Adoring You.

Living in a neighbourhood filled with people from different countries and cultures is exciting. There is the Macedonian family next door on the left, the widowed Polish man next door on the right, the large Italian family that live down the road and, my favourite, the loud and loving Greek family a couple of houses down. Growing up with a Greek best friend has somewhat influenced my life. Greek is now my favourite type of food and I have been exposed to the culture in an incredible way.

Damian Papadakis is my best friend. His family have lived in my neighbourhood for as long as my parents first moved here and had my brother, Seth. They had Damian a couple of months before I was born which means we are in the same grade at high school. He was sixteen turning seventeen in May while I was sixteen turning seventeen in September. The Papadakis’ are the family that my family are closest with. The thing is, Damian had no idea that I thought of him more than a best friend and I know that if I were to reveal my feelings, Mrs Papadakis would not approve, because I am not Greek. It’s even a wonder that she approved of me being Damian’s best friend in the first place. Mrs Papadakis shows that she has no problem with me to my face, but when I leave the house or when Damian comes home she rants. A lot.

Although Damian comes from a heavily cultured Greek family, I don’t see him as a Greek neighbour with a loud mouthed family, I see him as my best friend. The Papadakis’ and my family love each other as if we were related but sometimes the Papadakis’ beliefs and cultures restrict what Damian and I can do which can sometimes cause us to argue about our families and our friendship and no one likes arguing with their best friend. I swear Mrs Papadakis hates me.

“Billie Hart!” a voice pulled me out of my day dream. I blinked profusely and looked around the classroom I was in. All of my classmates were looking at me with a funny look on their faces and the teacher, Mrs Smith, was tapping her foot and staring at me expectantly.

“Next time you want to daydream in my class, Billie, expect a detention.” With that she walked away from my desk and back to the white board where she was writing maths equations.

“Nice going Bill.”

I turned to my right and saw Damian trying to hold in a laugh.

“Shut up Damian,” I laughed, “it’s not my fault the way she teaches maths is completely boring.”

Just then the bell rang signalling home time.

“Are you walking?” asked Damian.

“Duh,” I answered.

Damian and I walked out of the front gate of the school and headed in the direction of our street. All I kept thinking about was when I was going to grow the guts to tell Damian of my feelings towards him. I was scared of rejection. What if he didn’t think of me that way? What if he thought I was totally kidding and laughs it off? Or what if he never wants to be my friend again?

“Billie!” Damian shouted.

“What?”

“You need to stop day dreaming. I was saying that I think we should go to the park for a while.”

“Okay, sure. It’s not like I’m going to go straight home and dive into my homework,” I laughed.

 
Walking to the park didn’t take that long; it was about a five minute walk. When we got there, I looked around and saw that today was a busy day at the park. There were small children running around chasing each other with their parents watching over them, smiling, and also a lovely, old couple sitting on the park bench feeding the pigeons with their small loaf of bread. Damian and I walked over to a soft patch of grass underneath the tree with the most shade.

“Have you ever thought about you and me?” Damian questioned. I looked up at him from and saw that he looked worried. It was as if he was worried or nervous about what my reaction would be. I’ve known Damian for as long as I can remember and not once has he ever looked like this. His glossy green eyes were searching my dull brown ones searching for the answer before it coming out of my mouth.

“Like together? Like as friends? Like as individuals?” I asked, running a hand threw the soft green grass. “I hope you’re not trying to say you want to stop being my friend,” I looked at him, distressed. “You’re not saying that, are you?”

He laughed. “No, I’m not saying that,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, have you ever thought about us as a couple, you know, like together, together?”

Of course I have you Idiot, I’ve been thinking that for the last couple of months I thought.

“Why? Have you?” I asked. I was somewhat scared to find out why he asked.

“Well, recently someone came up to me at school and asked if we were going out and I just started thinking. I mean, we’ve been friends ever since we were born and as cliché as it is, sometime in our life we were bound to get together. I mean, we’re best friends, our families are best friends and sometimes I worry about us falling apart because of how different our families are. My mum hassles me about finding a nice Greek girl and settling down, while your parents don’t care just as long as you’re happy. I know you’re not Greek and I know that my mum probably wouldn’t approve of this but I’m going to try, as hard as I can to make this work. If you haven’t felt anything other than friendship between us, I think I have just embarrassed of myself and I just want to sa-”

I cut him off with a quick peck to the lips. Even within just that second it felt like butterflies were exploding in my stomach and fireworks going off inside my eyelids. I’ve never felt anything like this. We both slowly opened our eyes and he smiled like a Cheshire Cat.

“I’m sorry, that was totally uncalled for,” I apologised profusely.

“Billie, either you were to do that then or I would have done it after my massive speech. Either way, it was going to happen,” he uttered with a laugh.

In spite of this amazing moment of my life, my mobile just had to go off. The shrill ringing filled the quiet atmosphere of the park, completely ruining the moment between Damian and I. I smiled sheepishly before answering my phone.

“Hello?” I asked the caller.

“Billie Hart, do you understand what time it is? You were supposed to be home half an hour ago. Mrs Papadakis is over here nearly in tears because she thinks something has happened to Damian. Get home now!” with that my mother hung up to phone leaving me and my sore ear to start explaining how fast Damian and I needed to run home.

 
“We should go,” Damian snapped. I could tell his attitude completely changed from what he was feeling five minutes ago. His mouth hardened has his eyes were no longer the soft green eyes they were before. It was like he was distancing himself from everything, most of all, from me. He suddenly stood up abruptly and power walked away.

I didn’t understand what was happening. It was like he was in some sort of trance and left me completely alone in the park. I quickly hopped up and ran after him, but he was gone. Obviously he ran. He ran away from me.

After a completely depressing walk home alone, I walked inside my house to find my mother tapping her foot impatiently in the doorway.

“You are grounded for a week. Do you know how worried your father and I were? We thought you ran away or even worse, got kidnapped. Don’t you dare ever do that again!” she yelled. I could tell she was worried due to the frown lines on her forehead and the slight puffiness of her eyes.

“I’m just going to go to my room. I’m not that hungry so don’t worry about dinner for me.” I dragged myself to my bedroom, shut the door then flopped on to my bed.

~♥♥♥♥~

Two days passed and I hadn’t heard from Damian. I checked my phone so regularly, that if I checked it even more, I might have actually broken the phone. I was tired and confused. It wasn’t like he told me he hated me, but he might as well have. I hated being given the cold shoulder. I needed to know what was happening.

I hopped up from my bed, brushed down my hair and cracked my knuckles. I was on a mission and my target was Damian.

“Mum, I’m going out for a couple of minutes,” I yelled and I ran through the front door.

Running to Damian’s house gave me the adrenaline rush I needed, even though he didn’t live that far away. I sprinted up to his front door and knocked about three times. At first I thought Damian might answer the door, but instead it was Mrs Papadakis.

“Mrs Papadakis, I really need to talk to Damian.”

“You always need to talk to my son. You have brainwashed him to no longer believe that if he were to marry a Greek girl, he would be happier than if he were to marry an Australian like you. ” She scoffed in her heavily Greek accent was some sort of anger.

“With all due respect Mrs Papadakis, I think its Damian’s choice to choose who he wants to marry. I’ve known Damian for a long time, and even though he is your son, I pay more attention to what he wants then what you think he wants. He wouldn’t care if he married an Australian, or a Greek girl with the same beliefs as your family, as long as he was happy. You’re his mother; you should only care about whether he is happy and not shove things down his throat.” I’ve never stood up to Mrs Papadakis, let alone and adult that wasn’t related to me, but she needed a wakeup call. She needed to take notice of her son and his happiness.

Not really caring about what Mrs Papadakis had to say, I bolted to Damian’s room and busted through the door.

“Damian Papadakis, you explain to me right now what happened in the park and why you’ve been ignoring me!”

He sat up straight from his bed with confused eyes. It took him a while to actually figure out that I was standing there, fuming.

“I don’t know okay!” he yelled, “You make me so confused and you actually make me feel like myself, like I can stop pretending every time I’m around you. I want to be your best friend, but a part of me wants to be more than that and I’m always afraid to and I can’t admit that to you because I’m scared that you wouldn’t want to be friends with me anymore and that would suck. Plus having my mother on my back doesn’t really help the conversation. She’s always telling me to marry someone Greek, Greek is best. But what if I don’t want to be with a Greek girl, I adore you Billie. I want to be with you Billie.” He started tearing up but, being the stubborn guy he is, he blinked them away

“Of course I don’t want to be friends with you,” I started. He was about to interrupt. “I want to be your best friend plus your girlfriend. Do you think that if I didn’t want to be more that I would have kissed you?”

Damian smiled and stood up from his bed faster than you could say ‘cheese’. He shuffled towards me in a sort of sheepish manner.

“Billie Hart,” he started “Will you do me the honour of being my girlfriend?”

What sort of an idiot would I be if I said no?

“Of course!”

He tackled me into a hug and from the corner of my eye I could see Mrs Papadakis standing in the doorway with a grimace on her face. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like Damian and I being together. I pulled away from Damian and he gave me a funny look. I flicked my eyes over to where Mrs Papadakis was standing and I think Damian got the hint. He walked over to the door of his room and muttered something in Greek to him mum. She made an annoyed grunt and left us by ourselves.

“You’re mum hates me.” I stated.

“No she doesn’t, she just needs to get used to the idea of us being together.”

“Yeah, which will be never. Face it Damian, she would rather you be with a donkey from Greece then be seen with me. I think it’s for the best, if maybe; if we hid this from your family. Just until your mother sees how happy you are. It won’t be for long, maybe like a month.” I think Damian understood what I was trying to say because he slowly nodded his head.

“A month.” He repeated. With that he gave me a loving smile and kissed my forehead.

“You know, I could get used to this.” I stated with a laugh. Damian laughed with me before planting a soft kiss on my lips.

I could definitely get used to this.