“Fine.”

            She turned away from him and crossed her arms over her chest, heaving an exasperated sigh. Even with her face turned away from him, he knew that she was rolling her eyes to the heavens, muttering invectives under her breath.

            He looked away as well, and wondered how it had ever gotten to this. All they seemed to do was bicker, and they weren’t even old, gray, and wrinkled yet. She yelled at him for keeping the toilet seat up, and he yelled back that she kept the shampoo bottle open anyway. She didn’t like her scrambled eggs well-done, he liked them with crisp, brown edges. She hogged the blankets at night, he took all the pillows. If it wasn’t one little thing, it was another. And another. And another. Until they all just seemed to mesh together, forming one ugly ball of hatred and bitter words that just kept rolling around and around, without any signs of stopping or slowing down. Ever.

            He felt her sigh next to him, and somehow he could sense some of the tension ebbing away. But even so, he knew that it would take so many hours before she would look at him again, before she would bestow even half of her magical smile at him. The smile that made him fall in love.

            Suddenly, he could hear bells coming from a distance. It sounded like an ice cream cart was coming down the path. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought of ice cream. It had been a day just like this one, with the sun shining brightly above them, when she begged him to buy her a cone. She had whined playfully until he relented, buying her a double scoop of chocolate fudge on a sugar cone. And it was when she laughed as she got ice cream smeared over her lips that he first told her that he loved her. She had looked up at him in wide-eyed surprise, and for a second he wasn’t sure whether or not he should have told her. She had blushed, and lowered her eyes to the ground. And when she looked up at him again, she had smiled.

            He glanced at her then, surprised to see that she was looking at him too, with a look in her eyes that told him that she knew what he had been thinking of. She knew because she had been thinking of the exact same thing. She had been thinking, remembering, cherishing. Just as he had been.

            He stared deep into her eyes, then held out his hand to her, hoping that she would take it. Hoping that she would reach out to him just as he was reaching out to her now.

            “Wanna grab an ice cream cone?” he asked, a small smile playing on his lips.

            She stared at him, then down at his open palm. He felt as though the seconds were ticking by slowly, so slowly that an eternity could have passed in a second. But in reality, it could not have been more than a second’s hesitation, a single deep breath.

            Finally, she laced her fingers through his.

            And looking up at him, she smiled.