Page 68 of A Very Friendly Valentine's Day
The One with A Voicemail on the Burner Phone
When I decided to turn off the passcode on my phone and leave it out on the hotel desk, I was tempting fate. Or tempting Eddie, I suppose. I didn’t know if he cared anymore about that voicemail or if he even remembered leaving it. But the champagne told me that it was time to let him hear it, if he wanted to.
I honestly didn’t know if it would scare him and make him back away or not. I didn’t know if he’d be mad at me for not telling him what he’d said. It just never occurred to me that it would result in him kissing me so passionately and then making out with my lady bits like nobody’s business.
That boy is just full of surprises.
And talents.
And more surprises.
After the shower sex that the champagne had also made me do, he left the hotel room to go buy a coat, taking his bags with him. I thought I should go along with him, because while Eddie is a very responsible person—sometimes I wish I could put a leash on him. Especially when there’s a train to catch. But he didn’t want to rush me. He told me to stay and enjoy the room and he’d meet me at the lounge at Union Station. He told me to order more room service and relax.
I did. I’m relaxed. Until I find an envelope in my purse, with unfamiliar handwriting on it. That makes me a little tense for a minute. Because what if some creep had snuck into the room while I was in the shower and put something in my purse?
But then I realize the creep was Eddie. I can tell by the boxy capitalized letters that he tried to disguise his penmanship, but I recognize the slant of his handwriting and the size and spacing of each letter. I recognize the care he took in writing it, the same as I always know when it’s him knocking at my door.
Inside the envelope, I find a phone. No note. Just a charger and an unlocked cell phone with notifications for one voicemail message and three texts.
I feel a rush of excitement, a whole new flock of butterflies in my tummy and a shiver of realization that Eddie might just be the best guy alive.
And he might just be mine.
I take a seat in the armchair, hands shaking, and play the voice message from YOUR SECRET VALENTINE.
February 11th, 2:15 p.m.
“Hi, Birdie. I’m the guy from your American Lit class. You know me. You know me better than most people know me, but you don’t know certain things about me…yet. I remember once you talked about a Thomas Jefferson quote that you loved. ‘I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.’ I do like my dreams of the future with you, but I can’t say that I regret our past. That would mean that I didn’t like the time we spent together, and that would be the opposite of the truth. But I do want you to have a clearer picture of our history. There are some things that I never told you, things that I need you to know.
That first day of American Lit, you were already there when I walked in. We hadn’t met yet, but I’d actually seen you around campus before. You never seemed to notice me, which was…different. And intriguing. But everything about you intrigued me. Head to toe. The way you tilt your head when you’re reading. The way you twirl loose strands of hair around your finger and point your toes when you’re concentrating on a book. The way you walk, like a dancer who’s always late for an important class or meeting. But you’re never late. You’re always just a little bit early. You just treat everything and everyone like they’re really important, I think.
Anyway.
You didn’t notice me when I walked into class and you didn’t even look up when I asked you if anyone was sitting next to you. You just said “Nope!” and continued scribbling in your notebook like a maniac. The class hadn’t even started yet, so I had no idea what you were writing. I said, “Excuse me,” because I wanted to pass you so I could sit to the left of you—because I wanted you to see my good side. You finally looked up at me, and in that moment that we stared at each other, I had this feeling that you’d be an important person in my life. I figured you’d be a lover. Because at that point, it had never even occurred to me that I could be friends with a woman, much less a woman I was attracted to.
And then Layla showed up and plopped down on the other side of you and the moment was over.
But that feeling was still there. It’s always been there. It was a new feeling, but I recognized it. In the same way that you were a stranger I’d admired from afar on campus, but you seemed familiar. Familiar but also mysterious. Something I needed to study in order to understand.
Like when I first read those monologues fromRomeo and Juliet. You get this sense of what the words mean the first time you hear or read them, when you’re a teenager. This sense that they mean something to you, even if you’ve never actually experienced love at first sight before. I hadn’t, when I first started auditioning with that monologue. But I researched the words I didn’t understand. I taught myself what it meant to be that in love. I found my inner Romeo, even though I hadn’t found my Juliet yet. Even though I got really good at performing that monologue, deep down I knew there was a key piece that was missing. From the performance and from my life.
On Valentine’s Day—that first Valentine’s Day after we’d met, I wasn’t seeing anyone special. You hadn’t been either, not for a while. And we had a class together on February fourteenth. Like I said, I’d never had a female friend before, so I wasn’t sure if I should give you something or not. A card or a rose or whatever. I got all worked up about it. It was so dumb. But on the thirteenth, I called my brother Declan and asked him what I should do. I explained to him that we were just friends, and he didn’t believe me. But he told me to get you a card that just said ‘thanks for being a friend’ or something like that. And then he hung up on me because he was such a dick back then, but whatever.
So I bought the least shitty Valentine’s Day card I could find at a stationery store and wrote ‘thanks for being such a great friend.’ There was so much more I could have said. There’s always been so much more that I could have said to you. But that was all I wrote. And I brought it to class to give to you. You wore a red sweater dress that day, and those knee-high boots that you should wear more often, and you looked so hot and beautiful. I had very un-friend-ly thoughts about you, and I thought about asking if you wanted to have dinner with me that night. I didn’t even care if you were going to ask if I meant as a date or not. I just wanted to be the guy who had dinner with you on Valentine’s Day. But then Layla showed up and asked you where you were going for dinner with ‘that guy from the library.’ I wanted to yell out ‘WHAT FUCKING GUY FROM THE LIBRARY?!’ But I didn’t.
That card stayed inside my jacket pocket. It seemed wrong to give it to you if you had a date. So I never did. I tore it up and tossed it into the recycling bin and that was that.
Incidentally, in case you don’t remember, according to you, that guy from the library went from being ‘the stud in the stacks to a dud in the sack.’ I mean, that’s neither here nor there, but it’s worth mentioning.
I think I fell in love with you at first sight, Birdie. It just took me six years to realize it.
You were that key piece that I’d been missing. I was still looking for it in other women, even after I’d met you. Because it seemed like you and I didn’t fit together in certain ways. And maybe we don’t. In some ways. But we do in every way that matters.
There’s a reason why my performance of those monologues on the train was the best I’ve ever given. It’s because I finally understood what those words meant. I was finally saying them to the right woman.
It’s you.
It’s always been you.
