The boomers at the next campsite lit their third joint since I got here, and I’m thinking about everything they should have been. Not cowboys, like the lyrics of the song blaring from their speaker, but rather stewards, advocates, or fucking fortune tellers. They should have been voices for the planet while they had the chance. Now the world is burning, and they’re driving their RVs from campsite to campsite to watch the flames.

We sat outside at an old wooden high-top table. It violently tilted whenever one of us leaned on our elbows, and the bowed splinters from years in the salt air snagged our knit sweaters. I had drained my glass of white wine by the time our oysters arrived. I felt anxious, vibrating out of my body as my thoughts spiraled. It was my first time eating oysters. Not his. He said as much as we were parking next to the dock, our tires crunching over littered shells. His ex loved eating them.

I dropped out of culinary school the quarter before the bakery rotation. Some students called it the “bacation” because it was comically chiller than culinary. Nobody yelled, there were no ticket times, and you ate cupcakes. I could have used a good bacation. I had started resenting a lot about school: the culture, curriculum, and classmates. Seeing those happy, cupcake-filled pastry students irritated the hell out of me. So, like a balm on my burns, I started calling them pastry babies. Never to their faces, just in rage texts to the few friends I kept in touch with back home.

Of our many daily rituals, I savored the post-work hunger fix the most. It was a frenzied pantry raid paired with a recap of our great or not-so-great days. It was our end-of-day recalibration. No matter what happened out in the world, we always met back and snacked. We’d stand at the counter, eating straight from bags or off the cutting board, and catch each other up. We’d swing between topics, and each change in conversation was a shift in fare. Dark chocolate and his walk in the rain at lunch. Sun-dried tomatoes and a cold call from my dad about his friend who is dying from cancer.