A woman bends over the flower she just planted in her garden, the springtime sun boiling her skin. She wipes a bit of sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand after standing up to survey her work. One sunset pink rose. For one picture-perfect date that she attended the night before.

She smiles at the thought. The man, about a year and a half older than her, with soft black hair and, by contrast, a scratchy stubble. His charming voice made her heart dance, and his smile as she climbed out of his car… He was so genuine. He told stories, he laughed…

That’s enough. She pulls her gardening gloves off and puts them in a box along with the shovel, then goes back inside.

Throughout the summer, she finds herself coming back to this man. He takes her out on many dates, and after each date, she plants a new rose. Soon, the patch of dirt is filled with roses of all different shades. She is proud of her garden, and feels more excited than she can remember about a guy.

In mid October of that same year, the woman falls ill. She spends her nights in a hospital bed and is sometimes visited by the man, who brings her a single rose each time he visits. A vase that sits on the windowsill holds all the roses he’s given her while she’s been in the hospital. Unfortunately, the vase becomes increasingly full.

The man also visits her yard while she is in the hospital. He checks up on her flower garden. The roses wither and dry up. The cold autumn air tastes bitter to the man, as he must watch the woman he loves be too tired to say hello. Slowly, he picks the dead flowers and presses them into a sketchbook. He incorporates them into his drawings over the next month while he waits for the woman.

When it is time for her to return home, he picks her up from the hospital and drives her to her home. Her heart drops as she sees the snow-covered ground. Her summer project, her documentation of her time with the man—gone in only a matter of time.

When she steps inside her house, she gasps. On display is the large scale drawing the man had been working on. It incorporated every rose she planted, now dried and pressed—and a scene of every date they’d been on next to each flower.

The woman is speechless. “How—?” She starts but doesn’t finish.

The man lifts a finger to the sunset pink rose. “April twelfth. We had dinner and took a walk at sunset. I told you about my art, you told me about your gardening. We kissed on the sidewalk in front of the setting sun.

“July twenty-seventh,” he says, pointing to a midnight blue one. “We went stargazing. We lied on our backs in an open field away from the city and had a deep conversation about our most hidden hopes and dreams.”

He turns to her to see a smile stretched wide across her face. “This is beautiful,” she breathes. “Thank you.”

He wraps an arm around her and lets her lean into his shoulder. “Now your art and our time is immortalized.”