end of the day."

"I don't know what to say Reed," he said.

I looked up to find his eyes looking at his hands. How about, ‘I'm sorry?’ How about, ‘I'll kick Brad to the curb for hurting your feelings?’ How about, ‘I need you to stay?’

"That's okay," was all I could get out.

Maybe my politeness had started because I was scared of confrontation. I was scared of what else he was going to say, and saying "its okay" would magically make him not say things I didn't want to hear.

"Anyway, Brad's waiting to go to lunch with you and I have to finish some things." I opened the door and come face to face with Brad, who was smiling like the villain he is.

"He's all yours," I said and moved back to my deck.

I ignored Seth for the rest of the day, which I'm sure he didn't notice. I made arrangements for one of those temp girls, which Seth hated, to fill in for me until he could hire someone permanently. It took most of the day to get all my stuff out of the desk and the rest of the office. After three years stuff does start to pile up though, I guess. After I threw out all the useless crap that was only taking up space in the first place, I had one small box of things to bring home. It contained only a few things: toothbrush, day planner, CD's, and other stuff like that.

But I did find something that I didn't remember bringing to the office. I had probably done it to show Seth and then promptly forgot. It was a five by six inch photograph of Seth and me from last Thanksgiving. He had joined us at my Grandparent's house for the holiday. We had been walking around the back yard, talking about work, when he stopped under a tree and looked straight up.

"This tree must be really old; it's so big," he said, then looked back at me.

"My great-grandmother planted it when she found out that she was going to have my grandpa," I informed him, and leaned up against the trunk. "I used to come out here a lot and try to climb up it. I can't even reach the branches now; I don't know what I was thinking back then."

We laughed. I loved his laugh, so smooth and alive.

"Your hair is getting long again," he said, and tucked one of my locks behind my ear while smiling at me with his eyes. It seems that is when the picture was taken; when his fingers had moved across my cheek to move the hair. Wes had to have been a few hundred feet away when taking it, but the quality was so good it looked like it had only been a few feet. That's what Wes did for a living, by the way; take photographs.

Today I was going to leave a little early. I didn't want to talk to Seth right then, and if we left at the same time words would mostly like be exchanged. I placed the picture in the middle of my desk, along with my keys to the office, and left.

*******


"How goes the job search?" Dad asked as we loaded up his rented truck with more stuff to bring to the junk yard. I just