Two weeks later…

She wasn't entirely sure how she would describe the weeks that followed. Slowly the anger wore off, and the fear she had expected to replace it never really came. Instead, she found herself faced with an odd combination of disbelief and resignation.

The attraction itself wasn't entirely unfamiliar. She had already had a boyfriend, and gone on numerous dates with other hopefuls, most of whom had never gotten more than a three hour chance. She had found guys cute before (not that she would ever admit that to anyone she knew), and so it wasn't too hard to adjust to the fact that her heart sped up just a little bit when he came into the room, and that—sadly—there wasn't much she could do to cure that.

But she had never in her life imagined that Jeffrey—Jeffrey Tifton!—would be the cause of such heart trauma.

Yet she was confident that it would pass with time, and so she wasn't too worried.

At least, she wasn't until he called to ask her to go with him to the museum.

And as hard as she tried to squash it, there was that stupid little voice inside of her that asked, "A date, maybe?"

It didn't take long, however, for it to become painfully clear that whatever the outing was, it certainly wasn't a date.

First off, he picked her up at 8… in the morning. Not exactly the most romantic time of day.

He then packed her into the car with about about 3 dozen cold cut sandwiches and proceeded to blast music into her ears while jabbering on and on about other girls he had dated.

Yeah, not a date…

After listening through tales about Sofia, Sarah, Sabrina, and Sadie (apparently he had a thing for names starting in S) she finally figured out what he was doing.

He was letting her down softly. This was his subtle (not!) way of letting her know that he had found out about her feelings, but really wasn't interested.

Ouch.

And so, like the brave soldier she was, she faked her best bored look and asked him to please talk about something else because all this rambling was making her nauseous. And if she had to bite the inside of her cheek every time he reached over her to grab a sandwich so that she didn't grin like an idiot at the accidental contact, she would carry that secret with her to her grave.

Hormones were her least favorite part of science, but they could be dealt with and ignored, just like anything else.

(To be continued…)

Spark Writer - Glad to hear it. Hopefully I'll be able to keep that interest… :-) Thanks for the support! You're always WAY too kind in your reviews. (Not that I'm complaining…)

Applesandbanannas - Awww… You're sweet! The school year is starting to wind down, and I'm finding myself with some extra time, so I wanted to do a multi-chapter fic. I've missed them!

GinervaMollyWeasleyPotter - Thank you! Stay tuned: there's a surprise at the end that might back up that last part of your review… :-) Hint, hint.

Thank you guys for all your support. I couldn't—and wouldn't—do it without you!