"She asked me if it was a date. It wasn't. Now it is."

Well, we were best friends - with the understanding that we would not be anything more. We had dated in spring of 2021 for 3 weeks when I decided it wasn't going to work. When we became best friends after we had dated, we mutually agreed that neither of us would fall for the other because we had already tried that and it didn't work. The problem is, it is really hard not to fall for your best friend. By winter, I had developed feelings. But I knew that nothing could ever come of them as we had already discussed this. Well, eventually, I decided we had to have a talk. My feelings were too much to ignore and I knew I was going to be hurt when he started dating someone else. We decided to take a step back in our friendship. And we did - for about 2 weeks. We saw each other in the library and said hi and talked, but we tried to keep the deep conversations to a minimum. This was going great (well, great if I didn't want to date him, which I still did) until one day as we sat in the library he asked if I wanted to bake cookies. We were both bored and needed a good afternoon activity. We went to dollar tree and bought cookie mix and came back to school to bake the cookies. I had already scheduled a meeting with another friend that afternoon, so I asked if she would like to join us. She did. She quickly picked up on the awkwardness between us - we were clearly flirting though we promised we were "just friends." This friend is rather blunt (in a good kinda way) and flat out asked us "So, why aren't you dating?" We both laughed and he said "We already tried that."

"So, he's your ex?" she asked me.

"Yeah. . ." I said.

"Well, when is his second chance?"

And then we both laughed it off and continued with making our cookies. After a while, he asked me if I would drive him to the fire station (he is a volunteer firefighter). It was rainy and my car was closest, so I agreed and we walked to my car. Once in the car, he said he had something he wanted to talk about but he wasn't sure he would do it.

"Will you ever tell me? I mean, you don't have to, but I'm here whenever you are ready to talk."

"I'll probably tell you eventually."

Silence. Then after approximately 30 seconds, "Okay, maybe I will tell you."

"Is this going to make me cry?" I asked (thinking it was going to be a talk on boundaries and not laughing off when people ask us why we aren't dating).

"No, but you might slap me."

"Well, let me get parked at the fire station first so that I can slap you good, then."

After I had pulled into a parking place, I turned to look at him. He said, "I think we need a reminder of why we aren't dating."

"Do you want to go first," I asked.

"I think you should."

I proceeded to list the reasons we had discussed for not dating. I was so sad still thinking this was going to result in even less friendship. But I still asked, "What are your reasons for not dating me?"

And then the most shocking thing ever - "I can't think of any." And my heart jumped out of my chest. And then to top it off, he looked at me and said "And I'm not sure the reasons you just listed are really good reasons not to date." We talked for a couple more minutes before he had to go into the fire station for training. We agreed that we would not make anything official for at least 2 weeks. We may have admitted that we liked one another, but we were not going to rush into a relationship like we did the first time and break each other's hearts again. If we were doing this, we were going to do it right. Two weeks landed on spring break. A couple of friends and I went to the beach. When we got back, Matthew met me at my grandparents house with flowers and asked me to be his girlfriend. I gladly accepted.