After spending a week at my mother's house, I returned home. I enjoyed the time spent with her greatly, but I missed my bedroom and being alone. I was absolutely not allowed to be alone, ever, and it made me feel weird. But I genuinely felt better and my mother believed me.

During that week I worked hard on the writing of the play, and on Thursday I went to Luke's house to finally work all together. I was nervous about going because I hadn't seen his parents since his birthday, a lot of things had change by now. I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the warm welcome I was greeted with by his mother as soon as she saw me in the living room.

"It's been so long!" she said as she rushed to kiss my cheek.

"I know!" I corresponded her cheerfulness, "we need to catch up." As soon as the woman left to the kitchen, I turned to Luke who was focused on the computer screen, "hey, where's Tommy?"

Tommy is Luke's cat. His name is Tom but I'm the only one who calls him Tommy, everyone in the house calls him Little One. "He was in the backyard, I think" he answered.

We focused on what we had to work with. We were going to wait for Leela, but Alex decided to have breakfast before taking her to us, and God knows he takes ages to do anything, so we just started without her.

As I was taking out my notebook with all my notes and ideas, Luke's mom came back into the room, this time holding Tommy in her arms. She started doing this weird baby voice, making it as if it were the cat speaking, "look how big I am!" she said as she brought him closer to me. He was indeed huge now.

I made exactly the same voice as I responded, "Oh, look how big you are baby!"

Luke only stared at the both of us and laughed quietly.

After Leela arrived, the lady left – but the cat stayed –, and we went on with the brainstorm. The meeting was productive, we made about eight characters and we wrote down some plot ideas until Luke had to leave for work, he had recently taken a job as a teacher in an academy.

Days passed just fine, by the weekend I was going out to see Leela dance and visiting Alex because his cat, Fat, had babies. I went to class normally, visited Charlie regularly. The girls went to see me at my mom's place too. When I came back to my house, I attempted to paint furniture and study, but quickly quit both. Still, I felt happy to finally be back in my space. I missed my cats, my plants, playing loud music and singing while I drink tea, and lighting incense. I slowly started being myself again, I dressed pretty and did my makeup for school, and my friends constantly complimented me for it. It's like our love language, now that I think about it, the compliments, the reassurance, and I really appreciate them for it.

Darcy left for a weekend to see a friend that lived out of town, so I spent a lot of time with Leela and Alex during those days. Of course, as soon as she returned, I had her come over to sleep together and then I made her breakfast like a good wife.

One day, lurking through the black hole that is Twitter, I saw Oliver post some suspicious things, alluding that he liked someone. My crush for him was still a little superficial thing, so I wanted to know who it was at once, to nip everything in the bud.

"Who is she?" I asked him directly.

"I'm not going to tell you" he responded even more bluntly.

"Why not?"

"I'm still processing it, pal. Give me some time and I'll tell you" he tried to joke it off.

"Bro, we're both being miserable this week, what the hell?" I played along.

"True," he continued, "we should get together and have coffee while we talk about everything someday" finally he suggested.

"Maybe Saturday would be okay?" I said.

He took his time to respond, then said "I'll let you know if I can."

The only thing I could think of was that I surely knew the girl, because, what other reason could he have for not wanting to tell me? The girl he likes being me wasn't a possibility simply because those things don't happen to me, so who could it be? Darcy, maybe?

The thought made me a little upset but I didn't let it get to my head.

Even though I thought things were going pretty okay, that doesn't really last long in my world, so, eventually, Oliver started acting strange. He started avoiding being alone with me; when he inevitably had to be, he wouldn't talk to me, or even look at me. We were barely talking over the phone, not even about movies or bands, nothing. I started feeling like a stranger with him and it was bothering me heavily. Did he notice my crush? No, I didn't do anything too revealing. Even if I did, that wouldn't be an excuse to push me away. Or would it?

One day at school, I was already pretty upset about Oliver's behavior but, on top of that, Luke acted like a jerk too.

We had been eating cupcakes that a group of classmates shared with us, when I noticed Luke had glace on the corner of his mouth, and mine was too full to speak. I tried gesticulating with my hands but he couldn't understand me, so I just reached with my hand to clean him. He instantly pulled back.

After I swallowed the food, I looked at him annoyed. "What the hell?" he kept his eyes on the floor as he cleaned himself. "It's not like I'm going to hit you or something," I complained.

He looked at me with a knowing smile, it made me even angrier. I didn't know how to make him understand that it didn't mean anything, but it seemed like it did mean something for him. I just turned around and carried on with studying since there was no use thinking about it so much. That night I went back home furious about the two boys acting as if I was a disease they did not want to get.

The whole week I ignored Luke, but I was still very upset about Oliver, so, on a Friday, I decided to corner him.

I left class to go to the bathroom and, as I got out, I ran into him, who was also going to the toilet. He just grinned when he saw me, said a quick 'hey' and kept walking. I felt so mad, I wanted to wait for him outside but instead I just kept walking in the opposite direction. I was walking but the unsettling feeling stopped me in my tracks, so I stayed standing there in the middle of the hallway, waiting for him to come back. When he appeared he was staring down at his phone, even when he got to me he still ignored me.

"I was going to leave but I stayed because I want to ask you something" I told him as I stood in front of him. He just kept walking beside me.

Still looking at his phone, he replied "what is it, pal?"

"You are ignoring me" I didn't ask, I informed.

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are," I insisted, more and more upset with every step he kept walking and not even looking at me. "If this is about the girl, don't worry, I'm not going to ask you about her. You don't have to avoid me for that."

"But I'm not avoiding you" he insisted.

We got to the first step of the stairs when we saw Darcy coming down. I quickly spoke before she got to us, "that's what it seemed to me."

"Nah, you got your wires crossed" he blatantly stated.

As he pronounced this words, Darcy walked down to us. I was furious. Did he really think I was stupid? Okay, if this is how it's going to be.

I said hello to Darcy and left quickly, leaving them behind. I accidentally smashed the door a little too strongly when I closed it after walking into the classroom, so my friends noticed I was mad. Seconds later Oliver walked in too. He might have realized he did something wrong because he tried sending me memes on Twitter as usual, but I ignored him.

The next day I went to Alex's home, Charlie was there to help him paint his motorcycle. I was just watching them work and in charge of snacks, casually sneaking inside to spy on the kittens. Oliver showed up but I barely talked to him. Actually, I was melting on my insides because he was wearing a red jacket that made him look really pretty, but he wouldn't catch me staring.

At some point, he couldn't take it any longer and stood next to me, sticking his body to mine and occupying all of my personal space. He carried two mugs with coffee and offered me one. I took it without looking at him, so he leant in and whispered in my ear, "Do you want to play Fall Guys?"

I chuckled as I took a sip of the coffee, "okay" I said.

We went inside together, leaving the others do their painting alone, we sat on the computer and took turns to play. We laughed again, like we always did, and I felt like he was making an effort to make me stop feeling the way I felt. Finally, everything was okay again.

For the next few days, we were doing well. We had our inside jokes, we laughed together all the time, he went back to being my driver. We also spent a lot of time at Charlie's place.

Charlie and I started hanging out to jam, he played guitar and I sang. I even wrote a song that he composed. Soon Oliver joined us with his own guitar, he had a white electric guitar that was absolutely stunning. I would randomly pick Arctic Monkeys songs that I liked and he would play them for me.

"Oh, please do Suck It And See! I love that song!" I cried.

"Let me see if I remember it..." he said as he played the song on his phone first, and then imitated it on the guitar. I felt like a school girl in love with her rock star boyfriend looking at him.

Later that day, he posted a picture on his Instagram stories and he put that same song on it, drawing a smile on my face.

I still wasn't very sure of what I felt for Oliver, I still told myself it was just a crush, but I was spending way too much time thinking about him for it to be a simple crush. I had to tell Darcy, but first...

"I need to tell you something because keeping it to myself is killing me," I said to Leela as we were both lying in my bed, "but you have to promise you won't judge, okay?"

She seemed offended by my petition, "when have I judged you?"

I took a deep breath to get ready. "I might have started catching feelings for someone I shouldn't."

She was wearing the same smile she always naturally has on her face, "who?" she asked, I didn't respond in hopes that she would just read my eyes. "Come on! Who?"

I sighed, "Oli."

"What?!" she exclaimed, I closed my eyes expecting her to go off and insult me or call me a terrible friend, but instead, she laughed. "This is so random!" she kept laughing.

We spoke a little longer as I explained to her how I came to that conclusion and how I found out about my feelings. "You're right about that," she said, "it would've made more sense if you liked him from the beginning. You have a lot of things in common."

"I feel horrible, Lee Lee" I confessed, "I'm afraid Darcy is going to hate me after this."

"I don't think so," she said as she pondered, "She said that he was a whim. Also, she's with Elliot now and they're doing okay. You should still talk to her, though."

Suddenly, speaking about the matter out loud gave a whole new weight to it. Like, telling someone about it made it real. I had only kept it to myself so far, - with the exception of my friend Layla, who doesn't know them – but now it was done.

After several days of meditating it, I came to the realization that it wasn't a crush anymore. I truly liked him. I had genuine feelings. My closeness with Oliver wasn't really helping my case, he drove me home after school, we hung out on Sundays and we talked over the phone every day. At least once a day, I would require a hug and he would provide one. Being wrapped in his arms, close to his chest and smelling his scent was a life changing experience. Even more when he pressed his nose against my forehead, breathing me too.

I still couldn't get my hopes too high, that other girl was still out there.

Finally, the day of the first rehearsal for the play came and I was nervous as hell because everyone was asking me questions and complaining to me about things instead of complaining to Alex, who was the director. Right before I walked into the theatre, I looked up at Oli, who was standing in front of me.

"I'm so nervous" I confessed as I rushed to meet his body for my daily doses of hugs.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly, as always. "You got this" he said as I caressed his back with my hands.

I lifted my left hand and placed a single finger on my forehead. "Give me a kiss" I asked. I removed my finger and he placed a warm kiss in its place. After that, I broke the hug and walked inside to get my job done.

Days similar to that one passed, hanging out in his car, going places and running errands together. On a Sunday, we decided to get Charlie out of the house and we took him to the beach. I found myself looking at him more and more fondly, lovingly. Oh shit, there it is. It was real now, I had accepted it. I was head over heels in love with Oliver. All I could think about was him, his voice, his smell. Every time I rode shotgun in the car with him, hearing him talk about his father or his favorite football team, or what the mechanic said about the car or what he has to do next morning; I could only stare at him the whole way home, lost in the trace of moles that adorn his neck, or the way he moves his mouth while he talks, or the way his hands look on the steering wheel, or how his nose looks from the side which I love. Whenever he wore a football jersey or that blue hoodie I adore, I could only think about how nice it would be to borrow it once. Or twice. Or forever.