My favorite Valentine's Day was the day that Jeremy first told me "I love you."

We were attending college in Florida at the time. We had been very good friends for over a year, and we had been dating for the past several months. As we stood in line outside the overflowing cafeteria, waiting for our turn to enter the building and pick up our to-go boxed supper, I stood gazing up at the full golden moon in the periwinkle twilight sky. I remember how the bottom curve of the moon seemed to balance on the top branch of a nearby oak tree, and I thought to myself, What a beautiful, perfect evening. Jeremy stood behind me also watching the moon, we were so close together that my back almost touched his front. He leaned in close to my neck and with a low, gravelly voice quietly said into my left ear, "I love you."

My heart leaped inside me because I had been waiting to hear those words from him. But I did not want him to say that only because it was Valentine's Day, and I wondered if he would feel pressured or trapped now that he had finally said it to me. (Did I mention that I tend to overthink things?) So I gave him an escape route. Without turning around, pretending to be preoccupied with the moon, I casually murmered, "What?" as though I had not heard him.

He turned me around to face him and looked directly into my eyes. "I love you, Missy," he said firmly and decisively and with an amused smile on his face. He knew me very well.

I smiled sweetly up at him and said matter-of-factly, "That's good. Because I love you, too."

And what had I done for him that Valentine's Day, you ask? Well, early in the morning, I had snuck over to where his car was parked on campus, and I TP'ed the whole thing. I hung empty Walmart bags from his back bumper, and tied sad looking red and pink balloons to his side mirrors. With special window paint, I wrote HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! across his front and back windshields.

Because I'm romantic like that.