To The Only Boy I've Loved Before

Double Trouble

Lauren was walking back from class with Meredith the next day when Joey jogged up to her. 

"Hey," he said, just slightly breathless. "I need to talk to Lauren, alone."

Lauren felt her heart jump anxiously as Meredith nodded and walked off with a wave, leaving her completely alone with Joey, with no idea what he could possibly need to talk to her about.

"Look," Joey said, running a hand through his hair with an expression that Lauren couldn't decipher. "I just wanted to say that I really appreciate it, but it's never going to happen," Joey said.

"I'm sorry, what?" Lauren replied, having no idea what he was talking about. Until she spotted the letter in his hand. A letter written in a very familiar handwriting.

Oh. Joey's voice faded out as she willed the ground to swallow her up, and someone must have heard her prayers because she blacked out, losing consciousness just after she felt Joey's arms reach out to slow her fall.

She woke to the sound of her name. "Lauren? Lauren? Are you okay?"

Her eyelids fluttered open and she saw Joey's face hovering anxiously over her.

"What happened?" she muttered, although she had a pretty good idea.

"You fainted," Joey replied worriedly.

"Oh. Okay."

"Here, gimme your hand. And the other one too," he said, reaching out to help her sit up off of the floor. "There you go."

He looked at her as she sat there blankly, concern creasing his face. "Do you want me to call someone, get you some water?"

Lauren blinked rapidly to try and clear away the fog in her brain. "No, I'm okay."

"You sure?"

Lauren's eyes flicked over Joey's shoulder to see Darren walking towards her, a letter in hand.

"No," she said under her breath.

"What?" Joey asked.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed in horror. And then she did the first thing she could think of to stop Darren confronting her about the letter.

She grabbed Joey and pushed him onto the ground, rolling them over so that she was lying on top of him. And then she kissed him.

Joey made a muffled sound of surprise and he wasn't exactly kissing her back, but didn't push her off of him either, so she kept kissing him until she figured that Darren might have walked away. And even though she didn't have those feelings for Joey anymore, she lingered a little longer than was necessary because if she was honest, his lips felt very nice.

Then she pushed herself up, told Joey "thank you", and ran off without a backward glance, leaving him to stare after her in bewilderment.

When she got back to her apartment the first thing she did was turn the room upside down looking for the box, at a loss as to how the letters could have got out, but she had no luck.

She stuck her head round the corner into the living room, seeing Jaime on the couch.

"Have you seen a small blue box anywhere?" she asked desperately.

"Nope," Jaime replied, not taking her eyes off of her phone screen.

Lauren let out a groan of frustration and went back to have another look in her bedroom. 

As she was throwing piles of clothes around and racking her brain for where she might have put it, she faintly heard a knock on the door, but left it to Jaime to answer.

"Lauren, it's for you!" Jaime called out.

Whoever it was, it could not be good. She poked her head out into the corridor and gestured to Jaime to tell the visitor that she wasn't here. Knowing that Jaime wouldn't listen to that, however, she ran to her bedroom window and opened it, grateful for the fact that she was on the ground floor. She clambered out, grabbed her bike and cycled to the ice cream shop that she worked at her freshman year. She always went there whenever she needed to be by herself and clear her head, and today was no exception.

She was sat at the counter drinking a smoothie when a boy came in and sat beside her. She wanted to die when she heard Joey's voice order a milkshake, and wondered if it would be too pathetic of her to just get up and walk out now.

"Hey Lopez," he said.

"What are you doing here?" she sighed, staring straight ahead.

"I'm just here for this chocolate milkshake," he said as the server slid it across the counter to him.

"Cool."

"Actually, I stopped by your place and Jaime told me you'd probably be here."

Lauren reminded herself to make sure to kill Jaime later.

"I just want to be super clear with you," Joey said. "I'm flattered, really. But-"

"Are you trying to reject me right now?" Lauren cut him off, stifling a laugh.

"Well, yeah, cause it didn't really seem like the message got through before."

"Joey Richter, I am not trying to date you," she tried to explain.

"Okay, you say that, but then earlier you kissed me, so..."

"Here's the thing," she told him, turning on her stool to face him. "I don't actually like you, I just had to make it look like I liked you so that someone else wouldn't think I liked them," she told him. Because that wasn't at all confusing.

"Oh, okay. Who?" he asked.

"What?"

"You gotta tell me who or I'm just gonna keep thinking that you're secretly in love with me," he said with an irritating smirk.

"No."

"Okay, so should I just tell the whole school that you wrote me a love letter or...?"

"You wouldn't," she said, but he just stared at her and she didn't want to test her theory to find out if she was right.

"Fine, if I tell you will you leave me alone?" she begged.

"Maybe."

"Darren."

"Wait, Darren? My best friend Darren?"

"Yeah, well, he also got a letter even though I don't like him either so you can see how awkward and complicated that's gonna get if he thinks that I have feelings for him," Lauren said, wishing that they could just end this conversation and forget the whole letter incident ever happened.

"Woah, woah, stop, stop. I'm not the only guy you wrote a letter to?"

Lauren shook her head.

"Wow, you really think you're special and then you find out she wrote letters to two guys," he said, clutching his heart dramatically as Lauren failed to hide a smirk.

"Well, I should get going," she said after a moment.

"Wait, is that sparkly bike out front your ride?" he asked, spinning around on the stool as she made to leave.

"...Yeah?"

"Oh, no, I'm giving you a lift home," he said with a laugh.

"Hey, I like my bike!" she protested, but she followed him out to his car nonetheless.