"Come on Rory, maybe you should send her a valentine." Rory face flushed bright red, and his eyes immediately started studying the gravel under the swingset.
"Don't be ridiculous…" he muttered, making his words barely audible to his friend.
"Really, girls love that stuff," Jim urged, not knowing how awkward the situation was for Rory. Rory hadn't told anyone that he had fallen madly in love with his best friend, that she was all he could think about, but how could he? He was a shy, insecure, fourteen-year-old boy, and Amy was a confident, popular, fourteen-year-old girl. It wasn't a good combination.
"Yeah, but I don't want her to get the wrong idea," he mumbled again, and felt his cheeks getting redder by the second.
"She won't, she knows you're just friends." Just friends. That was all anyone would ever think of them as, all Amy would ever think of them as, all they'd ever be. Sending Amy Pond a valentine was looking less and less appealing by the second.
"Yup," Rory responded shortly, kicking his leg so the swing would carry him backwards. He sat where he usually sat during his recess period, next to his one or two guy friends. He didn't have many friends besides Amy. Really, he couldn't see why they had recess; it was always cold and the playground was tiny...not that eighth graders wanted to play on a playground anyway.
"So why don't you do it?" Rory shrugged, still finding the gravel intriguing. "If you don't, I will." This caught Rory's attention. It was no mystery that Amy was well liked in the school. Boys often looked at her with smiles on their faces, flirted with her, and even occasionally asked her out. Sometimes Amy flirted back, but she never said "yes" to any proposals of a relationship. This always ignited a flicker of hope inside Rory that possibly his feelings could be requited.
When Jim said he would send Amy a valentine Rory knew immediately what it meant. He observed the way Jim's eyes followed Amy around the playground, as she talked and laughed and ran with other boys and girls. Rory saw her wink at one of the boys standing around her and he felt a sharp pain inside of him, almost as if he had been stabbed, but tried to ignore it as he usually did when he felt jealous, which was much more often than wished for.
"I guess I'll do it then," he told his friend, trying to raise his voice to sound a bit more intimidating. It didn't really work.
"Send her a valentine?" Jim asked, raising his eyebrows as if hadn't had much faith in his persuasive skills, and never intended to really convince Rory to do it.
"Yes, I will send Amy Pond a valentine."
"Oi!" Amy cried when her bag of valentines was dropped on her lap. Every year, on Valentine's Day, the valentines were collected in the office for the students, and then distributed in their own bags they decorated themselves. Amy's had huge red, pink and purple hearts all over it, carefully drawn. "This bag is a bit full."
And it was. The bag was filled with prettily patterned envelopes and hard-to-decipher notes. Half would be from adoring friends, the other from adoring boys. And one would be from Rory.
"Mine certainly isn't," Rory replied glumly, holding up his flat bag that contained a maximum of four valentines. He didn't really care about getting valentines from girls-the only girl he cared about was Amy-but he felt embarrassed with so little when Amy had so many.
"Don't worry, there will always be next year," his friend replied lightly, playfully hitting him on the shoulder. "Now, let me see what I have here…"
Amy dug into the bag of valentines. Most of them were silly or meaningless, until she got to the bottom of the bag, where there was one in a brown envelope, tied up with string. She carefully unraveled it, ignoring the fact Rory refused to meet her eyes and was as red as a firehydrant.
"Dear Amy, thanks for being such a great friend," Amy read to herself, hearing Rory's voice in her head. "You are truly my one and only best friend. You are talented, kind, sweet, and pretty. I couldn't live without you. Your friend, Rory." Amy stared at the valentine a few more minutes after she had finished reading. "You really think I'm talented?"
Rory could barely believe himself. How could he have let her read all that? When he was writing it it was so much easier; and there had been so much more he had wanted to say! But now he was afraid he'd laugh at her, or end their friendship, or something equally as horrid. However, he had to answer the question.
"Of course," he mumbled, not lifting his eyes off the ground.
"And kind?"
"Yes." His embarrassment was too much to bear.
"And sweet?"
"Mmhmm." Why had he let Jim talk him into this? Why did his jealousy have to ruin everything?
"And pretty?"
He wanted to scream "Gorgeous, lovely, exquisitely beautiful!" but all he could do was nod. Amy put on a genuine smile-not the one she used for the boys on the playground-and leaned in close to Rory so he could feel her breath down his neck.
"I think you're the most handsome boy in this whole school," she whispered, her lips brushing his ear. She planted a kiss on his cheek, one that was sweet and meaningful.
Inside Rory it felt as if his internal organs had gone to war with butterflies, and his brain decided to make his thoughts go haywire. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out, so he closed it in order to avoid looking like an idiot.
So far, his best Valentine's Day ever.