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He didn’t know where to take her that might impress her, so he just decided they’d go to Stanley Park.

They walked down from the bus stop at Dunsmuir and Burrard, and he thought about Heather when they passed the statue of the old woman looking for her glasses on Georgia Street.

Trying to ignore and indulge the memory at the same time, he carried on quickly to the seawall past the rowing club, and stopped by the statue of Harry Jerome.

"He died when he had an epileptic seizure, you know."

She didn’t say anything.

"Flashing Christmas lights."

"Who was he?"

"A runner. A sprinter. He held some world records. A friend of a friend of mine. She was there when he died. At a Christmas party."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. Merry Christmas."

They walked on, and when they got to where the totem poles are he took her hand and started running. She didn’t know where they were going, but decided not to resist. He didn’t seem dangerous.

They caught up with a horse-drawn carriage full of tourists. The thing could probably seat about forty people and it was all full up, except for the very back row. He hopped up onto the bench without letting her hand go, and she followed. The tour guide was distracted, pointing out an interesting tree, or the location of an affiliated souvenir stand.

Although the guide didn’t notice them jump aboard, some of the paying customers did. Before they could say anything, he smiled his teeth all over the place and laid a great big lover’s kiss on the girl by his side. When he looked up again, the tourists were laughing and giving each other knowing looks as they turned back around to face the front.

"They were going to give us away, those tourists."

"How do you know?"

He picked at a bit of loose skin on his thumb.

"How do you know?"

"I could see it in their faces."

"I don’t know."

"Anyway, not bad for a first kiss."

"Yeah. Definitely."

The carriage carried on through the park, with the guide droning through his routine, but surely thinking about his brother’s recent car accident or his girlfriend’s developing "friendship" with her coworker or something – anything – more important than what he was talking about.

In the back of the carriage, the stowaways had had their second, and probably tenth kiss when the tour reached the sign for Beaver Lake.

"Oh, this is us!" he said, suddenly pulling away from her and jumping off the moving carriage without much thought for whether or not she would, or could, follow him.

He looked around for the trail among the trees that would take them to this Beaver Lake that the sign promised. As he looked for and found the trail, he heard his date jumping off the carriage with a short sharp yelp on landing, as well as the tour guide making a joke about people abandoning ship, without realising that the joke was really on him.

"This way, my dear," he said, speaking as though this had always been his plan, and as though, for a moment, she really was his dear one.

They strolled down the path, talking about God knows what – music, probably, judging by how they were dressed – and before long, they found the lake and started walking around it.

He was a bit surprised, because it was all a bit beautiful. The lake looked like it could easily be a real one, not man-made. It was all surrounded by trees, with very few people around, which seemed strange after seeing how full the horse-drawn tour was. The weather was ideal as well – overcast but fairly bright, lightly drizzling, and, he felt sure, fourteen degrees Celsius.

He looked at the girl he was with and realised that she was actually quite pretty. He asked her if she’d like to go into the woods, a little off the path. She said she’d be fine with it, and took the first steps into the trees without looking to see who noticed.

She found a spot that was mostly hidden from the pathway. She took off her coat and laid it on the ground, lining up.

Sitting down against a tree she took his hand and pulled him onto his knees and kissed him. It wasn’t long before he reached for her belt, heard some sounds of approval, and carried on until her pants and underwear were around her ankles.

He lifted her feet up and put them either side of his head, with her pants behind his neck, which made them both laugh. He worked his way up until he buried his head between her legs.

After some time and a bit of moaning, he sat up, wiping his mouth with his jacket sleeve. There was a moment of quiet as a seaplane passed overhead. They both looked up at it, then at each other.

He stood up and checked that nothing had fallen out of his pockets, as she struggled to get her pants up.

Once they were both collected and composed, they stepped back onto the path. He walked with her out of the park the same way they had come in, past the statue of the old woman, as far as the bus stop at Denman Street.