One of the Boys.

“Who was that, Ezme?” asked Henry from the top of the stairs, one hand tucked in the front pocket of his jeans. His blond hair swept over his flawless, strong-jawed face. He half-smiled at me.
“It was Brendon.” I said, sliding my right hand up the banister as I walked up the stairs to him. He slipped an arm around my waist and we walked back into my room, shutting the door behind us. As soon as the click was heard, I draped my arms around his shoulders and closed my eyes, kissing him softly. He sighed happily into the kiss and kept it a soft one, breaking away before it escalated. I rested my forehead on his.
“Emma.” he breathed. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I parted from him and put my arms by my side.
“I better go, I’ll see you when we go back to school, okay? My dad is dragging me across the country to stay with the family. I’ll text you, though.” he smiled.
“Alright. Merry Christmas.” I beamed and gave his cheek a kiss.
He gave me a quick hug, a kiss on the nose, then left the house quickly. I waited until I heard the sound of his engine drown out into the distance, then slammed my bedroom door and jumped on to the bed, face down.
As much as I love Henry, he can be a little… clingy. I thought that as we were now on winter vacation, I’d see less of him, but it’s quite the opposite. I’d see him every day, for hours on end.
I’m a short-tempered person, so it’s a surprise I haven’t shouted at him yet.
Then again, he is so, so lovely. I’m sure that someone who doesn’t like their independence would be thrilled with having a relationship with Henry.
Me, not so much. I’ve always been quite lonely, so I’m used to having my independence and room to think.
But surely if you’re that head-over-heels with someone, you’d want to be with them 24/7, just holding them and talking about everything, or crashed in front of the TV watching crap, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re with them.
I’ve never felt like that; perhaps I’ve never been in love and this is all a lie.
Then again, as Henry frequently says, ‘I’m not like other girls.’
I’d gathered that in kindergarten, when everyone else was playing with dolls and I had no interest in them whatsoever. I was the one who wanted to get outside and play soccer or tag, just to be able to run around in the fresh (as fresh as Vegas gets) air.
That’s how I met Brendon; he had ADHD and in order to let out some of his hyperactivity he needed to go outside and ware himself out. The teacher wouldn’t let us, I think she was called Miss. Marple, so we were forced to draw with blunt crayons and build crappy robots with Lego.
Which was no interest to either of us. I could just about contain myself, but Brendon had a real problem, tapping his foot loudly and squealing because he had so much energy that it needed to be let out, tapping, clicking and squeal squeal squealing.
Miss. Marple used to shout at him, making him cry because it wasn’t his fault, it was a chemical imbalance, he wasn’t trying to be annoying at all and he didn’t understand why this was happening to him.
So, we sat cross legged in front of the door, not doing anything until she let us out. She finally gave in and we ran outside for what seemed like hours, but was only twenty minutes. He ran around mindlessly, squealing his little five year old heart out in joy. When we had to go back in, for the rest of the day we were the perfect little kids. Miss. Marple let us have our twenty minutes every day, because that way we paid attention and did everything else she asked us to do.
Win, win.
We looked forward to those twenty minutes every day, we started to play tag with each other. I remember wrestling him to the ground once and he hit his head quite hard, so he bawled his eyes out.
“Wemma! You killed my head!” he cried.
He used to have difficulty pronouncing things, and used to call me ‘Wemma’ instead of ‘Emma.’
“I’m sorry Brendon!” I said and bent down onto my scuffed knees, picking him up.
“It weally hurts.”
I lifted up his head harshly and saw a deep cut in the back of his neck. I pulled a tissue out of my pocket, mom always made me pack one because there’s ‘nothing worse than snivelly kids’. I patted at his cut and he moaned in pain. I kissed it once then put him down.
“All better!”
He wiped his eyes. “Weally?”
I nodded. “I kissed it better.”
“Eww, you gave me cooties!” he squealed and ran away quickly. I chased after him and pushed him back onto the grass, one knee on his chest.
“Wemma! Get off of me!”
“No! I don’t have cooties!”
“Yes you do! I’m all scratchy!”
I bent down and kissed his lips once, to prove that I didn’t have cooties.
“Are you scratchy now?”
He blinked a few times, his big brown eyes gleaming. “No… I’m better!” he clapped and pushed me off of him, running off again.
I’d forgotten about that. I guess our first kisses really were with each other.
Our tag time soon escalated into running races, as we were very competitive. Then it was tree climbing; he got stuck once and started crying again, but it was very high and intimidating for someone that small. I remember getting really mad at him because I thought I’d have to tell a teacher, and they’d stop us from going outside.
Luckily, I managed to get up there and help him down.
“Brendon is a cry baby!” I mocked.
“Don’t be mean, Wemma!” he sobbed and rubbed his eyes.
“You’re a girl!”
He cried some more and gripped at his knees, sitting down by the tree. “I hate you!” he shouted.
I sat down next to him and he turned away, but I put a hand on his knee. “I’m sorry Brendon.”
“Mmm.”
I kissed his cheek. “You’re not a cry baby.”
“Weally?”
“Really.” I nodded and he sniffed, giving me a hug. I hugged him back, then we stood up and started running again.
We stopped tree-climbing after that.
I’m not sure he’s even been up a tree since then.
Anyway, for Christmas he got a skate-board, and it all took off from there. It was all about the skate-boarding; I bought myself one with my Christmas money and at every time possible we went skating. Then we found the most magnificent place, called The Skate Park.
All the kids there were a lot older than us, but they were surprisingly nice and helped us better our techniques and introduced us to the tricks.

Brendon cried again when we joined first grade and they wouldn’t let us have our twenty minutes anymore, because we had to learn such sickening things as math and English. We still went to the skate park, but it wasn’t the same.
The teachers got mad at us because we used to hold hands and hug and kiss cheeks, which apparently wasn’t normal for little kids to do. Being the good little kids we were, we stopped it.

Looks like we picked that habit back up.