“You really want to drive down here.”

“Of course I do,” Allen said.

“Okay. It just seems like you do all the driving,” Jamie replied. She was keeping her voice down because she was at work and there was a customer looking around.

“The other day you got all pissed because I didn’t want to drive down.”

“I know.”

“Well, somebody has to drive.”

“Yeah…”

“Incidentally, you left some pictures at my place.”

“I did?”

“The roll from the botanical gardens?”

“Oh yeah! I totally forgot about those.”

Allen thinks about keeping the picture of his reverie almost afraid now that it would give the secret away if she looks too closely. “Anyway… today’s just so… I just really want to see you.”

“Yeah?”

“Wednesday night was just stupid.”

“Yeah.” They both pause for a long while. “Well, you know, you can ‘make it up’ to me.”

Allen laughs a little, the phone crackling, the signal maybe bent by electricity hanging in the atmosphere. He liked it when Jamie baited him, and he can almost hear her smile through the receiver because she knows he knows. “I love you,” he says instead of taking the bait and smiles, staring at the Styrofoam carton that his brunch had recently occupied.

“I love you too.”

The pair enjoys a pleasant, pregnant moment of silence.    

“Listen, I gotta’ get back to work.”

“Okay. I’ll see you around five.”

“You sure you remember where it is?”

“Yup.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

Allen laughs again. “K’bye.”

“Bye.”

Allen trudges back to the bedroom to get his gym bag. Just beneath the bag, sitting at the foot of the bed, is an envelope of pictures. Without opening it, Allen sets the pictures of he and Jamie at the Atlanta botanical garden on top of his dresser. Official keeper of all-things-sentimental she must have left them behind last weekend. As an afterthought, Allen picks the envelope up off the dresser and sits on the edge of the bed to flip through them.

[Interesting Flower #1: large purple flowers that look like cups.]

Allen stares blankly.

[Interesting Flower #2: really light blue with lots of small flowers]

He strokes his chin scientifically and emits, “Um-hm.”

[Not an interesting flower.]

Allen looks perplexed. Why photograph that one? Jamie had thought they were all mesmerizing though.

[Interesting Flower #3: large clumps of small yellow flowers shaped like dust mops.]

“Ah yes, the rhoden… aram modi… menicus.” Then he snickers. His fake Latin was exceptional.

He pauses at each flower whereas before he would have tucked one and another of the photographs away looking for photos of people doing things. He didn’t know anything about the numbers of petals or the difference between a pistil and a stamen. There was nothing to recognize except for the brilliance of the colors in the sun that day. It had been beautiful, clear and blue and left Allen to wandering absently. But if he had been walking in thought of some kind up ahead of her, Jamie would holler after him, “Oh my God! Look at these gorgeous Dendrobium orchids.”

[Allen leaning into the frame of the picture with his eyes closed in bliss at the scent of several large saucer-like flowers.]

He furrows his brow and tries to remember the smell. There was an essence of brown sugar that he could remember but he didn’t know what to name it.

In most of the pictures he was in, he was mugging the camera, his smiles exaggerated, his eyes wide as if nothing could bring him greater joy than… yes, flowers. Then, Allen found one picture that Jamie had taken without his knowing.

[A curved line drops from one edge of the photo to the other: a hilltop overlooking a pond. Near the crest of the hill, beneath a tree, sits Allen, lost in thought.]

He remembers that thought, a decision about the future that he was pondering and an unspoken prelude to their argument three days ago. Things with Jamie were moving forward and he had been thinking about that. His face in the photo looked relaxed, the distant horizon in the photograph printed next to his nose.