A/N: Sorry it's been a while, and if you're wondering, yes, I'm still going to continue my other story, but this one kept popping up, and I just had to post it in order to keep my sanity in check. This is my first JN fanfiction, and it's quite short, but I hope you guys like it! :D

The Empty Hallway Confessional

Where Jimmy realizes just how much he's in love. And that he's got it bad.

It was in an empty hallway where he first realized, or admitted to himself, that he loved her.

Truly loved her.

And he had loved her for a long time. But he had originally dismissed it, because he couldn't accept it, and it couldn't be approved by his over-thinking analytical brain. After all, how could a genius like him suddenly accept that he made the most illogical decision possible? He fell for his arch-rival. This arch-rival was the girl who made it her life's mission to debunk his theories, his ideas. The girl who thought she could challenge logic and fact by calling him an idiot ever since they were kids.

No! He couldn't admit it. Not to anyone. Not even himself.

And at first he was puzzled by his developing…feelings. It had taken him by surprise, you see. It popped up, sudden, just after a little verbal spat, where his mind was all at once immersed in the light of her smile. The smile she always flaunted when she knew she had bested him in a heated intellectual debate. It was overpowering, to say the least. And it had to be, if his usually academic and rational mind was suddenly filled – no, bursting with thoughts of her and her cheeky yet sublimely captivating smile.

He tried so hard to dismiss it, blamed puberty and its cruel way of increasing his hormones. But that can't be, a voice in his head reminded him. For if it truly was the cause for his unwise, stupid and pathetic actions involving her then he should be thinking about other things, like her curvaceous and fetching female anatomy (not that he hadn't noticed). But all he thought of these days were her smiles, and that it felt so exhilarating when she challenged him so much day after day that it was quickly becoming a staple daily activity for him. And that when she consciously or unconsciously touches him his stomach does back flips and that he can't seem to stop thinking about her.

Oh yes, he's got it bad.

Truth be told he never liked her back then. He outright hated, no, despised her sometimes. And even now there were times where his old self would resurface and he would return to loathing her when she does something irritating. For the girl always had a way to get under his skin, and was able to piss him off big time in no time at all.

Most times it was her aggravating and condescending voice that would make him hate her again, the voice she always used when she was vocally and loudly jeering at his ideas, his inventions and his achievements. Sometimes it was that stuck-up laugh he hears from her whenever he fails. Sometimes it was whenever she actually, surprisingly, bests him at something. God, his ego couldn't take it.

But, over the years, she changed. She mellowed, and somehow, turned into something beautiful. Now more of a friend and less of a rival, she was actually funny now, rather than being irksome and sounding insipid like she used to be. Not an irritation now, but an enchantress, one that usually made him freeze up and be weird.

Unsurprisingly, over the years, he had changed too. He was maybe less arrogant, more accepting and more patient with her, since now he only wants to glue her mouth shut every other hour, not every hour, like he used to. And, judging from the looks she gave him when she thinks he doesn't notice (which is a ridiculous notion by the way, as these days he always noticed anything that involved her), more attractive.

But the biggest change of all was that he actually fell in love with her.

And this was no childish crush, this was no attraction caused by his over-acting hormones, this was full-on. He was truly in love with her.

It had taken a while, a really long time actually, for him to admit to himself his long suppressed romantic feelings, but when he finally could, he said it out loud, in the middle of an empty hallway, as if a dam had burst, and the water rushed out strong and fierce, just like his newly recognized affection. It was the most certain statement he ever made yet, and it made him feel brave, strong, free and light.

"Damn, I love you Cindy."