✽ Jason ✽
I planned Valentine’s Day the way I planned everything else: clean, controlled, and impossible to misread. Romance was a language Mandy understood. I didn’t. But I understood results, and the result I wanted was simple. She would feel chosen. She would feel safe. She would stay. The apartment was quiet. Mandy was at class, and the silence gave me space to build. I sat at the study desk with my laptop open and a notepad beside it, though I didn’t need the paper. Writing the list made it real. It turned intention into order.
The menu came first.
Not because food mattered, but because rituals mattered. Dinner at home meant privacy. It meant no strangers, no interruptions, no waiting staff watching her smile at other people. It meant I controlled the environment. I had scoured th
