When David opened the door, the sensor light in the entrance hall did not light up. He reached out to grope for the switch, but his fingertips touched a soft petal.

"Surprise."

The voice of his wife Sarah emerged from the darkness, with the warmth and sweetness of vanilla candles. A path paved with rose petals meandered on the living room floor, leading to the half-closed mahogany door of the bedroom. When he kicked open his briefcase, the sound of the metal buckle hitting the floor woke up the sleeping whiskey bottle.

"Seven years of playing hide-and-seek?" He loosened his tie and chuckled, his Adam's apple rolling and swallowing the residual fragrance of bourbon whiskey. In the halo of light overflowing from the crack of the bedroom door, there was the rustling sound of silk sliding across the skin.

The moment the door hinge turned, David remembered the night of their first date. Twenty-three-year-old Sarah stood on the steps of the library wrapped in a college-style sweater, with the first snow on the ends of her hair. At the moment, she was thirty years old, leaning against the four-poster bed, her moonlight nightgown budding like a tulip at her waist, and candle wax swaying in her collarbone.

"Happy anniversary." She bent her knees, and the pearls on her ankle chain rubbed against the linen sheets. "Remember the dress wholesale  vintage store in Brooklyn?"

David's thumb unconsciously rubbed the wedding ring. The platinum ring was stuck in the filter of the sink during the argument last week, but now it was burning. When he pressed one knee on the mattress, Sarah reached out to smooth the wrinkled shoulder line of his shirt.

"Did you change the fragrance?" He brushed his nose behind her ear, which was no longer the citrus notes used at the kindergarten parent-teacher meeting. "Like the one we used at our wedding..."

"It's sandalwood mixed with patchouli." Sarah pressed her cold feet between his calves. "Kate said middle-aged couples need some aphrodisiacs." Her laughter shook off a strand of curly hair, and the hair entangled David's third button.

The Bluetooth speaker on the bedside table suddenly played "Fly Me to the Moon", with the unique background noise of the 1964 vinyl record. Sarah froze as if she had been electrocuted: "Sorry, I originally set up a playlist of Laura Britney..."

David interrupted her explanation with a kiss. In the gap between his increasingly rapid breaths, he remembered that this morning under the dining table, Sarah was wearing plush pajamas with dinosaur patterns and hiding anti-anxiety pills in her cereal bowl. At this moment, the skin under the silk still had the milky scent of baby lotion, and the cesarean scar on her right shoulder glowed with mother-of-pearl in the candlelight.

"Do you know?" He held her pearl earrings in his mouth, "The time you secretly wore my daughter's ballet socks..."

Sarah suddenly covered his mouth, and her fingertips had the sweetness of chocolate lava cake. As the night passed over the windowsill, the parenting monitor quietly flashed green light on the chest of drawers.