The timer goes off in the kitchen; the cupcakes are done. Those delicious chocolate cupcakes made for such a special person, who truly deserves them. The timer continues beeping for the next minute while you’re beckoned from the living room to make it stop. You sit there still in the darkness of your room, wondering why you specifically must get off your ass to do this. Why can’t Mom or Dad do so from the living room? After all, they are closer.
            “Are you going to get that or not?” Mom screams from across the house, and you know you have to get up. Your eyes are red and tears are dripping down your face. You don’t want her to see you like this, but you can’t put her in a bad mood either; that will only make everything about one hundred percent worse.
            “I’ve got it!” Dad gives up. His footsteps stomp into the kitchen and soon the obnoxious timer has stopped. The trays drop onto the stovetop and you sigh. You can’t tell if he’s angry because you’re not used to him being angry.
            But you know you’re angry. Not even; you’re devastated. Nothing makes sense, and twenty-four hours ago you would have laughed if someone said this would happen. But of course, it did and you have to forget about it, because you promised not to say anything.
            “I love you,” he whispers.
            “And I love you.”
            “This is only going to be our secret?” When you nod, he adds jokingly, “You know I won’t tell a soul. You, on the other hand, are pretty close with your friends. Are you going to tell them?”
            “I promise, I won’t,” you assure him. He smiles and pulls you close; he trusts you.
            The bed squeaks as you sit up and fix the pillow your head was on. Grabbing the tissues next to you, you wipe off your wet face and give yourself a few minutes to lose your blushed color before leaving your room. You check yourself in both mirrors, supposing chances are one of them will at least pretend you look fine. Running a finger over your ear, you pull all the hair to the right of your face and slowly cross the hall to the bathroom.
            Thankfully, no one notices anything. You check yourself again in the mirror and wipe away a few fresh tears. Nodding, you head out again, this time allowing your face to be seen when you walk past the living room.
            “Are you getting those?” Mom asks.
            “Yes,” you agree. “I’ll finish them now.”
            “About time,” she mumbles to herself. The clock tells you it’s an hour after your usual bedtime. Disbelieving, you head into the kitchen and pull out a butter knife and the icing. Each cupcake slips out easily from its spot in the tray and is placed onto the cooling racks. The last cupcake is stuck to the tray, though, and you pull a little more than you had for the others. It falls out and drops to the floor. Your eyes squint shut as it hits the ground, as if you expect some sort of crash.
            As soon as your eyes close, you forget where you are. For the smallest moment, you’re on the beach sitting in the sand again and staring at Flawless, his eyes staring at you curiously as if waiting for you to say something or do something. The breeze feels nice and that comfort is so familiar, to be so close to him. In response to his unspoken question you shake your head and look out in front of you as the water crashes along the shore.
            The dog comes rushing toward the cupcake, but you push him back and quickly sweep up the mess. One cupcake down, twenty-three to go.
            You remove the lid from the icing and pull a knife from the drawer. Rather than lick the icing off the foil, though, you only throw it away. You pick up your first cupcake and examine it. The chocolate is so dark, it reminds you of those cocoa brown eyes you have stared at a thousand times before.
            The wind blows through your hair as you glance back at your left. Those soft eyes are staring at you longingly and you can’t believe you’re doing this again. It took a good few months to get over the breakup, and now you are here staring into his eyes as if it were just as simple as it was then. You can’t look away, though; they’re just too beautiful to pretend they don’t exist. Surprise, surprise, they’re Flawless’s eyes. His eyes are indeed flawless.
            You dunk the knife into the icing and start to spread it around as neatly as you can, though you can’t promise they’ll look so lovely in the end. If you think about it, not much you do turns out so lovely in the end. Just think about today’s previous events. You screwed up big time.
            “No,” you remind yourself. It isn’t like that. You turn the radio on. That’s normal, isn’t it? You always are in a good mood. Whenever you make cupcakes, you sing to the radio. Your favorite station is playing some pop song you’ve heard a dozen times before, but this time, you fight back the tears dying to escape.
            You pick up the next cupcake after squishing the first into a container. The next eight get done in only a matter of seconds, and they all fit in perfectly together, like a little family of happy cupcakes for your dear deserving friend that really needs something to cheer her up right now.
            Of course, you have another person in mind that deserves one as well. Or did, before the tears. You put a cupcake to the side just in case he comes for it tomorrow. If he does, no matter if you’re still upset or mad, you’ll give it to him.
            You ice the rest until you miss a cupcake and drop the icing on your hand. Your other hand wipes it off.
            Flawless grabs your hand and stares at the bracelet. He laughs at it, then holds your hand closer so he can take a better look, spinning the bracelet around your wrist with his other hand. Your breath catches in your throat and you know you shouldn’t be so close. Of course, you can’t bring yourself to move away. He already did plenty of times for you to know it hurts more to see the distance than feel the close proximity. He asks what the meaning is behind the phrase in beaded letters, but you just shrug. He doesn’t need to hear the story behind it; your friend had made it for you when you were upset over the breakup last spring—the breakup between you and Flawless when you two decided you were drifting apart too much.
            You wash your hand under the sink and dry it off before finishing the remaining cupcakes. After icing them, you put them on a plate and put them in the microwave for safe keeping. Tomorrow, they will surely be gone. Each and every one will be eaten by the end of the day. You’ll be lucky to even get one yourself.
            Finally, you flip the cake out of the pan. With so much extra mix, you decided a cake might be better than a dozen more cupcakes. Tomorrow when you can cut yourself a piece and eat it in the silence of your room while everyone is busy with their lives elsewhere, you will be quite thankful for the idea of a cake. You plop it onto a glass plate right side up and stare for a moment. It’s so simple right now; it’s a simple chocolate cake with no icing and no sprinkles, no chocolate chips or candles. It’s as simple as a cake can be. Simple is nice.
            He’s still as beautiful as he was months ago, but not nearly as unfamiliar as he was when you first met a year ago. Flawless leans closer and you think a moment of the simplicity of everything that was. What happened that changed it all, anyway? For a moment you miss those days when everything could be considered simple. You still believe everything can be simple, but Flawless doesn’t. He thinks differently. Everything’s different to him.
            “It’s different for you,” you whisper in sudden realization.
            “What was that?” he asks gently, a hand on your back.
            You only stare back at the ocean coming closer to you then pulling back. You can’t explain what goes on in your mind, especially when you don’t even understand it yourself. It isn’t “simple” anymore, at least not right now.
            You pour the remainder of icing onto the simple cake and complicate everything. There’s no icing left, and you try to spread it around every edge just enough that it will still look nice. In the end, it does and you find chocolate chips in the cabinet to sprinkle on top. It’s more beautiful than it was before and you can finally sigh in relief. You pick up the cake and squeeze it into the microwave with the cupcakes.
            The radio quiets for a moment while it switches between songs. You glare at the speakers, hating the song some caller just requested. This song is completely unnecessary. You know every lyric applies to you-know-who and it only upsets you more and brings back the hurt you forgot about for the longest moment.
            You switch to another station, trying to fix it. But you stop when they play the same song again. Why does it hurt so much anyway? Nothing exactly changed, nothing really happened.
            Well, you know something did happen and something did change. Your heart skips a beat when you remember the phone call. The unanswered phone call, because you know he is just as hurt as you. How could something as simple as one kiss complicate so much? It was simple sitting on the beach together eating your own sandwiches; it was simple even hugging him like any friend would. One kiss though, and suddenly the world seems at end.
            Like the cake, though, you imagine with enough patience, it can be fixed again and made even more beautiful than the simplicity was before.
            You smile.