The person I was waiting for hadn’t arrived yet, so I stepped down the broken cement stairs leading to the rocky beach. This is where I’d take the kids fishing. I should have taken them already. I’d meant to. I’d even bought a new pole, a good one with a baitcasting reel.

Soon. I’d take them soon.

It was stunning, Crooked River. Hunther’s hidden treasure. I breathed in the rich, earthy, and mineral scents of the river. The gurgling of crystal water bubbling over rapids calmed my senses. I had the urge to take off my shoes and socks and walk carefully along the rock bed. I could almost feel the cold water numbing my skin, soothing my feet and calves.

My old girlfriend and I used to come to the river all the time. Bonfires, swimming, fishing. The day I’d met her, I’d cooked her a Bluegill from the river. I had just returned from fishing and was sitting on my parents’ driveway, slicing open the Bluegill. Dad’s small grill beside me, charcoals burning, glowing orange and fading to gray. Sixteen. I was sixteen. It was summertime, before sunrise. I did that in the summer, woke in the dark to go fishing. Brought a fish home and cooked it on my parents’ driveway.

The early morning sky had been shot through with that electric magical blue. I loved that time of day when most people still slept, when anything seemed possible, the fresh-start cool and crisp feeling that you could be anyone.

“Whatcha doing?” she said from across the street. Her voice was like a fingernail tracing down my stomach. I almost slipped with the knife. My pulse was suddenly hammering, my skin was hot, and my dick was already hard.

As she crossed the road, her nightgown swaying at her knees, electric birdsong started in the trees as if she’d woken them.

She reached my driveway and tucked her wild morning hair behind an ear. Her fingernails were unpainted and chewed short. She wore rings on her fingers and a woven string bracelet on her wrist. Under her thin nightgown, her nipples were hard.

Instead of recoiling at the bloody guts on the asphalt beside me, the wide blade in my hand, she said, “Did you catch that in Crooked River?”

“Yeah.” I wanted to tell her everything about me, about what I loved, about the light and dark in me, I wanted to rip my chest open and show her my insides. I took a deep breath. “I’m about to cook it. You want some?”

“Is it safe to eat?”

“I hope so. I’ve been eating from that river for years.”

She smiled. “Um, sure.” She slipped her foot free from her sandal, used her toenail to scratch the back of her calf. “Me and my mom just moved in.”

“I noticed.”