written by DomiSotto

Anna glances at the ancient clock. It's the only heirloom Grand Aunt Enid insisted on taking with her to the retirement home. It's 2:26 pm.

"Count Valentine looks very handsome here," Anna says. "Some men are just born to wear a tux."

She says this exact same thing every Saturday, at almost exactly the same time, after Great Aunt Enid rustled through the same yellowed photographs from the days of glam, perm and Hepburn.

There are Saturdays when it rains, or the credit card bill is due, or when Anna stands in front of the flower rack in the grocery store wanting to splurge on roses... on those Saturdays, she is on the verge of telling Great Aunt Enid that every picture has a girl in a fancy dress—still recognizable as Enid minus fifty years—and a chair. Or Enid and a tree. Or Enid and the fabulous Canlis diner after it had just opened in 1950.

"Very, very handsome..." Anna sighs. Yet again, the absence of Count Valentine—handsome, average-looking or ugly—from those pictures remains her secret. The Invisible Count, a superhero who rescues little old ladies from the life of solitude.

Great Aunt Enid's cheeks blush with the hot-pink hue, as she strokes the velvet spine of the album. "I showed you mine," she produces a naughty giggle. "Why don't you show me yours?"

Somehow, that's worse than a full-frontal on Netflix. Anna dips her head and watches her own, manicured nail. Anything, but to meet the other woman's eyes. It makes a comforting tap as she wakes up her phone.

"Let me see what I have for you this week," she says with a robotic voice.

Great Aunt Enid's bird-like hand grips the device upside-down. It's as weird as Captain Sparrow sailing an aircraft carrier. With her other hand, pats her chest to find the glasses. Unhurriedly, she establishes them on her nose, while Anna blinks away the mirage of Great Aunt Enid smacking her lips.

Gosh, could anyone's life be so desolate that they would anticipate the selfies of Anna's life? Her biggest distinction—an awesome sister. Her highest passion—binge watching Netflix. Her prettiest dress—a bridesmaid's gown.

"Good heavens!" Great Aunt Enid shoots a mischievous look above her glasses. "It appears we have the same taste in men, my dear!"

Anna snorts. "You got that right, Auntie Enid." They both fall the hardest for perfect men who don't exist.

Great Aunt Enid holds the phone at an arm's distance from her, no longer awkward with technology. The velvet-clad album slips between her frail hip and the armrest, temporarily forgotten.

"Your young man is the spitting image of Count Valentine. Just change him into proper clothes.... I don't know what it is with clothes nowadays." She shakes her head ruefully.

Anna suppresses a sigh. Maybe if she didn't go along with Great Aunt Enid's fantasies, she wouldn't be seeing some slouch in Anna's pictures. Then again, if Great Aunt Enid spotted a guy in a tux with luxurious side-burns instead, it would have been worse.

Gently, she takes the phone away from the old lady. Her eyes slip across the screen. Sure enough, it's a selfie of Anna in a cafe she tried for lunch on her quest to sample Seattle's best. It's not legendary Canlis by any means, but a rare February ray of sunshine cheerfully plays on the checkered tablecloth. And the sandwich was great. Anna 100% would eat there again—but she is alone at the table.

Of course, she is alone. She always is.

"So, what's the young man's name?" Great Aunt Enid asks with a conspirator's wink. "If it's not a secret?"

Before Anna could think better of it, she blurts out, "It's Val."

The old lady clutches her fluffy sweater. "Wait... wait a minute! Is it short for Valentine? Is it?"

This childish delight totally exonerates Anna's white lie. Nothing is easier than following it up with another. "I'll ask him next time, I promise."

"You should tell me everything about him!"

Anna glances at the clock. "Next Saturday, alright?"

Great Aunt Enid wags her finger at Anna. "Surely not! Are you forgetting what day next Saturday is?"

She knits her brows, visualizing the calendar, but the old lady is faster. "It's Valentine's Day, my dear. That's what day it is. You want to be making yourself pretty for your date next Saturday afternoon, not wasting it on an old woman."

"Auntie!"

It would take more than an aghast exclamation to stop Enid. "I bet he will take you to Canlis. He has that look about him, a man of distinction." She smiles dreamily. "Did I tell you how Count Valentine and I danced the night away when Canlis first opened up?"

Only a thousand times...

Anna plucks the ancient album from its hiding nook and hands it to the old lady. "No, Auntie." She suppresses a sigh. "What happened that night?"

***

Anna's phone buzzes when she waits in her car for the gates of the retirement community to swivel outward. The ringtone is her mother's, but Anna senses urgency in it, like her mother really needs to talk to her. Some of Great Aunt Enid's wild imagination must have rubbed on...

She drives through the gates and a little way down the tree-lined street, parks and grabs the phone from the cup holder.

"Mom? Can I call you back once—" once I get home... she finishes in her mind, since her mother's voice bursts out of the speaker, cutting her off.

"Anna! He seems like a nice guy. Does he have a job? How did you meet? Oh, do you work together? Didn't you say there was to be a new hire at the office... is it him?"

The old lady must have dashed to the phone to alert Anna's Mom as soon as Anna had left.

"Mom, don't get excited," she inserts into the first pause. "Auntie Enid is imagining things again. You know how she is."

"Enid?" Her Mom sounds stomped. "What does Enid have to do with your new guy?"

Must Anna spell it out? "Val is as real as the dashing Count Valentine."

"Honey, who cares about—oh, so his name is Val? Good name. It sounds so solid. I approve." Her Mom yells, probably across the den and into the kitchen, "Jenny, his name is Val!"

Her sister's muffled voice is also excited. Gosh, was her life so pathetic that they are ready to throw a party on Great Aunt Enid's say so?

"Val isn't real," she all but screams in exasperation.

Jenny comes closer to the receiver. "Unreal, yes, I'd say so. He looks totally dreamy in the pictures." She produces a dozen of her famous snort-giggles. "Did you move in together?"

There is a bit of shuffling sound—is she fighting over the phone with mom? Keeping her at bay with her rounded elbow?

"Like, I opened up Instagram, and I tell Mom, 'Mom, look, Anna finally got over the Jerk and went out on a date', and Mom's like, 'omigosh, they're glued by the hip...'"

"I'm sure Mom didn't say 'ohmigosh'..."

"Lovely pictures!" her Mom shouts. "And he looks trim. A man who takes care of himself—"

"Did you, like, upload a week worth all at once?" Another snort-giggle from Jenny. "Anyway, happy for you, sis."

If Jenny weren't more good-natured than a Labrador-retriever puppy, Anna would have suspected a prank. But for her Mom to be on it too? Inconceivable!

"Jenny... Mom, I'm driving, okay? Can we talk later?"

It takes at least a minute to say goodbye, with her dad's baritonal rumble cutting off the women's chirping with 'give ma best girl ma love, pigeons'.

Anna hangs up, but her head is full of noise. She shakes it—it doesn't help anything. She drives home on autopilot.

The phone rings again the moment she locks the door of her condo behind her.

"Hello, girlfriend! I have an ax to grind with you--" Anna hides a wry smile: her BBF Chantal always hits the ground running. "Where were you hiding Val? And does he have a brother?"

The smile melts off Anna's face. What devilry!

"Val is not real!" Anna screams.

Chantal shuts up, abashed.

The pause allows Anna to take a deep breath in. "I'm sorry about yelling, okay? It's just everyone has been bugging me about Val. I don't know what you've heard and from whom... actually, who told you?"

Her mom and Jenny don't even like Chantal, let alone chat with her regularly. If they went through the list of contacts to spread the good news, Chantal would be at the bottom of the list.

"Nobody told me about your Val-dude," Chantal says sulkily. "If you wanted to keep him all to yourself, maybe you shouldn't have plastered him all over your timeline!"

Chantal hangs up, leaving Anna standing in the middle of her kitchenette, phone squeezed in her hand, the forlorn tone echoing.

Tears well in her eyes as she shuts the bloody thing off. It's a prank, a god-awful prank!

"You know what? I'm sick of it. If I ever catch whoever did this to me..." but she's too drained to do anything about it right now.

Anna tosses the phone on the kitchen counter and returns to her scheduled programming for that afternoon.

PJ's, popcorn, and the latest JoJo anime.

By the time her head hits the pillow, she's optimistic that it'll blow over by Monday.

***

It doesn't blow over by Monday.

Her mom leaves at least half-a-dozen VMs about how Anna knows her, she never messes into anyone's business, but—

All three of her sisters call intermittently between Tuesday and Thursday.

Chantal elects texting, more irate by the hour over Anna holding out on her.

Girlfriends, she considered out of her life ever since they've all got happily married with kids, come out of the woodwork.

Even the Jerk drunk-texts her something passive-aggressive.

"My account was hacked," she explains again and again. She'd suspect the Jerk if he had a modicum of computing skills or intellect.

On Friday night, after swearing off a thousand times, she checks her timeline.

None of her photos—no matter how closely she examines each shot for photo-bombers, effects or Photoshop jobs—has Val.

None. Val isn't real... except everyone else sees him.

She drops her face into her hands. Sobs shake her body. It's better to be like Great Aunt Enid and dream up this Count Valentine while nobody else sees him!

At least Great Aunt Enid is happy, while she... she isn't. She's miserable in her selective sanity.

***

On Saturday, February 14th, Anna doesn't drive to the gated retirement community.

Why bother? Great Aunt Enid doesn't expect her anyway.

Great Aunt Enid expects Anna to be doing exactly what she is doing—squeezing her freshly waxed legs into a pantyhose and trifling with the makeup. As if mascara and lipstick could change the fact that her bridesmaid dress is... actually, it's fine.

Anna snaps a selfie and posts it. Am I looking good, or am I looking good, ladies?

Likes flood in.

Is this what it feels like, being happy?

Even if it is being happy in a delusional way? Aunt Enid's way? Even for a few minutes before a crushing disappointment?

But the skeptic inside Anna can't deter her. She splurges on the cab ride to Canlis, because she will not complete her humiliation by searching for parking, then strutting for miles in heels to get to the restaurant!

Her heart squeezes into a tiny ball as she makes her way through the paired-up crowd. Sexual tension and romantic dreams are thicker than drizzle in the air.

She walks through Canlis' doors and takes a deep breath in. The reality would step its ugly foot on her heart.

"I... I have a reservation for two." Of course, she doesn't. But Aunt Enid said that Val would take her to Canlis...

The host looks at her patiently despite the press of the other patrons behind her back.

She licks her lips. "Under Anna Levito?"

The host browses his list.

Anna shuts her eyes for a second. She believes. She believes... she came this far. "Or it could be under... Val. Valentine."

The host will tell her to take her delusional self home... incoming in three... two... one...

"Aha, here it is. Please, follow me, Miss."

As in a dream, Anna walks into the casually elegant Canlis, choke-full of celebrating lovers. So, she lucked out, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

Her coat comes off. In the flattering light, her dress no longer looks fine. It looks like an old bridesmaid's dress that a girl pulled on when she was at the end of her wits. She slumps onto the chair the host has pulled out for her.

"Would you like anything while you're waiting?"

"Water, please," she says hoarsely. "And the menu. We both know I'm dining alone tonight."

Canlis is too fine an establishment for the host to give her a pitying glance.

She studies the menu, barely able to hold back yelps of dismay. This prank will cost her a small fortune...

The speculative stares of other diners land on her. Why is this girl dining alone on a night like this? Is this some sort of feminist statement? Was she ghosted on Valentine's Day?

Should she get up and address the audience? You see, women in my family have this peculiar taste in men. Some like them tall, dark and handsome. We prefer the invisible. Yes, yes, that's what I've said. Invisible men.

Another stare touches her bent head. She feels it almost as clearly as she would feel a gentle touch. It challenges Anna to lift her eyes.

She does.

The gaze belongs to a man who has just entered Canlis.

He's clearly a man of distinction. Trim, like he has a decent job and takes care of himself. Anna has no idea what Great Aunt Enid's taste in men is or was, but this guy... he is exactly what she had always imagined a perfect man should be.

Open face, kind eyes, a stubborn cowlick of hair over the right temple. Tall, but not towering. Fit, but not a meathead. And he is dressed... oh, gosh! He could give Count Valentine a run for his money.

Impossibly, those kind and clever eyes do not move away from Anna in search of his real date.

On the opposite, he cuts through the restaurant, making a beeline for her.

Anna dry-swallows when he stops by her table, unable to take her gaze off of him.

"Good evening, Anna," he says and lowers himself into the chair opposite to her. "I'm sorry I've made you wait."

"Ah... a selfie as your penance?"

He grins and scoots over. Anna lifts her phone. Her numb thumb presses the button. Once, twice... the pictures are almost the same: Anna and Val, Val and Anna. She slants her eyes from the phone to him and back again.

He is there. In pixels and in flesh. If that's flesh. "Who... who are you?"

"Don't you recognize me?"

Maybe 'what are you?' would have been a better question. But it's Saturday, so Anna whispers the same thing she says every Saturday. "You look so handsome tonight, Valentine. Some men are just born to wear a tux."

<<<<<FINIS>>>>>

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I love cats, sour cherries, human history and writing romances. I'm an immigrant Canadian, a mom, a wife and a working woman. Wattpad is my safe space and my me time.