Callum had a bracket.
I want to be clear about this. Not a metaphorical bracket, not a loose ranking he'd thought through on the drive down. A printed, folded, eight-slot bracket, made in Google Sheets, titled "St. Augustine Sunset Walk: Route Optimization (Final)" — with seeds. He had seeded the walking routes. Route C, which went past the fort along the waterfront, had received a first-round bye.
He explained the bracket to me in the parking lot of Alfred's on West King Street while we were still eating pizza and the sky was already doing something I can only describe as threatening. Not raining. Just considering it. The particular shade of grey-green that Florida sky goes when it's having a conversation you're not invited to.
"That's just cloud cover," Callum said. "Which, actually, is better. It'll be cooler."
He said cooler the way people say synergy — as if the word itself was doing work.
We had driven four hours from Atlanta. Callum had spent approximately three of them monitoring a weather radar app that showed animated precipitation like a sports broadcast, complete with his own commentary. That cell's moving northeast, we're fine. See that gap? That's our window. He had a window. He had identified a meteorological window using free radar and confidence.
Alfred's had been genuinely great, actually — loud and cold and full of people who'd made the same exact calculation Callum had made and were now successfully staying indoors. There was an air hockey table. I suggested we stay. Callum showed me the bracket.
We left at 6:47, which was, according to his phone, "optimal departure" for the seawall walk past Castillo de San Marcos. What his phone had not fully accounted for was that the National Park Service had begun mobilizing for a seawall rehabilitation project, which meant portions of the waterfront walk were fenced off behind orange construction barriers, with signage that had clearly been there for more than a day, and probably more than a week, and was not a surprise to anyone who had checked any source of local information other than a weather radar app and a homemade bracket.
"Okay," Callum said, looking at the barrier. "So we go around."
He was wearing loafers. He had worn loafers to a Florida waterfront walk in July. I have asked him about this. He said he thought the brick streets would be "more cobblestone-y" and he'd wanted to dress "historically appropriate." He said this while already sweating through his shirt in a way that suggested the microclimate theory had not panned out.
We went around. Callum narrated. He explained that the Castillo de San Marcos had survived every siege it had ever faced, which was interesting and also not immediately relevant to our situation, which was that we were on a detour in ninety-degree heat while the sky got progressively more serious about its intentions.
The first drops came somewhere near the visitors' center. Not dramatic. Just a few, the kind that feel like a warning.
"That's the outer band," Callum said.
Then the outer band arrived.
We ran — or I ran, and Callum sort of loped in loafers in a way that was both faster than expected and somehow more dignified than it had any right to be — back toward a covered archway near one of the old historic buildings, where we stood with approximately six other people who had also miscalculated, all of us looking out at the rain and the grey bay and the fort's silhouette going slightly soft behind the downpour.
And here is the thing about Callum, the thing that is both the problem and the whole reason I drove four hours:
He pulled out his phone, opened the radar app, and went, "Oh, wow, look at this. There's actually a beautiful clear window coming in about forty minutes. The back side of this is going to be incredible. We might still get the sunset."
He was not being defensive. He was not embarrassed. He was excited. He had found a new window.
We did not get the sunset. We got fish tacos in a place nearby and watched the lightning over the water from a dry table, which was, genuinely, spectacular.
On the drive home, Callum updated the bracket. Route C was eliminated. Route D, which he had apparently already mapped "just in case," received a bye into the finals.
He has already asked if I want to go back in August.
I'm going to say yes.