Wedding Day

A couple waited at a small table in a bakery for their order. They exchanged smiles and a few laughs between conversing and reminiscing. They chose this specific place and this specific day for nostalgia and right of passage. Between sharing their memories, they spoke little of what lay ahead.

They asked the man at the counter if their order was ready. The gentleman assured them it was coming. He turned his head over his shoulder and then looked back at them to add, “Soon.”

A bell rang to announce their order. The ring that passed through their ears shot into their hearts like a shock. Waiting stopped being a formality. They almost expected some divination to approach their moment, an omen for where they stood now and what to see ahead. They answered the silence after the bell to each other. “I guess we’ll see how it works out.”

“Yeah.”
In the kitchen, the baker put the last icing on the two cupcakes. She whispered to the man behind the counter if they were the couple that ordered them. He answered, “Yes,” as he crossed his arms and looked back at her to give his smile. She said she would hand them over herself.

She approached them with the tray. They looked at her, admiring her dark blue eyes and her kitchen garb that covered her all in white. She presented the two cupcakes to them, both vanilla with icing swirled in white and blue stripes. She added sprinkles of red on top right in front of them. She said there was something special about the way she baked it, but she did not say what it was. She left, leaving the couple admiring the cakes.

They both looked at the way the red little dots brightened the white and subdued the blue. The white dominated the colors and stared out at them from beneath the contrasting shades of blue and red. Their attention fixated on how the cakes looked, it brightened their minds, expanding new thoughts, and when they looked up from them at each other they finally found the right words for their vows. They wrote them down on the napkins she presented to them, folded them over once, and handed them to each other. They read the words aloud at the same time with the most audible sounds being laughter. They commented that they would have to remember to say them again next year at their one-year anniversary. At last, they ate the cupcakes.

They left a tip on the table and walked out. The man from the counter picked it up saying, “This is probably for you.” No one answered. “She’s gone again,” he said to himself. “She always gives and never receives. I guess when you need to move on you can’t take any more.” He dropped the money into a charity box next to the register and resumed his work in the kitchen, telling his assistant he could go back to the counter.