Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day

They'd spent four straight nights together at the fancy hotel. The sweet, sensual memory of it had kept Ariel in a trance all week. Now it was Valentine's Day and they had a 7:00 date at Lutece, a restaurant with a cobblestone patio and small candles at each table. Ariel had passed the place several times in her three months of living in Dallas. It was always packed with couples who looked like they were in that stage between courting and falling deeply in love.
She locked the door to her apartment and went down the steps to the first floor, where the security guard sat in a little adobe hut.
“Bye, Stan.”
He nodded. “Hair looks nice.”
It was up tonight, pulled away from her face, a suggestion from the saleslady at the empty store where she bought the tight pink dress. Ariel let the eager woman fuss with her hair, pulling out tendrils, sticking in barrettes, sliding in bobby pins like a bridesmaid.
“Enjoy the weather!” Stan called. It was unseasonably warm for February.

The restaurant was crowded with couples. Ariel smelled a fusion of perfume, grilled fish and lit candles. All week she'd imagined sitting across from Jonathan, her bare leg swinging playfully, her tanned shoulders rolling toward him. In the mirror at home, she primped like a schoolgirl, steaming her complexion, applying a new lipstick called “Sparkling Rose.” Now she imagined the color coming off on his lips and her wiping it away with a brush of her thumb.
The host smiled as she walked up. “Just one?” He had a closely shaved face but sprouts of hair peeked out from under his bow tie.
“I'm waiting for someone,” she said. “Jonathan Mitchell.” She imagined saying, I'm waiting for my husband, Jonathan Mitchell.
The man looked down at his reservation list, then flipped the page. He set down the clipboard and plucked out two menus. “Follow me.” He had an accent but Ariel couldn’t place it. Geography had never been her strong suit.
He led her to the famous cobblestone patio. All those evenings of jogging past the restaurant, eying the couples, and now she was finally on stage. Opening Night.
The host stopped before a table with a red rose in the middle and gestured dramatically toward it, as if to say, And now your Valentine’s Day shall begin.
She sat down, taking in her surroundings. Couple, couple, couple. Next to her a man and woman leaned toward each other, the candlelight dancing on their faces. They were young, probably early twenties. The woman wore a low cut red dress to match her nails and lips like she'd read an article called “How to Get a Man” and followed all the steps.
Hannah, her support group leader in Chicago, liked to peer into everyone’s face and say, “What life do you want?”
After being silent for three months, Ariel finally raised her hand. “I want to be loved.”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “But first you must--”
“I know.”
She was sick of the mantra. Why couldn’t someone just love her first and then later she’d learn to love herself? Ignoring Hannah, she packed up her bags and left the city that had sent her into a raging depression. As the plane took off, she felt herself changing from a frightened, angry girl to a confident young woman. Part One, Part Two. Before and After.
Now Ariel smiled to herself as she imagined an interviewer thrusting a microphone at her mouth, And how did you make the difficult shift from spurned fiancé to desirable date?
“Well, it was hard,” she'd say, “but I knew I deserved better.” She imagined traveling the country, making speeches to lonely women. “I used to be like you,” she’d tell them. And then she’d reveal how she met Jonathan in the local coffee shop--him in a tweed jacket and wing tips, reading the Wall Street Journal, and her in black running pants and a sweatshirt, circling ads in the classifieds.
“See, you don’t have to be all dressed up to meet your soul mate,” she’d say. She wouldn’t reveal that he’d taken her that same day to the fancy hotel because some people in the audience might not understand about love at first sight.