When Valentine’s Day arrives, Maggie can’t help but feel a little bit guilty for booking it off. She still wonders if she should’ve insisted that Isobel take it instead and helped cover for her at the office, but she knows that Isobel never would’ve agreed to that. At least Maggie is only taking the time off for her. She wouldn’t risk her sanity trying to bake a cake for just anyone.
It’s the last major hurdle of her plans, now all she has to do is succeed – easier said than done. Maggie’s experience with baking is so fleeting that it may as well be non-existent. She only vaguely remembers occasionally helping her mom out as a kid, and that help had mostly amounted to licking the spoon and filling little cupcake liners or using cookie cutters. Worse yet, she’s a disaster in the kitchen in general.
Still, she’s thought long and hard about this, and she wants to at least try. She already has enough ingredients for multiple attempts, hiding the extra ones in the very back of a cupboard and praying Isobel wouldn’t notice, when she's far too perceptive sometimes. They’re the first thing Maggie retrieves once she has the house to herself, setting them on the counter next to the oven before she goes digging for equipment.
Scales, a mixing bowl, measuring cups, an electric whisk and a cake tin, that much is obvious, but as she stares at it all laid out, she can’t help feeling like she’s missing something. She looks up a list just to be safe, and... Oh. Non-stick spray. She didn’t buy any of that. She scours all of the cupboards in hope, and there, next to a little basket of cookie cutters in the last place she looks. Thank God for Isobel.
Maggie sets it triumphantly beside everything else. All that’s left is the most important thing – the recipe, in a spiralbound notebook that’s kept on its own little shelf. Maggie has only seen inside of it a few times, a copy of a handmade book that Isobel’s mother left her, the pages filled with at least a hundred handwritten recipes and decorative sketches. Isobel had photocopied every single one and carefully arranged them in an empty book, wanting to preserve the original from wear.
After a decade, even the copy is visibly gently used. Maggie handles it with the same care she did a few weeks ago, when searching it in secret for today’s recipe. Once she’d had the idea to make a cake, her immediate next thought was to see if Isobel’s mother had a recipe. It had only seemed right, to bake something with meaning to Isobel, and her mother had given Maggie just what she was looking for, the instructions adorned with little penciled flowers. She only hopes she can do it some justice.
She flips it open just over halfway to where the desserts start and turns to the page she needs, scanning the ingredients to double check she has the right ones before settling on the first instruction. Preheat the oven. Well, that’s easy enough – even for her. She turns the dial to the right temperature, then moves onto the next step of weighing out the right amounts of sugar and butter.
She’s perhaps uncharacteristically meticulous, taking her time as she tips each one into the bowl and beats them together with the electric whisk. She’s not entirely sure what would be considered pale and fluffy, studying the mixture until she thinks (and hopes) it meets that description. She cracks open an egg and whisks it in, followed by a second and then a third.
She has to hunt down a sieve for the next step, measuring out the flour before sifting it over the bowl. She’s not entirely sure what difference it makes, but she isn’t about to doubt the expertise of Eléna Castille – she certainly knew more about this than Maggie ever will, mixing it in before adding the last of the ingredients. She sighs, brushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear when she finally removes the whisk from the bowl.
Maybe it’s because of her intense focus or the pressure to get this right, but this is easily one of the most exhausting things she’s ever done. She reaches for the cake tin and the non-stick spray, spritzing the bottom before slowly starting to add the batter. Then, perhaps the easiest part – sticking it in the oven and waiting for thirty minutes. She doesn't bother cleaning the counter when the messiest part is yet to come, simply pushing all the equipment to one side before sitting down at the kitchen table to wait.
She bounces her leg, watching the clock, even though she knows it’s not going to make the next half an hour pass any faster. It’s not often that Maggie gets nervous or dreads failure, but all she wants is to bake and decorate a cake that Isobel will like – to show how much she loves her using a medium that's close to Isobel’s heart. Maybe Maggie could’ve kept her gestures simple, but after getting the idea, it had been impossible to shake even before finding out there was a family recipe she could use.
She forces herself to relax, knowing there’s no use in overthinking it. However long it takes, she’s determined to at least try. Worst case scenario, she thinks Isobel will at least appreciate the effort. She gets up again to make herself a coffee before she runs out of time, and it’s enough of a brief distraction to at least calm her slightly before seeing the result of her first attempt. She sets the already half-empty mug on the table, far out of the way, and retrieves the oven glove from its drawer.
Moment of truth. She holds her breath and carefully takes the cake tin out of the oven, setting it on the counter. It looks fine, if not a little flatter than she thinks it’s meant to be, turning the oven off before she can forget. She gives it ten minutes to cool down, finishing her coffee as she waits, and then slowly runs a knife around the very inside of the tin, loosening any potentially stuck edges.
She’s at least not stupid enough to try prying it out, laying a plate face down over the top of the tin before carefully flipping the two over and setting it on the counter. The cake does at least come out without any issues when she slowly lifts it off the plate.
It also immediately falls apart. Maggie’s heart drops with dismay, and for a long moment, all she can do is stare at the aftermath, one side completely collapsed and a mess of crumbs. She takes a deep breath that doesn’t help and moves the plate to the counter on the other side of the room where she can’t see it. “Okay...” she says, carrying the now empty tin over to the sink. “That’s fine.”
It’s not, but it also isn’t a total catastrophe. She’s never done this before, and she was half-expecting to need more than one attempt. It’s why she brought extra ingredients, and she has plenty of time left to give it another shot. As disheartening as the result is, she tells herself it was still good practice. She cleans out and dries her equipment for round two, laying it all out on the counter again as she re-ties her ponytail and returns to the recipe book.
She reads each instruction twice this time, even the ones that seem simple, and double checks the weight of every single ingredient before it goes into the bowl. She whisks for the same amount of time between adding each egg, counting the seconds in her head, and sifts the flour across the batter as evenly as she can. By the time she’s carefully filling up the cake tin again, she thinks she’s sweating from the concentration alone.
If this cake collapses, too, she’s at a loss for what the problem is, closing the oven door and stepping back with a sigh. Now she has another half an hour to kill, though she’s not going to spend this one clock watching. She heads upstairs to retrieve her Valentine’s card from the giftbag hidden in Claire’s art room, then gets comfortable in front of the coffee table and attempts to fill it out.
Of course, as soon as she wants to write, her mind goes completely blank, and she rests the end of the pen against her teeth. She tries to think of something eloquent or poetic, a worthy declaration, but she’s never been good at that sort of prose – at least not intentionally. She scrawls a few fleeting ideas in her notebook, all floundering half-sentences with nowhere to go, and immediately scribbles over them. None of it sounds like her, just stilted and conventional and a little bit fake.
She’s overthinking it. Isobel doesn’t love her for eloquence or poeticism. She adored last year’s card so much that she still has it displayed on her vanity, and Maggie had written that one at work in a ten-minute frenzy after watching Isobel shout at someone. She closes her notebook and opens the card instead, pen hovering over the corner.
She just has to write from the heart – about Isobel’s melodic laugh, her soft, irresistible eyes, her adorable scowl, her beautiful brain, her undying loyalty and unshakeable trust.
To my North Star...
It flows all too easily from there, so much so that she doesn’t stop until she physically runs out of space. Ah. Not again. Perhaps she should’ve bought a bigger card. She finally sets her pen down, carefully slotting the card into its envelope where it’ll be safe, but before she can write Isobel’s name on the front, she suddenly catches the faint smell of burning.
The cake.
“Fuck.” Maggie instantly bolts back into the kitchen, abandoning the envelope on the table as she fumbles for the oven glove. She’d forgotten all about the time. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” There’s no smoke, at least, as she frantically rescues the tin from inside and sets it on the counter, but it’s already too late. The entire top of the cake is burned beyond salvation. Maggie sighs, staring dejectedly down at it, and struggles not to get annoyed with herself.
This was perhaps her best chance at an edible cake, and she still managed to ruin it by getting distracted with something else entirely. Maggie glances at the clock. She only has two hours left before she has to go and pick Claire up from school – that doesn’t leave room for many more attempts, and God knows how long the decorating is going to take if she does succeed.
She tells herself she just needs to try again – that's all – but as she goes to rewash and dry everything, there’s half a dozen things trying to drown out the little confidence she has remaining. Frustration, impatience, anxiety. Maggie starts again, periodically referencing the recipe as she repeats the steps she’s already familiar with, but it’s hard to ignore the growing stress of running out of time.
She has to keep reminding herself to slow down, taking a moment to breathe when she almost elbows the bowl off of the countertop. She’s starting to get a headache once she's finally pouring the batter into the tin for a third time, absently turning the oven’s dial and placing it inside. She sets a thirty-minute timer on her phone and retrieves Isobel’s neatly organized first-aid box, looking for painkillers. Hopefully by the time she needs to come back in here, they’ll have done their job.
Maggie lays down on the couch with a sigh and tries to relax. Despite her usual optimism, she’d never expected to successfully bake the cake on her first attempt, but she’d hoped she’d at least manage it with the second. Instead, it’s turned into an exhausting, stressful ordeal that's starting to feel Sisyphean. She thinks she’d rather be defusing a bomb. She closes her eyes and gives herself a chance to recuperate, only moving again when her phone inevitably goes off.
Her head, at least, has stopped hurting, but it’s only a small mercy when she returns to the kitchen. She opens the oven, but even before fully removing the cake tin, she can tell there’s something wrong. It’s flat and certainly doesn’t look baked. First, she burns one, and now she's managed the opposite. She double checks the dial to make sure it’s at the right temperature, and only then does she realize what happened – or, rather, didn’t.
She forgot to preheat the oven.
Okay, she tells herself, that’s not the end of the world. All she has to do is leave it in there for a little longer, although she’s not exactly sure how long. She decides to try twenty minutes, when that’s how long the oven would’ve been preheating for if she’d remembered to do it, setting another timer on her phone. She goes to lay down on the couch again, waiting, and ignores the growing suspicion that this isn’t going to work.
Unfortunately, the thought is prophetic. When she returns to the kitchen and checks the cake again, it’s still flat, and only the outer edges have baked. Even with her inexperience, Maggie knows that putting it back in is a waste of time – those same edges are only going to burn, and the entire thing is probably going to taste like crap regardless.
She sighs, tiredly setting the cake on the counter, and turns the oven off before sinking to the floor in defeat. That’s two attempts ruined because of her own inattention. She knows Isobel would still find it sweet that she tried and be touched by the effort, but Maggie can’t help feeling as though she’s letting her down – and butchering her family recipe in the process. This isn’t the heartfelt gesture she’d been hoping for.
She glances up at the clock. She still has just over an hour left before she needs to leave – enough time for one more attempt, for better or worse. She decides she has nothing to lose, getting to her feet again. She might be the equivalent of a bomb going off in the kitchen, but what she isn’t is a quitter, running the tap to clean her equipment.
She tries to be more diligent this time, forcing herself to focus as she follows the recipe religiously. It’s repetitive and draining, and she’s half-expecting to fail again, but she holds onto why she’s doing this to herself. For Isobel. It's all to see her smile, to make her happy, to show her how much Maggie loves her, as if she doesn’t know already. Maggie repeats it in her head like a lifeline as she mixes the batter.
With her slightly slower, more careful pace, she’s cutting it a little fine when she puts the cake tin in the oven, barely giving herself any time to get ready after it’s done baking. She makes another coffee while she waits, because God knows she needs it, slumping forward to rest on the kitchen table when she sits down. Regardless of how the rest of today goes, all she knows for certain is that she’s never going to try baking again.
Her mug is already empty when her phone chimes, but she doesn't feel any less wiped out, reluctantly going over to the oven. She braces herself for what feels like inevitable disappointment, bending down to retrieve the cake tin from inside, but her heart still aches painfully when she discovers it’s just another failure. There’s a crumbling fissure right through the middle of the cake.
Maggie resists the urge to slam the tin against the wall, haphazardly dumping it to one side in annoyance and tossing down the oven glove. She rests her elbows on the messy counter, hiding her head in her hands, and hates that she feels like crying. Even when she’s trying her hardest, she still can’t manage to get it right. She takes a deep breath, trying to steel herself. “Fuck my life,” she mutters against her palms, wondering what force of fate has it in for her, before abruptly leaving the room.
She doesn’t have time to clean all the disarray, not if she wants to pick up Claire on time, taking her coat from the hook by the door and grabbing her keys on the way out. She has to collect her order from the florist on the way back, far more important now that the cake idea is a bust. She should probably get some eggs, too. She just used the last of them and Isobel will certainly notice.
Riverdale is only a little over thirty minutes away, but the drive is still a well-needed break and distraction for Maggie. It gives her a chance to unwind and have something on her mind other than baking and failure, though she’s no less exhausted when she parks up her car and heads to the school gates to meet Claire. She’s just in time, distantly hearing the bell ring as she stops among the other parents waiting.
Maggie doesn’t notice that she’s getting a few odd looks, not exactly paying attention until children start coming into view. Claire isn’t hard to miss when she appears, with her head of bright orange hair, happily hurrying in Maggie’s direction, but her expression turns quizzical once she gets within a few feet.
“Why do you look like a powdered donut?” Claire asks, coming to a stop in front of her, looking up at Maggie with a questioning head tilt exactly like her mother’s.
“Huh?” Maggie glances down at herself, and only then realizes that she has flour stains on her clothes. “Oh. It’s flour.”
Claire raises an eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t. “Are you okay?” she asks, a little concerned. Aside from the flour stains, Maggie looks defeated and disheveled, her hair unravelling from its ponytail, but she only starts to smile at the question.
“Of course,” she answers, not wanting Claire to worry – let alone over Maggie and her failed baking endeavors. She holds her hand out, and Claire takes it, following her back towards the car. “I have to make some stops on the way home, are you okay with that?”
Claire nods but doesn’t say anything otherwise, falling unusually quiet. At first, Maggie thinks nothing of it as they walk along, but even after they’ve been on the road for several minutes, Claire still hasn’t said another word. Maggie was at least expecting to be asked about the flour – how it got there, what she was doing and why. The lack of questioning from her is a little odd, but Maggie decides not to mention it unless she’s equally as silent at home.
Except they go to the florist, and Claire doesn’t compliment any of the flowers. They stop at the grocery store to buy eggs, and she doesn’t say much of anything there either as they walk hand-in-hand. She holds the door open for Maggie and the bouquet when they get back to the brownstone, but still – nothing. Now it’s more than just a little odd.
Maggie momentarily has to leave her in the hall, carrying the bouquet into the kitchen. She sets it gently down on the table, the only clear surface in the room, and worriedly inspects the flowers – purple carnations and white dahlias accentuated with several roses. Fortunately, they’re as perfect as she’d hoped, though they can’t stay here. Isobel will inevitably see them. She sighs, shrugging off her coat, but when she goes to hang it up, Claire has already disappeared.
Maggie frowns slightly, assuming she’s gone upstairs. If she doesn’t come back down, she’ll go check on her, but first, before she forgets – the flowers. They would probably be fine for another two hours, especially in the basement’s cool air, but she’s not taking her chances after how badly everything else has gone today, locating the first thing that remotely resembles a vase and filling it with water.
She's just gently placing the bouquet inside when Claire returns, her eyes widening as she discovers the state of the kitchen. “You really were baking,” she blurts in disbelief, wandering over to the counter to investigate further. She’d had her suspicions after the flour stains and the detour to buy eggs, but given Maggie's track record in the kitchen, the logical conclusion had been unexpected – the mess, however, isn't. “What’s that?”
Maggie turns to find her stood on her tiptoes, observing the burned remains of cake number two with a perplexed look. “It’s a cake,” she tells her, shoulders falling at the reminder of her own incompetence.
“A cake’s dead body,” Claire corrects, which does at least manage to make Maggie smile slightly as she refocuses her attention on the flowers. "Are you going to try again?” It’s clear she wasn’t successful, and Claire can count at least three attempts scattered across the various counters.
Maggie sighs. “I don't think so, kid,” she concedes, carefully picking up the vase and carrying it out into the hall. Claire immediately follows, holding the basement door open for her.
“Why not?” she asks, trailing down the stairs after her. “You have time before Mamá comes home.” Claire’s never seen her give up before, waiting by the door to the laundry room as Maggie sets the bouquet down on one of the tables, worriedly inspecting the flowers again.
“I know, but I’ve already ruined four cakes,” Maggie explains, motioning for her to lead the way back up the stairs. It’ll be a better use of her time to focus on the plans she has left. She’s still not even sure if she’s going to tell Isobel about the countless failed attempts. While she’ll find it endearing and surely make Maggie feel much better about it, the frustration is still a fresh wound.
“I can help!” Claire insists, rounding back into the kitchen. Maggie grimaces at the mess, only now realizing how bad it is. Just cleaning it all away is going to be an undertaking.
“You're a sweetheart, but I’d hoped to manage it on my own,” Maggie tells her, taking cake number four, still in the tin, and upturning it into the garbage.
“I’ll just read the recipe and double check stuff,” Claire elaborates, watching her dispose of cake number two’s dead body next. The process would only be much slower if she were to do more than that. This isn’t baking for fun like she does with Isobel sometimes, Maggie’s Valentines plans are at stake. “That way, you still did it all yourself.”
Maggie sighs. “Alright, one more try,” she relents, deciding it wouldn’t hurt. The time is going to pass anyway, and her confidence is already shot to hell. She tosses the last of the failed cakes into the garbage, and Claire helps her clean the equipment they’re going to need to reuse, drying with a dish cloth while Maggie washes.
Maggie sets it all out again on the counter, and Claire draws a chair across the floor to rest beside her. “Okay, first we preheat the oven,” she says, reading the first instruction from the recipe book.
Maggie huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I’m not forgetting that step again,” she assures her, turning the dial, and Claire double checks that it’s the right temperature before going to stand on her chair.
“Next, we should line up and weigh all the ingredients,” she instructs, looking at the list of items and their weights. This advice, however, isn’t part of the recipe. “Mamá says it’s good if ingredients are all room temperature, and if you weigh 'em first, you don’t have to keep looking between the list and the instructions.”
“Your mom knows her stuff,” Maggie remarks, though that’s hardly news. Perhaps that’s where she was going wrong, following Isobel’s echoed advice as she takes the milk out of the fridge. The butter is already on the counter from when she last used it, and she hasn’t even put the fresh eggs away yet – those two should already be the right temperature.
She starts weighing, setting the scales where Claire can see the reading, letting her reference the recipe book and double check that the number is correct before Maggie moves the amounts into separate bowls, rinsing the container between each one. She knows the ensuing steps already, but she waits and lets Claire read them out to her.
“Okay, now we mix the butter and sugar until it’s pale and fluffy,” she says, watching as Maggie adds both to the mixing bowl and turns on the electric whisk. She already has it switched to the same setting that Claire’s seen Isobel use, and they fall into silence, staring down at the mixture as they wait for it to match the description.
It quickly becomes clear that Maggie has the practical side down, though perhaps that’s unsurprising after four attempts. Her expression is set with determination, and she’s quieter than usual, clearly focused – more than Claire thinks she’s ever seen her. As they keep adding ingredients, the batter continues to look the same as when Claire has watched Isobel bake. She’s not sure what went wrong during Maggie’s previous cakes – well, aside from the one that burned to a crisp – but so far, Claire’s confident that this might just be the one that finally succeeds.
“How's that?” Maggie asks when they’ve finally combined all the ingredients, brushing back the hair that’s come loose from her ponytail. She thinks it looks the same as all the other bowls of batter she’s made, which doesn’t have her particularly hopeful, but it’s not as if she has an eye for this sort of thing.
"It looks perfect to me!” Claire decides, convinced by the limited but reliable experience of helping her mother. It seems identical to hers, smooth with no lumps or grainy texture. Maggie is grateful for her optimism, transferring the batter into the cake tin for the final time. She makes sure it’s completely even before bending down to place it in the very center of the oven.
“And that just leaves the timer,” Maggie says, restarting the countdown on her phone when she stands up. She slips it back into her pocket and narrows her eyes slightly, looking at the counter. “Guess we should tidy up again.” It had been quicker to hand wash everything before, when she immediately needed it all again, but given that this was the last attempt, she opts for the dishwasher. Claire helps, passing things over, but the mixing bowl is left out – Maggie fills it with water and leaves it to soak in the sink.
“Did you know that’s abuelita’s cake recipe?” Claire asks, pushing her chair back over to the table before going to open the fridge.
“Yeah, I thought it’d be nice if I used it,” Maggie reveals, making her overdue third cup of coffee. Not that the idea has been going well for her so far. She hopes that this cake comes out edible and in one piece, if only so she can stop feeling like she’s desecrated a recipe that means a lot to Isobel.
“It is!” Claire assures her, tiptoeing as she removes a container of strawberry slices from the fridge and closes the door. “I think mamá will really appreciate it.” She sits down at the end of the table, swinging her legs, and starts on her strawberries just as Maggie joins her, coffee in hand. “Are you doing anything else?” She already knows about the bag of gifts – Maggie had asked to hide it in her art-room at the start of the week, and she’s been keeping it safe.
“I'm gonna run her a hot bath, with flower petals, and order from her favorite restaurant,” Maggie explains, tapping her fingertips against her mug. It’s rare that Isobel gets a truly quiet evening – if she isn’t working overtime, she’s bringing paperwork home. Sometimes both, and yet she still always manages to juggle it flawlessly alongside motherhood and their relationship. Maggie wants nothing more than to give her a long-deserved break, even if just for tonight. Maybe that’s a little simple for the occasion, but it’s something Isobel needs, and Maggie is confident she’ll appreciate it. “I want to give her the chance to relax.”
“That’s really nice!” Claire tells her, beaming brightly. There’s no denying that Maggie has clearly put a lot of thought and care into the evening. They lapse into silence as she drinks her coffee and Claire gradually eats several more strawberries, both waiting for the timer’s chime.
When it eventually sounds, Maggie is the first to slowly get to her feet. Even though she’s resigned herself to the disappointment and accepted that this part of her plan has fallen through, she can’t help still feeling a little nervous. She bends down to open the oven just as Claire wanders over to join her, keeping her distance, but when Maggie pulls the cake tin into view, she’s surprised by the result.
It isn’t burned, it isn’t flat, and it isn’t split through the middle. Of course, her very first cake attempt looked similarly successful, and that had been deceptive. She’s not going to believe in this one until it comes out of the tin in one piece, setting it gently on the counter to cool. “It looks good!” Claire says, tiptoeing to look at it.
“Well, let’s just hope it comes out nicely,” Maggie says, returning to her coffee while they wait. She remembers the recipe instructing her to leave it for ten minutes before removal, not that any of the other attempts had made it to that stage after the first, keeping her eye on the clock. “My first one fell apart.”
“This one won’t,” Claire insists, embodying Maggie’s usual hope and optimism for her. She falls back on her heels, turning away from the counter to face her. "Trust me, I know it.”
“Because you’re clairvoyant?” Maggie jokes, leaning back against the kitchen table as Claire sits down beside her.
“Clairvoyant with an E,” Claire confirms before putting a strawberry in her mouth, swinging her legs again. Her confidence almost gives Maggie some as they wait, but she remains a little apprehensive nonetheless, if only because she’d hate for Claire to be so hopeful just to watch the cake collapse. They certainly don’t have time to try a sixth.
“Alright, let's hope for the best,” Maggie announces when their time’s up, setting down her almost empty coffee mug before approaching the cake tin. She takes a knife out of the drawer and carefully runs it along the inside of the tin as Claire comes over to meet her again, resting her chin on the edge of the counter. Maggie lays a plate over the cake tin and slowly turns them over, then prays desperately for success as she worriedly lifts the tin up.
By nothing short of a miracle, the cake remains completely intact where it sits in the middle of the plate. Perhaps Claire really is clairvoyant, or a good luck charm. Maggie breathes a sigh of relief, setting the tin to one side. Finally, a cake that’s edible and in one piece. "Now I just have to hurry up and decorate it,” she says, turning to where she hid all her buttercream icing, but Claire stops her before she can even open the cupboard.
“You can’t,” she warns her, still inspecting the cake. “It’s too warm, it’ll melt the icing. Mamá says you have to leave it to cool down more.”
Maggie glances at the clock, suspecting they’re not going to have the time for that. “How long for?”
Claire shrugs, letting go of the counter and turning to face her. “Two hours or something,” she says, which is exactly the opposite of what Maggie wanted to hear.
“Okay, well your mom’s home in one and a half,” she points out, and the decorating will probably take her the majority of that. She has no doubt she wouldn’t be able to manage it in the interval where Isobel is having her bath, least of all when there’s no telling how long she’ll stay in there. It would certainly ruin things if she were to walk in before Maggie was even finished.
“We can put it in the freezer for a little bit,” Claire suggests. It’s not something she’s seen Isobel do firsthand, but it is something she’d asked about, when impatiently waiting for a cake to cool. The answer had been to use the freezer if you’re desperate, and Claire thinks this situation qualifies.
Maggie worries about ruining the only good cake she has, but with the two alternatives being to leave it completely plain or get caught trying to decorate it later, she decides to take the risk, carefully carrying the plate over to the freezer. Claire holds its door open for her, and she sets it on the top shelf, not sure which placement would be best. “Okay, since you’re the smart one, how long do we leave it in there?” she asks, standing up again.
“No idea,” Claire admits brightly, closing the door. “We can just check on it every ten minutes. It doesn’t have to be completely cold, just less warm.” Maggie nods, following her back over to the table. It’s not like she has a better plan, and so they sit down to wait. Given the little time they have, ten minutes feels like far too long, but she manages to stay in her chair the entire time.
She checks on it exactly when time is up, tentatively pressing her fingertip against the top of the cake, but she can’t really tell if it’s cool enough and reluctantly decides to give it a little longer. She doesn’t sit down this time, retrieving her decorating supplies before leaning on the counter in front of them, tapping her nails against the surface.
She only manages to wait another five minutes before impatiently checking again, but she can’t tell if the cake feels any different. “Do you think this is less warm enough?” she asks, motioning for Claire to come over and test it herself. She immediately does, pressing her finger to the side of the cake.
“Yeah, that’s probably fine,” she decides after a long moment, moving out of the way, and Maggie carries the plate back over to the counter, setting it beside her tubs of buttercream icing.
“Right, this better be as easy as it looks,” she murmurs, cracking the lid off of the first one before taking out a knife.
“Just do it gently,” Claire advises, putting her container of strawberries back in the fridge. “I’m gonna go get something to draw.” She turns to leave the room, her footsteps echoing on the stairs as Maggie starts scooping buttercream icing out of the tub and onto the top of the cake. She hopes she has enough for an even covering, following Claire’s instruction as she gently and slowly spreads the icing across the cake.
She’s not too concerned about keeping it smooth. Without any decorative flourishes or borders or anything else far beyond her capability, she’s hoping the almost fluffy look of unsmoothed icing will give it some character. She’s so focused that she doesn’t notice when Claire returns, quietly sitting down at the table with her sketchbook and a pencil. She doesn’t say anything either, clearly not wanting to interrupt Maggie while she’s in the zone, and both of them continue to work in a comfortable silence.
Icing the sides of the cake is much harder. She gradually turns the plate as she goes, eyes narrowed in concentration, knife held at an awkward angle because if there’s a better way to do this, she doesn’t know it. She ignores where the cake peeks through slightly, prioritizing a first layer. Only when the entire thing is covered in buttercream icing does she carefully go back in to fix the patchy areas, trying her best to have an even thickness all the way around.
Even for something so basic, it takes her longer than she would’ve liked, and the next part is going to be even harder. She sighs, stepping back to give the cake a once over. It was only when starting to decorate that she noticed the slight slope to its shape, and she’d tried to rectify it with the icing, but to her dismay, it’s still visibly slanted.
“Are you done?” Claire asks, looking over when she sees Maggie stop in the corner of her eye. “Can I see?” She’s already on her feet, abandoning her drawing as she joins Maggie by the counter, immediately tiptoeing to admire the cake. “Wow, it looks tasty!”
“It’s lopsided,” Maggie murmurs, dejected, shoulders falling. She knows it’s better than nothing, but it’s still not quite what she envisioned, and Isobel deserves nothing less than the best.
“She’ll still like it,” Claire tells her, impressed by it even if Maggie isn’t. This is easily an achievement for a woman whose kitchen expertise only goes so far as scrambled eggs and ready meals.
“But it’s not perfect,” Maggie laments, slumping against the counter. She crosses her arms on its surface and hides her head in them with a groan. “Ugh, why can’t I just bake a stupid cake?”
“Mamá wouldn’t want a perfect cake,” Claire assures her calmly, stretching to dip her finger in the leftover buttercream icing. “She can get one of those from the store. She’ll love it because you made it for her.” Maggie takes a deep breath, knowing she’s right. At least one of them has some sense in their head right now.
“Thanks, doodlebug,” she says, summoning a smile as she stands up again, reaching over to tousle Claire’s hair. “You have your mom’s way with words.” Isobel has always been good at making her feel better, even at her worst, caring, patient and understanding, and Claire has clearly learned from her to be the same.
“Are you gonna add anything else?” Claire asks, dipping a different finger into the buttercream icing this time.
“I wanted to write on it,” Maggie reveals, picking up a packet of plastic icing tubes in red and purple to show her. “I’m just worried I’ll make it look worse.” She supposes if the writing is completely illegible, she could always wipe it off and redo the buttercream underneath. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to try at least once. After all, the message is the part most important to her.
“You just have to keep a steady hand and go slow,” Claire says, returning to the table to give her space. “You can mark it out with a toothpick first, that way you can follow the lines with the icing.” Right, a guideline, that’s exactly what Maggie needs. The result will still be messy knowing her, but it might at least be readable.
“God, your brain is huge,” she remarks, immediately starting to search for said toothpicks. She doesn't know what she would’ve done without all of Claire’s advice – not have a cake, certainly. Her experience from baking with Isobel has undeniably been invaluable, offsetting at least some of Maggie’s cluelessness. She finds a little container of toothpicks in a drawer, setting it on the counter, and takes one out, leaning over the cake.
This step, at least, isn’t quite so stressful when it’s not permanent. She starts with the second line near the middle of the cake, wanting to get the message centered as she starts gently etching the letters into the buttercream icing. It’s a slow process, but she needs it to be as neat as possible if the final result has any hope of being decipherable, ending with the outline of a heart under the words.
Now comes the hardest part. She bought two packs of the icing tubes just in case, though she’s hoping she won’t have to use both, carefully ripping open the first one. She’s always had a steady hand, even under pressure – it might as well be a requirement for her job when your aim being even a little off could be disastrous – but she doesn’t know if that skill will help her here. She’s far more confident with a gun.
She twists off the lid of the purple icing tube and decides to get a feel for it first, removing a plate from the overhead cupboard – perhaps Claire and Isobel's ingenuity is finally rubbing off on her. She draws a few small, wonky experimental hearts on the ceramic, learning how much pressure to apply and how the icing flows, before reluctantly moving onto the real thing.
Maggie takes a deep breath, hovering closely over the cake as she touches the tip of the tube to the start of her guidelines and starts to gently press. She’s too hyper-focused to notice how tedious the process is, cursing under her breath every time the icing strays from the outline even a little bit. It’s finnicky and delicate, two things she isn’t necessarily good at, double checking each finished letter before moving onto the next one. Her lines are a little shaky, but it’s still clear what they spell out so far.
She just wishes the process wasn’t so exhausting or time consuming, trying not to rush herself when she glances at the clock and sees how long she’s been at it already. She won’t have time to prepare Isobel’s relaxing bath at this rate. She stands up straight just to briefly stretch her aching back, then immediately hunches over the cake again, dutifully continuing on, but it doesn’t stop when she eventually gets to the last letter.
She goes back over everything a second time, thickening the lines, which is at least much easier and quicker, a faint reprieve before she swaps her purple icing for the red one, starting to draw the heart that sits underneath all the words. Curves are the most difficult, but she cheats by almost painting them into place, carefully smudging the icing with the tip of the tube into the shape she wants, then filling in the empty space.
She’s so relieved by the hardest part being over that she almost forgets the finishing touches until she glances at her plate of little test hearts. Right, she wanted to draw those along the edge of the cake. At least they’re simpler to do, and she alternates between the red and purple, bordering the message with them. Some are a little wonky, but she prefers that they don’t look so uniform and identical.
By the time she’s finally finished, she’s pushing her luck with the time. Isobel will be back in twenty minutes, give or take. “Hey, if your mom gets home before I come back down, don’t let her look in here, okay?” Maggie tells Claire, opening the fridge door before carefully carrying her cake over and placing it gently inside.
“I can tidy up for you," Claire offers in answer, setting her pencil down. It’s not a major mess, but she knows Maggie is so down to the wire that even five minutes is a lot of time. Despite how much it would help, Maggie still looks appalled by the suggestion.
“No, it’s fine, I’ll-”
“You have to prepare that bath, stupid,” Claire interjects, getting out of her chair. Maggie has always done plenty for her, she can handle a little tidying up.
Maggie sighs, knowing Claire is just as stubborn as Isobel and unlikely to take no for an answer. “Your mom’s right to call you her little star,” she says, leaning over to kiss the top of Claire’s head when she reaches the counter before leaving her to head upstairs. She makes sure not to forget the bag of rose petals she bought from the florist, letting herself into Claire’s art-room to retrieve the plastic bag she stashed away next to her gifts.
She pulls it out from its hiding place at the back of a shelf behind a box, wrapping the handles around her wrist as she goes to the bathroom instead. Maggie turns the light on, setting her bag on the cabinet, and runs the bath’s hot tap. She waits until the water is the right temperature before putting in the plug and running the cold alongside it, then turns to take out all the electric candles she bought. They already have fresh batteries, and she starts turning them on, placing them around the room one by one a safe distance from the water.
She briefly turns the overhead light off when they’re all set up, to see how they look, and their glow is exactly what she’d hoped for, switching the light back on until she’s done. While the bathtub continues filling, she goes to fetch some towels – the fluffiest ones they own, fresh out of the dryer the night before. She picks up her plastic bag and sets them on the counter in its place before removing the last two objects.
First, a ceramic, light blue tray in the shape of a heart that she places squarely on top of the towels. Then, a bath bomb of the same shape that looks and smells like lavender – one of Isobel’s favorite scents. Maggie digs her short nails into the wrapping, freeing the heart from its confines to save Isobel from doing it before resting it on the tray.
The bathwater is almost high enough by that point. She tests the temperature with her hand and adds some more hot water before she’s satisfied, and that just leaves one more thing. Maggie takes the packet of rose petals from where she’d left them in the sink, peeling open the top before carefully taking a handful and scattering them across the surface of the water. She tries not to overdo it, adding a few more for good measure and sealing the rest back up for later.
She turns the light off and stands in the doorway, looking over the scene she’s set to make sure she hasn’t missed anything, and closes the door behind herself as she steps back out into the hall. It’s good timing, too. Just as she finishes hiding the leftover rose petals with her gifts, she hears the front door go. She hurries back downstairs, reaching the bottom just as Isobel walks in from the entryway, her exhausted expression brightening at Maggie's arrival.
“Hey,” she greets with a smile, setting her handbag down on the console table by the door and slipping out of her heels.
“Hey,” Maggie echoes softly, just as Claire steps out of the kitchen, instantly making a beeline for her mother.
“Mamá, mamá!” she choruses, running right into Isobel’s outstretched arms for a hug, and Isobel holds her tightly, rocking them slightly from side to side.
“¡Hola, mi estrellita! ¿Cómo estuvo tu día?” she asks when she pulls back a few seconds later, cradling Claire’s face in her hands.
“Hacía frío,” she answers, pulling a face, and Isobel laughs slightly, kissing her gently on the forehead before letting her go and standing up.
“How was work?” Maggie asks, watching her shrug off her coat before hanging it up.
“Not that bad,” Isobel reveals, which was just as well considering she was an agent down – her best agent, at that. She unravels her scarf and drapes it over the hook with her coat. “We caught a bomb case, but we had it resolved by the end of the day. Nothing major.”
“Well, no paperwork for you tonight,” Maggie instructs, closing the distance between them to wrap her arms around Isobel’s waist. “You're going to relax.” Isobel raises an eyebrow, intrigued. “I ran you a nice, hot bath.”
“It’ll be good for you!” Claire encourages from behind them before Isobel can worry about not spending time with her. Given the day, Claire wouldn’t want her to in the first place – they already have most of the year’s evenings to be together.
“Well, I’ll be sure to enjoy it, cariño,” Isobel promises, pressing a kiss to the bridge of Maggie’s nose and another to her lips that she holds for a little longer before moving out of her arms. She pauses at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the banister, and turns to shoot them a playful warning look. “Behave yourselves while I’m gone.”
“She means you,” Claire clarifies the moment Isobel is out of earshot, turning back towards the kitchen. Maggie rolls her eyes with a smile, not far behind.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a bad influence,” she concurs, eyes sweeping the room as it comes into view. It’s completely spotless – you'd never know she spent all day struggling to bake and borderline turning the place upside down. She can’t enact the rest of her plan until Isobel is in the bath and clearly not about to come out, going to double check on her cake.
It’s not like anything is going to happen to it in the fridge, but she doesn’t want to risk something going wrong in the final stretch. As expected, the cake is still perfectly intact. She has no doubt Isobel will love it, but she can't help being a little insecure about it, and Claire’s clairvoyance strikes again, reading her mind.
“Everything’ll be fine,” she assures Maggie from the table, back to working on her drawing. “I’ve never seen someone love mamá as much as you.” Claire has always appreciated how much Maggie clearly adores her mom, even when they were just friends. From the start, she treated Isobel better than any other adult ever has – colleagues, her dad, friends, men.
Claire has seen several dates and official boyfriends come and go, and even at her very young age, she knew there was something insufficient and surface level about how they loved her mother. She was only three during Isobel's longest relationship, with a man Claire rarely ever saw in anything other than a suit, but she still remembers his inattention and selfishness and faint annoyance when Isobel didn’t follow his lead.
Maggie is nothing like that. Even just one of the things she’s arranged for tonight is far more than any of those men ever bothered with – they certainly wouldn’t have tried once, let alone five times, to bake Isobel a cake. “I love you both, y’know,” Maggie reminds her gently, wondering if Claire forgets that part sometimes even after two years, but it turns out she doesn’t.
“I know,” she answers, her pencil briefly falling still before she continues, “you’re my mom.” The response catches Maggie by surprise, but her heart and soul immediately soften. It’s only the second time Claire has used that word for her, and the first time, she’d been half-asleep, wedged in bed between her and Isobel. She doesn’t know if Claire remembers saying it, wondering ever since if she would do it again and waiting. “Even though you can’t cook.”
Maggie snorts with laughter. “Yeah, that’s for sure,” she agrees, looking forward to staying away from the oven for a while after all of today’s difficulty. She hears footsteps overhead, glancing up at the ceiling, and listens out for the bathroom door, hearing it close a few moments later. Maggie resists the urge to immediately spring into action, forcing herself to wait for a couple of minutes – and then several more – just to make sure Isobel doesn’t come back out.
“Right, I’m gonna go get the flowers,” Maggie quietly announces once she’s certain that she won’t get caught in the act. “If you want to grab a snack before I commandeer this place, now’s your chance.” She heads out of the room and down into the basement where she left her bouquet, still exactly where she placed it in its vase. She carefully picks it up, the glass cool to the touch, and heads slowly back upstairs – the door is still ajar so she can push through it without having to balance the flowers in one arm.
Claire is already gone from the kitchen when she returns, setting the vase on the counter. Maggie assumes she’s taken her drawing into the other room, ripping a blank page from the notebook attached to the fridge and grabbing a pen. Follow when you’re ready, she writes in her usual messy script, doodling a little heart underneath, and leaves the flowers behind as she goes upstairs.
She’s careful to be quiet as she takes each step, even though Isobel will likely think nothing of it if she does hear her, and silently lets herself into Claire’s art room to retrieve her leftover rose petals. She reopens the bag before heading back out into the hall, stealthily approaching the bathroom door, and lays her note just a few feet in front of it, then methodically starts scattering petals along the hallway floor, down the stairs and into the kitchen.
She still manages to have a few left, arranging them on the table in the outline of a heart before throwing the empty packet in the trash. She briefly returns upstairs to collect her giftbag next, maneuvering it out of its hiding place before carrying that downstairs, too, and setting it on the table. The bouquet goes right beside it, and she rearranges the flowers slightly, fussing over the little details as she makes sure the fullest purple carnation is at the forefront.
That just leaves the cake. She gently removes it from the fridge, carrying it over to the table, and places it squarely in the middle of her rose petal heart. She tries to ignore how scuffed it looks, the writing especially, knowing that her nerves are making her overly critical of it, and reminds herself that a cake is one hell of an accomplishment for her. She steps back to examine the layout, making sure it all looks centered and symmetrical. It feels like something’s missing, but for a long moment she can’t figure out what, scowling at the display.
Then it hits her.
The card.
The last thing she remembers is tossing it on this very table when her second cake burned, but it’s not here anymore. If she moved it, she has no idea where, frantically checking the gift bag, but she can’t see it. She scours the counters but still doesn’t find it. Maggie hurries into the other room where she wrote it, wondering if she brought it back in there. Claire is sat on the couch, drawing on a lap tray for support, but looks up when Maggie passes in front of her.
“What are you looking for?” she asks, watching her search the coffee table and every other surface in the room but coming up empty.
“I lost my Valentines card,” Maggie murmurs, eyes wide with worry as she tries to wrack her brain for its location. Something bad just had to happen at the last minute, but why did it have to be the card? She poured her heart into that thing, and now it’s gone.
“I have it,” Claire suddenly reveals, almost jumping at how fast Maggie turns to face her. She’d found it sitting out on the kitchen table when cleaning up, right before Isobel had walked through the front door. “You left it where mamá could see, so I kept it safe.” She reaches under the cushion on the couch beside her and unearths the letter hiding beneath it, anxiously holding it out for Maggie to take. “Don’t be mad, I’m s-”
Maggie cuts off her apology with a hug, just glad to have it back. “Thank you for looking after it,” she says, knowing she meant well, and Claire relaxes in her arms with relief before Maggie moves away, returning to the kitchen with the letter in hand. She sets it gingerly in front of the cake, and briefly wonders if she should’ve bought more decorations before forcing herself to leave the room. She’ll only keep overthinking and fussing needlessly otherwise.
She steps in front of the mirror by the entryway, double checking her clothes for any flour or icing stains she might’ve missed. She debates changing into something else, but she doesn’t want to risk being in the wrong room at the wrong time and takes out her hair tie, sweeping her hair over to one side until it falls how she wants it to. Her reflection stares worriedly back at her, and she takes a deep breath, trying to make her expression relax.
She feels like a highschool student experiencing their first crush – that's what happens when you date the living embodiment of a goddess. It’s been years since they first met, but Maggie has only become more and more enamored with her and knows that will keep continuing to be true. They've certainly come a very long way since she struggled not to stare at Isobel’s ass on national live television right after being introduced to her.
She sighs, heading into the other room to sit with Claire while she waits. It’s the only thing left to do, suspecting nothing will be able to calm her nerves in the meantime. “How long’s it been?” she asks, falling onto the couch beside her, so preoccupied with putting her plan into motion that she didn’t register what the time was when Isobel first went upstairs.
“About half an hour,” Claire tells her, now coloring in the drawing she’s been working on. Maggie nods absently in response, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. She hadn’t noticed it when frantically looking for her missing card, but Claire did grab a snack before vacating the kitchen after all – the now empty tub of strawberry slices is sitting on the coffee table with what remains of the buttercream icing.
Maggie tries to distract herself by making a note on her phone to buy some more for her, before getting lost in the photo gallery, gradually swiping through the hundreds of pictures of her and Isobel that go all the way back to the first time Maggie convinced her to come out drinking with the group. That feels like another lifetime ago now. She should get some of them printed. Stick them on the wall of their bedroom in the shape of a heart.
She gets distracted from the thought by the sound of footsteps overhead, and the bathroom door opening. She glances at the time and realizes it’s already been another thirty minutes. Had she really been staring at the photos for that long? Maggie can feel her heart in her throat, holding her breath, and there’s a lengthy pause before she hears Isobel going further upstairs. Almost time.
“Wish me luck, kid,” Maggie murmurs, reluctantly getting to her feet, full of butterflies again.
“You don’t need it,” Claire reassures, still focused on her drawing as Maggie leaves the room and returns to the kitchen. She attempts to psych herself up, but it doesn't work. Her confidence is completely shot. She knows the cake is responsible. It’s subversive and imperfect and the only thing that Maggie can’t guess at Isobel’s reaction to. She scowls, trying not to look at it as she paces along the length of the table.
The silence is punctuated only by the sound of the kitchen clock ticking, not that Maggie registers it as the minutes drag unbearably by, listening intently out for something else until she finally hears movement overhead. She stops still right beside her gifts, fidgeting anxiously with her hands as she tracks Isobel across the landing above. She comes down the stairs a moment later, and Maggie briefly glimpses her through the gaps in the banister, only losing sight of her for a few seconds before she appears in the kitchen doorway.
Even in her fleece pajamas, Isobel is still religiously wearing the necklace Maggie gave her, its north star charm glinting in the overhead light. She’s holding the note from outside the bathroom door, the upper half of her hair pulled back into a ponytail, and admiring the trail of rose petals with a soft smile, but it disappears when she finally looks up. Isobel’s lips part in disbelief, her dark eyes widening, and Maggie forgets how to breathe. “Oh.”
Maggie tries to break the silence and say something – happy Valentine’s Day would be a perfect place to start – but her voice refuses to work. So much for cool, collected and good under pressure. She almost feels like her legs are about to give out, especially when Isobel finally steps closer, instantly drawn to the cake. That’s the one downside of it being front and center.
Maggie’s eyes never leave her, studying Isobel's face for some glimpse of what she thinks as she stares wordlessly down at the messy icing job, but no matter how intrinsically Maggie knows her, no matter how well their thoughts often align, she can’t actually read Isobel’s mind. She would never be cruel or judgmental or ungrateful, that’s just not Isobel, but when she only remains silent, clearly still processing everything, Maggie decides to brace herself for the worst case scenario.
“It’s okay, you can laugh,” she says weakly, and Isobel immediately looks over, her expression softening with pure, unadulterated adoration as their eyes meet. Maggie’s lungs stop working again.
“Why would I laugh?” Isobel asks, her voice like heaven. “It’s beautiful.” She’d thought the bath was already sweet and thoughtful, enough that it made her tear up when she opened the door to the rose petals and candles. It was the sort of sight she’d only ever been able to dream about before, and this is so much more – almost too much, after that.
“Really?” Maggie breathes, her heart fluttering with relief that instantly drives away her nerves. Beautiful... That certainly isn’t a word she was expecting to be used for her lopsided, messy cake, smiling brightly as it echoes in her head.
“Really,” Isobel assures gently, reaching out to take Maggie’s hand in hers, intertwining their fingers. “Maggie, you can’t even cook, and yet you managed to make an entire cake.” She pauses, glancing back towards said cake with a soft smile of her own, rereading the shaky words in purple icing – I love you with all my heart. “Just for me...”
She knows instinctively that it couldn’t have been easy for her. There was no doubt more than one attempt – boundless thought, time and effort clearly went into it. Isobel certainly hopes that her own gift can compete with it, when it’s a little more for them than strictly just Maggie. She’s spent weeks carefully designing and constructing a scrapbook filled with photos of them, including some with Claire, and mementos of their relationship.
Ticket stubs from theater performances and receipts from date nights, gift labels and little handwritten love notes, some from even before they started dating. She quickly lost count of all the hours she’s sunk into it, filling the empty space with doodles and stickers and inside jokes. It’s already wrapped up and tied off with a bow, hidden carefully in her library until she gifts it to Maggie after the dinner she booked for tomorrow evening. It’s poetic, she thinks, that they both decided to give each other something handmade and heartfelt.
“I followed your mom’s recipe,” Maggie reveals quietly, addicted to the way Isobel’s honeyed doe eyes immediately melt in response. It clearly means as much to her as Maggie had hoped, enough so that she decides words alone can’t adequately express how she feels. She cradles the underside of Maggie’s jaw with her free hand, leaning in to kiss her, soft and slow, the devout press of her lips as transcendent and intoxicating as ever. Maggie knows she will never grow even a little tired of the feeling – she would kiss Isobel forever if only reality permitted her to.
“Mi corazón late por ti,” Isobel murmurs as she pulls away, brushing her thumb against the corner of Maggie’s mouth. “Mi sol.” Nobody has ever loved her as thoroughly and wholeheartedly as Maggie. Even when they were just friends, she did far more for Isobel than any boyfriend ever has, always full of a genuine care that they never were. They all wanted her to fit their mold, to be submissive and pretty and easily swayed, and she complied because she thought they were the best she could do – until Maggie. She has always loved Isobel just as she is, shown her that she is worth so much more than that.
“I love you, too,” Maggie mumbles, tiptoeing to kiss the bridge of Isobel’s nose, familiar with enough of the words to understand what she said – as if the lovestruck look in Isobel’s eyes doesn’t already make it clear. Maggie holds her hand a little tighter and breathes a laugh, wondering now what she was so damn nervous about. “I’m really glad you like the cake.”
“I’m sure it’ll taste great,” Isobel says, looking over to admire it again. She still can’t quite believe Maggie went to the effort of making her a whole cake, and using her mother’s recipe no less. It’s a level of care and thought that isn’t unusual for her but still makes Isobel’s heart ache with adoration.
“Well, we can’t eat it yet,” Maggie tells her, hoping it really does taste at least halfway decent after the ordeal of getting here. “I’m ordering dinner from your favorite restaurant.” Isobel sighs fondly, immediately turning back to her with a smile.
“You’re spoiling me,” she says quietly, tapping her forefinger gently against the tip of Maggie’s nose. Isobel considers it one of her life’s two miracles – being so lucky as to find her. Whether or not fate truly exists, she doesn’t know, but Maggie certainly makes her believe, the same way she makes her believe soulmates are real after all.
“You deserve to be spoiled,” Maggie insists softly, pressing a kiss to her cheek, and then another, peppering them across her jaw until she hears her favorite sound – Isobel's laughter, like an angel’s song in her ear.
“Come on,” Isobel instructs, after letting herself enjoy the physical affection for a little longer, reaching over to take her gift bag from the table. She’ll have to find a nicer vase for the bouquet later. “Claire will want to see what else you bought me.”
“Let me put the cake away first,” Maggie says, retrieving the card from right in front of it and holding it out to her. “Don’t forget this, it’s the most important part.”
Isobel gently takes it from her, turning it over in her hands. “Don’t tell me you completely filled another one,” she remarks, carefully sliding it into the gift bag as Maggie carries the cake back over to the fridge. Every inch of last year’s card had been packed with Maggie’s handwriting, and Isobel has reread every single word more times than she could hope to keep track of. She doesn’t know how Maggie could possibly write enough different things about her to replicate that.
“You’ll just have to see,” Maggie says, smiling brightly as she reappears from behind the fridge door. Isobel rolls her eyes in amusement, taking Maggie’s hand again the moment she’s within reach, and wordlessly leads them towards the lounge, both of them just as entranced with the other – the sun and her north star.