19 Ways to Spend Valentine’s Day

1. Watch a sappy movie with your friends.
2. Cook a really nice dinner and treat yourself.
3. Go to that art museum thing. It was kind of fun last year.
4. Remember how he was never that good to you, anyway.
5. Especially that one time he kept you waiting for like an hour at your favorite Italian place.
6. What was it called again? Don Giovanni’s? Something like that. Not even authentic.
7. But man, when he showed up, you had such a good time. Tom always was a charmer. You had a nice Malbec, and he made you feel so comfortable. The food was delicious and the conversation sublime.
8. And Tom had the night all planned out. Dessert, a walk in the moonlight, stargazing? It was beautiful. It was the most romantic night of your life.
9. That was the first night you made love.
10. Keep it together, Jeanie. He’s gone and that’s it. That’s just it, okay?
11. Ever since he sacked up with that bitch Catherine and she got pregnant. And then the shotgun wedding. You fantasized about running in with a dramatic objection, but chickened out at the last minute. You just let it happen.
12. The thing that killed you the most was how quiet and normal it all seemed, as your future was silently gutted like a fish torn from the waters of your dreams. Something inside of you screamed as if every step down the aisle was a shiv in your emotional spleen. You smiled, and clapped, and cheered, but your eyes were dead. They were the dead eyes of a girl who had learned that she was not a princess. In real life, there are no fairy-tale endings.
13. You hope he’s happy, living with her harpie shrieks until her boobs droop down to her fucking ankles. Bimbos like that never age well. What’s it been? Three years? She’s already showing a few wrinkles, you reckon.
14. That skank.
15. Fuck Tom. Seriously, just fuck him.
16. …
17. Oh God, you’re so alone.
18. …
19. Cry all night into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s

-JRV ’12