Just Friends

My father raised me after the divorce. Mom just wasn't cut out to be a real mother. She couldn't calm down a child after a bad dream, she didn't know how to cook a dinner without burning it, and she didn't know how to put others' needs before her own. My father learned this a little too late. Two sons and a daughter too late actually. We lived in a small house and for a while, when we were all young, me and my brothers (Jared and Chris) shared a room. It was never a bad thing. We were all about the same age. Jared and Chris were twins, though they did everything they could to look different. I was born about a year later. We had the same friends and liked the same types of things. Sharing a room wasn't bad at all.

Then High School started. Jared and Chris were freshmen when I was still in eigth grade. That's when everything changed. My father decided that skinned knees and football games were not proper for me. Neither was sharing a room with two boys. He started bringing home girl clothes for me. Dresses, skirts, frilly shirts, and shoes that were difinately not sneakers nor boots. I refused to wear them. As much as my father faught, he couldn't win that fight. I used the new garmets as anything but clothes, they became rags for when I got oil all over me, cloths for washing the dishes in, and even a towel for when the dog got out of the bath. Like wearing dresses, he also couldn't stop me from playing football, or hockey, or basketball, or any sport that I desired to play. In fact, I started playing them more often just to spite him. Unfortunately, I was unable to stop him from seperating my bedroom from Jared and Chris's bedroom. While I stayed in my newly-painted-pink room, Jared and Chris packed up and moved to the cellar which was the size of the entire first floor. The move, now that I think back, was for the better. With them two in high school, they didn't want to hang out with me anymore. Neither did their friends. That's when I met Nick.

He was in my grade and I had known him forever. I just never took the time to become friends with him. He lived across the street. We hung out every now and again when we were younger. We hung out for the neighborhood games of flash light tag and the bon fires at our house that everyone in the neighborhood was invited to. We just never hung out, just us. It was always a bunch of people with us. Then one morning we were waiting for the bus to school.

"Want some gum?" he asked as he tried to pull another stick out of the package.

"Sure," I replied grabbing the gum form his hand, "thanks."

"No problem," after a few minutes of silent chewing he said, "Me and some other guys are going to the movies after school. You want to come?"

"Yeah" I said excitedly. This was one of the first times that I was going to hang out with people without having my brothers around. I hung out with people, but they were always my brothers friends. Nick wasn't someone that my brothers ever hung out with.

We met up with Harry, Joe, and Ralphy. All people that I had known forever but no one that I had really hung out with before. None of them seemed to mind that I was there and they all welcomed me right away.

By the end of the night we were joking around and laughing at the stupidest things as we walked home. Harry, Joe, and Ralphy had to split up with us about three blocks from where I lived. Nick and I just kept laughing at stupid jokes that we'd shoot at each other. We were home before we knew it.

Needless to say, we all became friends quickly. Soon enough I didn't need to hang out with my brothers and their friends anymore. Nick, Harry, Joe, Ralphy, and I built a fort in the back yard that summer before high school. It seems kind of dorky, but we got bored. I would sneak out of my bedroom almost every night and sleep out there with them. We even ordered pizza one time and had it delivered to the backyard. Then there was the night that Nick and I hung out without the other guys around. Harry, Joe, and Ralphy all became friends because their parents were all friends. Every summer the three of them would splend a weekend camping together. Nick and I weren't invited so we had out own camp out. We put up a tent in the fort and made smores without actually cooking the marshmallows. We fell asleep. I woke up first and realized that he had his arms wrapped around me. This wasn't strange, we usually woke up really close to each other. All of us, sometimes I woke up and couldn't focus because someones face was so close to mine. What was weird was the feeling I got. It was a warm feeling that made me want to smile forever. I never felt that before. Not around anyone. Was this what it felt like to have a crush? I didn't know what to do so I just laid there as the sun started to peek in the door of the fort. Everything seemed to be a miz of perfection and dissiness. As he woke up he yawmed and rolled over stretching his arms out above him.

"Good morning." he half yawned

"Mornin."

I spent every moment I could just thinking about him or hanging out with him. I suddenly wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to spend every minute I could with him. Thats exactly what I did. For the next two years we became the best of friends. Nick was always the person that I could turn to when something was going wrong. The night my father brought home his first girlfriend since the divorce was during the winter. Snow had just begun to fall and it was only about three or four inches deep. That night I climbed out my window and the tears on my cheeks froze to my skin before I got half way across the road. Nick helped me climb into his bedroom window. He gave me a pair of his boxers and a flannel shirt to sleep in. I slept in his arms again, and it was the most amzing night ever. Just being around him made me feel better.

Then one day it happened. Nick came to me and was talking about another girl. He liked her, but he didn't even know her. Not like he knew me. She was in our grade too. She just moved to our town that year. She was pretty, wore dresses, put on make up, and had her hair pulled back in different styles. Nothing like me. Why would Nick possibly like me anyways? We were just friends and destined to be that way for the rest of our lives.

He talked about her for about a month, but they never went out. Eventually he talked about her less and less until finally it was just a comment every now and again. But he still liked her and he didn't like me. That was all there was to it.

I decided it was best to move on, to stop caring so much. There would be other guys. Not that I wanted there to be.

It was near the end of our senior year, my brothers had just moved to California to start their lives over. At that same time my father told us that he was getting married. It shouldn't have been a surprise. He had been dating her for almost a year, but it was still hard to think that there was going to be another woman in his life. That sounded selfish, I know, but its true. It hurt.

I told Nick right after my father told me. The tears were streaming down my cheeks again and he held me telling me that it was going to be alright. I believed him.

We put in a movie and layed down on his bed. I couldn't help it, about twenty minutes into the movie I turned around and kissed him. That was it. I kissed him and he kissed me. It felt like heaven. We kissed and kissed until it turned into more than just kissing. he unbuttoned my shirt and I pulled his shirt over his head. Undressing each other, we stopped thinking. Nothing mattered anymore, it was just us and the world was gone.

Later that night as he laid behind me breathing deeply with his arms around me, I realized that that was all we'd be, just fiends, and I was strangley okay with that.