All right, but only cuz I like your poetry :)

Things you'll need to know before you can understand this story:

1. As I've mentioned elsewhere on the site, I skipped 2 grades, so I'm a 15-yr-old rising senior.

2. This tends to skew people's perceptions of my age/maturity in weird ways - either they think I'm older than I am, or much less mature than I (believe I) am. They're both kind of annoying.

3. In my friend group, there are two sisters, one going into college next year, one going into 7th grade. I'll call them Charlotte and Emily, respectively (no, there's not a third sister).

OK. So that's the background. About a year or so ago, it came out in a game of truth or dare at Charlotte's birthday party that I had a thing for the younger sister, Emily. This was not a good idea. Charlotte kinda freaked out, because I'd been in high school for the past 2 years with her, so she perceived me and Emily as being in 2 very distinct age groups that shouldn't inter-date or whatever. At that point Emily also said she didn't reciprocate, but might if she was older / I was younger.

Fast forward about a month-- Emily's been flirting with me pretty obviously in PE (the one class we have together) for a while, and as we walk upstairs she pulls me aside briefly to say that she does, in fact, like me. Whoa.

After some emails, we decide to start hanging out at lunch, but not tell any of our friend group about us. This goes swimmingly for a couple weeks. Then mostly out of the blue I get an email saying basically, "I can't deal with the thought of you going to college so soon, our relationship has an expiration date, we should break up." So that's the end of that.

But wait, there's more: we flirt on and off for a while, and around early May I text her (I know, I know, it's just crazy difficult to get alone time with her, especially now that Charlotte is actively anti-me being with her) my view on the college thing, which is that me leaving for college isn't for over a year, so we should be together while we can. She (surprisingly, wonderfully) agrees. But we also decide to wait a month before we even talk about telling the group or anyone else about us.

So for that month, we eat lunch together about once a week, occasionally joined by Charlotte and one of our other friends, both of whom I think suspect us. (Actually at this point I think a lot of our friend group have suspicions, especially because some have found out about our past relationship by this point.) But then around the end of school, I mention that it's been a month, and ask what she's thinking about telling people. She says that she feels like there isn't really that much to tell people about, which I blame on the fact that we've been trying to be secretive. But she blames it on our lack of similarity: "There's nothing for us to talk about, we don't have similar interests," so we kind of stop hanging out. Oh, crucial info I missed - we originally connected over a discussion of our core values, but didn't really get to know each other all that much before we started "dating" or whatever it was, so this was new.

But as I understand it, we're still (no idea what to call this so I'll just go with) "dating," just still secretively and somewhat less serious than before. Oh, crucial info I missed - we originally connected over a discussion of our core values, but didn't really get to know each other all that much before we started "dating" or whatever it was, so this was new. But still, every once in a while we text somewhat flirtatiously, and we hang out with the group occasionally.

And that's about how things stand. I've been meaning to ask her if she thinks we'll ever tell the group about us, but I've been putting it off because I'm afraid she'll say no, in which case I might feel like we should break up. I was really lonely when I wasn't with her, and I'm not looking forward to going back to that.

It felt good to type this all out. Being so secretive about it and not telling my best friends was kinda taking a toll on me, I think. Don't try to deal with stuff on your own, kids. No man is an island.

Anyway, if anyone reading has advice, please, hit me with it. I'm not really sure where to go from here.

(Just saw nowaypablo and OftenBen's admonitions to tell the story - here it is, guys. Tagging to make sure you see it.)

P.S. IRL friends that may be reading this (you know who you are) - I'm trusting you not to say anything. Seriously.