ShopFriends or more?
After the movies, someone posts a photo of Mila and Leo with a heart in the class chat. Everyone thinks they know what's going on. The two of them don't know yet.
It was Leo's idea, but he said it like it wasn't. "A few of us are going to the movies Friday. Want to come? Liv too, if she wants." Mila said yes before she could think about it, and then she thought about it for two days.
At the theater, seven of them sat in one row. Leo in the middle, because that's where the space is right, he said. Mila two seats down. After the movie they walked to the bus stop, the others up ahead, Mila and Leo a little behind because they were arguing about the ending. He thought it was cheesy. She thought it was brave. They laughed so loud that John turned around.
On Saturday morning it was in the class group chat. A photo from behind, two people under a streetlight, two names underneath and a heart. Twenty-seven reactions. Liv texted Mila privately: "So?" John texted Leo: "Bro." Mila put her phone face down on her desk and left it there all morning.
On Monday they avoided each other. Not on purpose, or maybe a little. At lunch Leo stood by the hoop and missed, three times in a row. Mila stood by the window with Liv and pretended not to notice.
That evening a message came. Not in the group chat, just to her. "Everyone else seems to know more than we do. I don't know yet. Do you?" Mila read it five times. Then she wrote: "Me neither. Is that bad?" The dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. "No," Leo wrote. "I actually think it's pretty good."
Everyone already had an opinion about Mila and Leo. Do you have to know how you feel about someone just because other people think they know? And was it fair to post that photo?
Two points of view
She likes Leo, she knows that. What kind of liking it is, she wants to figure out herself, not in a chat with twenty-seven reactions.
He made the first move, twice. Once with the movies, once with the message. The second one was harder.
The story does not end here.
You might have seen it differently. That is part of the point.