You Are the Shell to My Tortoise | ✓

Of Confessions and Obliviousness (5K Reads!)

AN: I HIT 5K READS GUYS. Thank you so much for reading! Here's a celebratory short! It's Melissa-centric, so obviously silliness comes with the package. Hope you enjoy it!

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in which Derek learns Melissa is actually pretty popular, and he should probably step his game up.

"Hi, Melissa."

Melissa looked up from the bottle she was filling up at the watercooler near the soccer field. She had just finished playing a game with some of the guys and her legs were exhausted.

Before her stood a pretty boy who she was sure was from her literature class. She remembered him for getting up during the Ariel-Carrie situation the other day and moving his things to another table much further away from the ridiculous confrontation. The constant look of consternation on his face during the whole thing was hilarious. If she hadn't been so caught up in the drama stirred by the two main players, Melissa was certain she would have been busy laughing at him instead.

"Hey," she said, barely making eye contact with him for a second before dipping her head to check on her bottle.

It was full, so she removed it.

When she tilted the mouth of her bottle to her lips, Melissa almost did a double take at the way he was repeatedly shuffling his weight from one foot to another.

Apart from his gaze that was frantically darting everywhere, he kept brushing his floppy brown hair out of his dark brown eyes with one hand. He looked totally jittery.

Melissa wasn't a teacher, so clearly there was no reason for him to be behaving in that manner.

It was evident that if she waited for him to speak first, she would never get to know what he wanted to say.

"What's up?" she said, after guzzling half the bottle and letting out a satisfactory sigh.

"I have to tell you something," he said, rushing out the sentence so that the words clumped together.

"O...kay," she said, eyeing him suspiciously. "What is it?"

"I – I know this might seem sudden, or even weird, but I've been wanting to tell you this for a while now—and I hope that no matter what you answer, it won't make things awkward," he babbled, still looking anywhere but at her face.

"It won't," she assured him, mostly because she had a feeling that if she didn't, she would be in for a five-minute speech consisting of his roundabout manner of tackling the mysterious topic he wanted to broach. "Tell me."

"I've always admired how sporty but laidback you are. You're not afraid to express yourself, even when you're being reprimanded by the teachers. I love how approachable and friendly you are," he said, taking a deep breath in between each sentence.

"Hey, thanks!" she said, grinning broadly. "That's nice of you to say!"

Getting compliments always made her day better. It almost made her forget how much homework Mrs. Henderson assigned them just that morning. It was a pity that Derek wasn't here to hear the compliments that were being lavished on her—he would be absolutely envious.

Melissa longed to rub it in his face. This was a lovely mood booster, especially after losing to the opposing team today.

"Would you consider going out with me?"

"What?" she blurted out.

The tone of this conversation had gone in a completely different direction so quickly.