Lovelanguage: Baking

Chapter 7 - The only Exception

Hugging him feels so good! So warm! Like hugging a comforting cloud. It's been so long since I've been close to someone. I never liked it, but I still missed it somehow. But as with so many things, he's the exception. I mean I asked if I could hug him twice today, that's so not like me, and when I thought he'd say no twice I was kind of scared, but now I'm happy I did. This is so calming, I don't want it to end, but I should make sure to not hug him for too long, to not make it weird for him.

Julie pulled back and smiled at him. "Thank you so much, you give awesome hugs! And I just didn't know how to express how much this all means to me." And for the first time she saw his face with a big, genuinely happy smile and despite his acne scars she was able to see dimples forming on the cheeks of his cute, round face. Julie felt her heart skip a beat.

Oh no... is this what developing a crush on someone feels like? I've never had that before. This would be kind of inconvenient, I want to have a friend and have no experience whatsoever how to deal with a crush. The chances of me messing that up are way too high for anything I'm willing to risk. I'm just going to ignore these weird feelings for now. Also I don't even know if he has someone, if he's into girls at all, if he's into anyone at all. I thought I'd never be attracted to anyone for the longest time, so now I'm confused. Maybe it's just the nerves of today. I learned in Psychology class that feelings are often the way your brain interprets the reaction of your body to a certain situation, so on dating shows they often do scary things like bungee jumping, because the symptoms of fear and symptoms of love can be easily mistaken for each other so it artificially amplifies the feelings. So maybe that's what's happening right now. If that's not the explanation, then maybe he's an exception to this for me aswell. That wouldn't surprise me at this point.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Nathan looked like he was thrown out of deep thoughts aswell, when he walked fastly to the front door. Julie ran to her bag instead. He had never answered about the paying situation, so she'll just take this into her own hands. There's no way she'd let him pay for her after all of the kindness and trust he had shown her today. She found her purse fairly quickly and joined him at the door.

The delivery person seemed familiar with Nathan and very surprised to see another person behind him. Did they expect Nathan to order two pizzas just for himself? She felt a weird feeling within herself again, but chose to ignore it, it didn't even make sense to her in this context. "How much for the pizza?" Startled, Nathan turned around, he hadn't noticed her coming up behind him yet. She whispered a little sorry towards Nathan and paid for both pizzas before he was able to protest, aswell as giving the Deliveryperson a little tip, they seemed nice and Julie really liked their retro-emo hairstyle... not that that influenced the tipping of course. After closing the door, Julie and Nathan were on their own again.

"You didn't need to pay for them! I would've..." "Shh" Julie interrupted him. "I know I didn't need to, but I wanted to!" Nathan looked flustered. "Nobody has ever... like... I didn't expect you would... But I got myself a large one, I wouldn't have done that if I would've known you wanted to pay! I can really give you the amount for my food back." "If it makes you feel better, you can do that of course. But I would make me happier, if you'd allowed me to do this for you" She had convinced him. Nathan shyly scratched the back of his neck before quietly muttering a little thank you.

Nathan started to walk towards one of the doors from the hallway, and she just followed him mindlessly. Before he opened the door he cleared his throat "Uhm... I thought you wanted to eat in different rooms?" She laughed "Oh yeah I'm sorry... my brain was empty there for a second haha. Yes... I'll go to the dining room then, thanks for being respectful of that!" She turned towards the familiar dining room, while he went into the room.