Robbie's POV

6 whole years and I haven't done a thing about it. That beautiful red head with the big brown eyes, is there every second of everyday and I can work up the nerve to tell her. He laugh, that simple giggle, makes my heart stop. Every time she says my name, I get butterflies. I kissed her once, just to shut her up, but she didn't do anything about it. She was yelling at, telling me I didn't make any sense and that whenever I talk, I don't say what I really mean, so I kissed her. I thought that was enough but I was wrong.

"Robbie…" Cat says waving her hands in front of my face.

"Oh sorry. Just lost in thought." I smile letting her know I was paying attention.

"Ok! So what do you want to do now?" She asks as the last bell of the day rings.

"Are you… Are you hungry?" I tell her.

"Yes! What do you want to get."

"I was thinking something like taco's?" I give her a sly smile.

She nods and gives me a quick hug, before we both walk out to my car. She was wearing a nice pink sundress with pink Vans to match. I watched her as she walked a step ahead of me, completely in awe.

When I had motioned tacos, I didn't exactly mean tacos though. I pulled up in front of this white building and got out to open Cats Car door. She steps out and turns to me.

"Where are we?" She asks.

"You'll see." I say taking her hand, which made her giggle, and bringing her inside. The building was dimly lit, with candles on every table. The plates were a shiny white with gold trim, and each table had fancy wine glasses. The waiters were in the black slacks and white dress shirts with ties. The man brings us to a two person table and pours water in one cup and offers us some wine. Cat and I both shake our heads no, and he leaves.

We sat there silently for a little bit. Cat folded her hands on the table waiting for me to speak, but I wasn't going to yet. She looked down at her feet and then back up at me.

"Robbie, this isn't exactly tacos." She says quietly.

"What are you talking about? This is a little bit of Nuevos Southwestern Cuisine with a French flair. It may not be tacos exactly but it has its origins in tacos. Like a Croc Bonheur has its origin in ham…" I flash her a smile, but she rolls her eyes.

"You know what I'm talking about." She pauses, looking a little mad. "This is nice. Really nice."

"I know I was thinking about steeling the plate." I cut her off.

"Robbie…" She says quietly.

"Ok… And that's a problem because?" I question.

"Because once again you're trying to say something without actually saying it. And it's driving me nuts." She explains.

"I think you lost me." I say trying to act dumb, hoping she wouldn't catch on. I was never that great of an actor though.

"No I don't think I did. I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. We've gone through this before. You kissed me…" She tells.

"Did I?" I ask her stupidly, still trying to save my cover.

"Damn it Robbie. You asked me out of a date without even asking me out on a date." She says bluntly. I sigh a little bit. "Now if this keeps going this way, if we can't communicate… and we've been over this, where you never say what you mean, I don't know how we're going to—"

I cut her off mid sentence, this time, not with a kiss, but with something so blunt I might as well have said I'm in love with you. "I don't want to be here right now…"

Cat's face completely changed. Her smirk dropped to a complete and utter look of despair. She looked down for a moment, but I kept my eyes locked to hers.

"What…?" She whispered looking at me.

"I want to be at my place right now…with you…" I locked eyes with her, refusing to look away. My straight face drove the point home, but she just stared at me with her jaw on the ground.

She turned her head a little bit, like a dog would if they heard something strange, and I did the same. The expressions on her face changed numerous times, from sorrow, to anger, to confusion, to a smile. Then with that little twinkle in her eye, she took the napkin off of her lap, got up and walked away. The smile on her face told me to follow her, so I got up, let out a sigh of relief, and followed her.

The next day was a little bit awkward. We didn't talk about anything that had happened the night before. We had seen each other all day, but neither one of us tried to make eye contact or talk. We just avoided each other all day. Later that day though, we had to face each other.

"So… Do you understand Smith's math homework?" She rocks back and forth with her hands in her back pockets.

I turn around from my locker to look at her. I was sick of the avoiding, sick of the awkwardness. I looked at her for a moment. "Can you do something for me?"

"Yea… Sure?" She looks away from me.

"Can you just for a second pretend that I'm not Robbie? For a second pretend that you're not Cat? Pretend that we didn't do anything last night? Can we pretend for just a second that we're a guy and a girl just hanging out and talking? We can drive around in my pick-up truck and go get ice cream. Go bowling." I ask her with a straight face.

She looks down at her feet with an ear to ear smile on her face. She still had her hands in her back pockets, which I found cute. She looked back up at me, the smile getting bigger and bigger, so I returned one.

"But that's the thing because the possibilities are endless. We're young. We have all the time in the world." We stood in silence for a moment after I finished. Still rocking back and forth, Cat stared at me.

She took her right hand out of her pocket and extended it. "My name is Ariana. Hi."

"Ariana?" I laugh because that was the name she used yesterday in acting class. "Well it's so nice to meet you Ariana. I'm Matt."

"It's nice to meet you too."

"Do you have any plans for tonight?" I ask her.

"I don't know, it's complicated." She smiles flirtatiously.

"Well not from where I'm standing, it's not." I look her up and down, not too fast, but slow enough tot get a good look.

"I have a boyfriend." She fakes.

"So does my girlfriend." I chuckle faking it too.

"That's a nice shirt you have on…" She started to get awkward again.

"So… Are we good?" I ask her, breaking character.

"Yea. Were good." She bites her lip a little before stepping forward and kissing my on the cheek. Before pulling back she whispers quietly in my ear, "And by the way, last night was amazing…"

Then she walked past me.

We continued things like that for a while. The little flirtatious things and the pushing-the-limit-as-friends things. It was great overall, but we both wanted more, but knew it couldn't happen. Not with the status we had in school. I was the geek, she was the preppy popular one. I got laughed at in the hallways, she got flirted with. I was the one pushed down the stairs, she was the one who could get carried up if she wanted to. Being friends with me was even too much for her little bitch friends, dating me, was even worse.

Days later she came up to me in the hall way and grabbed my hand. A few football players started to laugh and one came over to us.

"What are you doing with this scumbag?" He asks her.

"Oh, I was just… um…" She hesitates, but stands up a little taller. "I grabbed his hand. I wanted to show him that there was someone there for him when 'scumbags' like you come around and torture him. So go push off." She says giving them a look.

The one guy turns to his friends and starts cracking up. "You hear that?" He asks them before turning around and planting her fist on my jaw. My head snaps to the side and I fall to the ground, slamming my head hard. I sit up a little bit, debating whether to get up and hit him back, or just stay down.

Being me, I stay down, and that pissed Cat off. She slaps the guy hard, leaving a hand print on his face. She kicks him in the balls, and as he falls to the ground, she goes over to the other guys. She just glares at them until they run off, somewhat scared.

She grabs my hand again and pulls me into the janitor's closet, closing the doors behind us. "Why didn't you defend yourself!?" She yells at me. "They can't just torture you for the rest of your life. You need to put a stop to this. What the hell Robbie!"

"Ok. I should have defended myself! I get it. But if they pick on me, then maybe they would forget about what they saw, and I didn't want to have you get hurt. I didn't want that punch to be a shove into the locker for you tomorrow. If they take it out on me, there's no need to get you involved. I should have defend myself, but I let my emotions get it the way. And I'm sorry, but I'm just trying to make this work." I tell her referring to what we have.

"It's not going to work." She tells me bluntly. I look at her like she did the night I told her I wanted her to come to my place. My jaw was dropped but this time not in shock, but anger and sorrow.

"I'm standing on my frozen lake." She tells me.

"I don't know what that means."

"Your frozen lake is the name for what you want the most in the world and you want it… you want it so bad, that you'll do anything to get it. And your heart takes over. But because of that, it destroys you in the end. It's right there, just sitting in the middle of this frozen lake, and you think you're fast enough to go out and grab it before the ice cracks—"

I finish her though. "And what you don't realize is you're already standing on the ice and it's falling apart around you."

She nods. Tears start to form in her eyes and her lip starts to quiver. I wanted so badly, to take her in my arms and kiss her. To make her feel better and safer. But I knew exactly what she was trying to say and I knew I couldn't.

We stand, maybe 6 inches apart, looking into each other's eyes. Seeing into each other's souls and wishing the other would change their mind.

The door opens abruptly by the janitor, breaking our stares and forcing us to leave. "Sorry about that…" He apologizes before turning and walking away.

That was it. The awkward glances, the small conversations, the avoiding. It all started to happen again. And it pissed me off again. I couldn't deal with the fact that I would never get another chance to be with the girl of my dreams. I knew that all she wanted was space, but I couldn't deal with not seeing her.

We had every class together, so I saw her every second of every day, and that's what killed me. I was close enough to reach her, to touch her, to kiss her, but the second I was there, she would slip away. Sometimes, I was the one who let her, other times she did it herself.

It got to the point where I started to talk to her again. I made sure she thought I was 'just a friend'. Obviously she knew otherwise, but I tried my best to be on my best behavior.

"Hey!" I say walking up to her in the hall way. I lean on the locket next to hers, with one foot crossed over the other, trying to act cool.

"Hi." She opens her locker so the door is blocking my face. She slides her books in and takes her times, probably hoping I would go away.

"Cat. Look at me." I tell her, shutting her locker door. She turns to me, but stares at her feet.

I tilt her chin up with my knuckle. "Look at me."

She gives me a fake smile. "Hi…"

"Hey beautiful." I smile.

"Robbie…"

"There's nothing wrong with calling a friend beautiful if it's true." I tell her refusing to let her win on that topic.

"Fine."

"Do we really have to do this again…?" I ask quietly. "The way we're acting around each other… It's so freaking annoying and I can't take it… We know how we feel about each other, it's kind of obvious. But if you want to stay as friends, I'm fine with that. If not… let me tell you this… There is only one way to cross a frozen lake… Don't run, walk slowly. Stop to look at everything. Take your time. He'll wait for you." I turn and walk out of the building.

I pull my keys out of my pocket and unlock my car. Just as I open the door, I hear her shout something, the something I was waiting to here. "Wait!"

I turn to see her running towards me. "Robbie… um."

"I was just going to leave. We can talk tomorrow." I say.

"No! Hey, woah, woah. Please, let me just… Let me just tell you something." She grabs my arms.

"Yea?"

"We're going to figure this out." She smiles at me. "All we have to do is talk about it" She explains.

"Ok… But you don't really like talking about 'it'." I look away for a moment.

"Yea, but I promise I will be better at talking about 'this'…" She looks at me with those big brown eyes and it practically makes me melt. I decided there, that I would have some fun with it.

"What do you mean by 'this'?" I ask seriously.

"This…" She looks at me hoping I would get it so she wouldn't have to explain it. "You know…"

"This thing?" I ask her smiling. She looks at me, knowing I knew the whole time what 'this' was, and smiles back.

She gets really awkward and looks down. "Yes, this… our… 'thing'…"

"I'm sorry, I just- I just didn't hear you because there were so many people talking. Maybe you could say it louder? Just for me? Just once. Just say it." I chuckle.

"I hate you." She laughs.

"No you don't… You do not… You do not hate me…" I tell her, because love is the complete opposite of hate.

"Our thing." She says louder. Loud enough that everyone around could have heard, but she didn't care.

"Wow…" I let out a deep breath, making it more dramatic than it should be.

"You have to promise me something too though?" She tells me. The smile on her face disappeared, but it was obvious she was still happy. She just needed to get down to business.

"Anything…"

She waits a minute. "I'm not good at talking. I don't know how to explain my feelings. I was a hypocrite when I told you how difficult it was to talk to you because you didn't say what you mean. I never say what I mean to say and it's really hard to do that… Just give me a chance to try. That's all I want. We can do this, together. Just promise you will be patient with me…"

"HEY CAT!" Jade shouts from across the Asphalt Café. Cat turns to look at her.

"See you tonight?" She turns back to me.

"Yeah…" I open the door again as Cat walks away. "Oh and Cat…"

"Yea."

"Can you do me a favor?" I ask her.

"Yea?" She looked at me hopefully.

"Kiss me."

Ok… So I was watching a bunch of Kensi and Deeks clips from NCIS: LA and I was overcome with a bunch of feels and felt the need to write them out in a Cat and Robbie type thing… The whole frozen lake thing… Not mine, but damn that was deep… Major kudos to the NCIS LA writers for that. I think I now need to get some of that on a dog tag. Haha only some people would get that but yea… haha well I hope you liked it. I'll update Rule #1 soon, but I figured I would give you something HAPPY because I end everything sad.

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