Luke led Aria back in the direction that he had taken her on one of the first days she had been at the car lot. Back in the direction of the stream, which was now more of a river. Back in the direction of the place where they had laid bare their life stories to each other.

Seeing a cluster of plants with leaves that looked like lily pads, Aria squealed, “Hey look, it’s mallow.” She plucked a few of the tender young leaves of the plant and inspected them before biting a piece out of one and holding it out toward Luke. “Try it, you can eat it. Apparently you can eat the seedpods, too, as long as they haven’t gone woody. This is so exciting; I read that they didn’t really grow like this until spring.”

Luke took a curious bite out of the leaf. “It’s not that bad,” he said, suddenly stopping to hold his throat, pretending to be poisoned as a joke.

“Good Lord, cut it out. It’s really good, I swear,” Aria said.

“I didn’t know you were into this kinda thing,” Luke said. “You’d love this lady I stayed with up in Mount Shasta. No joke, she knows like everything there is to know about plants and plant medicines. She’s kinda like a witch. This one time I was up there, I got such bad allergies and she collected this batch of stinging nettles. It was so cool – she poured boiling water over the leaves and let them sit there for like ten minutes and made me drink the water. I swear to God, I didn’t have any more problems the whole time I was there.”

Her interest in foraging revived, Aria chewed on the mallow leaves as she walked. When they arrived at the spot where she and Luke had spent the day together months earlier, Luke sat down on the same rock where they had sat before. The water had swollen beyond the confines of the bank. Aria sat down beside him, waiting for him to initiate whatever he had wanted to talk about.

“It’s just kind of strange that you are just now telling me you have a boyfriend,” Luke said eventually.

His obvious irritation bemused Aria. She didn’t understand why he would care. “Well, it just happened, it’s not like I’ve been hiding it from you forever,” she said.