“This is an unexpected pleasure,” he said. “How is the ankle progressing?”
“Well enough,” she returned, “but it gets tired as the day wears on. I am just resting a bit.”
There was a moment of somewhat embarrassed silence.
“That is a good-sized rock,” he suggested, at length.
“Yes, isn’t it? And here in the shade, at that.”
She did not invite him with words, but she gave her body a slight hitch, as though to make room, although there was enough already. He sat down without comment.
“Not unlike a rock I remember up in the foothills,” he remarked, after a silence.
“Oh, you remember that? It WAS like this, wasn’t it?”
“Same two people sitting on it.”
“.... Yes.”