A month after my brief encounter with Camille, I lost my job.

When Kevin mentioned that now I just had to go with him, his family, and his friends to their annual Memorial Day Weekend trip up in Oklahoma, I was short on excuses. Before too long, I was really looking forward to it as a way to get out of my apartment.

We arrived at the campsite on a Friday evening and set up camp on the public lands right by the river. Camille was supposed to arrive late that night. I’d missed some sleep the night before packing so I turned in early. Having gone to sleep first, I also woke up first the next morning.

Micah, Kevin, and Callie woke up shortly after. Kevin and Callie headed out to Kevin’s folks hotel and Micah started making breakfast. Camille emerged from her tent shortly after that. My first real impressions weren't really very dramatic. She looked a lot less bulky than she did at the Firehouse, something I later found out was attributable to the clothes she was wearing on top of scrubs that night. My second thought was that she was, well, kinda cute.

Micah offered us some coffee. Camille quickly accepted, and even though I do not care for coffee, I accepted to in the spirit of the adventure. Then I opened my mouth, promptly putting my foot into it.

When she mentioned working in a hospital, I asked if she was a nurse. My thinking was that she looked rather young and worked in a hospital. Maybe her gender had something to do with it; I really don't know. In any case, Dr. Camille was none-too-pleased with the assumption. I was apparently not the first to make it. The ironic part is that I intended the question complimentarily. My brain already had in mind how to say that I thought that nurses were really cool. In fact, I'd always found being a nurse to be perhaps the sexiest profession, though I wasn't going to tell that to this person that I had just met.

"Okay," I thought to myself, "she just graduated medical school. That means she's probably closer to Kevin and Callie's age than my own."

That lead to foot-chomping incident two. Within minutes, we were talking about something that related to age and I made a reference to "my generation."

"We're probably about the same age," she curtly responded. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-four."

"See? I'm twenty-seven. I'm even older than you are."

Apparently, in addiction to being accused of being a nurse, she's been regularly accused of being younger than she is. Of course, I thought that she was older than she was, but I couldn't communicate that, choking on shoelace as I was.

She was good-natured about it, considering that I'd hit something of a sore spot.

That afternoon, we went floating.

The Whitlock First Rule of Intergender Engagement: Regardless of level of interest, if you get an opportunity to spend time talking to a (single and non-repulsive) female within your age range, you take it. You may either garner interest or she may have a really cute friend.

So as we boarded the raft, it was fully my intention to sit next to her. In part because of The First Rule, and in part because of the circumstances: of the six people that were going, we were the only two besides Callie (Kevin's girlfriend) that didn't know Kevin from way back when (it turned out that Camille knew Kevin a lot longer than I had thought, but I didn't know that yet).

The first day of river floating was a blast. Camille and I were in the back doing most of the paddling and while everyone else drank (I didn't drink so much because of fears regarding my bladder and she doesn't drink), we talked quite a bit.

The several hours of rafting gave us all quite a bit of time to talk. It wasn't long before I started picking up on a pattern: we were compatible in just about every way that came up.

It’s not something I haven’t run across before. Standard protocol when I do find someone with basically the same long term family goals, I start running through potential red flags. Personality-wise, there really weren't any. She doesn't drink, but has no problem with those that do. She mentioned somewhere along the way that she'd like to have a family someday (which was a good thing for her to mention, because my assumption was otherwise), and just about everything she said either resonated with me or, if it didn't, didn't bother me.

There was one catch: Idaho.

She was moving to Idaho. She was even partially packed.

So before my mind got too far along, I quashed it with the thought of that five-letter state. With that, I really didn't think too much about it again for the rest of that day's bout with the river.

The somewhat daunting weather had not improved the next day, as the rest had hoped. Kevin and Callie started wavering on whether or not to go out kayaking, as was on the itenerary.

Since this was my first trip, I was honestly interested in making the most of it. Having never been kayaking, however, I didn't want to go out alone. Camille to the rescue! She was interested in going and it ended up being just the two of us.

That was when things got more complicated for me. The second day was even greater than the first. Too great.

It reached a high point when we were taking a pit stop and we were talking. I felt the urge to kiss her. Considering that we’d known each other for less than 36 hours, I figured that would be a bad idea. Idaho. To this day, I can still remember the moment with crystal clarity. I remember her smile, what she was wearing, the landscape, and even the color of the kayaks that was passing us at the time (yellow and orangish-red). It was the first moment I realized that I liked her and I couldn't help it.

Of course, I had no idea how she felt about me and, considering Idaho, it was rather a moot point. Regardless, a lot of the self-recrimination and confusion I'd been going through at the time, it felt really good to like someone. Not only to like them, but do so free and clear of any expectation.

The next day, we all parted ways.