"Where are we going? This isn't the way to our hotel." Roman was silent in the passenger seat.
"No?" he said. I looked at the side of his face; it was all I could see from where I was sitting.
"No, Roman. It's not," I said, a little sarcastically.
"We have a detour to make first," said Tiffany. Detour? I was looking forward to getting to the hotel. I wanted to wash the seven hours of flight off of me and maybe follow that with a couple more hours napping. Not to mention food. I was starving.
"Where to?" I asked. She didn't say anything. I looked out the windows, mentally tracking where we were going. "Tiff?"
"You'll see when we get there," she said, looking at me through the rear-view mirror.
"Rome?" I tried.
"Hm?" he answered. The same innocent, noncommittal sound his sister had made. I sat back in the seat, mostly giving up. The list of places we could be going were limited, anyway. It wasn't like this would be a surprise when we got there unless something major like a new mall or something had gone up. I watched outside the windows as we took the familiar streets.
"What are we doing here?" I asked as Tiffany parked.
I hadn't been here in years, literally. During all the visits we had made back home, we had never come back to the park for a picnic. Back home, at our place in Miami, we had sort of carried the tradition on, taking a basket down to the beach sometimes when it wasn't that windy, but the last time we'd been to our spot was... It had been when we got back together. The weekend before I moved to Miami with Roman. Roman got out of the car and came round the back to open mine. He offered me a hand and helped me out.
"I thought we'd do something special this trip. We're celebrating."
"You didn't want to go to the hotel and drop our stuff off first?" I asked.
"Tiff's waiting for us. It can stay in the car."
"Waiting for us? She's not coming?" I asked as he pulled me to follow him.
"Come on," he said.
"Where?"
"Don't tell me you forgot this place already," he said. I hadn't, I was just confused. Why was Tiff waiting in the car for us? What was happening? Why were we here instead of the hotel?
"Are we having dinner?" I asked lamely.
"Why? Are you hungry?" he asked. We started into the trees that lined the clearing we used to visit.
"Roman," I whined.
"Come here, I want to show you something." He was walking ahead of me. I had to walk kind of fast to be able to keep up with him.
"Show me what? Roman-" I was about to complain some more, but cut myself off.
We were there, our spot, but I it looked different the last time we had been there. The grass was perfectly manicured, lush healthy green like it shouldn’t have been this early in the year. It wasn't dark yet, but dark enough to see the light from the strings of fairy lights strung across the trees.
"Roman, what's going on?" I asked. There was a sheet of white rose petals sprinkled over the grass. He pulled my hand gently and walked us right to the middle of the clearing.
"What do you think?"
"I think it's beautiful... Who did this?"
"All I asked was that they get the flowers right, but the lights are a nice touch," he said.
"You did this?"
"Tiffany made it happen, but yeah. I asked her to do it."
"For us?"