Until There Was You

Almost, Maybe

6.

Easter break arrived and Joey decided to cut his short by a couple of days to get a head start on a couple of papers for the beginning of term. With all his extra curricular activities he found he was slacking slightly with his academic work. His parents were sad to see him go for another term but were proud of his work ethic and sent him back to Michigan with a wealth of homemade food.

A few days before term was due to start Joey decided to head onto campus, get a coffee and start his essay. The coffee shop was practically empty so he slid his headphones into his ears and pulled up a seat on the window bar. He opened his laptop deciding to do the research first so he had a good basis to draw from.

Several coffee refills later he was pretty happy with the way his essay was going. Joey stretched out his spine and looked out of the window onto the quad. There were a couple of people milling around and he thought he spotted Lauren with a few of her friends in their gym gear making their way to the dance studio. He hadn't heard from her since the emoji two weeks ago. He hadn't expected to of course, they weren't exactly the best of friends.

Over the Easter break Joey had admitted to having a very small, not important and completely irrelevant crush on the short brunette despite their misgivings. He had also decided that his crush was rendered redundant due to the fact that A) she was his best friend's girlfriend, B) completely not interested and C) their compatibility was a huge issue. For these reasons and many more Joey decided to push his feelings away and attempt to just be her friend. He took out his phone and sent her a message.

'You back?' Short, simple, not overthought. Unless you count the fact that it took him 5 minutes to string together those two words.

'Alright stalker, where are you?' Lauren replied.

'I'll never tell... ' Joey wrote back, he wasn't sure if that actually was a little stalker-ish but he had hit send before he could think too much on it.

'Haha, yeah I'm back, why are you?'

'Starting this paper for my modern theatre class, trying to get a head start'

'I aced that class. Want any help?'

Joey paused before he wrote back. Maybe this would be a good opportunity to get to know her better, start a new friendship chapter and maybe find out a little bit more about her and Darren. He had heard from his best friend about a week into Easter break when Darren had text him to ask if he'd heard from Lauren. Joey had replied that he hadn't and Darren had then explained that he'd called her the day after the party and spoke to her briefly but he hadn't heard from her since.

In Joey's opinion Darren was a great best friend; he could ask him anything and not be embarrassed, he would drop everything he was doing to see Joey when he needed him to and best of all he was loyal to a fault. But when it came to being a good boyfriend Darren sucked. Not only had he cheated on Lauren, he hadn't even attempted to apologise to her more than once. If Lauren came to help Joey with his essay he would have it finished in record time. He could also make sure she was okay after everything that had happened and do a little digging whilst he was at it.

'Sure, when are you free?'

'Does tomorrow work for you?'

'Yeah that's great. Stop by around lunch?'

'See you then! I'll bring cookies.'

Joey laughed at Lauren's last text, shut his laptop and began to walk back to his house. He couldn't resist peering through the dance studio door on his way back. He smiled softly as he watched Lauren, her housemate Denise and some girls he didn't recognise go over some choreography for their new theatre show. The way she moved was almost hypnotising, it made him happy just to watch her dance, and the serene smile on her face as she moved made him think that she enjoyed it just as much as he enjoyed watching her. Joey's little crush on Lauren hadn't changed with the added distance, that much was clear and he had to shake the thought and walk away before she caught him staring at her and he gave the game away. She was still Darren's girlfriend as far as he knew and whilst he may have finally admitted to himself that he liked her he couldn't tell anyone else or do anything about it. So he swallowed hard and hoped that tomorrow spending all that time with her wouldn't be too hard.