Two Rejects

Can we cross the line?

He's my crush since middle school, we grew up next to each other, specially at school, I can't remember  when exactly I started growing feelings for him, I just caught myself  drooling and forgetting how to breathe whenever he's near me.
Back in High School, Nick and I were inseparable, we studied in the same class for 3 consecutive years, which made us grow closer and closer. I remember girls hating me for always being around him, I didn't mind as much as he did, so he'd protect me from them every time they attacked me.
I guess that's the moment I started seeing him as a boy, not only as a friend. I thought of confessing my feelings to him, but I was terrified of loosing our friendship, it was one of the most precious things I had, although everyone including his friends and our parents would say we would be cute together, but Nick never showed any interest in dating me.
On our last year in High School, I decided to tell him about my feelings, but he also decided to present me his girlfriend on the same day I thought of confessing to him. I was sad, but I also realised that he had different feelings for me, he saw me only as his best friend.
With his girlfriend, things between us changed a little, he'd spend less time with me, and the girls who used to bully and hate me for always being with him, now were laughing at me, and others even tried to be friends with me just to know about the mysterious girl Nick was dating.
As the time passed by, I stared getting used to the ideia of him having a girlfriend, I suppressed my feelings for him, and I even started liking his girlfriend. Things were going just fine until this one time a trio of girls came to our class and started to provoke me, and Nick held my arm and yelled to the girls "-I'd forever choose to date Alina, then one of you, so stop bothering her with that nonsense, if you have questions and problems, come and ask them directly to me."
He had done something like this numerous times before, but this time things felt different, and I felt my feelings for him awakening stronger and grow a little bit bigger.

Now that we're in college, in another city, far away from home and the people we know, we grew a bit closer, because everything is new and we only have each other here. He broke up with his girlfriend because long distance relationship was hard to keep for her. So we were back to the old times where it was just us.
Our plans were to live together, Nick's parents bought a whole penthouse for him and said they would like if we lived together and helped each other in this new era of our journey. As someone in love, I agreed and loved the idea of living and seeing Nick every day and night for all the time we'd be in college; Nick also agreed and seemed happy to have me around him everyday. But that was too good to be true, my mother's sister and her husband had asked me to stay at their house because they were moving to another city and didn't want to sell the house and they thought it would be great if I could just stay there. I couldn't say no, plus the house was very nice, and cozy for me, I had a lot of space and the best part was that it was in a really calm part of the city.
It is a little bit distant from Nick's house, but we still get to see each other at college and we spend the weekend at each other's houses from time to time.
Although college can take a lot of our time, and this time we're on different faculty , I make sure to see him on his basketball training and all the big games; Nick is also a super talented person, and he's managing college life very well.

It's the second semester of our first year of college, and my feelings for Nick are still growing stronger every day. This weekend he's coming to my house, I will finally tell him that I've loved him for so long.

- Alina!, did you wait for too long?

-Nick! No, I just got here, how was the meeting on the Students Assembly?

-Oh! It took longer than I expected, it was exhausting, but we sort everything out.

-You must be a superhuman or something, because I don't know how you can do all these things and still stand on both feet. Just the assignments get me drained, I can't even have a social life, nor make friends.

-Friends!? Am I not enough for you Alina?

-Stop right there, you know what I mean. You see, you have me, and your basketball teammates, if you're not with me, you're with them, and if im not with you, I'm with...

-Your books. _Nick cuts in before I say it, because he  knows that's all I do on my free time. - I know, I know, I see no problem with that though, I like the idea of having you all for me, you know I hate sharing.

-Nicholas! _I say blushing while giving him a little punch on his shoulder.

-Alright, alright. I get it, I can act girly if you want me to.

-Will you wear makeup and walk on hills too?

-What?!, but you don't do those things!

-Exactly, you don't either. And I need someone who does it.
There's an awkward silence for a while, until we reach Nick's car, he seems to be thinking hard. He stops on the passenger side and looks me in the eyes as if he were trying to read my thoughts.  I stare back at him, before I could say a word, he unlocks the car, and opens the door.  He observes all my movements until I sit in the car, he closes the door and start walking to the other side of the car. Nick gets in the car, we both fasten our seatbelts, and he start the car, but before the car start moving he stops moving and looks at me, I look back at him.

-So, is there someone you're trying to impress?

-What?! No, why?

-The makeup thing.

-Oh that? You said you wanted to act girly. And girls wear makeup, so...

-Are you sure? Girls usually start using makeup, and dressing differently when they are trying to impress a guy. But you shouldn't do that, you don't need those things, whoever he is, he should like you just like this.

-Are you saying I'm ugly and not impressive?

-Yes, but I'm also saying that they should like the real you, who you are, not how you look.

-You just called me ugly Nick.

-You are missing the whole point. You know I'm kidding, you're pretty, girly or not.

Nick start driving to my house and I stay quiet for a while, thinking about what he just told me. He likes me this way, or was he just worried I'd change myself for someone.

- Aren't you impressed though?

-What?

- When girls start wearing makeup up and changing the way they dress for you, aren't you impressed, don't you like that?

-I do like it, because they get more prettier. What I mean is, you're already pretty and very impressive.

-Right...

-Great! Enough with this topic, it's making me hungry, wanna stop somewhere and grab some food?

-I thought we were going to have homemade food today.

-Of course,  we're going to cook too.

-And who is going to eat the food we'll cook?

-Me, us? The weekend is going to be long, and I'm starving, the training this week were tough, I need to refill the wasted energy.

-With or without the training you've always been a fan of food. That was a lame excuse.

-Humm... True!!

We both laugh, as he look for a parking spot near a restaurant.