"The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago..."

If you are me, here is what you live for:

A Friday night, you are slightly tired, it's been a long week. You've got plenty of energy for making dinner though. Cheddar and bacon panini with a complicated chipotle relish that you've been making for a half hour. You're cutting an onion. It doesn't sting your eyes, but it does sting the skin around a tiny little crack in one of your cuticles.

In the living room, the boy and his roommate are playing the piano and the guitar, and then the bass and the guitar. They play songs you know the words to, songs you love the words to, but which you're perfectly willing to not hear the words to just now. The music is enough.

When you put the onions in with ketchup and the Worcestershire sauce, which are bubbling on the stove, it smells divine and your stomach growls. The boy takes a break from the piano to check on the dessert he's making while you're doing dinner. He puts his hand on your back and you remind him that it was when he first played one of those songs for you that you realized you loved him.

You remember when you were younger and imagined that being an adult would include exactly these things. Cooking late night dinners, someone playing good music, a glass of wine while you chop vegetables, bare feet on hardwood floors.

When he's back out at the piano, he plays the other song he played for you that night so long ago, maybe without even knowing what he's doing. You smile as you drop in the pinches of oregano and cinnamon, and the moment feels complete.