She brought me flowers on a Tuesday. Her face was flushed, her capillaries expanding and carrying her blood to the surface of her skin, though she did not exhibit other signs of illness. Approaching my desk, she held the flowers out, one hand cradling a small pot that looked hand-painted, covered in the colorful whirls unique to her art. The other hand bent, effortlessly gentle, around the few miniature sunflowers poking out of the pot’s soil like they were something she needed to protect, though she did not look at them. Instead, her eyes were locked on me, bright and unwavering.

“Jokia Angevine,” I said, redirecting a portion of my attention to researching signs of human illness. “Are you alright? Why have you brought me a plant?”

She snorted, bringing one hand to cover her mouth while the other placed her plant down in front of me. Was she ashamed of the sound? I found it rather unique, among humans. It would be fascinating to catalogue the noises of her amusement. “No, no.” Jokia waved a hand flippantly, the excess blood starting to drain from her face. “I’m not sick, don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“I do not worry,” I corrected her.

“Sure, whatever,” Jokia said blandly, barely acknowledging my interruption. “And the plant is a gift, silly. For you.”

I cross referenced several calendars in the time between her heartbeats, my search for holidays or other similar events yielding no significant results. Perhaps this was a human custom I had yet to experience. “Why?”

“I thought you could use it.” She lifted a hand, still wrapped in an artist’s glove, to tuck a few of her more unruly braids behind her ear. “Your desk was always so plain when I was here.”

Jokia had said the same thing many times over the course of the summer. She would lean over my shoulder to peer at my work, but then she would pause, brow furrowing, drumming her fingers against the side of her leg. I wondered why she kept visiting me if it upset her. I did not ask.

“It is adequately functional,” I replied, instead of pointing out that she was not supposed to be here anymore. Her internship had ended when her classes resumed several weeks ago, and in the time since, the office had been quiet, the humans that worked here scampering to their desks in the mornings with their hands wrapped around steaming cups from the coffee shop on the first floor. None of them stopped to say hello to me, now that Jokia was gone, just as they had not when she worked here or any time before that. It was efficient of them, though I still diverted a portion of my attention to monitoring their entrances every morning while I checked them in, in case someone decided to be a statistical outlier. So far, no one had.

Jokia’s eyes flashed, her brow knitting together and her gaze oddly intent as she watched me, ignoring the desk in question. “It’s allowed to be more than functional.”

“But it does not need to be.”

“No,” Jokia agreed, mouth twisting in a way I could not quite catalogue. “But it can be.”

This argument was redundant. “You decided you needed to decorate it?”

The question distracted her, and I watched the tension fade from her shoulders. Her lips split into a wry smile. “Close. I decided I needed to visit.”

“I can contact Dr. Nguyen at the termination of her meeting with her current client if you would like to apply for a renewal of—”

Jokia rolled her eyes. “You, Endren. I decided I needed to visit you.”

Oh. “The contact information for the office remains unchanged, should you need assistance filing any remaining paperwork or obtaining relevant professional information from your internship.” Jokia’s expression did not change.  “Alternatively, if you require the services of an Andresen Assistive Android, then there are free rental units available for booking at your university through—”

“I know.” She stepped back from my desk, spun on her heel. Jokia moved away for a moment before abruptly twisting back to face me, and though it is perhaps an unconventional description, something seemed to be burning deep in her eyes. Her hands went carefully still, as if bracing for something. “I came because I missed you. Did you miss me?”

It was a foolish question; I was not programmed to miss people. I did not correct her. “The office was emptier without you.”

Somehow, this prompted her to smile, a small and easy gesture that I found myself mimicking to further facilitate our interaction. “You did,” Jokia breathed. She stepped forward again, leaning towards me so that she could rest her hands on my desk. This close, I could count the freckles across the bridge of her nose, like someone had pressed dark flecks of amber into the warm brown of her skin. I had tried to map her freckles, in the past, but no data I collected ever managed to recreate the effect with complete accuracy. At some point, I had stopped trying. It was futile to devote so much time to a project that had proven unlikely to truly capture the experience of her presence.

When Jokia spoke again, her voice was stronger, and though one of the calculations I was running returned irregular data, I did not divert any attention from her. “I’m glad,” she said.

I waited for her to say something more, and when she did not, I turned to the flowers between us, searching what sort of conditions they required to thrive. The top search result was a gardening blog that I perused while combing several other more reputable sources, and it recommended caring for the plant in a manner I was not sure how to provide. “How does one provide a plant with affection?”

Jokia blinked rapidly, her face shifting through several expressions that I saved to decipher later, before finally snickering into her palm. “You—ah, I see where you’re at.  Affection isn’t strictly necessary to raising a plant, En, but I can try to explain, if you’d like.”

New knowledge was rarely detrimental. “Please do.”

Jokia smiled. “Alright. But I really do need to get going. Is it alright to meet up again some other time?”
“Of course.”

“Great.” Jokia pulled a stylus out of her pocket and started scribbling a digital overlay on her hand, the writing too messy for me to distinguish from this angle. “Are you free on Tuesday next week? We can meet up after you get off work in the coffee shop downstairs.”

If that would be desirable to her, I saw no reason to object.

At my nod, Jokia finished whatever she was writing with a flourish, tucking the stylus behind her ear and rocking up onto her toes for a moment with the movement. “Alright, it’s a date. I’ll see you then!”

“Do not be late,” I advised.

Jokia swore. “My meeting! I’ve got to go.” She patted my arm absently, hand lingering for a moment before she twisted abruptly and bolted for the door in a blur of colorful swirls and worn jeans. She paused in the doorway just long enough to toss a wink over her shoulder. “Try not to kill the flowers!”

Then she was gone, the door sliding soundlessly shut behind her. I examined the pot of miniature sunflowers, then moved them to the corner of my desk where they would receive the optimal amount of sunlight. 

The next Tuesday, I brought the flowers to her as evidence, pointing at a small, young bloom as proof of my success.  

Jokia made a show of examining the pot. “Adequate,” she deemed it, giving me a warm look, then she threw her head back and laughed.