Josie was pacing nervously in front of the door.
She didn't know for how long at this point, she was just trying to get the courage to actually slip the note in. Every time she thought she had it she would start over thinking again.
What if Hope didn't see the note? What if she did see it and then laughed in her face because she thought it was just a silly little school girl crush and didn't take her seriously? After all, she was a silly little school girl.
Ugh, she thought, this is stupid.
Why did she even think this was a good idea? It must be the most cliché way to confess her feelings for someone, and also a bit fourth grader of her now that she thought about it.
“At least it doesn't have any boxes to check,” she mumbled to herself while rolling her eyes.
But it wasn't like she could just go up to the girl and tell her. She could barely calm her nerves enough to wave at her from across the hallway and had to make a giant effort to keep from walking into a wall or trip over her own feet whenever Hope waved back.
She didn't even know when exactly her crush started. She had always been drawn to Hope but at first she really just wanted to be her friend.
She always thought Hope looked a little lonely and had tried several times to engage the girl in conversation, sometimes about her family and whether she missed them, it always looked like she was homesick. But every time, even while being nice about it, Hope always managed to shot down her attempts. After everything she heard happened last spring break and finding out exactly who her family really was, she understood why.
After that, the subject of family was out of the window, even if she was even more curious now than ever to know about them. But she knew it had to be painful still, she couldn't even imagine losing one parent, let alone two and in such a little amount of time, and her uncle. It was all really unfair. She wanted to be there for her, to let her know that if she needed someone to talk she could come to her. No one should have to go through something like that alone, even if by that point they weren't really friends. Yet. She knew she still had family but they were all the way back in New Orleans and who knows where else.
So yeah, in the beginning she just wanted to be there for her as a friend. Even if Hope made it really hard, locking herself in her room most of time that they weren't in class and training with her dad for the rest of it.
Still, every time that Josie managed to get her to talk to her for a few minutes, whether if it was for a class or just saying hi in the hallway or the cafeteria, Hope was always kind to her, always offered a small wave and smile in her direction. That smile had been driving her crazy lately.
Somewhere in between small bits of conversation that she managed to caught the girl in about trashy reality tv and waves and smiles across the room she had started noticing exactly how blue Hope’s eyes were, or how pretty her smile was, or how soft her hair looked. A lot of small silly things, like the sound of her laugh (no matter how little she heard it) or the way her nose scrounged a little when she did and her eyes got all squinty. She found herself thinking about her more and more. And then it hit her. Hope was beautiful. Like really beautiful. Like, girl of her dreams beautiful.
And just like that, she realized, she had a crush.
She started wondering what it would be like to hold her hand, to be the one that made her laugh all the time. To be the one that she finally opened up to. And lately, she’d been wondering whether her lips would be as soft as they looked. She always blushed like crazy whenever those particular thoughts arose and quickly pushed them away. She could barely look at Hope without turning into the distant relative of a tomato whenever she was around after.
