Wrapped in Red.

I have a date for Valentine’s Day.

If you’ve been following along, you know that this is big news. Huge.

For six years, Cupid has done his best to rub salt in the wound that is my single status. I’ve gritted my teeth against the onslaught of digital emoticons and flowers and chocolates and balloons that has left me seeing red. I’ve negotiated internally. I’ve gone from jealousy to acceptance to celebration of the outpouring of love and affection my friends and family have been given and received. I’ve stopped dreaming that the online system for 1-800-FLOWERS would be taken down with the virus to end all computer viruses.  

It’s not that Valentine’s Day was monumental before I was single. In all honesty, it was almost non-existent. My husband didn’t see any value in the day.

“Flowers die. And the more you ask, the longer it takes them to arrive.”

It became a joke between us. In all the time I knew him, I received flowers on our wedding day, my first day on two new jobs and my first real Mother’s Day. Four times. There were no chocolates and no jewelry. No dinner dates or movies. He simply didn’t think the day mattered and, in all fairness, I don’t even think he knew what flowers I liked. I was okay with that, but I couldn’t help but wish once in a while he would have opted for an unscripted gesture that deviated from the patterns of our daily lives. But it wasn’t until he disappeared that Valentine’s Day truly became a day of significance, significant because I no longer had any significance of my own.

I’ve spent six Valentine’s Days since wondering where the hell Cupid is.

The first arrived mere months after he was gone, my Valentine a macabre reminder of love grown cold in the form of a letter from the medical examiner. The second was spent angry and wine soaked, and I found a way to ignore the third until just before midnight when I fell apart in my glass of Merlot. The fourth I managed to fall asleep early and the fifth my heart wept anew that my future was out there somewhere without me. And now here we are.

I’ve met someone.

In six years, I’ve had ample time to mull over what I hope my forever-after Valentine will be. I can’t help but want to be swept away by someone who takes my breath away in laughter and passion, someone who will be strong when I am weak and who’s strength will shield a love that only I will feel. Someone dark and fierce and loyal and tender.

My heart has designs on a future that isn’t yet mine, but tonight I have plans. A glass of red. A red envelope. A Game of Thones.

And my new boyfriend Khal Drogo.