The evening, that had started off so extraordinary, reverted back to normal with such blinding intensity that Reid could barely believe, as he sat in the overstuffed airplane seats, that just an hour earlier he had been chatting with Vivian by the poolside. He and Emily were engaged in a third intense game of chess, for the latter was determined to beat the former before they landed. He reached out to move his knight to take out Emily's rook when she snatched his wrist and flipped it over to see the numbers scribbled there.

"What's this?" she said.

"A phone number."

"Well, yeah, but whose?"

Before Reid could answer, Morgan dropped lazily into the seat next to him and pulled off his headphones. "Yeah, Reid, tell us all about the attractive ginger I saw you smooching by the pool at the party?"

"What?" she gasped.

"Always the tone of surprise," he said, trying to keep his thoughts on the chess board, but he could still feel the pressure of Vivian's pen on the back of his hand.

Everything about her lingered in his mind, each detail stored away in the expanses his eidetic memory. The delicate scent that fluttered off her auburn curls as she brushed it against the breeze and behind her double-pierced ears. Her forest colored eyes glittering with the reflection of the twinkling surface of the water. The brush of her eyelashes on his cheek and the warmth of her breath when he was close enough to have counted the freckles on her nose stuck with him more vividly than anything else, torturing him with his missed opportunity.

"That's not what I meant," said Emily. "Actually, it is. Who is she?"

"Her name is Vivian," he said. "She's an artist."

"An artist?" said Morgan, incredulously. "Really?"

Confusion skimmed across Reid's face as he scanned the chessboard expertly. He moved another piece before addressing Morgan. "Yeah, she is. She works as a sketch artist, but she does her own work on the side."

"I didn't doubt you," he said. "I was just-"

"Checkmate."

"Dammit!" Emily huffed, knocking over her queen in defeat. "Again."

"Guys, lets discuss the case file," said Hotch, before they could reset their board.

Emily began to help picking up the pieces to replace them in the Reid's special cherry wood box, but he stopped her and nodded for her to join the rest of the team. Morgan, however, remained to help without complaint.

"Come on, Reid, tell me you're going to call this chick?" he probed.

He slid the last silver pawn into its place and closed the lid. He sat back and took a breath, looking at the numbers. They were dangerous and fantastic. He longed to call them as much as he feared it. Rejection, he was accustomed with but acceptance was new, so he had to shrug.

"Why not, man? She could be good for you."

"You don't even know her," he laughed.

Morgan would not be so easily swayed. He took Reid's arm as he tried to join the rest of the team. "You're right, I don't know her, but I know you. I know that you are a great judge of character, obviously, we all are. And if she likes too, than I don't want you to pass up something that could be good for you, man."

Hotch called them over again.

"I'll call her," Reid agreed.

The next weekend, Reid spent all afternoon pacing the length of his apartment with his thigh-high hound at his ankles thinking his nerves were a new game. He waited for seven o'clock. He had kept to his word and called Vivian. In fact, he had done one better. At seven o'clock he would leave to pick her up and they were going out to dinner.

"I can't do this, Amina," he said, dropping onto the couch.

She jumped easily onto the couch beside him and nuzzled her nose against his neck, madly wagging her whip-like tail. He scratched behind her tall, erect ears, feeling comforted. "Do you think I can do it?"

She barked and Reid laughed.

"Thanks," he said. "I needed that."

Dinner had never been so enjoyable. Vivian had something to say to very nearly everything that Reid brought up and her company was even more comfortable than he remembered. Halfway through their plates conversation fell temporarily.

"Do you want to see something cool?" said Reid, leaning forward.

"Of course," she said.

He rested his elbows on the table so she could plainly see both of his hands. Her eyes narrowed in curiosity as she sat back to watch the magician at work. "Can I see your napkin?"

She handed over the fabric kerchief and Reid carefully shook it out, laid it across his hand and patted it flat. Vivian's eyes caught every movement. However, when he flipped the fabric around and revealed a single rose in his hand, she gasped. He smiled brightly and handed it over.

Brushing the soft petals across her nose, Vivian breathed in the flowers delicate scent. "You are an endless wonder, Spencer Reid."

"It's the only impressive thing I can do," he said.

"Only? Certainly an IQ of… what did you say? 187, would beg to differ."

He willed himself not to feel bashful but she remembered. She rested the rose with the greatest of care on the napkin he had returned to beside her nearly empty plate.

"I want to show you something," she said, pulling out a spiral bound pad from her purse. She ran a thoughtful stroke across it with a fond smile. "You were right."

"About what?"

Accepting the journal as she slid it across the table, Reid flipped it open. The first page had a picture of a woman jogging, complete with headphones and pocketed MP3 player, surrounded by magnified details of different aspects of the larger sketch. He turned the page. A pair of children chasing a group of ducks, an old man reading a newspaper on a bench, an adolescent boy pouring over his revolving chess board. Only the first few pages were drawn on, but they were filled with the same precise pencillings.

"They are so accurate."

"I haven't drawn like this for myself in ages," she admitted. "I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't told me what you did. Turn towards the back… there's one more."

He flipped through the journal until he opened to a drawing a couple pages from the back cover. To his surprise his own face was looking back out at him. In the corner were a few cursive lines of words. "L'art n'est pas ce que vous voyez, mais ce que faire voir," she recited before he could think to try to pronounce them.

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see," she said.

"That's Degas."