Britta’s eyes grew wide. “Fuuuck. Lily, somebody likes you!”

Molly narrowed her eyes and sucked hard on her fat, hand-rolled cigarette, blowing smoke out both nostrils like a dragon. “Lily, you have to return the flowers, otherwise that means yes!”

But I was already smelling them; inhaling traces of tuberose, white lily, plus a spice, like clove mixed with grass. “Yes to what?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “What do you think? These guys are not subtle . . .”

I felt him before I saw him. This push of air, a cool shadow over us where he blocked the brash overhead lights that ticked and swayed in the breeze. A flame of self-consciousness, of awareness of beautiful male, zipped up my spine. All this, and I hadn’t even looked up from my stranglehold on the bouquet. A long-legged black insect emerged from the throat of one of the fluted flowers, tending one of its delicate limbs into the scented night air. My friends shrank back into their chairs, stared holes into me, breathless for me to say something.

“Here,” I said, thrusting the flowers in his direction. “I can’t accept these.”

That’s when I finally looked at him. A gymnast’s build, a bit taller than me, inhabiting his clothes—short-sleeved shirt a size too big and unbuttoned over the universal white wife-beater, baggy American shorts cinched with a colorful woven belt—like he wasn’t aware of them. Thick black hair cut short, missing the usual pomade Bolivian men used to slick it back or spike it up. Under the blocky glasses, carved, high cheekbones shadowed a wide, full mouth. Around his neck hung a black cord strung with the incisors of a peccary, a wild hog deadly in herds; lots of guys wore them, but on him it looked right. Cheap American sandals, the $1.99 type, wide feet, beaten and dusty looking on the sides; they looked unused to being in shoes of any kind.

His fierce brown eyes, magnified by the lenses, lasered into me like he’d found something he’d been looking for, and who was I to stop him? Like what was wrong with me for not remembering who he was. Of the three of us, Britta was the knockout, hands down, so I couldn’t stop wondering, Why me, dude? And what was with the Clark Kent glasses? Bolivian men, many of them slick and preening, often acted like they were doing you a favor offering to bed you down; this guy, handsome as he was, looked like he got dressed, cut his own hair, and combed it in the dark without a mirror.

“Where are you from?” he said in Spanish. He made no move to take the flowers.

“I said, I don’t want them.” I carefully laid out the flowers on the table as if I was showing my losing hand in a card game. I kept my eyes on the heavy velvet petals as my fingers lingered there.

Britta took a swallow of her tequila and head gestured at me. “She’s from the land of strip malls and Burger Kings. Ever been there?”