As we sat in the hotel lobby, I looked across the room at Chance as he flirted with another girl. On OUR New York City trip. I was not okay with this. Like, REALLY not okay with this. But on the other hand, we were just friends. Why did I care about the girls he flirted with?!

It was 2012, and as we left our annual New York City trip and arrived home in Virginia, we continued the summer as friends. I was preparing to head to college for my freshman year and Chance was starting his senior year of high school. One day at football practice before the school year started, Chance broke his wrist badly enough to need surgery. I remember as soon as I got the call, I dropped everything and rushed to the hospital. I was so overcome with worry for him and just wanted to be there for him. It was only a broken wrist, but I will never forget that in that moment, I knew in my heart… I care so deeply for this boy, and not just as a friend.

Later that summer, I went off to college and Chance started his senior year. I put my feelings for him on the back burner. He was showing interest in other girls and it was obvious he didn’t feel the same about me as I did him. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there might be something there. I felt like I was caught in the middle. A large part of me wanted to be with Chance, but there was always a voice in the back of my head making me second guess myself. Did I really want to be with Chance? We’d been friends for 4 years now. Did I really want to mess all of that up?

During the first few months of my freshman year, I had a lot of really terrible things happen all at once. Everything that could go wrong personally, emotionally, relationally, and academically, did. It completely drained my usual happy spirit. I was really sad and not myself for a large part of the rest of my first semester of college, but Chance was the first to always check in and ask how I was doing. I remember spending the whole day at his house watching football right after everything had happened. We sat and just talked through everything. He was always there. He’d always been there.

As Christmas break approached, I started planning out what I wanted to do for my birthday that year! Birthdays are my FAVORITE and I always wanted to have a fun time! Since most of my new college friends were heading home for Christmas break, I ended up just inviting Chance, my cousin Chris, and my friend Sarah to the lake to celebrate on the night of. As my luck would have it, I got extremely sick on my birthday. And like, the reaaaaally not pretty kind. Chance came in several times to check on me and make sure I was okay. At one point, he sat with me and rubbed my back and before the night ended, gave me a kiss on the forehead. YES, A KISS ON THE FOREHEAD. I. FLIPPED. OUT. In my delirium, I honestly questioned if it even happened…

As the night went on, during the moments when I lie awake, I would play the kiss over and over in my head, trying to figure it out. Did it mean that he liked me or was it just a friendly kiss? Did it say, “Hey Demi, I like you,” or “feel better, kid.” After what felt like hours of analyzation, I finally figured out a solution. If the next morning, when he woke up and came upstairs for breakfast and things seemed different, it DEFINITELY meant something.

(If you missed part I, you can check it out HERE!)