Page 65 of Never Your Valentine

Grant: My landlord. I like her a lot

Annabelle: Wait I know her! She’s awesome

Grant: She is

My creativity has broken wide open and I spend the next few days in an inspired fugue state. I’m drawing without erasing, making reels with no edits, and uploading everything raw and uncut. I don’t split test, I don’t ask my newsletter subscribers for their opinion, and I don’t second-guess my captions. I just go, making birthday cards that are fresh, feisty, and relatable.

Icicles hang from eaves, one broken and dangling. Caption: Another year. Still sharp, slightly damaged, all you. Happy birthday!

A snowplow emerges from a giant drift. Caption: Congratulations! You made it through another year without getting stuck.

A moose stares blankly at a tipped-over ice-fishing shack. Caption: Another year older, another year of questionable decisions. Nailed it!

I place an order with my printer that’s so big I’m scared to look at the total cost. I pace around my apartment a few times, considering.

I scroll through my cards again, my finger hovering over my best design. I designed it. I drew it. But when I read it, I hear Grant’s voice.

Front of card: Two pine trees covered in snow. One is wearing a party hat. Curly lines indicate strong wind.

Front caption: Birthdays are like snowstorms.

Inside caption: They hit hard, pile up fast, and leave you with a mess you didn’t ask for. Congrats on surviving another one.

I add fifty more of that design to my cart and send in the order.

Then I take an everything shower, lotion up with the yummiest-smelling lotion I own, flat iron my hair, and knock on Grant’s door.

He doesn’t answer.

Annabelle: I knocked earlier

Grant: I know

Annabelle: But you didn’t answer

Grant: I was deciding whether that would make it real

Annabelle: And?

Grant: Still undecided. But I left the door unlocked

Annabelle: That feels like a conclusion

Grant: It’s a footnote at most

Annabelle: I’m right outside

Grant: I can hear you

Annabelle: Are you opening the door?

He opens it. Today he’s wearing a blue t-shirt that says, “It’s Better By the Lake.” And honestly? Accurate.

I tilt my chin up to take him in. His hair is doing that perfectly messy thing that he pulls off so well. He’s got a scruff of beard going, the kind that looks deliberate but casual, as if he woke up and thought, yes, today I’ll be devastating. Brown eyes lock with mine, warm and amused, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.

I had a whole speech planned, but instead, I’m busy thinking about how unfair it is that he looks like this on a random weekday.

He leaves me hanging in the doorway a beat too long. “Can I come in?” I ask.