Author's Note: Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Oh how I hate this holiday with a peacock sized passion. I did not recieve a rose, card, etc from any guy. It sucks big time. Thank the Lord that tomorrow is Anti-Valentine's Day! So, I meant to post this one-shot last night, but I was literally falling asleep while typing. So here it is! A nice, long one-shot for my fellow authors. :) Song at the end is called "You and Me" by Lifehouse. Hope you enjoy! By the way...I have officialy declared that Sake's day is Sunday. I don't know why I chose it...I just did. :p
"Love is like playing the piano.
First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart."
-Unknown
When Sam was five years old, she was finally old enough to remember special events. The first one that she remembered was, as her mother called it, a 'day of love'.
::
The day was slow and boring, so the auburn haired girl's mom had her sit down at the small kitchen table and set some supplies in front of her.
"What's this for, mommy?"
The striking older woman with the hair of a lioness looked down at her only child's confused face and said, "It's for Valentine's day or, as some people call it, a day of love. It's a day to show everyone how much you love them. Maybe you can make some cards for your friends at school."
The small girl, Samantha, turned her attention back on the multicolored construction paper, safety scissors, and colorful crayons laying on the table and thought that this 'day of love' had a good point to it. As her mom went back to mixing red velvet cake mix in a plastic bowl, Sam picked up a piece of cherry colored paper and started to make her very first Valentine.
::
Two hours later, Sam has sixteen mutilated looking paper hearts all spread out on the wooden table. Four of them are for her Gram, her mom, her dad, and for her friend Jake. Twelve hearts have no names on them and Sam ends up taping all twelve of them on her white walls.
/
When Sam is six, she has her first Valentine's day without her mother. She sits alone at the kitchen table with all of her craft supplies in front of her. Her Gram is spreading icing on the red velvet cake that they have every year on the 'day of love'. But to Sam, it's just not the same. Her mom is supposed to be making the annual cake, not Gram.
The rest of the day, Sam is unusually quiet. She didn't eat any red velvet cake, any chocolate cupcakes that Jake's mom had brought over, and didn't even look at any of the Valentine cards that she had received at school.
She thinks that this is the worst Valentine's Day that any six year old can go through.
::
At midnight, Sam wakes up from her slumber and tiptoes down stairs to get a snack. She eats one of Mrs. Ely's delicious cupcakes with pink icing and glances over at the kitchen table where the craft supplies are still laying there. After throwing away the last bite of her sugary snack, she sits down in a chair and picks up the orange safety scissors.
Four minutes later, she ends up sticking a bright, bumble bee yellow heart on the refrigerator door with a small magnet. The little six year old will never forget that yellow was her mom's favorite color because it reminded her of sunshine.
::
When Grace Forster wakes up from her eight hours of sleep, she notices the yellow heart that says 'Mommy' on it and smiles softly to herself.
/
At nine years of age, Sam rides the bus every morning to go to school. But on February 14th, she rode the bus with a small paper bag full of handmade hearts. She is old enough now to question why pink and red are the main colors of Valentine's Day.
To be different, she made all of her miniature hearts with turquoise and sea green construction paper, silver ribbon, and wrote everyone's name in black sharpie. She didn't realize that the sharpie seeped through the thin paper and sabotaged her creations. But she didn't care. There was no way that she was making all nineteen hearts all over again.
::
In class that day, everyone notices the weird colored hearts and all Sam can seem to hear is, "Hearts are supposed to be red or pink. Not green and blue!"
Sam is quiet after all of the comments and doesn't talk the rest of the day. But when she finally takes her regular seat on the bus, she breaks down. Soft tears fall down her eyes as she stares out of the window. And then suddenly, a girl from her class, who's name was Ally, sat down next to her and says, "Don't worry…I thought your Valentine cards were cool."
And just like that, she turns to this Ally girl and smiles a grin that could blind someone.
/
When the girl with the milk chocolate eyes is ten years old, Valentine's Day is on a Sunday. Gram drags her to church in the morning to meet up with Mrs. Ely and four out of her six sons.
::
Three hours fly by and church is over. Sam stays seated in her seat while Gram takes the time to talk to Mrs. Ely. Three of her sons have already gone out to sit in the car, but her friend Jake stays seated next to her. He reaches in to his jeans pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. Sam opens it and it reads, "Happy Valentine's Day, Brat."
He might have called Sam by her hated nickname, but she wasn't angry with him. She was happy because it was her first real Valentine that wasn't given to her by family or classmates, but by her best friend.
/
Brown eyes look out of the apartment window to see buildings, smoke, and trash. The scenery of the city. To the twelve year old girl doing homework on the too polished black desk, the city was horrible. She couldn't understand why anyone would like such a dirty and cramped town. But she just had to deal with it no matter what.
::
The alarm clock on her nightstand reads 2:34 a.m. and she's so tired, but so thirsty. She manages enough energy to walk in to the tiny kitchen with the steel appliances to get a glass of water. Before even getting a glass, she notices a card laying on the counter. It has her name on it and she knows it's from Aunt Sue.
She slashes the envelope open and reads the poem inside it. She smiles an oh so sweet grin and places the card back in the envelope to make it look like she didn't open it.
Her mind wanders to everyone who received roses at school the day before and who all will receive one today. And she just can't help but feel a little left out.
/
At sixteen years of age, Sam can say that she has never received a rose on the 'day of love'. She has received cards and chocolates from her family, but never a rose.
So when she was grooming Tempest in the barn after school, she was surprised when Jake came in to the stall and placed one single violet rose on the area where a saddle was usually placed on a horse. Sam stopped grooming out of shock as Jake, in the quietest tone possible, said, "Happy Valentine's Day, Sam."
He didn't call her Brat.
::
At least now she can proudly say that she has received a rose.
/
At age eighteen, she is considered an adult but she still feels like a child. It's the 'day of love' once again and she is alone…again. She has dated a few guys, but they're nothing special to her.
So on the night of Valentine's Day, she makes a trip downtown to the old church that she never goes to anymore. The priest is unlocking his car door, probably going home to spend the rest of the day with his gorgeous wife. He smiles and says, "Little Samantha…well not so little anymore. Why are you here so late at night?"
"I didn't feel like being stuck at home alone."
The priest bids her a good night and drives away from the old, white church.
::
Sam walks through the backdoor of the church and she's in the back room where old Bibles and brooms hide. She walks a little further, pushes past cobwebs, and finds what she's looking for. Taking the old, lace cloth off the bulky item, she finds the old piano that she use to try to play.
While she was in San Francisco for two and a half years, her aunt thought it was best for her to take up a hobby. She chose piano and her teacher had said that she was a natural. When Sam left the city, she left her piano playing days behind and hadn't thought about playing again until today.
Sam laid her fingertips on the white keys and it was like she never stopped playing. The soft ballad of her favorite song sounding like Heaven to her ears.
::
Being lost in the sound of the piano, she didn't notice the sound of the backdoor opening and closing. A heavy body sat down next to her on the piano bench and she knew who it was by the tanned skin.
"What are you doing here, Jake?"
She saw him shrug out of the corner of her eye and she watched as he placed a violet rose on the stand where sheet music was usually placed. Turning toward him, Sam smiled and placed a soft peck on his already flushed cheek.
"Thank you." Jake nodded and asked her to play something. So she continued to play her favorite ballad and somewhere in the middle of the song, she started to sing.
"Cause it's you and me and all of the people. And I don't know why I can't keep my eyes off of you."
The next lyric was cut off by slightly chapped lips on hers. Her fingers lifted off of the keys. The music stopped and it was just Sam and Jake. Her hands slightly floating above the keys. Jake's left hand holding her face and his right was caressing her auburn hair.
And all both of them can think is that this has got to be the best Valentine's Day ever.
And Sam will always remember that her first kiss with Jake happened on a Sunday.