Be My Valentine

It was Valentine’s Day, and I was all alone. Well, not physically, but emotionally. The rest of my band was there, on the tour bus, but I had no one to share the holiday with. It was the first time in a long time that I didn’t have a girlfriend to celebrate with.
“Mar-i-lyn!” My bassist, Twiggy, called from the back lounge.
“What, Twigs?” I had just gotten comfortable on the couch in the front lounge.
“Come make decorations with me.”
“That’s okay. You have fun.” I loved Twiggy, but sometimes, he could be a bit annoying. All I wanted to do was relax, not children’s arts and crafts projects.
“Please?”
I sighed. “All right, Twiggy. For just a little while.” I stood up, stretched, and went to join my band mate.
“Hiya,” he smiled enthusiastically, looking up from the red paper heart he was covering every inch of with gold glitter. There was glitter all over his arms and hands, some on the table, and even a bit in his hair.
“Are you making a mess?”
“No.”
I laughed, sitting down across from him, picking up a sheet of pink construction paper. I drew a heart, cut it out, and drew an arrow through it with a purple glitter pen. I shoved it over towards Twiggy, and watched him continue to apply glitter to the same heart he’d been working on when I’d joined him.
“Are you sad, Marilyn?”
Sometimes, Twiggy sounded as childish as he often behaved. But, he was insightful. In his own way, he was probably the smartest one of us. Not book smart, but highly intelligent nonetheless. He could always read people’s feelings, and he had a very sweet heart. No one could cheer me up like Twiggy could.
“You are, aren’t you? You don’t like being alone today. Well, guess what? You’re not alone. You’ve got me.” He reached across the table, and patted my hand with his glittery one.
“Yes, Twigs, I know that. Thank you.”
He nodded, finally looking at the heart I’d decorated. “See? You’re sad. Arrow through the heart.”
I sighed. I thought we’d been over this already.
“John and Ginger both have girlfriends. Pogo has…well…you know. You and I have each other.”
“Yes, but our love is different. You’re my best friend, not my lover.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t be my valentine.”
“Yes, it does. Best friends aren’t valentines.”
“Why not?”
“They just aren’t.”
Twiggy pouted, finally deciding that he couldn’t apply any more glitter to his heart than he already had. He put down the glitter pen, and took both of my hands in his. His little hands were so cold. Always cold. It must’ve been true, the colder the hands, the warmer the heart. No one had as big of a heart as Twiggy did.
“I don’t get the feeling that you’re too crazy about being alone today, either.”
“I don’t mind.”
I knew that for the majority of his teen years, he’d pretty much been an outcast. He hadn’t worn makeup and dresses back then, but he had still been the same person. It was probably his need to please people and to make them smile that caused him to wind up an outcast. Believe it or not, his mother told me that he had been very shy for most of his life, before I’d known him. He had very few friends. Of course, the fact that he was constantly teased for looking feminine and just as often having to prove that he was, in fact, a boy, probably didn’t help him to make many friends. It did, however, earn him a lot of detentions as well as a few suspensions.
“What’re you thinking about?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
Twiggy was now decorating a pale pink heart with red glitter. “Were you thinking about me?”
“Actually, I was.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I was thinking about something your mom told me once.”
“Oh. What did she say?”
“That you were shy.”
He smiled. “It’s not easy to make friends when everyone picks on you for being different. I used to beg her to cut my hair, you know. Now, I’m glad she didn’t. I learned how to defend myself.”
“By pulling down your pants?”
He gave me a wary look. “I could kick your ass.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
He seemed to consider it, then shook his head. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Me, either. I’m sorry. You could totally defend yourself.”
“By pulling down my pants? Or lifting up my dress?”
We both laughed, Twiggy getting glitter all over his forearm. He noticed the mess he was making, and rubbed his arms together, getting the glitter on both of them. “I’m sparkly.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Want to make me more sparkly?”
“I think you’re doing just fine on your own with that.”
Giggling, he picked up the blue glitter pen, and quickly drew a heart on the back of my left hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Cheering you up.”
I sighed. “I’m fine, Twiggy. Really.”
“I don’t think so!” He started drawing all over my hands and what he could reach of my arms.
“Twiggy, this had better come off. We don’t even have a shower on the bus.”
“It will be fine. You can look pretty when we go out later.”
“What’s later?”
“Dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“Sure. You eat dinner, I know you do.”
I rolled my eyes. “What have you got in mind?”
“Well, I did some research about the town we’re going to be in tonight. There’s an amazing little Italian place there. I called ahead and made reservations about a month ago.”
“You did?” This was behavior very unlike him. Twiggy was always a spontaneous person. He wasn’t one for planning ahead. Not if he could help it, anyway.
“Yep.”
“And what if one of us had found a girlfriend by today?”
He shrugged. “I’m not really on the market. I didn’t think you were, either.”
He was right. My breakup with Rose had left me pretty much unwilling to date for the past few months. And Twiggy, well, he’d been hurt more than once, just as I had.
“What time is it?”
I looked down at my watch. “Four eighteen.”
He nodded. “We’ll be there in a couple of hours. Our reservations are for seven.”
“Okay.”
Even though I didn’t really want to, I stayed at the table, working on decorations with my friend. I didn’t want to be alone, and being with him seemed to make the time go by faster.
Shortly after five, Twiggy yawned, out of paper and long ago out of glitter. “I’m gonna take a little nap. Wake me when we get there?”
I shook my head. “I’m tired, too.”
“Okay. I’ll ask John.”
Twiggy disappeared, likely to find John. It wasn’t like you could go anywhere when you were on a moving tour bus.
I was thankful that we didn’t have a show that night. It would keep me from having to really let it sink in what today was. Besides, it gave me a night off from having to get into my stage clothes and go through all of that. Not that I didn’t love performing, because I did. More than anything. But, sometimes, it was good just to be able to have a night off to take it easy.
A while after Twiggy had departed, I went to the bunks to crawl into my bed. I sat down, feeling a lump beneath me.
“Owww,” I heard a muffled voice from beneath my sheets. I pulled them back, and found Twiggy curled up in my little bed.
“What are you doing? This isn’t your bed.”
“So?”
“So, get out. I want to sleep in my own bed.”
“So?”
I sighed. Twiggy could be so stubborn.
Finally, I settled for squeezing into the little bed with him. We could both be stubborn, I guess.
The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes to see John, Ginger, and Pogo all laughing beside me. I blinked a few times, realizing that I was tightly hugging my pillow. And then, my pillow slightly moved. As my eyes focused, I realized that it wasn’t a pillow at all, but my best friend’s back. We were curled up together in my bunk, and he was still sleeping peacefully.
“It’s almost six thirty. We’ve been here for awhile,” Ginger spoke, the only one not still laughing.
“Thank you.”
“You two sure look cozy,” John smiled, a hint of laughter in his voice.
“Well, he’s very soft, for someone so bony,” I replied lamely.
As the others trooped off, I gently nudged Twiggy awake. He opened his eyes, and smiled up at me.
“Did you have a nice nap?”
I nodded.
“Me, too.”
I stood, stretching for a moment before I moved to allow space for him to get up, too.
We both changed, and still had time to make it to the restaurant in time for our reservation. To my surprise, not a single photograph or autograph was requested that night. No one seemed to even notice us there. It was a quiet, peaceful dinner.
When we’d finished, both stuffed to the gills, Twiggy paid the bill, and we took a taxi back to the bus. We would be alone for the night, as everyone else had opted for a hotel room.
For awhile, we watched TV, and then, Twiggy became restless, so we switched to playing a video game. When he’d lost for the third time, he sighed, and turned the TV off, sitting down and propping his bare feet up in my lap.
“You okay?”
He nodded.
I began to rub his feet. He let out a happy sigh.
“This was an okay day, wasn’t it? I know you didn’t have someone special to share it with, but it wasn’t too awful, was it?”
I smiled, tickling the bottom of both feet. “It was a very nice day. Thank you, Twigs.”
“You’re welcome.”
I went back to rubbing his tired feet. “But you’re wrong.”
“About what?”
“I did have someone special to share today with.”
“You did?”
“Sure.”
“Who?”
“You, silly.”
He looked at me with a little twinkle in his golden eyes.
As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with your best friend being your valentine.