I HAVE A WINE GLASS filled with flower petals — carnations once dyed an artificial orange — all dead now. Brittle potpourri. When I look at it, with its gold edges, I think of Stephen before I think of you. I think of how it was filled with candied treats that I tossed to open-mouthed friends, and then I remember the black car that carriaged him there, to my grandmother’s, to my sixteenth birthday party. It was your black car. I knew the interior well, maybe too well. I spent days in there with you. When I think of that summer in 2013, I think of that car, a black 2011 Buick Lacrosse (I just googled the year). I remember how your dad pressured you into buying it. It was such a good deal and come on — it had your last name, something that we both thought I’d get a little ways down the road. The flowers weren’t there yet. They wouldn’t be until after homecoming and after they all split from their stems. I wanted to keep them. You gave me a single flower earlier (Hey :) and a sticker, I believe) in the year, but I didn’t save it. I just had the note, which I dutifully kept because it was my first flower after all. The wine glass and the flowers came from different occasions and different people at different moments, but somehow they melded together until one memory formed: Fall 2014. It was a downward slope from then on. Our relationship peak, unfortunately, had already been reached. We had many peaks and we had many valleys, so high and so deep. I liked when we were on steady ground, the day-to-day moments that have long escaped me.