It was even dimmer inside. I had to wait a moment for my eyes to adjust. I began winding my way through the small rooms and hallways, all lined with stone-walled beds full of thousands of orchids, all shades and shapes, alien and lovely. They hung down in fantastical chains from lattices and arches.

I kept searching, smiling as I passed by the few people who had braved the humidity to see the flowers. I peered through a fall of pink blooms into a dead end and saw a couple in a tight embrace, half sheltered by the plants. His hand was under her short skirt. It was a Spence-type move, but not Spence. It was a paralegal. Chris or Craig. I didn’t know the girl. I backed away silently and pressed on.

If Trey were here, he would bellow, “Spence, damn it, olly olly oxen free!” and be so good-humored about it that no one would be affronted by his nonsense.

It had been that way at the High Museum the day we met. He stuck by me as I turned and made my way back down the hall, this time pausing for each of the featured artist’s paintings. He paused with me, his tone light as he confessed, “I’m not big on modern art. I want people or animals. Maybe boats. I can really get behind a good boat picture.”

I tutted. “Very old-fashioned of you.”

“I know. But these look like bad wallpaper to me.”

That made me laugh again. We moved on, now in tandem. All the paintings in the hall were similar, white backgrounds with various shapes spattered across the canvas. He made up names as we passed them: Rainbow McNuggets. The Diatom’s Revenge. Dung Takes a Holiday.

That one got us both giggling, and a stuffy-looking older couple shot us a glare. I grabbed his arm, almost pinching, shushing him, but he wasn’t fussed. He put a hand over mine, walking again, my hand now tucked companionably into the crook of his elbow.

I liked the feel of him. Solid and muscular. I could smell some kind of aftershave, spicy and faint, and under that his own warm male smell. I liked that, too. Interact, the assignment said, but from the moment I touched him, it wasn’t about the assignment anymore. Something real was happening.

We wandered the exhibit, chatting more than looking, until the halls let us out into the tall, round atrium.

He paused there and said, “I worry that that boring exhibition ruined your afternoon.”

“Just a little.” I smiled up at him.