Accidentally on Purpose

Bonus Chapter #3

Jonah Gibbs had accepted the fact that he maybepossiblyprobably had a crush on Hannah Taylors.

It was a weird feeling, liking somebody, and he'd never really experienced that before so he didn't even actually know for sure that this was really falling in lo—falling in like with a girl. The last time he'd had a crush on someone was in kindergarten, but we all could agree that kindergarten love didn't really count (he didn't even remember her name) or maybe when he watched that one movie Clara—his sister—forced him to watch with that wasn't too bad called Begin Again or something about a girl and a boy who sing and whatever and the girl was pretty and he kind of liked her, but we all could agree again that celebrity crush was a whole different thing (he didn't even remember the actress' name).

But Jonah felt nervous when he recited the wedding vow he'd prepared—his hands were trembling but he hid it pretty well—and he wanted to barf all over himself because he knew his vow was so damn cheesy and he only realized just then that he'd actually turned into a huge ball of cheese ever since he met Hannah. First that proposal and then this.

He breathed in relief when he finished his vow, and he didn't even dare look at Hannah or at their teacher, but he did see Hannah's hand balling up the paper she'd brought just before she said her own vow.

Jonah bit his lip.

Something changed after that. That was when he realized what it meant when his heart skipped a beat.

-

They were going to have a honeymoon in Paris and Bali (it was supposed to be all over the world for six months but then she got pregnant) and he laughed out loud for the first time after seeing how red her face got while talking about their supposed marriage.

That felt good.

-

They kept having fake dates at the place he worked at—the one her family owned—and they did these twenty questions because they had to get to know each other better. For the project.

But Jonah found it enjoyable, sitting down in front of each other and asking questions about each other. He was a bit scared to share little parts of him, but he didn't regret doing so. He hadn't felt so not-lonely in such a long time and he was glad for that. He also didn't mind hearing her laugh.

Or watching every time her face lit up when he made a new kind of caffeinated drink for her. He memorized that look on her face somewhere in his head, and she never saw it but it made him smile to himself, too.

-

They asked each other about their biggest fears and Jonah had this urge somewhere in his chest to just blurt out everything that he'd been hiding to himself, but he didn't want to scare Hannah away so he simply said that his biggest fear was losing anything.

She told him that hers was being forgotten and he wanted to say but how could anybody forget someone as unforgettable as you but then he realized that that was too cheesy where did he get that from anyway.

She'd gotten her heart broken before and he had too, when he had to leave the people he'd called friends over and over again until he stopped bothering to care, and he wondered to himself if she would think of him as weak if she knew that.

The only thing that he knew right now was that he considered Hannah a friend, and it scared him to know that he could leave her anytime soon just like he'd left all of the friends he'd made around the world. Literally around the world.

Then he had to answer a few questions from Mr. Herberg about relationships and decisions and he decided to honestly answer that, yes, he could probably fall in love with Hannah Taylors somewhere in the future. He might not, but there was a chance that he would.