Yesterday was great! I wanted to give a rose to Rachael and was planning on it, but my mom didn’t take me to school yesterday so I wasn’t able to get the rose. So I’m wondering what I’m going to do, and then I run into my friend Shane. He said that he would run me to Steele’s at lunch to pick up a rose for Rachael. Awesome! Except for when we got to Steele’s. I only had five bucks. They didn’t have any single roses. Damnit! Instead, all they had were large bouquets for more than I had to spend. So I figured I would get a chocolate rose. That’s cool, right? They were out of them! Damnit! They only had half-dozen boxes of them. So Shane, being the cool guy that he is, spotted me the cash to get the six-pack. One obstacle down … At the end of lunch, I found Rachael in the hall and asked her if we could talk after school. She said okay, and I asked her to meet me in the hallway in front of the office. She agreed …

I ditched American Lit. to setup for the concert in the commons. Since she has 4th hour off, Amy was in the commons as I was doing this. Needless to say, this was very uncomfortable for me. Especially because when I was working, she kept staring at me. I ended up staying at school the whole day until after the end of the concert, but I’ll get to that later …

So after school, with chocolate roses in hand being covered by my jacket, I met with Rachael. After some stuttering, I told her that I just wanted to thank her for being such a good friend, and that I didn’t want to seem too forward, but I did want to show my appreciation for her. Then I handed her the roses. She was almost on the verge of crying when she saw them. And her first words were, “Oh, Chris, I love you so much …” I just about died. We talked about how I didn’t talk to her. And she said that she understood if I wasn’t comfortable talking to her. I told her that wasn’t the case. But the reason was that no one had cared so much about me, and that was hard for me to deal with. Truth quotient: about 7 out of 10. This is a major reason, but perhaps more reasonable is that I’m falling in love with her. We hugged a few times and she told me to call her any time. We hugged again and held each other’s had for a minute. Then we said goodbye.

The concert: The music was absolutely fantastic. The decorations were great. But the lighting was another story. Brett and I had spent about two hours setting lights for the show. And we obviously put too much into it because we blew a circuit, causing the lights to go black in the middle of the performances. We attempted to fix this during the show, but were unsuccessful until the last group was performing. But that’s okay. Centre Stage did great. So I’m happy.

After we went on stage, I sat and talked with Nicole. I finally told her that I’ve had a crush on her since last year. She seemed surprised, but not. It felt good to let that out. But the bombshell of the night belonged to her. She had come to the concert a little late because she was making Mike and Amy dinner. So she went off about that for a little bit, and then she told me that Mike was extremely happy because he found out that Amy isn’t leaving. Wow. To be honest, I was kinda glad that she was leaving, if only for the sake that Mike and I might be able to repair our friendship. I’ve wanted to apologize to him for a long time, but I’m scared. And I have the feeling that even though she’s not leaving, for me, she might as well be.

In any case, even though I didn’t get laid, and I didn’t have dinner with a Valentine’s Day sweetheart, and I was kinda lonely, this day was certainly better than I thought it was going to be. I may hate Valentine’s Day, but I sure hate it a lot less now.