Joshaya one shots

So Not A Date

Y'all probably won't like the first part. But just bare with it.
________________________________________________________________________________

It wasn't a date. It wasn't. He was just a friend from school. Someone that she met in her art class who she got along with and they decided to hang out one day afterwards. Just a friend. Nothing else. And even if he wasn't, there was no reason for her to feel guilty. She wasn't dating anyone. Least of all, the person that she really wanted to date. So what was the big deal?

She had spent the afternoon convincing her friends that this wasn't a date. That they were imagining the way he looked at her sometimes. She had to indulge in their teasing and cheering as they all decided that it was finally time for her to start getting out there more. But it wasn't like that. Sure, she was a sophomore in college and had never really been on a date before. Not anyway.

Her friends had told her she was crazy for waiting this long. But she wasn't really waiting, she just hadn't met anyone else. Nobody that had really caught her interest the way a certain someone else had. Everyone else in her friend group had already been through girlfriends and boyfriends, lost their virginities or even hooked up with random people at parties.

Then there was Lucas and Riley, who were about as serious as serious got. She and Zay had a current bet going to see how long it took before they were engaged. She was wagering on right after graduation, Zay insisted there was no way Lucas waited that long.

It's not like she had been constantly waiting on her 'special someday' as her friends would put it when they brought it up. In fact, she hadn't thought about it in a while, or at least not consistently. She couldn't even remember the last time she had talked to Joshua Matthew's. On his graduation maybe? The after party perhaps? But she wasn't sure, it had been hard for anyone to talk to him that night while he had his tongue stuck down that red heads throat.

But it had been close to a year since that happened, and Maya tried hard not to think about it. She always knew that her feelings for Josh were more intense than his were for her, and it was hard to be reminded of that whenever she heard about him through the Matthew's family. Apparently that red head was just a momentary fling, and he hadn't really had a serious girlfriend. She didn't care, or at least, she tried hard not to.

"Maya?" She broke out of her thoughts and looked up at her friend. Derick was his name. He was a good guy, and part of her wished she could make herself have romantic feelings for him.

"I'm sorry." She cleared her throat. "I was just caught up in myself." He smiled at her.

"It's okay, every good artist has to be in their head from time to time." She wasn't sure what exactly he meant by that, but she wasn't curious enough to ask him to explain. "I was just talking about the new art exhibit that opened up last weekend. They're apparently having their first public showing on Friday night. I was thinking we could go?"

"Oh yeah, that sounds fun." She gave him a tight lip smile. The place they were at wasn't fancy enough to be considered a date place anyway. It was just a small diner right off campus. The food consisted of burgers. There was nothing romantic about it,  nothing that could possibly make people think they were together.

"What are you planning to do for the project this week? I was thinking of-" Maya tuned out again. She felt bad, Derrick was great, and if it weren't for her friends teasing her and referring to this as a date, then she would have no problem sitting here and talking with him. She wouldn't be in her head like this.

She didn't even know why she couldn't get it out of her head. Normally she wouldn't care what people think, and so what if they thought they were together? It was just Derrick. That was it.