Come Mid-March we had been doing the friends with benefits thing for almost three months, and I really thought it would have gotten old by now but it hadn’t. If anything, it had only gotten better. I rolled over and pulled Mark up against me. I loved waking up with him and that was something new for me.

I always had a plan for my hookups. Waking up the morning after alone was the best, but if the guy I was with stayed the night, I wanted to get him out the door as quickly and painlessly as possible. Lazy mornings in bed had never been my thing, but they kinda were now. We usually spent the night together at least a couple times a week. Mark snuggled into my embrace, and I wished we could just stay here in bed, but we couldn’t this morning.

“Hey you,” I whispered in his ear. “It’s time to get up and get going. We have places to be and trails to ride.”

“Tell me again why we have to get up so early to ride a bike,” Mark grumbled.

“Because if we’re going to Muleshoe Bend to see the wildflowers, we need to get a move on. It’s about an hour drive and we need to stop and grab something to take to the park for lunch.”

“No, we don’t. I made sandwiches and packed up a backpack for us yesterday. All we need to do is grab the sandwiches out of the fridge and go. Let’s just stay in bed a few more minutes. Please, Justin, just a few more minutes.”

“Nope,” I said cheerfully. “We have a full day ahead, and we need to get moving. We didn’t go to the trouble of putting that bike rack on your SUV for nothing. Come on, let’s go!”

“You sound like a little kid on Christmas morning.” He laughed.

“Well, wildflower season is my favorite time of the year, and biking the trail is the best way to see it. I can’t wait.” And yeah, I admit I sounded pretty excited, but I had been looking forward to this for a month.

“Okay, can I at least get a cup of coffee first?” he asked, yawning and stretching. He looked so blasted adorable at that moment, I had no choice but to tackle him on the bed and kiss him senseless. We laughed and kissed and, finally, I stopped and looked at him.

“You’re not going to distract me with your hot body, Mark. We’re hitting the road. We can drive through some place and grab coffee and breakfast. Let’s go.”

“Me distract you? You are the one who tackled me!” He laughed as he crawled out of bed and started to get ready. I knew that even though he sounded like he wanted to go back to bed that he was just as excited as I was to go on this ride.

We loaded up the car with lunch and headed out. “I can’t wait to get pictures of the wildflowers. I love this new camera. I just wish I knew half of what it can do.” Mark was flipping his camera around looking at it like it was a piece of alien technology.

I laughed at him. “It’s a camera; how hard can it be? I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

We arrived at the park and found a place to park. We got out of the car and took the bikes off the racks. “The trail we’re going on is six and a half miles long. It has some of the most amazing wildflowers anywhere in the state. I can’t believe you’ve never been here before.”

“Well, when I was a kid, we usually just went to Fredericksburg. My mom loved the shopping, and my dad loved the German food. Rachel really had a thing for the wildflowers though. She loves them. I wonder if she has come up here.”

“It’s pretty early in the season. Maybe we can come back in a couple of weeks, and she and Brad could come with us. Do they have bikes?”

“I know Rachel does, but I’m not sure about Brad. I’m pretty sure if she told him she wanted him to ride with her, he’d go out and buy one that day. He’s so gone for her it would be funny if it didn’t make her so happy.”

We both laughed because we knew it was true; Brad was truly head over heels for Rachel. We had hung out with them quite a bit, and I was pretty sure she felt the same but was a little slower to show how she felt. I figured by this time next year, we’d be attending their wedding.

This time next year. Wow, I didn’t realize until just now that I was thinking about me and Mark still hanging out a year from now, but I was. I tucked that thought away for later. Now wasn’t the time, and I refused to let anything ruin our day.

“If you want to stop anywhere along the trail to take pictures just let me know. There are tons of great spots. Also, about halfway there, there is a perfect place to stop and eat.”

We locked up the car, got on our bikes, and headed out.

* * *

This day was just about as close to perfect as I could imagine. It started out with me waking up in Justin’s arms, and now we were sitting in a picnic area surrounded by the most stunning wildflowers I had ever seen. I was even figuring out how to operate my new camera, which was a little like figuring out how to perform brain surgery.

We were sitting at a picnic table, eating our sandwiches, looking out over the field of blue with sprinkles of red and yellow. “I know bluebonnets are what it is all about, but I really like the Indian paintbrush. They’re like a little speck of special in the middle of all that blue.”

I turned and looked at Justin, and he was looking at me weird. Like he was confused about something. “What?”

“Nothing. I just love going places with you. You just make me see how special things are because you enjoy them so much. I don’t know; it’s stupid,” he said, looking embarrassed.

“No, it’s not; it’s sweet. Really.” I leaned over and kissed him. “Here, let’s take a picture. Turn around and face the other way so we’ll have the flowers behind us.” I pulled out my phone to snap a picture and Justin stopped me.

“Aren’t you going to use your camera to take the picture?”

“No, I can’t take a selfie with the actual camera, the phone’ll have to do.” Justin moved behind me so we’d both fit in the picture with the flowers as our backdrop.

“Hey, that is a pretty good picture,” he said. “Will you send it to me on my phone so I’ll have it?”

“Sure, I’ll send it now.” I tapped a few buttons and sent the picture to him. “I want to share it on Facebook so Rachel can see the wildflowers.”

“You know, Mark, no one but soccer moms and grandmothers use Facebook anymore. I don’t even have an account; I deleted mine ages ago.”

“Yeah, well apparently soccer dads do too, so there,” I told him, and he laughed and admitted that soccer dads counted as well.

After that, we packed up and biked the rest of the way around the loop, stopping to take pictures a couple times. By the time we got back, we were both tired. The 6.5-mile loop wasn’t far, but we had dragged it out to last almost all day. “Let’s head on back to the house. Em is going to be waiting to hear all about our day. If we leave now, I’ll get to see her tonight and she can stay at my house.”

“I still think the whole Em going back and forth and you living next to your ex thing is crazy, but you guys really make it work,” Justin said, shaking his head. “Although I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

“Well, Suze and I were always best friends. It makes me sad that I wasn’t honest before I married her, because I know it hurt her. But I wouldn’t trade Em for anything, so I guess it all worked out the way it was supposed to.”

“You say it hurt her, but I thought she was the one who cheated on you.”

“She was, but she realized way before I did that we loved each other but weren’t in love. Or, at least, I wasn’t in love with her. I’m not so sure she wasn’t in love with me and that had to hurt. To realize that the person you married considered you a friend but would never actually be in love with you. I’m proud of her for refusing to settle. I was perfectly willing to spend the rest of my life with her as friends. It took me awhile to accept why that wasn’t enough. But I’m so glad she found Tom. He loves her like his world would end if she weren’t in it, and she deserves that.”

“So do you, you know,” Justin said quietly.

“So do I what?” I asked, trying to follow where his thoughts were headed.

“Deserve to have someone look at you like the world would end if you weren’t in it. You deserve to have that.”

I do, I thought, and so did he. He deserved to have someone look at him like that, and he also deserved to feel that way about someone else. And sometimes, I swear I thought he looked at me that way, but no, I couldn’t allow myself to even think that. That way madness lies, as Shakespeare said.

I just smiled and at him and said, “Yeah well, maybe someday.” And we headed back home.