Chapter 18

Adrian's POV

5 days later...

"Julian, I'm sorry, but I don't have feelings for you."

I get no answer.

"Fuck, that was terrible," I tell my reflection in the mirror.

I'm just trying to practice what I'm gonna say to Julian when I finally decide to tell him that I don't like him the way he likes me. I'm probably gonna tell him today, just get it done with and be able to move on.

"Julian, I think you're a great guy, but I feel like preserving our friendship would be better than actually being in a relationship."

"Adrian? You good? It's 5 AM, bro," Devin says through our bathroom door.

"Yeah, I'm good, sorry," I say, facing the mirror again and lowering my voice back to a whisper. "Julian, I really like you, but I really like you as a friend. And I think that's as far as our relationship should go."

I don't know what to do and I'm stressing out right now. I have to tell him at some point, and Derek has been trying to help me all week but I'm not really good at this kind of stuff. It's not as big as a breakup, but I've never had to do something like this. I've never had to tell someone that there's no chance for them with me.

I just feel bad and I don't want to make Julian sad because he's a really fun guy. I still want to spend time with him but I just think that we shouldn't date, and I don't want to get Julian's hopes up just for them to fall back down later, farther down the road. It still terrifies me that Kai and Jax said he's sensitive to these kinds of things. That's gonna be really difficult. I have to tread super lightly.

"Julian, I think you're an amazing person that I'm happy to call my friend, but I don't think our relationship should go anywhere further than that. I'm sorry," I say to myself in the mirror.

I might just have to play it by ear when I see him later. I already told him I wanted to talk to him tonight after practice. We had the first week of classes this week, I like all my classes so far. I'm in a few with Derek, which is nice.

However, it is pretty clear that I have feelings for him again. He's being so fucking sweet to me ever since he saw me in the locker room. He doesn't say anything mean to me, he's just being so sweet. I have feelings for him again, and that's not even a question. I'm not mad about it, I think I have feelings for him for the right reasons. He makes me feel safe.

Anyways, I am gonna go back to sleep because it is 5:00 AM and I need sleep before class starts. My teachers are cool or whatever and my classes are good but the only thing I care about is the fact that for the first time, I feel like all of Derek's attention is on me. That didn't happen at all in high school, and yeah, he was probably thinking about me a lot after I walked in on him, but probably not fondly.

But now he's hanging out with me, smiling at me with his beautiful dimples, and little does he know that I'm quickly falling for him again.

13 hours later... (A/N: sorry for the specific time jumps I just feel like it would be weird for the time jumps to be random)

I told Julian to meet me at the tables behind our dorm building so we could 'talk.' I hope his expectations for this aren't high. I didn't specify what I wanted to talk about, so I hope he doesn't think this is me confessing my feelings to him.

I'm waiting for him there right now, and I'm stressing the fuck out of it. I talked to Derek before coming over here and he told me to just stay calm and don't stress about it too hard, but that's impossible in this circumstance.

If Derek were here right now he'd tell me to breathe with him or to stop biting my nails. He would probably do everything to comfort me, and I wish he were here, not just because of that, but because I want to see him again. He's so amazing.

"Hey, Adrian," I hear from behind me, and Julian walks up to me, taking a seat next to me at the table.

"Hey, Julian," I reply.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" he asks.

I take a deep breath. "Um, Julian, I think you're an amazing person, and I really enjoy being your friend. However, I think that I don't have feelings for you. I'm so sorry."

I look away because I don't want to meet his eyes. I will just feel way too bad about it and I would feel so bad for him as well.

"Adrian," he gets me attention, and I turn back to him, and he's smiling. "I expected you to tell me this. I realized you were gonna tell me something like this after you had lunch with my family. I'm still sorry about that by the way, I didn't mean for it to be that awkward. My family can be annoying at times, and seeing me with a guy that they don't know confused them."

"That's all fine. I just can't really imagine 'us' working, if that makes sense. I really like you as a friend, and I think we should stay friends. I really do enjoy hanging out with you."

"I'm gonna be honest, Adrian. I kind of lost feelings for you as well. When I realized how good of a friend you are, I realized that I shouldn't try to ruin our friendship by wanting to be in a relationship."

"You lost feelings for me by thinking that?" I ask.

"Yeah. I can force myself to do anything basically."

"Wow. That was way easier than I expected it to be," I state.

"Yeah. I just have one more question for you, Adrian."

"Yeah?" I question.

"Is this about Derek?" he asks, smiling at me.

"What?"

"Do you not have feelings for me because you like Derek?"

"How, how d-" I start, but Julian cuts me off.

"I saw the way your face lit up when you saw him. You really like him, and I can't blame you."

"Yeah. I-I do. I do like him."

"How long have you liked him?" Julian asks.

"For years. Basically since the moment I saw him."

"So yeah. You're feelings for Derek are too strong to fall for anyone else then, right?"

"I guess so. It's nothing against you, Julian. You're a great guy and I feel like I've said that a lot, and I mean it. I just don't know what it would be like for me and you to date," I state.

"I actually kind of agree. Since I've lose feelings for you, I feel like us dating would be a little weird. I would love if we stayed as friends though. Anyways, back to Derek. It makes sense that your feelings being as strong as they are for him blocks you from liking other people. Derek raised your standards, correct?"

I nod at him. "Yeah. I really fucking like him. He's so beautiful and he's so sweet to me now."

"That's nice."

"Thanks."

"No problem. I'm glad we've got that all cleared up, and now we can go back to being friends."

"Yeah. Thanks for being so understanding, Julian, I really appreciate it. You have no idea how much I was stressing about this over the last few days. I don't like having to give this kind of news to people, so thanks for making this easy," I tell him.

"Again, no problem. I understand that whole stressing about other people's feelings, but you have to put your own feelings first. Don't overthink it either, just go in and be honest. That's basically exactly what you did, and you didn't make me feel bad. Thanks for not being rude, by the way. I'm glad you didn't just say something like 'Julian I dislike you and nothing will ever happen between us so stop thinking about it.'"

I smile at him again. "Thanks for losing feelings for me, I appreciate that too."

"No problem. I have a strong will, so I forced myself to do it. And having to yell at all my family members about you and me not being together was kind of funny in a way."

"Yeah. It was awkward though."

"Sorry about that, Adrian. Anyways, it's basically dinner time, and I assume that you have plans with Derek?" he asks, still smiling at me. I'm very thankful for his calmness.

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"I'm smart, Adrian. Between you and me, Derek is gay and you have a massive chance with him," Julian states, beginning to stand up.

I ponder it for a moment before standing up as well. "Thanks, Julian."

"No problem. Thanks for being honest. I'll see you around."

"Yeah. See you later."

I leave and go to Derek's room, where he said he ordered Chinese food. He said it's good no matter the occasion, happy or sad, and it doesn't matter if I'm in a bad mood after talking to Julian, I'll still want Chinese food. I agree with that, Chinese food is on another level of good.

I knock on his door, and pretty much immediately, he opens it and smiles at me before letting me in.

"How did it go?" he asks.

I take a deep breath. "It was actually really smooth. He was totally cool about it. I just told him straight up that I don't have feelings for him. He told me he lost feelings for me pretty quickly after I told him I just wanted to be friends with him. I still feel bad for him though."

"Eh, you had to do it some point, better to do it early before he actually gets super attached. You did the right thing, Adrian, and I'm proud of you," Derek states. I might be blushing.

"Thanks," I smile at him.

"Anyways, here's all the Chinese food I ordered. I ordered way too much so we can have leftovers after the game tomorrow if you want," Derek suggests, pointing at all the takeout boxes. There are about 20.

"Damn, we might be eating this for the next week to be honest," I laugh.

"Yeah, but that just means spending less over the week, and that's a dub in my book."

"Yeah. That is a good thing for sure."

"So Julian was alright with it?" he asks and I nod.

"Yeah. He was. He was really nice about it too, he said he still wants to be friends with me, I agree with that, because I want to be friends with him as well. I think just having him as a friend is good enough, I don't need to date him to be happy."

"But you are happy, right?" Derek asks and I look at him kind of confused.

"Why?"

"Because I just want to make sure you're doing fine. I understand that you went through a lot of shit at that football camp, and I just want to make sure that things are getting better."

"Yeah, things are getting way better. You're helping a lot with it, thanks for being there for me. I really appreciate it because I needed someone to talk to, and you stepped in and were so quick to be that for me," I tell Derek.

"I'm glad I could help you. And we're in a lot of the same classes, so we can study together as well. And we can eat all this Chinese food at the same time."

"Yeah. This is good. You ready for the game tomorrow?" I ask.

"For sure. We'll play well, no doubt. Sorry about getting mad at you for the first game, I was being a bitch for no reason."

"I actually didn't care as much about that as I did about you glaring at me because I knew you were gay because you actually had a valid reason to be frustrated with me after the first game of the season. You're a competitive guy, I wasn't that surprised that you were upset," I state.

"Thanks. You're competitive too, I think it just kind of concerned me how nonchalant you were walking off the field after multiple defensive breakdowns. But since then, you've been great, and the two of us are playing very well together. I'm glad we've made up and we're cool again because our part of the field is important to defend well."

"Yeah. But now we're not really gonna be the most consistent unit on the team. Cam and Aaron have been unstoppable so far, they've been locked in since week 1," I point out.

"Yeah. Oh, by the way, I went out and got you a pink lemonade, I know how much you like those," Derek says, walking over to DeShaun's mini fridge and taking a pink lemonade out. He hands it to me and I might actually be staring at him in awe.

"Damn. Thanks, Derek. How much did this cost you? I'll pay you back if you-" I'm cut off by Derek.

"No, don't pay me back, Adrian, this is a gift."

I smile at him. "Thanks. I really appreciate it, man."

"No problem, Adrian. I just want you to be okay."

Me and Derek continue to talk all evening while eating only about a third of the Chinese food he ordered, which according to him, was planned. He didn't want to actually eat all of it tonight. There's kind of no way we would be able to eat it all anyways, so I guess it was a good plan. We'll just eat together tomorrow night again after the game, and we can just keep talking.

I'm falling for Derek, there's absolutely no doubt about that. Everything about him makes me want him so much.

He's so fucking sweet to me and no one other than my parents has ever put this kind of effort into spending extra time with me, let alone buying me things that I don't need to pay them back for.

He's funny as hell as well. Even though he's not the same goofball that I fell for in high school, he still is hilarious when he wants to be, even when he's not trying to be, he's still funny.

Obviously, his personality isn't everything that draws me to him, but it's definitely the most important thing. He's still the most majestic person to walk this earth, with fucking towering height and amazing muscles. His arms are so huge and his chest is so amazing. When he's wearing compression shirts, I can see his abs and there are 8 of them.

Another thing that's kind of weird, but it's really hot for some reason, is the fact that he still has some remnants of what definitely used to be a strong Boston accent. Sometimes I forget that he was from Boston until he says the word 'horrible.' He pronounces the o in horrible as an a, so it actually sounds like he's saying 'harrible.' I don't know how that makes him hotter, but I like the accent and I really like his voice.

Very soon it's gonna be awkward to hang out with Derek. I'm gonna be staring at him with heart eyes and he's gonna notice.

Hopefully I can control that.

Derek's POV

The next day...

Today is our fourth game, and I think we're more locked in than we have been all season. Our defense played crazy in practice all week, our offense is still doing as well as they have been playing all year, and we're not even playing a good team. We're just playing San Diego State, who is an 1-2 team, so we're just gonna have to play a clean game and we'll win.

"Remember what I told all of you guys in practice, guard the air game well. Their quarterback is crazy good. We haven't played a quarterback this good yet. On offense, do whatever you need to do to score a touchdown. Their defense is pretty terrible from the tap we've seen so far, so just do anything. Make sure to just have blockers available on run plays, and make sure to get open on pass plays. Don't make big mistakes, because they could cost us," Coach Nelson tells us.

We all run onto the field after he's done talking to us, and me and Adrian go up to midfield and wait for San Diego State's players to come up as well, for the coin toss.

"You ready?" I ask and Adrian nods.

"Yeah. I'm surprised I'm not still in a food coma from all the Chinese food," he answers.

I smile and contain my laughter as I try to stay looking professional. "Same, honestly. And we still have so much food left."

"Yeah. Devin is out with Alicia tonight, another double date with Cameron and Aaron. They figured out the TV, we can eat in my room and watch TV tonight," he states and I nod.

"Great. That sounds like a plan."

"Yup."

The referee finally shows up and flips the coin, with us winning and deferring the opening kickoff, meaning the defense will be on the field for the first drive of the game. If we have to focus on the air game, that means me and Adrian are going to be in for a long night. We're gonna have to be running around and batting down passes. I think we'll be fine though, we were in sync all of this week's practices.

The kickoff is great, and they have to start all the way at their own 15 yard line, which is bad. They should want to be starting at at least their own 25 yard line, so they have a long field ahead of them.

On their first play, just like Coach Nelson told us to, we correctly predicted a pass play, and Jax defended the pass perfectly, not allowing the receiver to even see where the ball was. Our cornerback on that side of the field, Marcus, is a better cornerback than Dominique was in high school, but Dominique is still getting plenty of playing time.

The rest of the drive is completely pointless, and they have to punt after picking up 2 total yards. Our pass defense, like it was all week in practice, was absolutely elite. The only yards they picked up were on a run play, which we also defended well.

The offense gets on the field after the punt, driving down extremely quickly and scoring a touchdown to put us up 7-0 early.

Our next defensive drive goes the same as the first one, with us not giving up a single yard in the air, and the run defense finally locking in. We pretty much have one good defensive lineman, Corey, and Devin, and they are basically the only two great players in our front 7. Our secondary is great, with me, Adrian, Jax, and Marcus.

We end up winning the game by 21, with a final score of 35-14. One of their touchdowns was on a punt return touchdown and another was on a run heavy drive. Like I said, our run defense is just alright. They do need to lock in if we seriously want a chance to get into the playoffs, which is already unlikely with our week 1 loss.

Me and Adrian both got one interception, completely sealing off our side of the field. We allowed no receptions by the receivers that were on our side of the field. Our chemistry is damn near at an all time high right now, it's kind of crazy. When we watch tape next week, me and Adrian are gonna look absolutely fucking elite. That's basically what we are right now.

"Great job out there. I'm blown away by the improvements made on defense, you guys did great. You guys really did defend the air well. I'm very happy about this, and I hope you guys can make even more improvements," Coach Nelson says once we're all done showering.

I dap up everyone and go to sit down with Adrian who's talking to Devin and Cameron.

"Hey guys," I greet them, taking a seat next to Adrian.

"Hey, Derek. You ready to go?" Adrian asks.

"Yeah. Any time is fine with me," I answer.

"K. Let's go now."

We say bye to Cameron and Devin, who are basically just sitting there waiting for Aaron to finish getting dressed and then the three of them will be gone. It's pretty cool that the three of them and Alicia go on double dates with each other. It's really cute and I feel like any relationship that I might have in the future should be like there's. They're just so healthy and sweet to each other. I'll see Aaron and Cam just walking around campus sometimes just holding each other's hands and I don't even try to get involved, I just let them do what they're doing.

When me and Adrian get back to the dorms, we go straight to his room, turning on the TV and scrolling through a hell of a lot of channels before settling on another football game, which yeah, might seem boring, but football doesn't get boring for us.

"I'm thinking about getting a haircut soon, my hair is getting kind of long," I tell Adrian.

He looks up at my hair, and I can see the gears turning in his head, thinking about what I should do. "Why are you asking me?" he kind of laughs.

"I don't know. I feel like you know what would look the best. Don't ask me why I think that."

"Derek, I don't have hair that looks anything like yours. You have curly ass hair, I have pretty straight hair. But if you really do want an answer from me, I think what you have going on right now looks really good. If you really want a haircut, maybe just shorten it a little bit, because I don't think there's much you really have to change," he states.

"Thanks. Your hair is great as well, just thought I'd put that out there."

"Thanks. I don't know if you remember, but I went through like 5 phases of hair and now I finally found something I like. I don't even want to think about that horrible perm I got. I got the perm and just let it stay as a fro."

"I kind of remember that. That didn't look that bad, by the way, it was still alright. There are people that wouldn't look good in that, trust me," I point out.

"Like who?" he questions.

"Well, to start, me, but also Jax, I can't really see him with any hair other than what he has right now. Cam as well. He already has pretty fucking curly hair, but if it was all the way around his head, it wouldn't look right."

"Yeah. I agree with Jax, I think he found a haircut and he should stick with that one, he shouldn't be trying to change that," Adrian agrees.

"Yeah. So, I'll just get my hair cut a little bit, make sure that most of it stays the same. Thanks for deciding my haircut," I joke.

"I didn't really decide your haircut. You just look good with it, I don't think you need to change it."

"I was joking," I laugh. "But still, thanks."

"No problem."

Me and Adrian keep eating, watching football, and talking to each other until Devin comes back. I really love spending time with Adrian. He's such a fun person and I can't believe that people are just deciding to be complete dicks to him. Even though he went through all of that shit, he still has a smile on his face all the time. He's staying so positive and I'm glad I can be there for him.

A/N: The relationship is developing. This slow burn is finally getting somewhere, and I'm so excited to write the next couple of chapters. They are going to be awesome, and if you still dislike Derek, all of that will go away in a heartbeat once you're done reading the next 3 chapters. To be honest, the two of them might end up being my favorite couple once this book is finished. Cam and Aaron were great, and they're still currently my favorite, but Derek and Adrian could pass that up. Thanks for reading!!!