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Valentine's or Palnetines: Day 14. (plot point) Valentine's Day

The word count is 1,783 words. I hope that you all enjoy Valentine's Day Panic.

I walked into the dojo the next afternoon in a rather foul mood. It wasn't that I hadn't had a great time hanging around with Sam yesterday. I did have a great time. I found out that we have a lot in common besides the fact that we both dated both Miguel and Robby at one point in time.

The thing that had me in a funk was splashed all over the dojo walls by Aisha. I scowled as my friend continued to go about hanging paper hearts of every shape and size around the room. I knew that Sensei Laurence wouldn't stand for this. He would tell her to take all this mess down and then we could all forget that the most horrible time of the year was almost upon us. Valentine's Day.

"What's got you in a mood?" Miguel asked, looking up at me from behind his laptop.

"Are you hiding from the pink and red heart vomit that's all over the room?" I asked, motioning at his laptop.

"No," Miguel said, cocking an eyebrow. "But I am noticing how you just blew off my question, Tory."

"I didn't blow it off," I said, not wanting to share my fears. At least not here anyway. "I just chose to swiftly move past it is."

"It wouldn't have anything to do with the pink and red heart vomit, would it?"

I rolled my eyes as I moved down next to him. I could Miguel almost anything. We'd become friends of a sort a few months after our breakup and my subsequent dating of and break up with Robby.

"Maybe?" I looked over his shoulder and could see that he was typing away at something on his laptop. "What's that you're working on?"

"Something for Valentine's Day," he said, not looking up as he looked at the sentence he just figured. "What do you think would rhyme best with Cobra Kai?"

"I wonder why?" I suggested, looking at my nails and trying not to allow Miguel to see my jealousy of him.

"Is that jealousy I detect in your voice, Tor?"

"No. It's something entirely different."

"Is it?"

"Alright. Maybe it is jealousy. But what of it?"

"Why are you jealous?"

I snorted. Like he didn't know. Everything came easy to people like Miguel who had that Latin lover style about him or Robby who had the bad vibes that all the girls liked. They didn't have to work at this love thing as hard as any of the rest of us did.

"I'm serious why do feel the need to be jealous?"

"You're probably writing a Valentine's Day poem for some lucky girl. But I can't even find the right words to tell the one I like that I even like them."

He waved me off. "Are you kidding?" he asked, snorting. "You're brilliant at coming up with this sort of stuff. Remember when you helped me with that…."

He must have seen the way my face changed because he closed his laptop and turned his full attention to me. "You don't have any ideas left for yourself, do you?"

I shook my head.

"Do you know what this person likes?" Miguel asked, using the same advice I would have given if he was the one in this situation.

"Um…karate?"

"I mean outside of karate," Miguel said, trying to wrack his mind around who my secret crush was. He must be figuring that it's someone from here because he's looking around the room and judging the potential of each match. "What do they like to do? Do they have a favorite movie? Do they like candy?"

"I don't have a clue about any of that," I said, taking a deep breath and letting it out quickly. "She likes the beach."

"She likes the beach," he said, his eyes falling upon Aisha. Boy, would he be surprised when figures out that it's not Aisha but her ex-best friend Sam. "So, she seems like a romantic type?"

"I guess."

"Do you think poetry would work?"

"I think it's kind of too early for poetry. She doesn't even have a clue that I like her like that."

"It's never too early for poetry. Poetry is the words of the soul written down on paper and given to the world to express one's innermost feelings without having to say them."

"Is that what you were working on?" I asked, looking at his laptop.

"Maybe?" he replied turning my own tactics against me. "Do you want me to help you write something down for your special someone?"

"Only if you tell me who you're writing yours for," I said, knowing he wasn't about to tell me that. We were close but not that close.

His dark eyes suddenly grew very serious and he looked around once more as though checking to see that someone wasn't going to overhear him. He then leaned closer to me. "You won't tell anyone, right?" he asked, looking up as the chime over the door rang. "Especially not Sensei Laurence."

I raised an eyebrow and then nodded.

"It's a poem for Valentine's Day," he said, looking up quickly as the door chimed once more. He leaned closer and lowered his voice so that only I could hear him as Sensei Laurence walked in. "It's for Robby."

"What?" I asked, noticing Sensei Laurence looking our way.

"I'll tell you after karate," he said, putting his laptop away as Sensei called us into formation.

"Okay," I said as I walked out of the dojo with Miguel, "it's after class. You said you'd tell me more about this poem for…." I could sense someone walking out behind me. I wasn't about ready to spill Miguel's secret. Not on purpose. "...You-Know-Who."

"There's an awful lot of whispering going on between the two of you," Sensei Laurence said, making us turn and see him leaning against the door frame watching us. "What's all that about?"

"Miguel's helping me with a Valentine's Day gift for someone," I said, shrugging as if to say there was nothing else to it. It wasn't entirely a lie. Miguel had offered to help me with a Valentine's Day gift. But Sensei Laurence didn't need to know the rest of what we were whispering about until it absolutely concerned him.

"Aren't you the one that Miguel goes to for help with that sort of stuff not the other way around?" he asked, watching me.

"Sensei Laurence is good at advice regarding love too," Miguel said, nodding at the older man. "He was the one who told me to go for it with Sam."

"Oh." I tried to keep the blush off my face at her name. "Well, what sort of advice would you give me, Sensei?"

"Well, the man's supposed to make the first move…."

"What if there isn't a man?"

"I don't understand."

"I'll explain it to you later, Sensei Laurence," Miguel said, pulling me away from our karate teacher as quickly as he could.

"What was that about?" I asked as we walked to Miguel's apartment building. "We could have at least gotten a ride with Sensei to your apartment. You both live in the same building, don't you?"

"Then we'd have to explain same-sex relationships to him. Sensei's kind of old-school when it comes to those sorts of things."

"Oh. It's probably not going to stop questions from coming up when classes resume next week. Or when he figures out that his top student is in love with his son."

"I….I…."

"I'm just kidding. It's not like I'm going to tell or anything."

"You better not. Now, let's spitball some ideas for a poem you could write your potential girlfriend, Tor."

We talked as we walked towards the apartment complex. The more we talked the more writing a poem seemed to feel like the right idea.

"Are you saying Tory's gay?" Sensei Laurence asked when we finally arrived at the apartments, causing both Miguel and I to roll our eyes as we walked past him. "What it's her choice, right?"

"Yes, Sensei," I called back to him. "That's what we're saying."

He caught up to us easily. "The advice I gave Miguel in regards to Sam LaRusso works for any sort of relationship," he said, looking at me. "You just got to have the balls to pull it off." He then looked at me as though realizing who he was talking to. "Or lady balls as it were."

"Thank you, Sensei," I said as Miguel pulled into his apartment and past his mother and grandmother, and into his room.

We spent the rest of the night writing and rewriting and rewriting again the poem I was going to give to Sam. While at the same time I read his poem for Robby and made a few suggestions for him to try. It kind of felt like old times. Before he and I had dated after Sam and Miguel broke up. It felt nice to be able to talk to a friend about how I felt.

I could feel the butterflies in my chest as I moved towards Sam's locker. It was Valentine's Day and here I was before school. Sneaking into the building so that I could slip a Valentine's Day poem into the locker of the girl I liked. My heart was thudding as loud as my footsteps were each echoing off the floors and lockers like bombs dropping from the sky.

"Here goes nothing," I said, slipping the poem into Sam's locker, or at least I hoped it was hers. "This was the one she was usually standing near most of the time.

I quickly walked away from the locker. I hoped that she'd like it. I also kind of hoped that she'd understand what it was asking too. I had planned a nice romantic picnic at the beach for us. Miguel and I were going to go after school and set everything up.

"Did you do it?" Miguel asked, walking over to me from the direction of Robby's locker with a look of pure relief on his face.

I nodded. "You?"

"Yep."

Now all that was left was to sit back wait and see what would happen. I couldn't help praying that everything was going to work out well as I watched Sam open her locker. The poem tumbling out onto the floor. She stooped down and picked it up. I could see her reading it a light blush crossing her cheeks. I didn't know what happened next because Miguel tugged me off down the hallway towards our first class of the day. But I hoped that I would be seeing Sam later on tonight.

I hope you all enjoyed Valentine's Day Panic as much as I enjoyed writing it.