She knows it's coming. The second her heart skips a beat when she catches him looking at her all soft-eyed and red-cheeked when he thinks she won't notice, she knows. Because he looks at her like that all the time, but it's never affected her more than just embarrassing her a little. So when she feels her heart jump when she sees that look on his face out of her peripheral, she knows what's coming, and she knows that nothing good can come out of it.

They're working together. And while no one minds a little crush, that doesn't mean that they're necessarily wanted. Sure, he's made his feelings for her painfully obvious, intentionally or not, but both of them have always known that they weren't reciprocated.

But now…well, things are changing. She knows that a little uneven beat of her heart isn't the end-all, be-all determination of whether or not she has feelings for him, but she also knows herself. And her heart doesn't just do that.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asks her, his eyebrows knit together.

She looks up at him, meets his familiar eyes and gets an unfamiliar feeling in her stomach, and smiles. "I'm fine."

He smiles back at her. "Good. You kinda spaced out there."

"I'm probably just tired," she tells him honestly.

"You? Tired? I didn't think it was possible," he teases, a smile forming on his lips.

She rolls his eyes and shoves him gently, her heart pounding as she tries to keep up this carefree act.

They wrap late that day, so as soon as she gets home she tries to go to sleep. But her thoughts are plagued with him; with those soft-eyed glances and gooey smiles; with his voice and his laugh and those jokes he makes up just for her; with memories of moments they've had together that she knows all led up to this, all led up to her falling for him.

She stares at the ceiling, frustrated with herself and wishing she could fix this somehow. She doesn't want to have these feelings. She doesn't like having these feelings. Only an idiot would ever put themselves in this situation.

But she knows she can't help it, and she realizes that she probably should've seen it coming.

Honestly, it wouldn't have been that hard to foresee this. All it would've taken was a little analysis of the nature of their relationship. Come to think of it, she probably could've predicted it from the second she met him.

They were both just fourteen; barely even teenagers, both only scratching the surface of figuring out who they were going to turn out to be. But that shy blond quietly strumming away at his guitar in the corner of the room caught her eye. And when she introduced herself to him, she noticed a tiny fraction of that soft look she's grown so accustomed to. She should've known from that moment that they'd end up like this.

But she was young, and she didn't really think about it. So here she is, almost five years later, wishing that she would've given herself some sort of warning before suddenly having all these feelings for someone she only ever really considered as a friend.

With each passing day, things only get worse. He quickly catches on that something is off about her, and he won't stop asking her if she's okay.

"I'm fine," she keeps telling him. "Nothing's wrong."

But they both know that something is very, very wrong.

They go out to lunch one day, just the two of them. And while she knows that this is just as friends, she can't stop imagining it as something more than friends.

She remembers that he's had feelings for her practically since they met, and she feels a newfound respect for him. He's always acted as nothing more than a friend. She feels like she's dying.

"When are you gonna tell me what's up with you?" he asks, stealing one of her waffle fries as they sit in a Chick-fil-a.

"Nothing's up with me," she says. "I'm fine."

She's starting to feel like a broken record.

"You can be fine and still have something up with you," he says.

"There's nothing up, I swear," she says, rolling her eyes.

"You've been acting weird all week."

"Have not."

"Have too. You've been being all secretive, whispering with Raini all the time and then shutting up whenever me or Calum get close. And you hardly ever even look at me anymore except when we're filming. You're worrying me, Laura. Are you mad at me or something?"

"If I was mad at you, I wouldn't be hanging out with you right now," she points out. "And I'm not doing any of that. It's all in your head."

"I know you. And I know when something's up."

"Nothing's up, I told you that. And even if it was, me denying it would obviously mean I don't wanna tell you."

"You tell me everything."

"Yeah, well, you don't tell me everything. Maybe I just wanna return the favor for once."

He presses his lips together in a tight line, knowing full well what she's talking about. She knows she hit a nerve, and she doesn't even know why she said it – it's not like him admitting to her how he feels out loud is that big a deal to her. In fact, it would probably just make things unnecessarily awkward. But he really can't play that card when he technically doesn't do it either.

"Whatever, Laura," he mutters, looking down at his food. "Sorry for wanting to help."

She sighs. "Ross – "

"There's nothing to help with because you're fine, whatever, I get it." He looks up at her, his eyes slightly narrowed in frustration. "But if something is seriously wrong and the only reason you're not telling me is out of spite, then I guess I can't really feel bad for you."

"I didn't mean – "

"You never mean to," he says, sounding angrier now. "You never mean to say the things you do, you never mean to act the way you do, you never mean to do anything that gets you in trouble. You wanna be this perfect person who never makes mistakes, but you're not."

"Whoa, where'd that come from? I honestly – "

"Sometimes you say things that suck, Laura. But you never just own up to them and admit it because, oh no, you're perfect and you would never meanto hurt anybody, ever."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks, knitting her eyebrows and feeling offended. "Are you saying that I try to hurt your feelings?"

"I'm just saying that I think sometimes you take certain things for granted, so you say things to test just how far you can go."

"I don't – "

"You know what I'm talking about."

"No, I actually – "

Ross stands up from their table to cut her off and grabs both of the empty trays, dumping their trash in the can and setting them on top of it.

Her heart pounds painfully, and she wishes she could go back in time and prevent that argument from happening. But she knows she can't, so she just stands up and wordlessly follows him to his car, keeping her eyes trained on the ground.

They both get in and he sighs, leaning back against his seat and cursing under his breath.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly, looking over at him.

He turns his head to look at her, his face void of emotion. Her heart drops to the pit of her stomach.

"I…I shouldn't have said that back there. And I'm sorry."

He presses his lips in a line and looks away from her, buckling his seatbelt and starting the car.

She bites her lower lip and buckles her seatbelt too, trying to think of something else to say to fix this.

"I just don't know what you want me to say, Laura," he finally speaks, sounding exhausted. "Even without you not telling me what's going on with you, you're always hinting at it and treating it like this – this thing you have to hold over my head and make me seem like this horrible friend. And if you already know, I just…I don't understand why you're so obsessed with me telling you in the first place. I don't see how it's such a big deal to you if it's just something you already know."

"It's not. I don't know."

"Is it that you like getting a reaction? Because that's really low – "

"No, of course not!" she says quickly, feeling a pang in her chest at the idea that he thinks she likes hurting him.

"Then what is it? Do you just want to know you were right, or – "

"It's not – I don't – It's not a big deal, Ross. I don't know why I keep bringing it up."

"Well, maybe you should figure it out, because it kinda sucks that you keep doing it for no apparent reason and you don't even know what you want."

"Well, what about you? You keep bringing up something being wrong with me – "

"You want my reason? I want to help you. I'm worried about you. You've been acting different and I don't know why and I wanna help you get through whatever it is."

"I…can't tell you."

"But something is going on."

She nods hesitantly. "It's not a big deal – "

"Then why can't you tell me?"

"Same reason you can't tell me."

He rolls his eyes, looking annoyed again. "What do you want me to say, Laura? Do you want me to tell you I like you? Confirm what you already know? Will that make everything better?"

Her heart skips a beat when he says those words out loud for the first time. She fights the blush rising to her cheeks and says nothing, looking down at her lap and feeling incredibly guilty for being slightly happy that he actually confirmed her suspicions.

He continues to stare at her, the car still unmoving in the Chick-fil-a parking lot. The only sound to be heard is the hum of the engine as they sit in relative silence.

When he seems to decide that she isn't going to say anything, he leans back against his seat again, finally pulling out of the parking lot.

"How did you do that?" she asks after a few minutes, breaking the tense silence.

"You have to be more specific," he sighs.

"Just…say that like it was nothing. After all this time."

He presses his lips together, thinking for a few seconds. "I accepted my feelings for you a long time ago, Laura. And I accepted that you knew about them a long time ago, too. So honestly, it really was nothing."

She watches him wordlessly. He glances over at her and shakes his head, looking at the road again.

"I think I'm falling in love," she blurts.

He rolls his eyes. "I'm the last person who wants to hear about it."

She frowns, taken aback.

"Maybe that was a jerk thing to say, but honestly, I really don't wanna hear about you falling in love with some guy. I'm not trying to play the bitter best friend, but the fact of the matter is that it sucks."

She bites her lip. "I…thought you wanted to help me."

He presses his lips together – he's been doing that a lot lately – and exhales. "That's why you've been acting weird?"

She nods. "I…was worried about how you'd react. I didn't wanna hurt you."

So its partially a lie. But maybe this will smooth things over after that argument.

He glances over at her, and she catches a hint of the softness in his eyes. "Yeah?" he says.

She nods, swallowing her nerves. "Are you mad?"

He sighs and shakes his head. "How could I be mad at you for trying not to hurt me?"

"So…are we okay?"

He pulls into the parking lot at the studio and turns the car off, looking over at her. "Yeah. We're okay."

She sits next to him on the sand at the beach, trying to work up the courage to bring up the topic she so desperately needs to talk to him about.

It's been a couple weeks, and they haven't entered into that dangerous territory since that day. But her feelings haven't gone away, and at this point she's pretty much convinced that she is falling in love with him, and quite frankly she's terrified.

"Penny for your thoughts?" his voice next to her startles her.

"Just…things," she says, terrified of crossing that threshold again.

"Things…you wanna talk about?" he tries.

She purses her lips and nods, grateful that he's trying to ease her along.

"How can I help?" he asks.

"Well…I guess I'm just…scared."

"Scared?"
She nods. "Of falling in love."

Well, she's opened the gate. She hopes she can withstand the flood about to pour through.

He chuckles. "Everyone is, dude. It's scary."

"Are you?" She looks at him, her heart pounding again.

He shrugs. "I was."

"Why aren't you anymore?"

"You can only be afraid for so long, you know? It gets tiring."

"I actually don't know, that's why I'm asking you."

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. "It's scary. It's gonna be scary for a while. But if you're really falling in love, then there will come a point where you realize that it's not worth being afraid. When you fully accept that you're in love, it stops being scary."

"So…accepting it is all it takes? Then it's not scary?"

"Kinda. But don't just rush into it to make the fear go away. That fear is your mind warning you that you're making yourself pretty vulnerable by letting yourself love that person, and that they're gonna have a lot of power over you if you do. Only an idiot would just let themselves fall hopelessly in love because they were sick of being afraid and awkward about it and they thought the other person might feel the same way. Don't do it unless you're sure."

"So…the only way to feel better about this is to accept it, but I shouldn't accept it too quickly because then I'd be an idiot?"
"Pretty much."

"What happens when I do accept it?"

"You have to want to love this person, Laura."

"Okay, say I do. What happens when I stop being afraid? Because you're making it sound like all it'll do is hurt me."

He looks down, losing himself in thought for a few seconds as a small smile creeps onto his face. "Falling in love may be for idiots, but…it's the best feeling in the world."

"It is?"

He looks up at her, that small smile growing slightly. "It's like you're high, but…better. You see them, and you're happy. You think about them, and you're happy. You spend time with them, and you're smiling for weeks. And at first, it's almost like you can't even contain it. But…you learn, eventually. And sometimes things happen that bring you down from that high, and it sucks." He shakes his head, looking down again. "But it's worth it, because eventually things get better and it feels even greater than before."

"You sound like you're speaking from experience."

He looks at her again, saying nothing.

But she knows.

Heat rises to her cheeks and she tears her eyes away from him, her heart threatening to beat out of her chest. She makes him feel like that?

She wants him to make her feel like that.

She wants to fall in love with him.

She is in love with him.

"Call me an idiot," she says, meeting his eyes again, a smile forming on her face. "I'm in love."

He smiles slightly, but there's a sadness in his eyes. "Yeah…looks like you are."

"What do I do if I think he loves me back?"

He looks down. "Can't help you on that one," he mutters.

She bites her lip, trying to hide her smile as she grabs his hand.

He immediately pulls it away from her. "No, Laura. I'm not doing this."

She frowns slightly, already coming down from her high for the first time. "What do you mean?"

"You're happy and that's great. But I just helped you fall in love with another guy."

"Ross, I never told you who it was."

He looks at her, and she can see the hope flooding into his eyes, even though it seems to pain him.

She takes a deep breath, the smile making its way back onto her face as she gets ready to say it out loud for the first time.

"I lo – "

He must already know what she's going to say, or maybe he's just taking a leap of faith, but he grabs her face and kisses her before she can finish her sentence.

Her heart starts skipping and twirling and cartwheeling, as if she just injected six shots of espresso into her bloodstream. Her smile grows as she kisses him back. He exhales, almost as if he's relieved that he doesn't have to hold himself back anymore, and entangles his fingers in her hair.

She pulls away and looks at him. He stares right back, his eyes wide as saucers.

"I love you," she tells him, because she knows just how badly he needs to hear her actually say it.

"I love you," he exhales, almost in a whisper, as if saying it too loud might shatter whatever dream he thinks he's living in.

She leans forward to rest her forehead against his, and he closes his eyes. She tries to memorize his face, the look of pure relief on his features.

"I love you," she repeats quietly, just because it feels so good to say it.

He lets out a small burst of laughter, as if he can't even contain it. "I love you."

She kisses him again, but this time he pulls away.

"I know I told you only idiots rush into things, but do you maybe wanna go out, or – "

She laughs. "Let's be the biggest idiots in the world."

He grins. "Okay."

She's suddenly extremely grateful that she couldn't stop herself from falling for him. Because if this is what love feels like, then she'd be an idiot if she didn't want it.

hahaha i hate myself