My Anti-Valentine

After a brunch with my best friends, I usually spend February 14th watching horror movies because Valentine’s Day is not a real holiday. It’s a corporate scheme that was designed to monetize fake romance. It’s a capitalistic scam to profit off performative love. This year, I agreed to be Emmanuel’s date to his cousin’s wedding because we’re friends and he needed me. But attending a Valentine’s Day wedding was high on the list of things I didn’t want to do. He wasn’t my Valentine. He was my anti-Valentine. And as it turned out, an anti-Valentine was exactly what I needed.