Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and I’ve recently decided to write a short story about Valentine’s. I used this idea for the first tutorial lesson by The Write Practice. If you love to write, you should really check them out!

Denice walks into the school gym, wearing her midnight blue glitter dress. She scans the room, looking for Riley and his date. She wasn’t able to tell him that she was coming to the dance anymore because he was still mad at her and also because her mother had forced her to attend.

She walked past the refreshments table and saw Riley in the middle of the dance floor. He was dancing and smiling with Pauline, his Physics lab partner. Denice wanted to approach them and ask if she could talk to Riley for a bit but something stopped her.

He’s really happy with her, she thought. He doesn’t need a friend like me.

She turned her back against the dance floor. Suddenly, she was holding back tears. I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Denice ran out of the school gym and made her way to the small garden behind the school grounds. The flowers in the garden had bloomed and somehow, it made her smile.

“Are you all right?”

Denice jumped and almost screamed at the sudden noise. She didn’t expect that she would be followed.

“I’m not going to hurt you or anything,” the voice said so she turned slowly. The boy offered her a handkerchief and she took it only because she recognized him. “Vincent”, she remembered.

“Yeah.”

“You were the one who gave me that rose back in junior high,” she blurted out.

If the garden wasn’t so dark, she would have definitely seen him blush. “Yeah, that was me.”

Denice wiped her tears away with Vincent’s handkerchief. It smelled like roses.

“Thanks,” she managed to say.

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

“Yeah, I’m fine I guess.”

He nodded and everything fell silent again.

It felt strange to be sitting in the dark with someone who gave you a rose once in junior high and never even said anything afterwards.

“Would you be my Valentine?”

She looked at him, wide eye and jaw dropping. “Your Valentine?” He nodded again.

“Why would you want me to be your Valentine?”

“I’ve been wanting to ask you that question since junior high but I never really got the chance to do so.”

“How come?”

“You were always with your friend, Riley.”

“Oh,” she said quietly. She looked down on the ground and then to the handkerchief in her hands. There was a rose stitched at the corner of the handkerchief and when she unfolded it, there was a preserved rose in between.

She smiled and said, “I’ll be your Valentine.”