(Chapter 2:cont'd)

Jefferson left after that for another few minutes and I tried to find a mirror or some reflective object with which to see if my makeup had smeared in the small office I was in. It was definity a man's office, and on closer inspection, I found it was Jefferson's.

He brought me to his work...What's he up to? I thought.

Finally, Jefferson came and got me, had me hold my hands over my eyes, and once more led me around. "No peeking...No peeking...Okay...Now!"

There in a conference room of some kind was a gorgeous dinner laid out with crimson dishes jsut for the two of us! What a romantic idea! We ate dinner to the melodious strains of Frank Sinatra and Michael Buble and then came the exchanging of "valentines."

The two weeks that Jefferson was in Belize, I had been wracking my brains to think of something I could do for Valentine's Day. I wasn't quite sure what stage we were at in our relationship, I mean, we'd only held hands once for Pete's sake! So I didn't want to a mushy, lovey-dovey valentine, but I also didn't want to go to far on the other end of the spectrum and have him thinking I didn't like him at all.

So I settled for a nice middle position, focusing on our friendship, and made hime a little valentine book, entitled The Perfect Valentine, which lays out the struggle a little bunny has in trying to find the perfect valentine for his special little friend. I used Franklin, a Build-A-Bear I had made with Jefferson on a date soon after our first one, as the main character, and took Franklin around to different parts of the town in his search to find the one valentine, as was outlined in a poem I wrote, and took pictures of him there. Then, I scrap-booked the pictures together with the poem and made a book! It was this book that I pulled out of my purse after Jefferson had pulled out a set of jewelry from Belize (a rock necklace with a heart-shaped rock as the pendant, with matching earrings). We read the story together and Jefferson was "blown away", as he put it, by my creativity.

The rest of the evening, we spent dancing (aka--snuggling and swaying to music). There was a time or two where I felt like Jefferson was going to kiss me, but each time the kiss fell short, landing on my forehead or the top of my head even.

The drive home was pleasant. We discussed maybe having a date the following day (President's Day) and making sobai pants ("comfy" pants in Thai). The walk to the door was a total norm by this point, and we paused just short of it to continue plan-making for the next day. I was standing on the doorstep which conveniently made me about a foot taller than I am, and relatively closer to Jefferson's height. He dove and planted a short smooch where smooches go. I didn't know how to react!

Did that happen? I asked. Better yet, should I acknowledge that it just happened? Ah! What do I do? Well don't just stand there...do something!

And so I kept talking along the same lines as before, not even acknowledging what had just happened! We set the plans for the next day, and that was that. Not a very romantic end to such a promising start now, was it?