Hey Guys,

So here is the first chapter of my Isla+Jordan Fic!

I don't know how long this is going to be, so I'm not making any promises, but I've just been so busy lately that I thought I'd get this up here for now. I'm going to try to update both stories as quickly as possible, obviously, but sometimes things get a little hectic with my school commitments and everything. Sorry.

Anyways, I hope you like the way it starts (it's short and sweet, but later chapters will be longer, I promise)

Photos from the story can be found on my photobucket:

.com/home/ellenwoods21/allalbums

Make sure you check it out, and let me know what you think!

Reviews please!

Chapter One: And I Love Her

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Isla

"God, boys are aggravating!" I said, storming into my dorm room, and throwing down my bag.

"No. No. No. I was all for operation get-with-the-hottie-from-you-lit-class when it began, but honey, it's been like two months. My sympathy is beginning to run dry."

My roommate, Kate, was rude, blunt, and sometimes downright bitchy, but I loved her. She was probably the last person I'd have expected to make friends with, but somehow we got allocated to share a room and here we were. In the couple years we'd known each other we'd become best friends, and I came to find she was viciously loyal, and a great person to have onside. She was always there for me.

So tonight, I wasn't surprised to find her patience was wearing thin, after she'd been there for me through a very long time of pining over a guy. But not just a guy. The guy.

His name was Jordan Lincoln.

Many a girl would testify, he was incredibly good looking, but he was so much more than that.

Jordan was not like anybody I'd met before.

Since we sat together in one of my principal classes it wasn't as if I was crushing on him from afar, no, that probably would have been easier. I was crushing on him from up close, right up close, and we had moved firmly and resolutely into the "just friends" status.

This was all, as you would have guessed, to my intense dismay.

I like to think of my life as some kind of Novel. Some days it seems like a drama, some it's tragic, some, with any luck, it's romantic, and sometimes it's a bore-fest of non-events not even worthy of the shelf space in the back corner of a forgotten library.

In my love story, Jordan is my love interest. He is my leading man. I know he is.

The only problem is, he doesn't seem to know it himself.

"Okay, okay, I'll bite. Spill on the latest." Kate said from over on her bed where she sat painting her nails.

"I just feel like I can't do it anymore. Just when I think it's not worth the stress, he proves to me that he's amazing and just makes me want to be with him even more."

"Alright, I'm going to say it for the five-thousandth time, but why don't you just come out and tell him? Tell him how you feel, what's really the worst that can happen?"

"Uh, he'll reject me, and it'll break my heart as well as being totally weird and ruining our friendship."

"But you're obviously not enjoying the friendship now, if you're coming home fucked off three nights a week" she reasoned.

"That doesn't mean I want to just throw it away, though. I really care about him, and any relationship we have is better than none at all, right?" I asked, wanting the conformation for myself.

"Whatever," she said, raising her eyebrows, "I'm just going to say though, for all the heartache it's causing you now, if something doesn't change soon I really think you're going to have to do something about it. That is if you want our little pow-wows to continue- because I won't take much more of this." She said in her sternest "no-shit-to-be-taken" voice.

I knew better than to believe her though. Kate and I had become so close; that I don't think one of us could ever really leave the other alone if we tried.

Truthfully, I knew she was right. It was getting ridiculous how long it'd been since I'd first realized I'd had feelings for Jordan. Well, proper feelings, anyway- like, deeper than "Oh my god who's this gorgeous person sitting next to me?" first meeting, type feelings.

It was about six weeks ago, at the beginning of the semester.

I had showed up to English lit early. It was my favorite class, and should have been considering that was my dream. To be a novelist, that is.

So there I was sitting there, watching the room fill up, mostly with people I'd seen before, as I was an English major, so it wasn't surprising I was in similar classes to a lot of these people.

The class was practically full when he came in.

I honestly don't know how this could be my third year here and yet I had never seen this person before.
I knew I had never seen him, because trust me, I would have remembered.

Jordan has one of those faces that you have to be Jane Austen or a Bronte sister to do justice. As a leading man, he is the prince charming personified, and not in a pretentious way, either. He's really down to earth and sweet, qualities you would definitely not expect from someone who looks like he's walked out of a Hugo Boss fragrance ad.

He sat down next to me, giving me a small smile as he did so. My eyes caught on his face, and embarrassingly, I couldn't seem to control them.

For the entire lecture despite my better efforts to keep my eyes somewhere else, anywhere else, they didn't seem to want to leave him. From his perfect profile- straight nose, defined bone structure, golden skin, to his light brown hair, which hung just above his eyes- it's Sun-kissed tips just touching them, causing him to give the occasional sharp flick of the head.

"I'm Jordan." He'd introduced himself, turning to look at me at the end of the class.

Breath-taking.

His eyes, as they looked into mine, the skin around them creasing with his warm smile, were a piercing and beautiful pale blue.

I'd never seen eyes like that before, and against his tanned skin and sandy hair they were alarming.

I didn't want to take my eyes off of his.

But he was looking at me expectantly.

I jerked myself back to reality just in time.

"Um…I'm I-Isla." I stuttered like an idiot.

"Cool to meet you, Isla. I'll see you tomorrow, I guess." He'd smiled before getting up to leave.

So now, all this time later and nothing much of note has developed. He was quite literally all I thought about.

But I knew that there was no way he felt the same. I mean, if a guy wanted a girl, he did everything he could to get her, right? I mean theoretically anyway.

And Jordan, though he'd been perfectly sweet and friendly every time I'd seen him, had definitely not done anything that indicated we were any more than friends.

So here I was in this excruciating friendship limbo, and I was too chicken to get myself out of it, because, above anything I knew that talking to Jordan were the best parts of my week, and I didn't want to do anything to ruin that.

And there's nothing I can do about it without running the risk of doing just that.

Because, truthfully I know that he doesn't feel the same way.

He doesn't feel faint in my presence.

He doesn't long to be with me every second of the day.

I'm not in his constant thoughts.

He doesn't love me.

And I love him.

Jordan

The way she smelled.

The way her top lip curled when she was smiling.

The way her cheeks creased and her teeth showed, when she was really smiling.

The way her laugh was about a hundred notes higher than her actual voice.

Her actual voice.

The way she made me laugh.

The way she'd cross one leg over the other, swinging it up and down non-stop for two hours.

The way her hair looked when it was down, wavy and flowing all over her face.

The way her hair looked when it was pulled back exposing more of her face.

The way her hair looked, period.

The way her eyes would glaze over when she was thinking hard.

The way her eyes would close when she was really thinking hard.

The three freckles that formed a perfect triangle on the left side of her neck.

The way her eyes could look so green.

The way her eyes could look so brown.

The way the back of her hand was always covered in a hundred "to do" notes.

The way she would casually raise one eyebrow when questioning something.

The fact that she was always writing.

The way her whole face was affected every time she learned something she found interesting.

The fact that she was the first to arrive and the last to leave.

The fact that I can't stop thinking of things for this list.

The fact that I can't stop thinking about her.

And I love her.

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