I went. Did anyone seriously think I wouldn’t?

Well, I guess Josh did. When I got there he looked a little surprised that I had come. I told him I wasn’t sure if I should be there. He said he was glad that I was and I heard myself say, “so am I.” I swear, there are times when words just fall out of my mouth and this particular night was especially bad.

I looked up at him and saw him looking back at me in that way that makes my knees turn to jello and my heart pound a million beats per second. I leaned against the cement wall that surrounds the park for support. He told me that he knew it was wrong to pull me away from my date and said, “it’s just that something happens to me when I see you.” I was thinking to myself play it cool, Nicole. But what I said was, “something happens to me too…I dream about you almost every night.”

As soon as I said it I wanted to turn around and bang my head against the cement wall! So much for playing it cool! But he surprised me when he said, “I dream about you too.” I was so stunned I just said, “you do?” He nodded and said, “yeah, but sometimes I wish I didn’t. It just makes it harder. Harder to get through the day, harder to not be with you.”

I should have asked him if he still wanted to be with me, but that’s when my brain realized it should put up some sort of filter and my words were no longer dropping off my lips. Instead I told him that things were so tangled up and I don’t know how to unravel them.

It was so fast, but I think I saw disappointment flash across his face before he nodded and said, “I don’t want to look back on us a few years from now and think, Nicole is a girl I once knew. I don’t want us to be strangers. I hate not having you in my life. I hate being just your neighbor or your co-worker. We’ve been through so much. We’ve laughed at each other’s stupid jokes and cried in each other’s arms. How can we be strangers?”

I told him what makes it so hard is that I have shared such an intimate part of myself with him. But he wasn’t letting me go. He kept saying, “but we have to start somewhere.” I just looked at him and he said, “Lets do the dance competition. I’m your key to that trophy. None of those other guys is going to have the same chemistry with you that I have, and you know Mona is going to pair us up. It will be good. We’ll get be partners, we’ll be in each other’s lives.”

I frowned knowing how hard it would be to get that close to him again – especially if Patrick and Tanya are in the picture. I started trying to explain it to him, all the while knowing that he was right. He would win me that competition - and I really want to win that competition!

So I came up with an idea… and we made a pact: No discussion of romance. No romantic gestures. No talk of love lives in any way, shape or form. No talk of people we’re dating, have crushes on, etc. The competition would be friendly but professional and we would conduct ourselves under those rules at all times.

He agreed. So if Mona assigns us to work together Josh and I will be dance partners. I won’t fight it.