“Here, try the chocolate one.” Maggie giggled, holding the cupcake out frosting-first. The sun was setting leisurely, coloring the pale roof of the building in a clementine-orange. It caught in Maggie’s hair, beads of sunlight shining like crystals illuminated by her own warm aura. Sam grinned and leaned towards her, catching a whiff of what smelled like citrus. He opened his mouth for a bite and Maggie smushed the cupcake gently into his face. He laughed and licked the frosting from above his lip. “It’s good,” he said.

It had been hours since Sam picked Maggie up from school, but it may have been just a few minutes. Time was not present as the two of them talked and nibbled their cupcakes, their happiness an island on the roof under the open sky. The world around them was an ocean, bobbing peacefully up against the building in little waves. The box of cupcakes that had room for six, now held just two. Sam held Maggie’s hand in his and she lay her head against his shoulder. “I don’t think I can eat anymore” said Sam. “But this has been sweet.”

“Ha ha. It really has. This tops off a Friday evening nicely.”

“Like a good frosting.”

Maggie giggled again. “You really have had too much.”

“Let’s do this next Friday too.”

“Let’s.”

10 years later, the sun was spreading slowly and generously over the counter in Sam and Maggie’s quaint little kitchen. It was early on a Friday evening, and a box of six cupcakes stood propped open on the counter. Time stood still, decorated in the color of clementines.