Memories approach like sneaky thieves, stealing your thoughts and leaving different ones. Some are pleasant like walking past a roasting nut cart, filling your senses with cinnamon and buttery nutmeg and others unexpectedly sting you like picking up the wrong end of a toothpick.

Full of memoir potential, a single table with an umbrella zealously sits. The table is weaved steel and the umbrella is two shades of blue, a deep azure and a light faded teal. The table does not tend to wobble like every table of this type tends to do when placed on flag stones; it is not even supported by stacked sugar packets to achieve this rare anomaly. There are only two chairs and no other companion tables nearby; a vibrant pistil on a flower without any surrounding petals. It is a particularly prime spot, encouraging any to stop here.

At first, Kylie walks by this table without so much as glancing at it. She has a song stuck in her head and its a good song. She is swaying her hips a little more than usual to her own tune, unaware of little else. Music was often like a defiant curl in her hair that bounces away its own style without being held back by an ear or a pin. Kylie sings often. She sings, she dances with her fingers on the steering wheel when she drives. If she has a drink with a straw, she always puts the straw in the side of her mouth instead of in the conventional front. She hates wearing shoes that don’t have the click of a heel.

Kylie passes the table, the color of the umbrella catches her eye and she pauses, takes a picture with her smart phone and continues forward, swaying a little more awkwardly as she texts the picture to her own email so she could update her wallpaper on her laptop later. Kylie is a second late in moving out of Walt’s way, who is heading in the opposite direction. Their proximity to one another cause shy glances and smiles and Kylie giggles an apology to Walt, saying something about how strange that the flow of pedestrian traffic could become so confusing, and her not even being English. Walt chuckles politely at her wit and stares a little too long at her mouth as she makes her excuses.

After Walt passed the sweet girl with the phone, he reaches for another potato chip in the bag he’s carrying. The sandwich is long gone, but traces of mayo remain at the corner of his mouth. Walt had found a bench for the sandwich but the chips got to come along on his walk since he only had a quick break before he had to get back to work.

Walt likes his tech job but hates the place he works at, anyplace that mades him repeatedly wear khaki pants and a name tag he finds unappealing. In negotiation with himself when he took the job, which he was too old and too qualified to take, he had pledged to take a walk everyday when he got a break. Those that work nearby are used to seeing him walking and eating at this time of day.

The khaki’s, now slightly worse for wear from the greasy, potato chip finger smears, are sagging slightly. Walt looks to his right to see if the coast is clear, the lady with the phone is now far enough behind him and the two guys ahead aren’t looking in his direction. Walt grabs his belt loops and lifts. This move, done frequently and by many, is qualifiedly private – somewhere between underwear shifting and arm pit smelling, inevitably your embarrassed to be seen doing it. Walt realizes he had forgotten to look to his left where the table with the blue umbrella was while performing this task. Too late, he looks now, flushes slightly at what he sees, and continues walking, reaching for another chip. His step quickens and he moves farther away from the table and closer to his place of work, thinking as he goes of the nice surprise run in he got on his walk today.

Noah is with his brother Brandon, both are enjoying the sibling silence that normally walks with them. They were the same height, have the same color of light brown hair and are in the habit of causing strangers to become fed up when guessing which is the oldest. Noah elbows his brother to look up at the table with the umbrella, and as Brandon does, they mutually decide to stop and linger.

Noticing hesitancy, a sense of protection coming from that direction, the brothers slow down their pace and come forward, innocently looking at what lies propped against the steel chairs and sprayed across the flagstones like a garland on a banister.

Brandon tilts his head to the left, revealing a wide birthmark on his cheek. He lifts his finger, points for Noah to see the drawing of the young woman, oblivious to her surroundings, bashfully tucking her hair behind her ear next to a guy wearing dockers and wiping his hand on his saggy pants and smiling at her. Brandon grunts slightly, communicating to Noah that he’d already noticed it. In that small interaction, it becomes clear that Noah is the oldest brother.

Later at her computer, Kylie adds the picture of the beautiful blue umbrella she had seen today, reminding her of the guy she almost walked into with the bits of lunch still on his mouth and the charming smile on his lips. She has successfully cropped out the man sitting at the steel table with the sketchbook and pencils.