In the end, it doesn't happen at a wedding, or an art show, or a camping trip.

Or a bar, or a restaurant, or a bowling alley; or the kitchen, or the supply closet; or his desk, or hers; or the roof, or the parking lot, or the stairwell in between.

In the end, it happens on a Sunday, after he's buried the past week's interactions at the base of his brain, like the recently dead, so that when he turns the corner into the aisle and finds her staring at the plastic forks, he can't reconcile her presence. She doesn't belong here, in this place, or on this day, or anywhere beyond that business park. She doesn't exist during his weekends, can't exist, because he has no excuse not to be with a real, live person.

So he watches, fascinated and separate, as she chooses a box. She opens one end and reaches in, and he knows without having to be too close that the forks are nested snug against one another, because she has trouble drawing one out, and also because they just always are. But then they aren't where they should be, and she's holding the box upside-down, watching them clatter around her feet. She squints at them as though reading tea leaves, but must not care for her fortune because a second box is emptied, and a third.

He catches her wrist as she reaches for a fourth. The pattern shifts and cracks under his shoes, and she winces.

"I need spoons."

"These are forks."

She sighs. "I know. I thought I needed them, but I don't, I need-"

"Spoons."

"Yeah."

He pulls the right box from the shelf and hands it to her. A boy wearing a vest and a nametag gapes at them from the end of the aisle, so Jim pulls a bill from his wallet, drops it on the forks, and steers her to the back of the store. There's a room there, cold and stacked with beer, set apart by a curtain of heavy plastic strips, and, thanks to an archaic law, devoid of customers today.

Inside, in the dim light, she stares at the box of spoons until it begins to shake. Her voice is small.

"I don't know why I'm here."

"You need spoons."

"I do? No, I don't."

The utensils are like ribs rattling against a pine box, and when he puts his hands on either side of hers, it's as much to muffle that sound as to calm her. She doesn't move, but after a moment, she looks up at him for the first time. His hands fall away, and she holds the box to her chest.

"You're here."

"Mm-hm."

"I've missed you."

He nods. "I've missed you."

"I'm right here."

Oh, I know, he thinks.

She seems to notice the room now. "Do you need beer?"

He shakes his head.

She raises the box. "Spoons? I have some."

He smiles. "No."

She dips her head and sets the box aside. Her fingers weave together and she finds his gaze again. "Do you need me to say it?"

He exhales. "Yes."

In the end, she does, with her words and her eyes and her hands at the same time, finally.

In the end, he discovers that the depths of his mind haven't served as a boneyard so much as an incubator.

And in the end, he's glad that it happens on this day, in this place, buffered from everything not-them.

Because, in the end, it's the beginning.