Valentine's Day
The noise pulsated through Dani, reminding her, unceremoniously, that she was still capable of the anxiety that always had plagued her.
The kids were buzzing with excitement - as was typical for them with any sort of break from the normal Monday through Friday. Maybe it was the sugar from the cupcakes Dani always made sure to bring in or maybe it was the fact that there was just a minor changeup in their routine, but their energy enveloped Dani from head to toe. And today, with the pinks and reds and heart shaped boxes, their frenzy was calculable.
She thinks back to the Valentine’s of the past. Eddie wasn’t a romantic, and Dani never thought herself one either, but they both tried to play the part. It became monotonous, much like every rudimentary part of their shared life together - a standing reservation at 7pm at Rico’s in town. It was where they went first, when they were 18 and finally old enough to share an upscale meal on their own dime, and Eddie never thought to change it.
And maybe that was part of it all - nothing had ever really changed for Dani. She was still the caged bird. Even after she picked up her keys and made the huge step to change the trajectory of her future, she hadn’t truly set herself free. She was still here, in this town, teaching these kids. The only true difference was that now she knew what it felt like to flap her wings and they shuttered to fly again.
She smiles despite herself at their chatter. She smiles at the exchanging of cards, the talk of chocolate candies and the examining of chalky hearts with words like be mine or xoxo. The group of 9 year olds were far too young to know the consequences of giving your heart away, a notion with which Dani was all too familiar.
There was an innocence here, one she wished to protect. She watched as a little girl with a mop of curly red hair delicately handed over her cut up construction paper to the boy who sat alone in the corner of the room. The gesture enough to make his green eyes light up under the thick rimmed glass that sat heavily perched on his nose.
It reminded her of Eddie. It reminded her of their young friendship, how she marched up to him one day and declared them best friends and took his hand in her own. They were only 7 and Eddie had just moved all the way from across town. He never spoke, Dani didn’t even know if he knew how, but she could see his gentle soul and felt the tug of familiarity to him.
They grew up both slowly and quickly and all at once. Dani remembers little from their early years, mostly just running through the sprinkler on hot summer days or trading pogs in between class bells, and the rest were like a hazy dream; the moments in between dusk and dawn. Like fuzzy camcorder VHS tapes that skip from scene to scene. She remembers creepy crawlies and catching lightning bugs in jars. She remembers their laughs and their tears and she remembers having a best friend. Her only best friend she had ever had.
Eddie was easy to be around. He was quiet and shy but he was sweet and he always looked at Dani like she hung the moon. So when they were 12 and Eddie leaned in to kiss her outside the bus stop one fall afternoon, she let him. Sometimes she wishes what her life would have been had she just turned her head.
“Miss Clayton?” Dani hears the small voice pull her out of her memories and spins on her heels to see the young girl in her cotton candy pink dress and a mess of chocolate all over her face.
“Do you need a napkin, Delilah?” The girl nods fervently and Dani moves to the back of the room, stepping over the landmines of toppled backpacks on her way.
Delilah snaps the cloth away as Dani hands it to her and Dani looks around the room, shaking her head at the mess these kids managed to create in just ten short minutes. She claps her hands together loudly and one by one little sets of glowing eyes look up at her, waiting for instructions.
“Okay let’s settle down. Everyone clean up your area and then back to your chairs.” Her voice carried heavy over their heads - the one small bit of authority she carried in her life.
They tidy up quickly while Dani looks over the lesson plan on her desk. She sighs, realizing that it wasn’t even lunch time and she has several more hours of this before she could go back home to her tiny little loft and undress whatever bottle of wine seduced her for the night.
“Miss Clayton?” Dani can feel the start of a headache peeking through her temples. Their quiet murmur settling as they each fall back into their chairs.
“Yes Tommy?” It comes out as a sigh as she points to the young boy with his hand stretched far into the stale classroom air.
“Do you have a valentine?” His small voice is shrill and Dani closes her eyes, trying to think of the best way to handle the inevitable question that comes every year on this day.
“Yeah who is your valentine this year?” Another child chimes in from the back of the room, before several more begin to their own chorused versions of the same wondering.
“Well,” Dani starts, dropping her voice down low and she lowers herself to lean back on her desk, as if she’s about to tell them all an intimate secret, “you know a valentine can be anybody. It can be your mom and dad. It could be your best friend. It could even be your dog.”
“That’s silly, Miss Clayton. Chester can’t be my valentine, she can’t eat chocolate!”
A little boy from the middle row turns around to his friend, “My dad said that mommy is his valentine and that if he doesn’t buy her flowers and chocolate, she’ll make him sleep outside.” And then they are off again, chatting amongst themselves about what they know to be fact of this hallmark holiday.
Dani rolls her eyes and her temples pound.
“Miss Clayton, you have a delivery.” A timid voice of the school’s office manager comes from the doorway and Dani turns to see her struggling to hold up a rather large arrangement of white flowers.
The chatter morphs into a range of oo’s and ahh’s.
“Oh,” Dani pauses, hesitating to take them in for fear of even more questions from her curious bunch of young minds. “Thank’s Bernice, let me grab those.”
She sets the vase down on the corner of her desk and notes the usual lack of card poking out from the top. It’s a beautiful assortment, crisp white like snow, and she imagines that whoever sent them put much thought into the gesture.
Eddie, she figures. It must be Eddie.
“Eddie, it’s not like that.” Dani’s voice echoes in desperation. She’s desperate to be heard, desperate to be understood. But most of all, desperate to be released of this responsibility.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Before we got this far?” Eddie’s eyes are soft but his tone is biting.
“I didn’t know.” Eddie scoffs. “I didn’t know, Eddie. I-- I never got a chance to figure it out. You were- we were together so young and I didn’t even know what I was feeling. And then I just started to, change? I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t change, maybe I just started to understand. And you’re my best friend and I thought that was enough. I wanted it to be enough.”
“Then why can’t it be enough?” Eddie’s fists slam on the table and Dani startles at the noise. He’s drawing attention to the table and she wants to slink under.
This was why she had never brought it up to him, why she let each of her passing wants flutter through and away and why she never chased after them. It was why she said yes when he asked her to marry him for the third time. It was why she let him guide her through her monotonous days. It was fear; fear of him and what he might say, fear of losing the only best friend she ever had, fear of her own suffocating self doubt.
“Because.” Dani shakes her head and drops her face into her palms. “I want to wake up beside somebody and watch the way their heart beats. I want to be so turned on by somebody’s mind that I can’t keep my hands off them when they talk. I want to be insane, you know? I want to be absolutely mad with that kind of love. And that’s not-- we can’t ever have that.”
Eddie won’t meet her eyes and she knows that what she says next will crush him.
“I just don’t love you like I should. I don’t love you like you deserve to be loved by somebody. I don’t love you like I deserve to love somebody too. Don’t you want that? For both of us?”
Eddie looks up at her through his thick glasses and she’s reminded of the comfort she always found with him. His shoulders drop out of their tight hold and he picks up his glass of wine, spinning the liquid around and studying the way the red stains the sides before fading away. Dani knows he’s thinking about everything she just said, and she’s hoping he finds peace in her words.
“Eddie,” His face relaxes and he nods ever so slightly. “You had to have known that we just weren’t the right kind of love.”
He thinks about this, for a while it seems. They always had an ease between them, but never a spark. Eddie loved her, loved her more than she could have asked him to, but he couldn’t love the passion into her. They both knew it didn’t work that way. And at some point, at some peak along the way, that had to be exhausting for him too.
So when his lip pulls up, just a fraction, just slightly, she thinks maybe there’s been a weight that’s lifted off him too.
“Is- um, is there somebody? Is there a girl?”
Dani finds, in that moment, that maybe she didn’t have to lose her best friend. Maybe he’d stick around. Maybe, maybe,
“Maybe one day there will be.” And she hopes, she prays, that the girl will find her way.
Dani tucks her nose into the flowers and breathes them in. Their scent is subtle yet commanding. They feel like a new beginning, a mystery, an unknown.
She nearly forgets the 20 pairs of eyes staring up at her when she turns back to the class. Curiosity on their faces and she smiles at them as she sits on the edge of her desk.
“I am spending valentines with my absolute favorite people this year.”
“Who is that?” One asks. “Yeah, who Miss Clayton?” Another finishes.
“You guys.”
The sun is just starting to set in the corner of the sky when Dani finally emerges from the school and into the faculty parking lot. Her car was the lone survivor of the day, an empty stranger under the glowing lights. Her keys jingle in her hands as she walks the distance to the vehicle for which she held just a small amount of disdain.
It had taken her away from here, sure. It had been her blessing when it had broken down, setting her up for her knight in shining armor. But it also had trucked her away from there, hadn’t given up its last battle, and with it it carried her far from her little slice of happiness. And for that, Dani didn’t know if she could ever forgive it.
There’s a chill in the air, the late winter wave coming in like a bullet through her coat and scarf as it pierces her skin. There’s no beauty here in this dark cold lot, not like there was on that farm some 200 miles away. There’s nothing to warm her heart, not like on Christmas day. So as the frost settles under her skin, she shivers and she remembers.
She’s exhausted from the day. Catering to nearly two dozen children had that effect on her, especially as of late. Her eyes are heavy and her mind is busy. She didn’t seem to sleep anymore, staying up until the early morning hours with thoughts of her so it takes her longer than she cares to admit to notice the note on her windshield. It’s small, discreet, and Dani probably would have driven off without even seeing it if it hadn’t been for its bright yellow color.
She looks around her car for any noticeable damage, sure that the note had been left by a generous stranger that had dinged her door in a hurry. But when she unfolds it and her eyes take in the delicate loops of the words, Dani already knows who it’s from.
I want to be lost with you. I’ll be waiting on the line.
It was from a stranger that left a lot more than just a scratch in the paint.
“Can you tell what’s wrong with it?” Dani perches herself on the counter at the edge of the garage, keen to watch Jamie as she works, but careful not to appear too curious. Idle hands toying with anything she can find - at the moment, a raggedy towel - just to keep them from reaching out and offering to help.
“Engine.” Jamie’s curt voice is muffled as she leans further into the open hood. “Can’t tell you more than that.”
It becomes glaringly obvious to Dani that Jamie isn’t one for words. Her sentences are short, brash, and snipped. But Dani was never one to really enjoy the unsettled silence, even with strangers.
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s pretty old.” Dani tilts her head to the side and waits to hear Jamie’s smooth accent, but nothing comes. “You know, I’ve had this car since I was 16. I saved up for months just to buy it. My dad was so angry when I came home. He kept telling me that it would break down if I tried to drive it more than 100 miles. ‘Wasted your money on that hunk of junk, Danielle.’ That’s what he would always say. Guess I showed him, huh?”
All Jamie does is grunt in return with a mumbled, “bloody fuckin’ hell” at some obstacle unseen.
Dani let the way Jamie curse settle over her. There was such air of unwavering authenticity in everything she did, every way that she moved, that Dani envied.
Ever since she was a child Dani was a wild heart, with a steady soul. There was always something bubbling inside her, ripping at the seams. A bird, caged, wanting to break free. She recognized what it was now - it was Dani, not Danielle, clawing to be released. To be herself.
“You know, I used to drive this car all the way to the state line, just to sit there.” Dani announces proudly - and then, after a pause, softly, “I know that must sound pretty stupid. Going to the line, that’s always what I would say. Well, to myself. I never told anybody where I was going. It was sort of my secret spot, you know? Like it was where I would go when I just needed to clear my head and just… think.”
Dani thought back to the dozens of times she parked her car down by the waters edge next to the piers, sat on the hood and threw rocks into the still river. There was something entirely calming about the sound of cars passing overhead, wheels bouncing on concrete, taking their passengers far away from this stifling place. It became the place that Dani would return to unload her heavy mind.
“Have you ever been to Iowa?” Dani asks but is met yet again with a gutted noise. Though the absence of words doing little to deter her. “Not missing much. I never actually really left it, I was always afraid to cross the line. It felt really symbolic somehow. Like that bridge was everything I couldn’t conquer. But it was peaceful to know it was there. I could always cross the line if I wanted. If I ever got up the courage, I could.”
Dani heard a loud metallic clank and Jamie stood and looked at her through the empty space between them. Her eyes swimming like the ocean, whispering like the trees. The green and blue - and Dani really did want to know which it was - hue sparkled in the shadowy room. And Dani thinks, just briefly, just for a moment, that she sees understanding in them. But it’s fleeting when Jamie blinks and her eyes reset to a gray fog.
“Hand me that towel?”
It didn’t take Dani long to decode the words on the piece of paper that now sat precariously on her lap. And with each mile she drove, her heart pounded into her chest, up through her throat, and radiated out of her fingertips onto the cold wheel as she gripped tighter. She was ready to cross the line.
It’s unmistakable, the faded candy shell coating of the antique truck.
It’s unmistakable, the mumbled fuck that weaves itself through accent and whimsied frustration.
It’s unmistakable, the way Dani’s heart rises and drops like the top of a rollercoaster when she sees the woman who turned her inside out.
The fog is thick, gathering density as the minutes tick, on the top of the water. Dani had parked up above the ravine, wanting to give herself the time to walk, give herself the time to turn around and run should she so choose.
The gravel cracks under her sneakers and gives her away and when Jamie turns, startled and stunning, Dani knows there’s nowhere to turn and run to now. Now she’s here. Now.
“You know there would have been an easier way to do this?” She calls out into the bitter air, her breath freezing in the dark.
Jamie chucks a rock into the water and slides off the hood of the truck. “Yeah, know that. Wanted to give you an out, in case you never wanted to see me again.”
Dani can only just make out her outline. Her thin frame looks smaller than she does in Dani’s dreams. Jamie stands, weary, stuffing her hands deep into the pockets of her oversized coat. Dani watches as she sways back and forth, garnering the courage to take another step forward.
Dani stops a safe distance away, drinking in those words. Wondering if facing this now would be worth damaging the fantasy she had left behind. She can’t see Jamie, can’t see her eyes or the crease in her forehead, or her strong shoulders. Can’t see beyond the shadows and the fog and the memories of those three nights.
“You’re a hard fucking person to find, y’know that? Do you know how many Danielle Clayton’s there are?” Jamie yells out, the wind picking up her words and carrying them away.
“No. I don’t.” Dani shakes her head, incredulous to this woman even attempting to track her down.
Jamie takes another small step forward. Shy, like she’s afraid to scare Dani off into the night. “Alright, there’s only two in Iowa and you didn’t seem to be 73 so... pretty easy to narrow it down, actually.”
It’s entirely odd to see her here, to see her outside those safe confines of the forest and the farm and the garage. It’s odd to see her in a place that Dani only ever knew as an escape. It’s odd that they are strangers but all the while they are familiar and Dani can’t ignore that maybe this too is all just a fantasy.
“What are you doing here?”
Jamie looks back over her shoulder, as if taking in just where here actually is. “I got the truck working.”
She says it like a badge of honor. Like a reward one of her students shows her for completing the rope climb or running the mile. She says it like she’s looking for something, a job well done maybe, a pat on the back. She shuffles forward, eager to show off her accomplishment. There’s hope in her voice, Dani can hear it, like she’s waited all this time just for this.
“Yeah, took me nearly every day and quite a few stubbed toes from kicking the tires. But I finally figured out that the engine was all corroded underneath and--”
Something in Dani shutters and snaps. Something about this woman, this infuriatingly stubborn woman, who let her walk out and walk away and is now just here. She’s just here, in a place that Dani never invited her and somehow fantasy gives way to frustration and she snaps, her feet moving forward until she’s directly in front of this glorious beauty, this beautiful beast.
“Jamie. Did you come all the way here to show me a fucking truck?”
Jamie’s mouth snaps shut quickly and her eyes go wide. And Dani is thankful when she can hear how there’s at least some shame in the way she says,
“No. No I didn’t.”
It’s silent for a moment, the air is still and the water is frozen and the world tilts. Dani simmers between anger and expectation. She wants, she wants so much to forget the hard line across Jamie’s jaw when she handed her the keys to drive away. She wants to forget the way Jamie never looked back as she started up the engine. She wants to forget that Jamie let her go without so much as a whispered plea or a stolen glance. She wants to forget, but she wants to remember.
“I-- I got the truck working.” Jamie repeats, though this time there’s no pride in her voice. “I got the truck working and all I could think of was you.”
Jamie takes a deep breath, letting the air whistle through her teeth. “I have spent so many years alone in my castle, happy to be alone, preferred it really. Just me and myself. Me… and what I chose to let in. And it worked, worked for a damn long time. D’nt miss anything. Didn’t, not even a little think I wanted anybody else there. And then I found you - I mean I literally found you. Looking like a fucking wanker out in the middle of the goddamn road, Dani. Your fingers were pretty fuckin’ blue and I mean, no offense but you don’t really seem like somebody who would be able to make it out in the cold for very long. You were in a bloody dress with no coat. Who leaves the house with no coat?”
Dani doesn’t move, doesn’t bite, just stares, doe-eyed and blank and Jamie shakes her head and lets out a groan.
“See-- this is-- you are… God you are infuriatingly annoying. You are absolutely mad. You are sunny and warm and I am none of that. I hate that, quite honestly. Like sometimes people want to brood, Dani. I like to brood and you just--”
Dani scoffs, her brow furrowing. “So you came out here to… what? Insult me?”
“No, no.” Jamie’s hands jut out, reaching into the space between them, before she flops them back down by her side. “Right then. I don’t think I even realized how cracked I was before you came. I think I thought that maybe the jagged edges were just part of me, permanent scars, but somehow being around you made me want to feel whole again. And when you left, I think you took some part of me with you. And I want that part back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before I left?” Dani yells, pulling at her hair, watching Jamie step closer.
“Because it wasn’t my fuckin’ business. You have a whole fiance and a whole goddamn family, Dani. I-- what business do I have to ask you to stay?” Jamie takes another step, and another, and she’s in Dani’s bubble now. Dani can see the way her eyes are both blue and green and the way there’s a fire behind them; burning, turning into ash.
“I had known you for three days! Three days. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know your middle name. I don’t know if you have any siblings. I don’t know where you grew up or fuck, Dani, I don’t even know what you want in life. You’re a stranger, and God, I wish you weren’t, but I have-- had no business asking you to stay.”
They’ve reached an impasse, this is where they are. There’s no winners here, there are no losers. There are two strangers, standing toe to toe, underneath a bridge, in the dead of night.
And Dani thought back to all the times she ran. All the times that life got just a little out of focus, every time she saw what she wanted and she turned the other way and fled. She thought of the way she delayed her own happiness, the way she denied herself refuge. She thought of all the nights she spent pretending to love Eddie, all the days she spent pretending to want what he did. She thought about the steps, rather small but forward, she had taken since she walked out of that church two days before Christmas and left her life behind. She thought about the progress, she thought about the girl who made her want to keep going forward. To quit running. To stop, to walk steady, into the fire.
Jamie’s lips are cold and chapped and yet still all of what Dani had remembered them being. It takes her, this stubborn woman, only a split second before she’s leaning in and up and all over Dani. Lips parted, breath hot, hands trembling as they grip her hips through the thick layers. It’s everything, it’s harsh and biting, it’s wet and it’s sloppy, it’s everything.
It feels like a rush, and then it feels like a trickle. The kiss turns from angry and bruising to gentle and Jamie’s biting at her lip, holding her jaw. Every unsaid thing is on Jamie’s tongue and Dani can taste it. She can taste the words, she can feel the way they are drawn on her skin with the delicate touch of Jamie’s frozen fingers. They say stay, they say please and they say you.
And Dani wants this. Only this. Only now and only forever.
Eddie never kissed her like this, and that’s all she can compare it to, but she can’t imagine anybody else would ever kiss her like this either. Eddie was always fumbling through, awkward and uninviting. His hands never felt right, his body didn’t fit. Not like this, not like Jamie.
“Had.” Dani pants into Jamie’s open mouth.
“What?” Jamie says distractedly as she takes the opportunity to move her lips to Dani’s jaw, throat, ear.
Dani breathes in sharply when Jamie sinks her teeth into flesh. “You said I have a fiance. I had a fiance. I don’t anymore.”
And it’s barely something Jamie doesn’t already know but it’s enough to make her step back and look, really look at Dani. Her eyes speak louder than words ever could. There are promises there, promises of tomorrow, promises to try.
Run. That’s all Dani’s mind had ever told her. Run, run and don’t ever look back. Run from your feelings, run from that short haired barista in the coffee shop that asked for your number, run from that pit inside your stomach that tells you what you’re feeling is normal. Run, her mind said. It’s what it’s saying now.
Dani doesn’t listen. And it’s all it takes, that simple look, that understanding in Jamie’s eyes. It’s all it takes for her to tell her mind no. No, not this time. Not ever again.
“Ask me.” She says. “Please, ask me.”
Jamie presses her forehead in, her breath ragged and hot, her lips quirking up and her eyes sparkling bright when she says, “Stay with me.”
And Dani did. In the end; she stayed.