Ben applauded as I tried to lift the spare triumphantly, but I misjudged my grip and the thing slid out of my hands.
And speed-bounced directly toward the drop-off to the river.
“No!” we screamed in horrified unison.
Ben unfroze first, tearing after the runaway tire. The observationspot was basically a sloped dirt pull-off littered with stones, which made the tire move unpredictably. Just when it started to slow it would hit a rock, bounce into the air, and recharge.
“Careful,” Ben shouted when I tripped on my own feet.
He finally chased it down at the last second, kicking it onto its side just before it was about to bounce over the guardrail and into the river.
“Oh my god, that was almost atragedy!” I breathed, clutching my chest and dropping to my knees.
Ben laughed as he squatted down to collect himself, keeping one hand on the tire. “You’re right. A double tragedy—littering in a pristine waterway, plus without this tire we’d be stranded here together for all eternity.” He gave me a winsome grin. “I’d have to build us a cabin on the mountainside.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup,” he answered confidently. “And you’d have to forage for all our food. Berries and mushrooms, mainly.”
“Okay, I get it.” I smiled back at the thought of it. “We’d also adopt some baby animals to keep us company, like a possum. Maybe a raccoon too.”
He nodded. “Exactly. And the fireflies would be our string lights. Every night we’d sleep beneath them on pillows made of foraged goose down.”
“And we’d climb to the top of that mountain to howl at the full moon with the wolves every month,” I added. “Wild and free.”
Sensations I’d never experienced. Ben, on the other hand, had been the poster boy for both. We both gazed up at the mountain, squinting into the cold sunshine.
“Damn,” he finally replied. He cocked an eyebrow, righted the tire, and pretended to roll it toward the river.
“I wish,” I admitted.
“Hey, in a few weeks you’ll have more free time than you ever wanted,” Ben replied with a little more grit in his voice than necessary. “Maybe you should start planning some camping trips?”
“Oh? Just like you did post-Olympics. A quiet escape to Walden Pond for some introspection, perhaps?”
It was a dig, because his victory tour was headline-worthy. Seeing the photos of him stumbling out of clubs in sweaty, half-open button-downs in the months after Switzerland was all the proof I’d needed that I’d been a charity case for him.
“Mistakes were made,” he replied with a wince. “I can be your cautionary tale. Do as I say and all that.”
“But you did have fun,” I insisted.
He took me in for a beat. “That’s how it looked, huh?”
The whimsy of our fireflies-and-feather-pillows conversation evaporated.
“If I can do anything for you,” Ben continued, “other than delivering a great episode, it’s to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes that I did. Because the one thing people never talk about is how—”
A gigantic black pickup slowed down to a crawl, then pulled in behind my car.
“Uh oh,” Ben said under his breath. He placed the spare back on its side and stood up in front of me.
I spied a young girl in the passenger seat as the driver opened the door and stood on the running board.
“Hey,” the guy in a baseball cap called out to us. “You folks okay?”
Ben gave him a wave. “All good. Just changing a tire.”
The guy glanced at my stopped car and us hovering near the edge of the drop-off. “Need any help?”
