Val shifted her weight in the chair and bit her lip, frustrated with herself. "This is definitely not right. It sounds so stupid." She told Brooke, who was seated on the bed next to the desk, as she crumpled up the note and threw it at the trash can, but missed.

"All love letters sound stupid." The younger girl said, and sighed. This was the twelfth time Val had stopped writing and had thrown away her pathetic attempt to tell Tyler her feelings, and Brooke wished they could just quit and get going. Val was supposed to drive her to the mall to meet Nick and Amy.

"Well this one is supposed to be…I don't know…beautiful." She said, her voice wiry.

"Right, and you're just going to fall into Tyler's arms and kiss him for, like, a year, and everything's going to be perfect. Can we go now?"

She rather liked the picture Brooke had painted for her and rested her chin in her hand on the desk, thinking longingly of the day when that really would happen.

"Val?" Her sister got up off the bed and waved her arm in front Val.

She snapped out of her little daydream. "Huh? Oh, yeah, the mall. Sorry." Closing her notebook and dropping her gel pen she followed Brooke out the door. No letter was going to be big enough to fit all her feelings for Tyler.

* * *

The evening was turning out to be quiet at the station. Jamie was engrossed in his video game with his feet propped up on the table and Hank was asleep on the top bunk of the bed by the door. Tyler was working on his inventory report and Val was seated next to him attempting to finish her English homework—that had been due the day before. She couldn't help but notice how cute he looked when the light hit him the way that it did.

"You know…" She started, but stopped. Wouldn't it sound even stupider if she told him right out how he felt? Val didn't think she had the guts.

He looked up. "Huh?"

"Never mind. Forget I said anything. I must have been daydreaming about something and then thought out loud." She prayed that little white lie wouldn't count against her in the future.

Tyler smiled. "I do that a lot. I start to think about something special and then I…" he paused, "yeah. Sorry. I'm not making much sense tonight."

Humph. Her mind wasn't making any sense that night—and at that point she felt that nothing Tyler did was wrong or stupid. "You're making more sense than these questions. I mean, I don't even understand what we're reading, how am I supposed to answer the questions?"

"Well," he shifted closer to her to read the question she was working on over her shoulder and to reach over and grab the book they were reading; Romeo and Juliet. "Imagine loving someone so much that you can't…can't stand to be away from them…and you get upset at everything that separates you. You just love this other person more than anything in the world and all you have to figure out is…" Tyler stopped, seeing Val hanging on to his every word, but continued again after the pause. "how to be together for the rest of your life."

TO BE CONTINUED….tell me if you like what you've read so far. Happy holidays all.