“Maybe I’ll take you up on that someday. If I ever find someone to go with me.”

“I’m sure you won’t have trouble finding a travel companion. What about Cat?”

“Oh, come on, you know Cat. Can you honestly imagine her taking time off work?”

“She is a little tightly wound,” he allowed, smiling crookedly. “Here, tell you what: if you can’t find someone who wants to go, I’ll go with you.”

I laughed. “Sure. We just met, let’s fly to Asia together! It can be our third date. What could go wrong?”

He laughed with me, but soon our laughter faded and we were left looking at each other with goofy half smiles on our faces. Max’s tongue darted out to wet his lips, and then he leaned toward me. I closed the distance between us, our lips meeting in the middle. He cupped my face in his hands, the slightly rough pads of his thumbs stroking my cheeks, and warmth spread like molten lava through my limbs. Dimly, I heard the roar of another plane, but all I could focus on was Max, on the connection of our mouths and the smell of his skin.

Roses are red, violets are blue, some flowers are headless, you could be too.

I shivered involuntarily as the rhyme resurfaced suddenly and without warning, and Max pulled away, his eyebrows knitted in concern.

“Is something wrong?”

I shook my head and reached for him, but he held me off.

“Are you sure? Was I too forward there? I was just kidding about—”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I promised. “Just some online stuff I thought about for a second. It’s nothing.”

“Online stuff?” He tilted his head. “You mean your … what did you call them? Presets?”

“Not them, actually. I haven’t quite finished them yet. I’m getting close, though. I actually used a trial version when I shared the picture of the picnic earlier.”

“Really? Can I see?”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing my phone and opening Instagram. I tapped on the new photo in my grid and started to hand Max the phone, glancing offhandedly at the comments as I did so.

One in particular caught my attention: Who are you with?

My skin prickled. I could feel Max’s eyes on me, and, not wanting him to think something was amiss, I quickly deleted the comment and handed over my phone with a bright smile.

“Here you go. See how bold the colors are? Particularly that blanket.” I winked. “It was a good investment.”

“I knew it,” he said faux seriously. “But, Audrey, really, this looks incredible. You took my dumb little picnic and made it look like … I don’t know, like art. I can see why you have so many followers.”

I put on an amused smile, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Instagram comment. Who are you with? It could be innocuous, but it felt menacing. I rubbed my hands over my arms, quelling the sudden outbreak of gooseflesh, and surreptitiously glanced around. Was someone watching us?