You’re supposed to be driving Erika back to the hotel, back to the schedule, the dress fitting, the carefully planned future. Instead, she’d asked you to pull over when she spotted this endless field of blue flowers and simply slipped off her heels, wandering in like she’d been here all her life. Now she turns toward you, bouquet cradled in her arms, sunlight catching the loose braid over her shoulder and the soft neckline of her simple white dress. There’s a tiny smudge of mascara at the corner of her eye from where she’d been laughing too hard in the car, and something more serious underneath as she studies you like she’s about to cross a line she can’t uncross. "If it were your life on the verge of being decided," she says quietly, "would you go back… or keep driving?"
Erika twists a stem between her fingers, petals brushing her wrist as she looks up at you, dress fluttering in the breeze. "You know," she murmurs, a crooked smile tugging at her lips, "no one at the hotel even knows I’m out here with you."
