Friday, August 22, 2025

My First Valentine's with You (I Like Your Shoes)

By Sophia Larimore

Student Writing Awards, first place, creative writing category

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I am disgusting. I have been wearing the same clothes for three days now. Overworked from school and writing for its newspaper, I spent the night at his place to avoid driving home to gain a priceless extra 40 minutes of sleep.

I am poor. My foot had been injured since early November, so work has been impossible for me. I am at my college and away from my house, unable to get a new change of clothes. Forty minutes here and forty minutes back and that’s wasted money and time. 

I am at Plato’s Closet because I am disgusting and poor. My mother has sent me a small sympathy present/Valentine’s gift. The money that she has caringly given me to show her love will be used to make myself nice for my love. After hurrying around the store I finally find an outfit that will make me feel comfortable and be within my budget. I will fix myself to no longer be disgusting and poor.

I am extraordinarily late to my first Valentine’s date. But at least I have a new shirt, pants and shoes. Forty-eight for the whole outfit. Twenty dollar shirt (originally 60 dollars by the way), eight dollar pants, and a beautiful, pale-blue pair of Converse. Now I’m just poor.

I am in love with the shoes. After I first put them on, I realized that I had been wearing one size too small my whole life. They fit comfortably around my feet and simply let me exist as I am. Blue shoes, blue sweater, blue boy.

I arrive twenty-five minutes late. My boyfriend is upset when I ask if he likes them.

I am f r y i n g with heat inside the fancy sushi restaurant. Men and women are packed up and also cooking in the room like sardines. They smell just as fishy. The women stand in tight, sparkly, scaly, dresses showing off every curve and are decorated with extravagant makeup. They cling to their boyfriends and are elevated by their beautiful, painful, high-heels. 

I am sitting next to my boyfriend on the bench and with my heavy sweater that hides my breasts that have been compressed by not one, not two, but three sports bras. My dark, graphite-colored pants are wide and cover my legs. Then there are my pale blue shoes. Comfortable. Disgusting.

I am attempting to look like a boy, and I pulled it off. Now there was the issue of trying to not look like I was a middle school boy so my boyfriend didn’t look or feel like a pedophile. 

I am trying to make attempts to avert my eyes but cannot help staring at one particular girl’s shoes. They are golden at the sole and heel, but the straps across the foot are clear. Dainty. Elegant. Feminine. Her feet remind me of Cinderella, how in the books the step-sister had to cut off her toes in an attempt to fit in someone else’s shoes. I cannot imagine wearing the shoes, with the skin folded up on top of itself and the clear plastic sawing itself into my feet. Her feet seemed to be suffocating. 

I am still sitting on the bench twenty minutes later and breathe in. Our legs are glued to the plastic slipcovers at this point from sweat and alas, our noses will forever be stained with the smell of hard scaled creatures.

I am comfortable in my own shoes but others are not. There is not a single other queer couple in this restaurant. We stand out among the crowd like a sore thumb– or maybe a sore foot, in need of space. Glassy eyes flick toward me by the dozens and blood stained lips murmur in confusion about what I could possibly be. 

I am trying my best to stare away from the fish eyes staring me down and focus, again, on the needle tipped shoes. After wondering for a minute how long I could survive a woman “stepping on me” (probably around 8 minutes) my boyfriend tilts his head onto my shoulder. His soft hair tickles my nose.

“You know,” His face is near my ear and he is being sure not to speak too loudly. “I don’t mind how you look.” 

We are comfortably settled together when the waitress tells us our table is ready. 

*

We are together and lounging lazily on his couch back at his home. After eating more than our own body weight we are more than ready to never leave the couch. My boyfriend leaves the couch, to grab the cat, Loki, or “little man” as my boyfriend calls him, for an extra cuddle buddy and walks up the stairs. On his way downstairs along with the sweetest boy I have ever met, the cat lets out a purr. 

We are together in his cluttered room that rivals mine as he sets the cat down. I walk up to him and wrap my arms around his neck. 

“I’m sorry for being late,” I murmur. “Thank you for taking me out to eat.” 

“I really didn’t care if you were ‘gross’” He does air quotes as he talks to me. “I just wanted to spend time with my beautiful, handsome, partner.” 




























We are then, for a moment, 

timeless. We are the pause  

before the next page. We are a photograph 

on a nightstand. We are the tension 

in the air

before the first “I love you”. We are cicadas 

before they let out that desperate scream for another. 

We are a pair of new shoes

in the mirror 

before a Valentine’s date. 

We are simply

together.


We cuddle the cat together on the couch, our little family. Rich. My boyfriend holds me to prevent me from falling. The three of us on the couch is a bit much. The capacity for the couch is just two boys. 









“So, did you like my shoes?” 

“...I hate to say it, but…yes.”



About the Author

Sophia Larimore is a journalism major at Illinois Central College who writes about anything that sticks in their brain. From love and queerness to feelings of despair and trauma, Sophia covers everything. When they're not writing, they're busy tending to their plants or playing video games. They hope to one day publish both a horror story and a collection of poetry, drawing inspiration from creators like Andrew Joseph White, Andrea Gibson, Will Wood, and Dazey and the Scouts. 

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