers who took a cut-through to get to the waterfall.”

“You think the owner is still out here?”

I shrug. “Probably not. Usually, the owner either gets lost and can’t find their way back to the vehicle after they go looking for water or something, or they’re looking to ditch the car for one reason or another. A lot of the time, it turns out the car’s stolen.”

We’re both quiet again for a while. Truthfully, I had an ulterior motive for bringing him along today. Ever since the Kayla debacle, it’s felt a little weird between the two of us. I know they were friends – maybe even more – and he’s undoubtedly heard about the pictures by now.

It's an awkward thing to bring up. I’ve spent the entire week dodging the topic, and now I’m not sure how to bring it up.

“So, uh, everything okay with you lately?” I finally manage to ask.

Emmett shrugs out a simple, “Yeah.”

“It’s been a weird week,” I say after a beat. I’ve been cringing over these words all week, but it’s the best I can come up with.

“Yeah, the whole thing with Kayla?” he says tightly. “Do you want – I mean, if you want to talk about it, we can – “

“Me? No, I thought maybe you would be upset about it, man.”

Emmett laughs. “No, not at all. I mean, the way it all went down was pretty messed up, but I’m not too sad to see her go.”

“Really? I thought maybe you two had something going on. She was always up in the lobby flirting with you.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she was just trying to make you jealous,” he says.

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