Read the Author's Note at the bottom, it's important.

Marcus's POV

Bianca and I spent the rest of the day chatting and getting to know each other better. I learned that Bianca's favorite book series is Harry Potter, that she loves clothes designing, and that she's actually really smart behind the outside cliché "popular girl" shell.

I told her more about myself also. About my dad and some of his inventions, about some of the past schools I've been to.

By the end of the day, I felt like I knew her a lot better, and I realized she was a very deep person underneath it all. Before, I liked her because of how she looked. Then, I didn't like her. She was mean to me, mean to other people, and generally rude. Now, I realized that there were many layers involved. Bianca told me about her brother, and how him kind of leaving her life caused a change in her.

At around 5, there was a lull in the conversation.  We sat there in silence for a few minutes, when suddenly I noticed something.

"I can't hear the rain anymore," I told Bianca.

"You're right!"  She got up and went to the door. When she pulled back the flap, the smell of fresh air entered the tent along with a warm breeze. I sighed.

"It's so peaceful out here," I commented.

Bianca nodded and came back to sit by me.

"You know, Marcus?" she said. "You're a pretty cool guy." We sat like that in silence, looking out at the sunset, until it got dark and we closed the tent flap and went to sleep.

Bianca's POV

The next morning I woke up to the sound of birds chirping. Marcus was sitting is next to me, changing the ice on his foot.

"Morning sleepy head," he said.

"Hey," I replied. "How's the foot?"

"Doing better, but it's not healed completely yet. I think I could maybe walk, or at least swim, seeing as it would be less weight on it."

"Swim? Maybe," I replied. Then I got up. "I'll get breakfast." I walked outside. It was a beautiful day. I walked into the woods and gathered berries, careful to get only the ones that I knew we'd eaten before.

"Did you get any of those purple ones I like?" Marcus asked as I entered the tent.

"As a matter of fact, yes I did," I informed him, putting his bag of berries by him.

"Awesome." He began wolfing down berries like he was starving.

"Whoa, calm down!" I exclaimed, wiping berry juice off his chin.

"Sorry, I was hungry," he said sheepishly.

I laughed at his fake ashamed expression. He huffed at me, but smiled a few seconds later.

Later that day, I helped Marcus walk down to the creek. Neither of us had a swimsuit, but we did both have an extra pair of clothes to change into, so we decided we could just swim in our clothes.

Marcus got in first.

"How does it feel?" I asked.

"Good, actually. I was expecting it to be a lot colder."

I felt the water myself, and realized that is was pretty warm. It wasn't long before we were both completely in and swimming around.

After a few hours of swimming, Marcus went under and didn't come up.

"Marcus?" I called. "Marcus!"

I dove under, frantically searching. I found him fairly quickly, and managed to drag him out of the water. Quickly I felt to see if he was breathing and found he wasn't.

"Oh god. Oh god, Marcus." Then I remembered something I'd learned in swimming lessons years ago. Fumbling, I pinched his nose and leaned in. I put my lips to his and exhaled into his mouth. I took a breath, and exhaled into his mouth. After doing this a few times, I listened to see if he was breathing. He wasn't, so I went back to breathing for him.

I repeated the process several more times, until finally I felt his chest moving up and down. He coughed, and water spewed out of his lungs. Once a few minutes of that had gone by, he stopped and looked up at me.

"Bianca?"

"Marcus, thank god you're ok. You nearly died! You stopped breathing!" I couldn't stop myself from crying with relief.

"Yeah, well thanks for saving me," he croaked.

"I was so worried," I told him. "If I hadn't known what to do, you would have been dead."

Marcus smiled up at me.

"Well, thanks to you, I'm alive. I'm here. In fact, I think you deserve some kind of reward for that."

I looked at him, confused.

"Reward? What kind of-"

Before I could finish my sentence, he reached up with his good arm, wrapped it around my neck and pulled my lips to his, kissing me.

At first I didn't know what to think, what to feel. The kiss was so overwhelming it overloaded my senses, but then I realized I didn't mind the kiss, didn't care that it was with Marcus, and that I was kissing back.

That's when my feelings for him became truly recognized for what they were.

When Marcus pulled away, he was smiling so happily he looked like a kid on Christmas. I'm sure a similar expression was on my face as well.

"Bianca," Marcus said, "I really like you."

"Marcus," I replied, still slightly stunned, "I really like you too."

Author's Note:

Hey everybody! This is to let you all know that I need to be motivated to update this story, so I'm going to set a goal for myself: I am going to update this every Sunday if I can, and if I can't it's because I actually, truly, can not update, not just because I'm unmotivated. So, updates every Sunday from now on. Bye!