Unattainable

Chapter 11: That Awkward Moment When...

Too soon the morning came and I had to get ready for school. I was still exhausted so I didn't put much effort into my appearance. I get to school and Tiffany and I began walking around together. We started talking about what had happened that Saturday.

"So what are you and Joseph going to do about everything?" Tiffany asked me.

"I'm not sure yet," I told her. Joseph had never said anything about starting a relationship with me. I honestly had no idea what was going on with us. When I saw him later that day is was as though nothing had changed, we were still in the same place as we were before Homecoming. The only indication that we had happened about a month after Homecoming. We were waiting for orchestra to get out and all of a sudden, Christina turned to me.

"I'm so sorry Amber," she told me. She had been talking to Joseph before turning to me so I gave Joseph a quizzical look.

"What do you mean?" I asked her. 

"Do you remember that picture I took of you and Joseph at Homecoming?" she asked me.

"Yeah," I answered. How could I forget I thought to myself.

"Well I posted it to Facebook," she began.

"And my sister saw it," Joseph said to me. "She thinks we went as a date and she showed my parents the picture. Now they think I have a secret girlfriend that I'm not telling them about.."

"Oh," I said in response. I didn't really have a response to that. 

"Don't worry, I will fix this," Joseph told me before we had to separate to go to class. After that day, I never heard anything about the picture so I assumed that everything was taken care of. In December, my brother and I broke a wishbone we had sitting around. It had been drying out for a while, so we really needed to get rid of it. My brother and I held the wishbone, making our wishes. I wished that Joseph would finally ask me out. We started counting down before breaking it. I closed my eyes, scared that I wouldn't win. After it broke, I opened my eyes and saw that I had the bigger piece; I won! I was so excited that I immediately texted Tiffany to tell her what had happened.

Me: OMG Tiffany!!! So my brother and I just broke a wishbone and you know what I wished for and I WON!!!! That means that Joseph is going to ask me out!!

It took a while to get a response, but I sent the text early in the morning and I know Tiffany doesn't wake up early. I finally get a new text and see that it's from Joseph.

Joseph: hey I think you sent your text to the wrong person.

I look at my phone and see that the text that I meant to send to Tiffany I actually sent to Joseph.

Me: OMG I'm so sorry, I thought that I sent that to Tiffany.

Joseph never really responded to it. We continued talking, but not mentioning the wishbone mishap.

By now, it was approaching January, which meant that the Winter Formal dance was coming up.  I really wanted Joseph to ask me, but he never showed any inclination of even going. A couple of weeks before the dance, I decided to text him to see if he was going.  I had to be discreet about it though. After school one day, I decided to text him about it.

Me: Hey Joseph. I was just wondering if you're going to winter formal. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to go so I'm texting people to see what they are doing.

It didn't take him very long to reply. Within five minutes I got a reply from him.

Joseph: Hey! I'm actually not. I have a scouts thing that weekend other wise I would've asked you.

When he said he would have asked me I was surprised. Outside of our texts, he never really showed any affection toward me. We would sometimes hug, but only if he was going around giving other people hugs. Even our texts looked like they were between two friends.

Me: like as your date?

Joseph: yeah. :) I think we would have had fun together. I wish this trip was another weekend.

That text made me so happy. Almost as happy as when he told me that he likes me back. With this text, I gained back hope. I decided to use this hope to get up enough nerve to ask him about starting a relationship.

Me: so what would have happened if we went to the dance? ;) like do you think we would get together?

I waited for a response. While in reality it took a few hours, it seemed to me like years went by until her texted me back. When I saw the new text a few hours later, I practically jumped to my phone to see what he had said.

Joesph: sorry I was at my violin lesson. anyway, what are you up too?

I was speechless. He hadn't even mentioned what I said. I decided to just ignore it, maybe he hadn't gotten the message. I continued talking to him as if nothing was wrong, and I tried to act that way. The next day at school was the same, nothing was different, we were still just best friends. 

The year went on the same way, me trying to make something happen, him trying to ignore it. Even though I tried, I realized that the way I tried was very passive. I promised myself that over the summer and during junior year, I would bring it up more and try even harder. I had made Mannheim Orchestra, which was an advanced orchestra for the best string students in the Symphony Orchestra. Being in Mannheim meant that we had to go to a camp over the summer. The camp was held at one of the collages near us. Everyone was required to attend, so naturally Joseph was there. During that week, Joseph and I grew closer. We also talked a lot over the summer. We never actually hung out over the summer, but we texted every day and learned a lot about each other that we didn't know before.

Too soon, summer break came to a close. Everyone was picking up their schedules and texting each other to see what classes they had together. Joseph texted me as soon as he got his. I ended up having five classes with him! Four of them in a row then we both had the last class free. We were really excited about having classes together, since we never had classes together besides orchestra before. Our good mood went down a little bit though when we realized that one of the classes we had together was a mistake and he actually had it at a different time. We were still really excited though about the four we had together. Soon it was the last day of summer. My junior year was about to start and even though I made the same promise before my sophmore year, I was determined to make my junior year awesome!