Play Pretend | ✓

24 | take 4

(Thank you to @apolloshuntress for making the awesome cover up above!)

Dinner was...weird.

Mom and Dad kept asking Tyler questions about his career and gushing about his success (that last part was Mom). They even went as far as to request him for an audience with their favourite actors! God! Okay, I mean, I get their excitement, but really? Geez.

After hurriedly finishing my dinner, and making Tyler finish his fast too, much to Mom's disappointment, we both went up to my room. As soon as I opened the door, Tyler raised his eyebrows at me and grinned.

"So, still very much in love with me, I see."

I glared at him. "Shut up. These Polaroids were taken long back and they reminded me of good times, so I didn't want to take them off. Plus they make my room look better. Get off your high horse, Ty, geez."

I turned away before he could notice my reddened cheeks. I had a big bulletin board in my room filled with pictures of Tyler and my childhood together. I never removed them since I didn't have the heart to. Plus, Tyler had hit the nail on the head when he said I was in love with him. I had been, and I think I still was. I couldn't really get over him, as simple as that.

I never really had this big revelation or realisation one day that I loved Tyler. It just smoothly developed from friendship to love, I don't even know how. All I know is, as I grew up more and more, I started to look at him differently and even today, those feelings buried in my chest, had never really gone. They'd just been, like I said, buried. But now Tyler had slowly broken down any wall I'd built for him, and he was inching his way back into my life.

And my heart.

***************

Tyler went over to the bulletin board and gazed at the pictures. His eyes bore a faraway look, as if he was remembering the times captured in the small white-rimmed photos.

He traced his fingers over a particular photo, of him and I with our arms around each other, dripping wet. I remembered that day crystal clear. We'd watched a video of Holi, the festival of colours in India, where people cover each other in coloured powder and water balloons filled with coloured water. We'd become so excited with the idea that we'd decided to try it out for ourselves. We'd secretly filled loads of balloons with water (no colours, since we didn't have any paint at that time) and splattered each other shamelessly.

Our moms had been furious with us and hadn't let us see each other for five days. But one night, I'd heard a tapping on my window pane and had opened it to find Tyler outside, beckoning me to join him at the park. We'd snuck into the park at midnight and sat on the bench and talked for a long time. Finally I'd started to feel sleepy and then we'd walked back to my house. After dropping me off, Ty had walked back to his, which was only a street down from ours.

Thinking of these good times, I smiled. Ty looked at me. "What are you smiling about?"

"Remember the day of our infamous water balloon fight? And how we got grounded afterwards and you still snuck out to meet me and we hung out at the park at midnight?"

He grinned. "How could I ever forget that? And as a reward for being brave enough to sneak out, you treated me to ice cream the next week after school, when we were finally allowed to meet each other."

I'd forgotten about that one. Damn. Ty remembered more than I gave him credit for.

Suddenly he pointed to another picture. "Remember this?"

I blushed a beetroot red, and this time I couldn't stop him from seeing it. It was the picture. The one picture I'd never be able to forget. The picture of Tyler and I kissing, when we were just five years old.

We'd attended the wedding of a common friend of our mothers'. That was the first wedding we'd ever been to, and we'd been fascinated to say the least. We'd decided to have our own little wedding in my backyard. I'd worn my favourite white lace frock and a white ribbon, while Ty had worn a black shirt and denims, since he didn't have a suit or tux. It was incredibly silly but we'd been five, for god's sake, and hadn't known any better. Our moms, just to humour us, had also played along. We hadn't really gone through with the entire ceremony. I'd just walked down the aisle, aka our garden path, and Ty had given me a cheap plastic ring our moms had bought for the occasion. I'd given him mine and then we'd kissed. It was a very brief, very stupid, and very innocent kiss, but it had been captured on camera nonetheless and it had remained frozen in my memory forever, because it was the only true kiss we'd shared, as stupid and immature as it may sound.

I tried to look away from Tyler and turn around to hide my blush, but he'd seen it, and apparently, he was having none of it. He gripped my shoulders and turned me around. Suddenly he held my chin and tilted my face upwards so I could meet his gaze. His eyes had taken on a deep hue of forest green, with an intensity I'd never noticed before.

"Tell me, do you remember this?"

Screw this. I looked him in the eye, and whispered, "You think I forgot?"

And just like that, as suddenly as that faux wedding we had at five years of age, he closed the gap between us.

But this kiss was nothing like that one. This was longer, more passionate, and more meaningful. This was definitely a kiss.

We kissed like there was no tomorrow. I held onto his arms as he held my face, firmly yet gently. I'd kissed him like this before, on our movie sets, so I knew what it felt like to kiss Tyler Callahan. But this time, I felt something different. I felt what it was like to kiss Ty. My Ty.

And this kiss didn't feel like the usual fireworks or butterflies I felt while kissing him on set. This felt like a warm fireplace. This felt like coming home.

(A/N: and there you have it! Their first real kiss! Tell me, was it as unexpected for you as it was for me! Also, did it make up for my long absence? Leave comments, and be sure to vote! xx)