2. Zach

Chapter 2

Zach

Being offered the regional manager position for the Santa Fe office was an honor. Truly, the raise was nice. The extra four weeks of vacation was nice, and the bigger bonus would be nice when I got it at the end of the year. A few other perks were great too, including the clothing and tech allowance I never used. But moving away from Reno, the only place I'd ever lived, had been tougher than I thought it would be.

Since I hadn't needed to make new friends since I was a child, I guess I assumed it would be easy. But I quickly realized that when you were hired as a manager of a team, you couldn't exactly become buddies with your staff. And when I worked all the time, it was hard to meet people outside of work. Which meant, after living there for a few months, I still had no friends.

I joined the Lactin Brotherhood and met some great guys there. They held socials once a month, but most of those guys were either partnered and busy with their families or were available to socialize during business hours when I was at work because they worked evening hours either with private clients or delivering their various milk-based products.

Monetizing my milk hadn't ever been a high priority, but it was something I probably needed to consider as a way of meeting people. Back in Reno, I had some regular clients I delivered to, but nothing yet in Santa Fe. I'd been donating to a bank that served the fitness industry, but only when I wasn't lazy about pumping and had time to drop it off. They freeze dried the milk and sold it as powder for high-fat protein shakes and for cooking.

The president of the chapter mentioned that guys often volunteered in the NICU ward at the hospital to help with preemies or sold directly to parents who couldn't produce milk. It sounded like a nice thing to do someday, but I wasn't there yet.

That was a big commitment and would leave me fewer hours in the week to go out and meet people.

It wasn't even that I was looking for a romantic situation. As nice as that sounded, I wanted to actually make connections in Santa Fe. People to meet for dinner or play golf with. I hoped to be in the area for the long-term, so building a network of friends was important to me.

I joined several meetup groups for singles, including hiking, pickleball, and bowling. I wasn't particularly good at any of those things, but I figured meetups would be a low-pressure way to learn the games and get some exercise too.

My first hike was scheduled for Sunday, but since I hadn't been on a hike since I was a boy scout in middle school, I decided to do a little test run first. I bought new boots, new cargo shorts with a million pockets but only a few inches of length because apparently guys wore Daisy Dukes these days, and a camelback to stay hydrated. I was ready for anything. At least, that was what the guy at the sporting goods store told me when he was loading me up with crap.

The El Camino Real Trail was not far from my house and was known across the country for its rich history. I threw a granola bar in the front pouch of the little mini backpack that held the water bladder and set off for my test hike.

According to the weather, it was going to hit the high nineties, but on Sunday, it would be 102, so ninety-eight was a good temp for me to acclimate and make sure I didn't pass out in front of all my new potential buddies.

At exactly nine o'clock, I parked at the trailhead and headed out. I planned to go three miles out and three miles back. A nice little 10k to warm up my dormant muscles.

There were surprisingly few cars in the lot, which should have made me hesitate. But I didn't. As usual, I just assumed I was one of the early birds and it would fill up a little later in the day.

Of course, I knew most people would probably stay at home in this weather, but most people already had friends and didn't need to take such drastic measures to make new ones.

Undeterred, I zipped my car key into my backpack, took a sip of my water, and took those first tentative steps onto the lonely trail.

Realistically, depending on the elevation changes, I expected to be no more than an hour and a half out and an hour and a half back. That should put me back at my car somewhere around lunchtime, so I could load up on carbs and then spend the rest of my day feeling proud of myself for having taken the first step toward companionship.

But I underestimated how hot 85° would feel out in the desert.

The trail didn't have a lot of shade, so within just a few minutes, I was sweating. I did a pretty good job of rationing my water, but the small hydration pack was quickly getting lighter on my back.

By the time the first hour had passed, I realized I'd missed a few of the trail markers and wasn't exactly sure where I was. I knew I wasn't more than a few miles from the parking lot so I wasn't worried, but I made an effort to start paying better attention to my surroundings so I wouldn't take a turn that ended up being dangerous.

For the most part, it was quiet. There was the occasional leaf crunching and small critter sounds, but when I heard a series of howls that sounded a lot like a pack of coyotes, I decided it was time to turn back.

Since I wasn't going to be out as long or as far as I expected, I sat down on a rock and pulled out my granola bar and had a snack. Before getting up, I checked the water level in the hydration bag just for an idea of whether it would be sufficient for my longer hike the next day. There wasn't a lot left in it, maybe a few ounces, which further solidified my decision to turn my tired ass around and go get lunch.

I wasn't entirely sure where I was, so I tried to pin my location on my phone to make sure I wasn't going in circles. But I had no signal out here. I didn't expect to have a signal and didn't plan to use my phone at all, but once it was confirmed that I was out here all alone, I started to get a little nervous.

Going out on a hot day—all alone—to an unknown historical park was probably not one of my smarter decisions.

The sounds of nature seemed to get louder with every step I took. I was probably just more attuned to them now that I was starting to get paranoid, but when I heard something that sounded more human than animal, I braced myself for an attack of some kind.

At first, I stood still and was silent, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. Then I cleared my throat. "Hello. Is someone out there?"

There was another moan from behind an outcropping of rocks.

Slowly and carefully, I leaned around and was shocked to see a man crumpled up in the tiny amount of shade provided by the rocks. "Oh shit. Are you okay?" I went to his side and reached for his hand. There was a bit of crusted blood across his knuckles but nothing serious. "Are you hurt?"

He shook his head but didn't open his eyes. "Water?"

"Yeah, of course." I pulled out my hydration pack and cursed myself for having inhaled most of it for no reason instead of conserving it for an emergency like this. "There's not much, but can you bite the tip of the straw and suck?"

I held the tip close to his lips and waited. He opened just enough to bite down on it, but didn't seem to have the strength to pull what was left at the bottom of the bag through the long straw. I looked at the bag again and wondered if there was a way to shoot what was left directly into his mouth. I bit the tip to open it and inflated the entire bladder until it was full and then moved the opening to the boy's lips. "Here, open your mouth. There isn't a lot left, but I'm gonna shoot it right into your mouth."

His lips separated, and the poor guy looked like he was already dead as I squeezed the opening of the straw and put pressure on the bag until the small amount of water did in fact shoot right into his mouth.

He quickly lapped it up, swallowing every drop and licking his cracked lips. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, but that's not enough to sustain you." I looked at his backpack and frowned. He didn't seem to have any of the proper hiking gear to be out in those conditions, at least as far as Chad from the sporting goods store explained it to me. "Do you have any more water in your pack?"

He rubbed his eyes, like he was trying to wake himself up. "No. I have nothing."

Again, I felt terrible for eating my granola bar when I wasn't even hungry, but I remembered the pack of Lifesavers that I slipped into my pack. "How about some hard candy? Maybe a little sugar will do you some good?"

He finally opened his eyes and smiled as I tore open the candy and broke off a piece for him.

At first, I wasn't sure if I should handle it with my bare fingers, but since he had already sucked on my straw, I figured we were past the point of worrying about germs, so I just went ahead and broke off a piece and then placed it in his mouth. "There you go, kid. Suck that for a minute and hopefully you'll start to feel a little bit better."