Valentine's Day Sucks

He moved, and we were dancing.

The world melted away. Instead of the foul odors, I only inhaled Matt. He smelled delicious.

“Natalie,” he said. “Are you glad you came with me?”

Nodding against his shoulder, I said, “I am. Thank you for bringing me.”

“I wanted to.”

I lifted my head in surprise. “You did?”

“Yes. I wanted to ask you long before your mother mentioned it.”

“Seriously?”

“I didn’t because I didn’t want you to feel like you had to say you’d come. I didn’t want you to think you owed me anything for… I didn’t want you to think you had to agree or I’d stop bringing you food.”

“I would never think that. I know you wouldn’t let me starve.”

“You didn’t act like you wanted to come with me.”

“I did.”

“You keep calling me your friend.”

“You are my friend.”

“Can I audition for any other role in your life? Like boyfriend?”

Could this be real or…”Is this just because you feel bad about what your sister did to me?”

“No. It’s because I like you. Do you feel the same way, or not? This would have been so much easier by text.”

Joy swept through me. “Will you be my boyfriend?”

He stopped swaying. “I would love to.”

“Are you going to kiss me now?”

He lowered his lips to mine, and finally, finally, kissed me.

I was just starting to get the hang of kissing him back when I heard a throat clearing beside me.

The principal scowled at us. “Romantic holiday or not, we don’t allow public displays of affection on school grounds.”

I wanted to bite him.

“Yes, sir.” Matt had the presence of mind to be polite.

The man nodded and walked away.

“Let’s ask him to babysit Ashley,” I said.

“Then we’d be stuck with him forever.”

“Not if we didn’t save him.”

Matt touched his forehead to mine. “You know you would save him. You can pretend you’re heartless, but I know the truth.”

“What truth?”

“That you are a beautiful, smart, sexy woman who loves her family and cares about people.”

“You haven’t known me long enough to be sure.”

“If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have made it this long without hurting somebody.”

“And the other stuff?”

“Other stuff?”

“The beautiful, sexy part?”

“Don’t you have mirrors in your house?” He kissed my neck. “You’re beautiful.” He kissed my ear. “You’re sexy.” Then my lips. “You’re hot.”

We danced for song after song.

A vibrating sensation pulsed through my hip. My head was fuzzy with happiness, but the sensation was out of place.

“My phone,” he said. “I set the alarm so we’d be in time to babysit.”

“We have to leave already?”

“Yeah.” He winked at me. “We’ll be alone at my house for hours.”

“Alone with your sister.”

“No parents. Much kissing. You and me together.”

“Let’s go.”

***

“She’s in bed,” his mother said.

“Pretending to be asleep,” his father added.

“As soon as we leave, she’ll be down here bothering you,” Mrs. Johnson said.

Mr. Johnson helped her into her coat. Then he waited patiently as she put on her gloves. She picked up her purse.

“Got your phone?” she asked.

Mr. Johnson patted his leather jacket. “Got it.”

“We have late dinner reservations,” Mrs. Johnson said. “I know you want to do this with Matt, but if you need to leave for any reason, I left cab money on the desk in the library.”

“I won’t need to leave,” I said.

“Surely not,” Mr. Johnson agreed.

“We left some A-positive cocktails in the kitchen for you.”

My stomach rumbled.

“Ashley already had her blood for the day. Don’t let her sweet talk you. She can have synthetic if she’s hungry,” Mrs. Johnson said. “And your father downloaded some romantic music in case you didn’t get enough dancing at the school.”

“Go, already,” Matt said. “We’ve got this.”

“Don’t beat your sister,” his dad said, one last instruction as they went out the door.

“He meant me, I think. You still can,” Matt said.

“Maybe she won’t come down.”

“Ha!” Matt said.

“Ha!” Ashley repeated as she reached the bottom step.

Yay, I thought to myself.

“What are we going to do, guys?” she asked. “Want to watch cartoons?”

“Not a good idea, Ash. They have adult content this time of night.”

“We could play Monopoly.”

I hadn’t played in a while, but I remembered how long a game could take. “Let’s watch one of your movies,” I suggested.

Matt groaned.

“Trust me,” I whispered.

Ashley was already rushing over to her gigantic collection of movies. “Which one do you want, Natalie?”

“Well,” I said slowly. “We are supposed to be

on the girls’ team, right? So pick something girly.”

“Hey!” Matt said.

“I’ve got it!” Ashley jumped up, clutching a DVD, and grinning at us. “You’re going to love this, Matt.”

“How bad is it?” Matt asked. “What did you pick?”

“You’ll see,” she taunted. “First, you have to sit down on the couch.”

Matt and I walked around to the front of the couch and sat down. He squeezed my hand.

Ashley loaded the disk into the tray. Then she ran over to stand in front of us.

“What?” Matt asked when she just stared at us.

“Move,” she said, motioning with her arms to part us. “I sit in the middle.”

Before we could protest, she wedged herself in. We moved apart, and she slid off our legs and onto the sofa.

Then she hit the remote, and the movie of the night was unveiled.

iCarly: iSaved Your Life.

“Oh, man,” Matt said.

“Nice choice,” I said, and I gave her a fist bump.

“Girl’s rule,” Ashley said.

“Hey, Ash,” Matt said. “If you guys are going to do the girl thing, can I at least sit next to Natalie?”

“No way,” she said.

Darn.

“Five bucks?” Matt asked, holding the bill out in front of her.

“Done,” she said, grabbing it and stuffing it in her pocket. Then she hopped up and plopped back down on the other side of me.

After squashing me in middle, both of them demanded my attention. Ashley chattered and told me to “watch” any time I turned toward her brother. Matt held my hand and traced little circles with his finger until I thought I would die if I couldn’t kiss him.

After about twenty minutes, Ashley scooted toward the end of the sofa and curled up with her head on the pillow. Matt took advantage of the extra space. He put his arm around me, and I leaned into him.

“Now, this is cozy,” he whispered.

I turned to answer, but, instead, I found my lips almost touching his.

Then they were touching, and we were kissing. Yeah, this was cozy.

Ashley cleared her throat.

We ignored her.

“I can hear your gross kissing noises!” she said.

Matt stopped long enough to growl, “Then go upstairs!”

“No!” she squealed.

He kissed me again.

“Gross!” she said. Then she hit the volume on the remote.

The movie blared at a ridiculous level. I didn’t care, and neither did Matt.

For the first time in a long time, I was thinking about something other than blood. I was thinking about Matt, and his lips on mine, and his warm hand on my back.

My temperature had risen about ten degrees and my pulse was beating fast when the movie noise stopped suddenly.