That moment

I am sitting back in my chair. Looking down at the assignment I just didn’t want to do. I sigh, tapping my pencil against the desk impatiently and looked around the room. Eye contact, with him. I smile and he smiles back. I wonder if he’s thinking about our conversation in science class too. I look back down. Across the room girls are giggling loudly. So loudly I want to scream “Don’t you have something better to do?”
“Hey!” I hear my name called and I look around to see who had said it. It was him.
“Yeah?” I call casually, wondering why he was so especially wiggly.
And then he says it. You know, the big question, the question I had wanted to hear him say forever.
“Will you go out with me?” just like that. All in a blur, so fast I felt like time had sped up and left me behind. So fast I felt my breath catch in my throat. And then there was silence. Complete silence. The girls from the other side of the room had stopped giggling, all the pencils around the room had stopped moving, the teacher even stopped his typing. Everyone was staring at me. I felt like saying “What?” I felt like I was missing something.
My mouth opens and no words fall out. So they start talking for me. Those girls that were giggling earlier. “Say yes, say yes…” or “Say no, your too good for him,” they are loosing me in their words I don’t want to hear. I find myself shaking my head, trying to clear my thoughts. I look into his eyes, his beautiful brown eyes I always get lost in. The girls are talking louder. I feel the pressure, suffocating me. I close my eyes for a second.
“Please,” he murmurs in that quiet voice. I was hurting him. He could not hear the girls, all he could hear was my silence and it was hurting him. And that was the last thing I wanted to do, I couldn’t hurt him. I open my mouth, the answer was simple. So logical it felt like a waste of breath to answer. My lips form the y, the e and then they freeze. I Was suddenly immobilized with fear. What if it was a joke? What if I wasn’t good enough? What if I wasn’t ready? What if I hurt him? The fear was bubbling inside of me, bringing tears to my eyes, tears that did not fall, that I swallowed.
The last question stopped me. What if I hurt him? I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t let that happen. I was too weak and he deserved better. I looked into his eyes again. Pleading, longing, pain I had already brought him by waiting. I wanted to crawl under a rock.
“No,” when the words hit the silence, I was just as shocked as he was. And I was scared. Scared he would leave my life forever. Scared that I hurt him worse than I had ever wanted to.
And I saw his pain and it hurt me. I was scared of his pain, scared of what it would do to him. My greatest fear in this huge world had just been shoved in my face. I had hurt him. And the world was crashing down upon me.