Valentines Day (finished)

February 11th

The world hadn't forgotten about Valentine's day, and it wasn't about to let Matt forget either. Sales. Were. Everywhere. Basket sales, chocolate sales, room reservations sales, and balloons. Oh goodness, the balloons.

So many balloons, all over the place. Matt was waiting for the best price. A balloon wasn't much, but he couldn't afford much. He looked at the latex balloons, and quickly decided against them. They weren't cute at all, much more prone to fly away, and the messages on them seemed to imply that the receiver would be getting something else with the gift.

No, Matthew's eye was set on something else. He was watching, very carefully, a tin balloon. It wasn't much. All that it had on it was, "I hope you have a great Valentine's Day," but for Matt, that was enough. He incorporated a daily routine.

Every day he'd stop by the store and stare at the balloon. He wasn't interested in anything else in the shop, just the Balloon. He watched it tick down. It went from twelve dollars to ten dollars. An argument struck up in the man's head. "You should buy it," part of him argued, "it won't get any lower."

"Patience," responded the other half of his mind. "No one thinks to buy one balloon. If we wait, it'll drop in price even more."

Logic won that day, and prevailed overall. The next day it'd fallen two more dollars, down to eight dollars. "At this rate someone's gonna get to this before you do," his emotional side reasoned.

"It's okay," reconciled his logical side, "we have a little pie. We can wait."

Once more, the price dropped.

"Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy," screamed his emotions.

"You need to calm down," his brain explained. "It's six dollars. Someone has to be looking for-" Matt's brain stopped processing as the scene before him unfolded.

A man walked over, grabbed Matthew's balloon, and went to the checkout counter. The poor retired actor's jaw dropped open and watched the man walk away. Matt didn't know what to do. All that his mind could come up with was a, "I told you so," from the right side of his brain.

This, was on February 10th.

*

Now it was February 11th, and Matt kicked up rocks on the way home. He was disappointed with himself. He should've just bought the balloon when he had the chance. Now, he didn't have a gift to give her. However, the stone that he was kicking around, led him to a new place. The rock landed on a popped balloon. A specific popped balloon.

Matt's jaw dropped. How did he get so lucky. Sure enough, the tin balloon that he'd been ogling for the past few days was just lying on the ground. He examined it and found a small hole that he could easily cover with a piece of tape.

The lucky man sprinted home, clutching his piece of victory.

*

Stephanie heard a chuckle when she got home. "Matthew?" she called, as she hung up her coat.

Matt swung around the corner and smiled at her. "Hello there love."

"Well someone's happy," she giggled. "What's have you done this time?"

"I," he said, booping her nose, "have a little gift for you. And I'm really happy because I almost lost it, but I managed to get it after all."

"I think I might like it then."

"Oh, I'm really excited to show it to-" Matthew's voice cut off as there was an audible 'POP!' from the other room. The Patricks rushed into the bedroom just in time to watch a white streak flee from the room.

Matthew's mood changed from gleeful to devastated in a manner of seconds. "No..." he whimpered. "No, no no no no!" Matt beat his head into the bed, directly under the popped balloon.

Stephanie examined the now popped gift on the bed. "It's okay," she comforted, "it was a really nice thought." They stayed there for a while, Steph's arms resting atop her husband.

*

Matthew groaned as he sent out another application. After a very quiet dinner, he'd tried to bury himself in work; or in his case, since he didn't have a job, applications. It had been two hours and he was surprised to not find his wife playing Skyrim when he came back to reality.

"Stephanie," he called.

His wife bolted into the room. "Yes?" she asked innocently, obviously hiding something behind her back.

Matt caught her slight smile. "What are you hiding?" he queried with a small grin.

Steph proudly produced a fully filled balloon from behind her back. It had been taped up in some places, and the tape had been cleverly covered with band-aids. It was pretty cute.

"You looked pretty down, so I decided to fix it for you."

Matthew was lost for words. He didn't expect her to do this. He'd wanted a perfect presentation, but somehow, his wife had made it a certain brand of perfect. Finding himself without response, he pulled her into a hug.

"I'm going to take that as a yes," she chuckled.

The rest of the evening was spent talking and playing ping-pong(or volleyball) with the balloon. They fell asleep on the couch together, but once more, Stephanie awoke in her nice cozy bed without any memory of going there.