Friendly Dating 2 - Ethan

Chapter 9 - Just Like Neighbours

"What are you doing?" Kira is giving me a wary look as if I've just tried to kiss her.

For the record, I haven't. I've been thinking about it a gazillion times since I saw her wrestling her way out of the bushes at the bridge, but I haven't tried, not even once. Friggin' impressive self-control on my part because, seriously, this girl's lips were made to be kissed.

By me! Only by me!

"I'm walking you home," I enlighten her about the mind-blowing activity currently happening. What the hell is her story? We've come down to the footpath, and instead of walking down it to the road like a normal person, she is standing still, looking at me expectantly. At least, her look was expectant; now she's just frowning. I'm already carrying a school bag over each shoulder and have the hockey stick in my hand. Did she want me to carry her too?

"You can't walk me home!" she exclaims as if I've suggested running naked in the sprinklers again. We did that when we were small. Okay, I might've been the only one running through the sprinklers naked, and Kira and Deli were mostly just running away from me.

What can I say? I like being naked, being one with nature. One would think that Kicks would understand that since she's always trying to make herself physically one with nature, but she is extremely anti-naked for some reason.

"Why not?"

"Then everybody will know."

"Know what?" I ask, looking over my shoulder at the absolutely nobody around us. What's there to know?

"That we met in the forest."

"And that's a problem because...?"

"We can't be seen together."

My mouth is hanging open now, placing me in danger of swallowing some bugs, but I cannot help it. What is this chick on about now?

"We literally live next door to each other; we are often seen together."

"No, we're not. I'm seen with Dell, and you're just there too sometimes."

"Kicks?"

"Yes?"

"Did you hit your head when we fell?" I step closer to her and use my fingers to see if I can feel a bump under her hair. Of course, she does what she always does when I come within two feet of her. She dives, ducks and dodges, and I have to grab her and hold her in place with one arm to feel her head with the other hand, careful not to hit her with the hockey stick in the scuffle.

"Stop it! Get off me, you big oaf!" she shouts, and if I had a coin for the number of times she's said that to me in the 12 years I've known her, I would be a millionaire right now.

"If you're really not going to go swim at the waterfall and absolutely have to go home now, at least take the shortcut route through that empty yard and the swamp behind our houses."

I know which route she means. It has some obstacles, like climbing through a barbed wire fence at the beginning and over our back wall at the end, which means that Kira only uses that route if I'm with her to help her. She's rather small in stature, and though she'll get through the fence in the empty lot just fine, she has a very hard time getting over the wall and has to go a long way around to get to their front gate anyway. When she's walking alone, she always just follows the road.

I don't know how I'm supposed to feel right now. She really doesn't want to be seen with me, and I honestly don't get why. Yeah, I know people like to gossip about me and girls, but this is Kira; she's practically family. We're often in each other's vicinity, and she's wrong; Dell isn't always with us. I'm starting to think she has selective memory.