It is this season last year. I am in the grocery store, collecting oranges and dairy-free desert. Then I find her working in the park. It is hot, and she coos happily at the gifts.
"Some guys tried to hit on me earlier," she says. I prepare to hear a funny story.
"They were lawyers. They said 'Now that is a strong woman! I'll bet she don't take crap from nobody,' and I said 'Nope! I sure don't!' I told them they weren't my type, and I have a boyfriend. I was hoping you would come before they left."
"Oh really?" I ask, eyebrow raised in that combination of satisfaction and amusement she always brings out in me.
"Yeah, they were like 'oh, let me guess, is he really hairy and plays the guitar?' so I said 'No, he's more like a ninja.'"
A few months will pass, far too quickly, and we will be sitting in my room. "I like being close," she will say, "but not that close."
I will tell her that I am angry that this has happened, but that I want her to be happy. I will write a goodbye, and, like any ninja, I will vanish.
More time will pass. There will be others who like me better. Then one day I will find myself looking at oranges in the grocery store. I will remember. Color, heat. Sliding over the curb and dismounting my bike, the two of us laughing at nothing in particular. The time she put me in the passenger side of a two seated plane and flew me to the ocean, and I knew I was done for.
I will wonder how she has been.
I will know better than to ask.
I will buy myself mangoes and cherries, and decide to keep the memories after all. Perhaps someday I will offer them to someone else.