Ah, Saturday. I've always liked Saturday. Ask anybody, and they'll tell you that nobody appreciates a good Saturday more than Madison Clements. There's just something almost spiritual about a day of relaxation after a busy week. The thirty seconds of nirvana I had experienced before I realized that the day was, in fact, Wednesday were perhaps the happiest of my life. As I got ready for work, I shot a glare at my so-called better half, who was sleeping smugly in our bed. Before we moved in together, I had thought it was impossible for a sleeping person to be smug.

I ate breakfast in companionable silence, enjoying the solemnity of my bowl of sugar with traces of wheat. I made my partner's lunch and left it on the counter with a post-it note reminding her that it was her turn to cook tonight.

I arrived at the Busy Bee at 4:00. Claire, my apprentice pastry chef, was already there. We sanitized the work environment, checked our inventory, and prepared the ingredients for the goods we would be making that day. The sun was flirting with the sky by the time we began to bake. Claire was putting the final touches on a batch of macarons when our first customers arrived in the salon de thé.

Mrs. Rogers was a teapot-shaped woman with a fondness for profiteroles. She ordered her usual cream puff and sugary coffee combo, and took a seat at the counter, preparing to update us on the daily dealings of the neighborhood. Mr. Jones, an elderly gentleman, was dressed in a tweed suit. He ordered a scone with jam and cream and a cup of Earl Grey, then sat at a table by the window and read his newspaper. John, the investment banker, ordered "an honest cup of Joe." It would probably be the only honest thing that would touch his lips for the day.

Apart from the regulars, there was a mother and daughter, the former in her mid-20s and the latter around 4. The girl said something to the woman. The woman smiled and sat at a table. The girl came up to the counter. She was looking at her mother, who was gesturing for her to turn around when I spoke.

"Welcome to the Busy Bee." The girl yelped and ran over to her mother, burying her head in her lap. The woman stroked her hair and mouthed the words "first time." I came out from behind the counter and walked to the pair. I knelt beside the girl and softly whispered, "Hi there. What's your name?"

"Catherine." Her voice was muffled by her mother's skirt.

"Catherine, huh? I'm Maddie." She looked up at me, tears threatening to spill from her eyes if I said the wrong thing. I smiled gently at her. "Did you want to get something?" She nodded. "Why don't you come show me what you want, and I'll get it for you?"

"Okay." Catherine took my hand and walked with me to one of the displays, then pressed her face against the glass. Every so often, she would take a step back, murmur something to herself, shake her head, then press her face against the glass again. After the fifth time, I glanced at her mother.

"It's serious business," the woman said. I giggled despite myself. Catherine looked at me, an adorable pout already forming.

"Have you chosen something, Kitty Cat?" I asked, hoping to distract her. It seemed to work, as her face screwed up in thought. After a few moments, she gave a hesitant nod. "Are you sure?" She nodded again, this time with more confidence.

"That one," said Catherine. She pointed to a chocolate éclair.

"An excellent choice, madam," I said, provoking the titters of the peanut gallery, "and what will Mommy be having?"

"A plaisir sucré," said Catherine. She pronounced the words with some uncertainty as if the sounds were themselves an exotic food gracing her tongue for the first time. I accepted her payment and gave her her order. She held the plates as though they were saucers filled with milk for the queen of cats and carefully made her way back to the table. She placed the plates on the table and let out a happy squeal of victory. As she sat down to the cheers of her beaming mother, I let out the breath I didn't realize I had been holding. Serious business? There's nothing more serious than a young girl saying "let me do it myself."

###

"I'm just saying that if President Walken isn't secretly a parahuman, how do you explain his freaky eyes in this picture, huh?" said Jack. His wild gesticulation made it difficult to make out the so-called freaky eyes he was offering as proof.

The lunch rush was over. The only people left in the tea house were the regulars, and they had long since gotten used to Jack. He was a sweet kid, starting his freshman year during my senior year at Arcadia. He was like a cross between a puppy and the editor of the National Inquirer—which sounds like the perfect National Inquirer headline—all guileless credulity and bright eyes.

"Jackie, if Walken was a cape, don't you think somebody would've noticed by now?" said Mary, the girl working the counter in the salon. "You need to think before open that mouth of yours, hun."

"Remind me why you aren't in school, Jack," I said. Jack had a tendency to wander when left to his own devices, and I was worried he had come here instead of going to class.

"Free period," said Jack.

"And you're definitely not cutting?" His face was the picture of shocked innocence, as though it had never even occurred to him that skipping class was a thing people did. Of course, I knew from personal experience not to trust a face on innocence alone. I may not have written the book on acting innocent, but I at least wrote the foreword for the latest edition.

Two women in their mid-20s entered the patisserie. The taller of the two wore white jeans and a salmon colored chiffon sweater. Her honey blonde hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. Her auburn companion wore black shorts and a white blouse with black polka dots. I let them browse for a few minutes before coming to play the diligent shopkeep.

"Can I help you with anything?" I asked.

"I was in here last week, and I fell in love with your chocolate bread. We were wondering if you did events," replied the auburn-haired woman.

Technically, the answer to that question was a resounding "no." Until that moment, I hadn't even considered the possibility, but I nevertheless found myself hesitating to just walk away from a potentially massive order.

Deciding the best course of action would be to hedge my bets, I said, "What kind of scale are we talking here?"

"There'll be around 300 guests at the wedding," she said.

"It'll be in June," added the blonde's soft voice, her voice quavering as it hit that final vowel.

Oh my gosh. To all outward appearances, I maintained my perfectly crafted façade of professionalism. Internally, however, I was squealing like a person who had a particularly good reason to be squealing. I had never managed to hit that growth spurt mom said would be coming any day now or rid myself of my cutesy looks, so whenever I encountered another woman who was similarly afflicted with the curse of perpetual adorableness, I inevitably found myself filled with glee. For all this woman's chic fashion sense and statuesque beauty, she had the nervous disposition of a ten-year-old. Hang on, did she say—

"Wedding?" I asked, fighting back a grin as I looked between the two women. They were family! I wondered if they'd join my book club, before realizing that I'd have to actually start a book club first.

"Yes, my dear sister Abigail is settling down," said the smaller woman, gesturing to her companion, who waved. Oh, that kind of family.

"Congratulations," I said to Abigail. The Amazon smiled weakly. "I think that should be manageable, but I'll have to confirm that this doesn't conflict with any pre-existing obligations. If you give me your contact details, we can call you and arrange a tasting. For now, could I perhaps tempt you with more of our pain au chocolat?"

###

"What are we going to do, Ruth?" I felt guilty for phoning my manager, Ruth, and asking her to come in on her day off, but this wasn't a decision I could make on my own. Ruth was my manager because I knew I didn't have a head for things like this, and it's her livelihood at stake, too.

"That depends on whether or not we can provide enough cakes"—Ruth paused to take a long sip of her tea—"and pastries for 300 people in addition to the inventory required for the store."

"We could close the store on the day." I frowned. Closing the story could hurt us, but it would be better than disappointing both sets of customers.

"I don't think that would be necessary. Our main bottleneck isn't pastry output." Ruth was now hunched over her tablet, her horn-rimmed glasses coming dangerously close to falling off her face. "Looking at previous June sales figures, we could expect to see around 350 pastries sold per day. How many éclairs could you make at once?"

"Our oven's capacity is around 500. Filling them all would be annoying, but that's why God invented apprentices," I said.

"Be that as it may, we should be able to handle the load provided all the girls come in that day."

"So how many cakes and pastries will we need to prepare? I have no experience with catering."

Ruth ignored me and poured herself another cup of tea. Once the tea was deemed good enough to no longer demand her full attention, she answered, "Let's say around five items per person at $20 a head. 300 guests, so that's 1500 pastries and cakes for $6000." I stared wide-eyed at Ruth, who sipped calmly at her drink. "That's just for a simple dessert table. If they want something fancier, we can adjust the price to match."

"You mean we finally have a way for this bakery to start making some real dough?"

Ruth groaned, the traditional response to great puns. "Why do I put up—" A klaxon sounded from my cell phone, interrupting what I'm sure was yet another deeply flawed rant about my sense of humor and subsequent worth as a human being. Ruth sighed and said, "Go ahead." I smiled apologetically and turned my attention my phone.

I had received a news alert about one of my watched terms. I opened the news feed app and felt the blood drain from my face. An image of a burning skyscraping filled the screen. At the bottom of the screen were the words "Blink in death-defying rescue." The image turned to video shot from a cell phone. The footage showed Blink saving a person—I couldn't tell if it was a man or woman—who had apparently thrown themselves out of a window in an attempt to escape the flames. Blink appeared and grabbed the freefalling figure. My breath caught in my throat as I watched the two hurtle towards the ground. After what felt like an eternity, the two figures the vanished from the screen, leaving the image of the towering inferno to burn itself into my memory.

My throat felt like it was constricting. I couldn't hear much over the sound of my pounding heart. I scrolled through my contact list until I came to Taylor's name. After a few misses, my shaking hands managed to place a call. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. She answered on the first ring.

"I'm fine, honey," said Taylor.

"I know, I know. I just"—I took a deep breath and tried to collect myself—"I just needed to hear your voice." I felt like a massive weight had been lifted thanks to those three little words.

"And so hear it you shall." I listened as Taylor told me about her day. The more she spoke, the more my heart rate calmed.

Once my heart was under control again, I said, "Don't you have to give a report or something?"

"That can wait. Right now, I'm here for as long as you need me."

"I wish you were here. Why did I give Ruth the office?"

"Because she'd use it for things other than secret rendezvous with your cape lover."

I giggled. "Calling it a secret rendezvous makes me feel like we're back in high school, stealing kisses behind the bike shed." I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. "I should probably get back to work. It looks like we'll be getting a $6000 order."

Taylor said, "That's fantastic. I am so proud of you. We're definitely talking about this tonight."

"Ok. Love you."

"Love you, too."

I hung up and looked at Ruth. "Let's get back to business."

###

The bakery's official closing time was 4 PM, but on most days, I liked to give the customers a little extra time to finish up. That plus the housekeeping—literal and figurative—that needed to be done usually meant I left work at 5. Today, however, I left that in Ruth's hands; my hands had better things to do.

I listened to the radio on my drive home from work. I sang along as best I could, belting out half-remembered words to some power ballad. I was nearly at my apartment building when my cell chimed, alerting me to a new message's arrival. It could wait—Taylor would kill me if she knew I was texting while driving.

I pulled into my park and rode the elevator up to the 14th floor. The elevator wasn't the most responsive, so I used the wait as an opportunity to read the text I had received. It was short, just three words long.

Taylor: can't cook tonight

"Damn it, Taylor," I muttered to myself. I knew it wasn't fair. My day had almost been ruined by watching her risk her life; I couldn't imagine how she must have been feeling. Still, I wished she'd told me earlier. Empathy doesn't put food on the table.

I let myself into our shared apartment and called out, "Honey, I'm house." It was a silly ritual we had whenever one of us came home. We had been doing it for so long, that I could no longer remember why we intentionally flubbed the line.

"Welcome home," said Taylor from the door to our bedroom. The smile on her face was warm and gentle, like a litter of puppies. Her eyes, on the other hand, were tired, like a puppy that had just rescued a man from a burning building. She held her arms open, and I melted into them. I closed my eyes and let the sound of her heartbeat drown out everything else. When I eventually opened my eyes, we were no longer in our apartment.

My first clue was the lack of light. The only source of light was a candle burning on a small table. The candle's only companions were a picnic basket and a bottle of wine. I twirled around, taking in the scenery. We were standing on a cliff overlooking an inlet. The air was still and smelled of salt, and I wondered how far the nearest settlement was.

My phone chimed again. I opened the message and chuckled.

Taylor: let's eat out instead

I wrapped my arms around Taylor's neck and pulled her down for a toe-curling kiss. After the fireworks had cleared, I looked her in the eyes and said, "I love you, Taylor Hebert."

AN: So that's the first chapter. I hadn't intended to publish this for quite some time, but it turns out instant gratification feels really good in the moment. If you're wondering how the hell Madison and Taylor ended up together, that will be answered in due time.

I am indebted to the users of the Cauldron Discord server, particularly Nihilistic Janitor, somnolentSlumber, and LacePrisonQueen.