Cozy Christian Fiction
Simple Faith | Solid Friendships | Strong Families

The deserted basketball hoop was my first hint of the threatening storm. Not that the weather itself was stormy; it was mild for early February, with only a hint of a breeze. And it wasn’t as though my brother would have left the hoop for anything short of active lightning before his hour of practice was up. If he hadn’t honestly enjoyed the sport, I might have worried about his conscientious insistence on finishing out his practice regardless of conditions. But just now, I was much more concerned about its highly unusual absence.

I parked on the street, just in case the timing was the only thing broken and Val would still want the hoop later, then gathered my things and hurried into the house. Tyler was at his desk in the corner of the living room, which eliminated some of the worst possibilities, and I drew a relieved breath. He looked up, and his face creased with the warm grin that still gave me butterflies after almost a year of marriage.

“Hey, babe. How was your day?”

“Not too bad.” I kicked my shoes into the basket on top of both pairs of Val’s, and the worry that had dimmed in the light of Tyler’s smile roared back to life. “Everything okay with Val?”

Tyler’s expression tightened, and he gave something between a shrug and a head shake that was an answer in itself.

“No idea. Came home and went straight to his room. Didn’t want to talk when I asked. He might talk to you, though…”

I headed for the stairs without bothering to shed my coat, my worry kicking up several notches. Maybe it was being raised by an older sister with a tendency to ramble and a bent toward oversharing, but I could probably count on one hand the times Val hadn’t been willing to talk about what was bothering him. Granted, he’d been more reticent with Tyler at first, but my then-boyfriend had quickly proved himself, and ever since we’d been married, I couldn’t think of a single topic Val had been willing to talk about with me that he wouldn’t broach with Tyler.

At the top of the stairs, I stood and breathed for a moment, putting my composure back in order. If Val wasn’t talking, something had touched a deep wound, and starting out frazzled and flustered and trying to force an explanation wouldn’t help. I whispered a prayer and knocked gently, and after a few seconds of silence, Val answered in a strained voice.

“Yeah?”

“Val, it’s me.” I waited a moment with no response before trying again. “May I come in, please?”

I could almost hear him swallow through the door, but after a few more long seconds, he offered a “yeah” so soft I almost missed it. With a sigh of thanks, I gripped the doorknob and slipped into the room.

Val lay on his stomach on the bed with his head buried deep in the pillows. He hadn’t changed out of his school clothes, and his backpack lay unopened on the floor—even more red flags for my methodical brother.

I crossed to the bed and sat next to him, running a hand gently up and down his spine. A little shiver ran through him, and I waited a moment before attempting to speak again.

“Rough day, kiddo?”

Val groaned softly, and I licked my lips and tried to chart my course. I knew almost nothing about parenting a sensitive fifteen-year-old—but I had known even less about parenting a grieving four-year-old when he’d been handed over to his equally grieving sister without any kind of instruction manual. Somehow by God’s grace I hadn’t ruined him yet, and my heart sent up another silent prayer that this wouldn’t be the time.

“Val…” I whispered the word, trying to force down the lump that threatened to clog my throat. “I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”

Val’s breathing hitched, and he choked into his pillow, but he still didn’t answer in words, and my heart sank further. I tried to think back over the years to the times I’d seen my brother like this. It was an extremely limited sample, but every instance I could remember had involved some form of teasing or insensitive comment—and Val’s unwillingness to admit that Mom was in some degree at fault for it. And suddenly it hit me that, while the gaudy hearts and overflow of chocolate had taken over the store aisles the day after Christmas, we were almost on top of the one day that had given both of us the most grief in our eleven years together.

“Is it the holiday, Val?”

His shoulders stiffened and slumped, as though he’d considered a denial before accepting the inevitable, and my heart broke all over again. Mom had been an amazing person—both memory and objective fact testified to that. But she had also been a deeply impractical one in some ways, and the names of her babies topped that list. I had gathered my own collection of weird looks and verbal jabs over the years, but the burden of Philomena was nothing compared to the weight that Valentine had been saddled with.

Val shifted on the bed so that part of his face was visible, and the words finally rushed out.

“Phil, I don’t know what to do.”

“Just talk to me, kiddo. We can figure it out. I promise.”

We had always figured it out—from the year he was five and first experienced the teasing of his classmates to the year he was ten and discovered it was no longer the thing to gift paper valentines to the entire homeroom. I spoke with as much confidence as I could muster, hoping desperately that this new wrinkle could also be smoothed out.

“I—I wanted to give—Kayla—something special this year.”

I had nearly panicked last spring when Val had come home from a class field trip and asked how old he had to be to have a girlfriend, but after some long family discussions—and some nearly as long with Kayla’s parents—we had worked out a trial arrangement where their time together was always spent in the company of one family or another. And I had to admit that the experiment had been a success so far—the teens had never complained about the extra layer of scrutiny, and their blossoming relationship was developing a deep root of real friendship that would hopefully stand them in good stead through whatever might come next. But I couldn’t help wondering what he’d thought I thought he was doing as he slaved over yards of purple paracord, braiding collars for her beloved pet goats.

“I know. You’ve been working on it for weeks, remember? It’s a perfect present for her.” A sudden chill brushed my heart, and I tried to force down the quiver in my voice. “Did something—happen? With Kayla?” I had so hoped my sweet brother would be spared the heartbreak that had marked my own early attempts at romance, but he was shaking his head hard.

“Not Kayla. Junie.”

Junie. The name was vaguely familiar, and when I concentrated hard, I could just make out the face of a girl from the church youth group—big eyes framed by round glasses, limp dirty-blonde hair, and outdated thrift-store clothes. Had Val found himself in some sort of uneven love triangle? I couldn’t imagine it, but—

“Some guys were—were teasing her today. After I walked Kayla to homeroom. I guess they thought I was too far to hear. Or maybe they wanted me to. I don’t know.”

“Okay…” I gave up trying to fill in the blanks, and Val drew a shaky breath.

“They said they bet she—she wouldn’t get anything this year—since Cupid was spoken for.”

The words punched me in the gut, but Val rushed on faster, more desperately.

“I want Kayla to feel—special. But I—I started because—all the girls should feel special—and now they’ll feel worse, and—and—”

He hid his face in his pillow with something suspiciously like a stifled sob, and my heart shattered as the truth swept over me. I had caused this. Mom might have started things by tying his name to such a fraught holiday, but it had been my idea to help him “own” that inheritance by giving carnations to every girl in his class. Only now I’d apparently made him responsible for the emotional well-being of those girls in perpetuity and forced him to choose between the girl he truly liked and what he’d been explicitly told was his legacy.

“Oh, Val.” My voice broke as I leaned over and buried my face in his hair. “This is all my fault.”

He made a little noise of protest but couldn’t actually argue. Of course he couldn’t. I had projected all my own insecurities and romantic failings onto a class of middle-school girls and saddled a serious ten-year-old with bridging the emotional turmoil of a centuries-old holiday—what on earth had I been thinking?

“Hey, guys.” Tyler’s cautious words reached my ears before the silent prayer had finished. “Can I join?”

Val scrambled up to a sitting position, and Tyler took a seat on the bed, squeezing my hand in a gesture of comfort that I didn’t half deserve. Val gave the dilemma more calmly and succinctly than he had to me, but before I could explain to Tyler how badly I’d botched things, he was rubbing his chin with his thumb in the way that always meant a good idea was coming.

“Help me out, Val. The carnations were never meant to be romantic, right? I mean, you weren’t offering to date every girl in your class.”

Val’s forehead creased, and he shook his head slowly.

“Then tell me what they were for.”

“To—to show the girls they were special—whether they had a boyfriend or not.”

“And has that changed? Are they not all special now that you like Kayla?”

“Sure they are.”

“So what’s stopping you from telling them? Just because some jerks think you can’t have a girlfriend and still be nice to other girls?”

Val’s eyes widened, and his lips parted, closed, and parted again before he answered.

“You don’t think—Kayla would mind?”

“I think you should call her. Give her a chance to tell you what she thinks before you assume—or take the word of someone who doesn’t know her at all.”

“You think she would—”

“Call her. And then tell us what she says.” Tyler stood and tugged me up from the bed, and Val scrambled for his backpack. I followed Tyler into the hall but paused at the top of the stairs.

“Wait. What if this doesn’t work? What if she—”

“Hey.” Tyler tipped my chin up to look at him. “Think I know better than to promise for a teenage girl? Her dad told me last week she’s been dying for an invitation to help.”

“Help?”

“With the carnations. It’s one of the first times she noticed Val—and one of the first reasons she liked him.”

The reversal of feelings was too much, and I sank onto the top step and buried my face in my knees as a wave of gratitude and leftover guilt swept over me. Tyler was next to me in an instant, kissing my hair and cradling my head against his shoulder as I tried to stem the flow of tears that I didn’t want Val to hear.

“Hey, now, none of that.” Tyler’s tone was infinitely tender, as though he could somehow see into the depths of my soul. “You raised a good kid, Phil. Caring goes a lot deeper than romance. And whether it’s Kayla or another girl someday, somebody’ll be proud to call him her Valentine.”