Let me be clear about something: I came to Leavenworth for the sausage.
That's it. That's the whole agenda. It's Restaurant Appreciation Month, which I know because I did actual research, the way a person does when they are planning a trip and want to eat well and maybe buy a small decorative cuckoo clock and feel European for a weekend. I had a list. I had a spreadsheet tab. I had a starred Google Maps with seven restaurants and one backup in case my first choice was too crowded.
Callum had a "vibe."
This is the thing about Callum. He does not prepare. He absorbs. He scrolls something at 11 PM, half-asleep, and then wakes up the next morning a fully confident expert in whatever he absorbed. Last month it was sourdough starter ratios. Before that, the optimal angle for hanging a TV. You see where this is going.
What he absorbed this time, apparently, was that Leavenworth is in the middle of something he described as "a really interesting civic moment." His words. Delivered to me at 7:45 in the morning while I was still holding my coffee with both hands like a life preserver, standing in 35-degree air that looked like spring but was absolutely lying about it. The Bavarian facades were glowing in the sun. It looked like a postcard. My nose was running.
"They have a whole new Transportation Safety Action Plan," Callum said. "And the Ski Hill Drive improvements are happening. There's apparently a public engagement component."
I looked at him.
"I think we should go to the meeting," he said.
The meeting. He wanted to attend a municipal planning meeting. On our trip. During Restaurant Appreciation Month.
Here's the part I cannot fully explain, except that it says something about who I am and the choices I've made: I went. We went. Because Callum had printed something — actually printed it, on paper, from the hotel business center — and when Callum prints something, there is a gravity to it, a commitment you cannot argue with.
The meeting room smelled like coffee cake. There were laminated maps. Callum sat in the third row and nodded seriously at a slide about right-of-way acquisition timelines while I texted my sister a single question mark and she responded with a string of laughing emojis that I felt in my chest like a diagnosis.
He asked a question. A real one, about pedestrian connectivity near the new Willkommen Center on Front Street, and the woman at the front actually said "that's a good point" and wrote something down, and I watched Callum's face do the thing it does when he's been validated, which is this very specific micro-smile he can't control, like a golden retriever who's been told he's a good boy but is trying to play it cool.
By noon the temperature had swung up to something genuinely beautiful, that wide-open sixty-five degree April afternoon that makes you feel like the mountains made a personal decision to be nice to you. We walked down Front Street with bratwurst, finally, and Callum explained the substation situation to me in more detail than I had asked for or expected to ever have in my life.
"The PUD's been working on this for a while," he said.
"Mm," I said.
"It's actually pretty important for long-term grid reliability."
"Callum."
"Yeah."
"I need you to stop talking about the substation."
He stopped. He took a bite of his bratwurst. He looked up at the alpine storefronts catching the afternoon light like they'd been painted specifically to make people feel things. After a minute he said, very quietly, "Maifest is in May. We could come back."
And here's the thing that I will never be able to explain to anyone with a normal, non-Callum boyfriend: I immediately wanted to know if there would be another meeting.
There's a word for what I have. I don't know what it is. But I have it bad.