Third Wheel

Why I'm Not Crazy For Valentine's Day Anymore

Senior Year. A time where, all of a sudden, I decided to break all the vows I'd made since freshman year and dive headfirst into romantic endeavors.

Say what you will about my terrible decisions. I hate myself too for making them. I shouldn't have thrown caution to the wind the way I did.

But the truth remains that I went out Jaime Santiago.

I dated him.

I had kissed him. More than once.

And I lost him to the next pretty girl.

Honestly, I didn't expect things to end this way. I always thought that it would be Rita Rodriguez, the school softball MVP and most attractive Latina girl. She had been dating Jaime sporadically since freshman year, they had been best friends since kindergarten, and just one look at her would explain enough. She had the longest legs out of all the girls in our grade (maybe even the entire school), very visible abs, a long record of RBIs, and she looked confident in her brown skin (unlike me). Her heritage made her exotic. My heritage made me a bit of an outsider. By default, this meant that if she wanted to, she could probably pick Jaime off my arm and take him home with her.

However, I hadn't counted the possibility that ultimately, both Rita and I would lose to a white girl by default.

When Rita saw me and Jaime together, I always felt guilty. Like this shouldn't be how things were. Jaime and I would be sitting together on the sidewalk, leaning against one another with our legs entwined (even though it was a hot day and the asphalt was burning my ass and I was sweating like hell), and she'd jog by in her green and blue tracksuit. The first time she ran by us, I felt a cold sweat, like Rita was going to scoop up Jaime, take him away and put me into my place.

But she didn't. She just gave us a look, then jogged away without even turning around to do a double take.

After a few times, though, I began to think maybe she didn't care, or perhaps she really didn't think this would last. Which would get me into another cold sweat, and cause Jaime to ask me why I looked anxious. Not that I could tell him.

But maybe, maybe Rita knew what was really going to happen. Because unlike me, she hadn't stopped paying attention to Jaime's patterns of the past.

It happened right on Valentine's Day.

I had just gotten my driver's license for real, and drove myself to school to show it off to Jaime. He hadn't told me about any plans, but I knew that he probably had something in mind. No way he could have forgotten it was Valentine's Day, not when our school decked up the halls in as many sappy decorations as possible. Likely he had a surprise, and as much of a killjoy as I can be, I decided to be a nice girlfriend for once by not asking him and spoiling it. As far as I knew, Jason was still at home playing videogames.

I was on a bit of an adrenaline high, but of course I made sure to park my car in the school lot as neatly as possible. I then got out of the car and ran like a madwoman towards the school entrance. I didn't care who saw me. I was unusually happy that day.

That was, until I actually got through those school doors.

There, right in front of my face was the most unpleasant couple I'd ever seen. Jaime, who was holding onto a red heart-shaped balloon, and the white girl who transferred to our class a few months ago, sitting in his lap like she'd been with him all this time. When they noticed me, they immediately jumped apart and stopped sucking each other's faces.

I will say this. If there's one thing I've gotten out of this experience, it's that my enthusiasm and expectations for Valentine's Day have been significantly lowered. Like, if Jason gives me a dandelion weed he found lying around, I consider it a pretty good day.