Friendly Dating - Kira

Chapter 13 - This Thing Called a Relationship

"Stop running!"

"Stop chasing me!"

"I'll stop chasing you if you stop running!"

"Well, obviously!" I say, stopping to point out to Ethan just how flawed his logic is... as usual. He almost runs me over when I turn around, but he prevents the collision from being fatal by picking me up and running a few steps with me until he's finally able to stop... For a second, I was a little afraid that he was going to head for the goalposts to score a try with me.

"Why did you stop?" he asks, his face mere inches away from mine.

"To illustrate a point."

"Good job," he laughs, nuzzling my neck, freaking me out and reminding me why I was running in the first place.

"Gross! You're so gross! If you were any grosser... people would start calling you... Ethan!"

I shriek when he tilts me over backwards in a heart-stopping dip before pulling me against his chest again. He finally puts me down, and I hastily take a step away from him, feeling a little dizzy and disoriented. There are way too many people looking at us, probably wondering what is going on between Ethan and his sister's dorky friend.

I'm used to arguing with Ethan, sharing many life events with him, and having him be a part (unwanted) of many of my daily activities, but I'm not used to being manhandled by him. We don't hug, we don't hold hands, and we certainly never kiss, not even on Christmas or birthdays.

Well, maybe a peck on the cheek.

He does sometimes do me the honour of letting me smell his armpits or dumping his dirty laundry on my head... or picking me up to toss me off the bridge, but this picking me up and nuzzling thing is all new! Is it really required? He has managed to transfer a lot of his sweat and rugby-induced grime to me; my white polo shirt is now covered in stains.

That might have been his goal, which makes it less strange.

"Now I need a shower," I grumble.

"I'm in."

"Shut up," I laugh, trying to smell my shirt... I shouldn't have done that! It smells funky!

We beat St Albany's! I know because the Corbin spectators were beside themselves with joy, and a couple of fights broke out because the ones from the visiting school weren't.

Marshall Gibbs got a yellow card from the referee – Delia assured me that it wasn't a shopping voucher - before the second half officially started because a few people tried to force-feed some video proof of his crimes to the referee, and he finally had to do his job properly.

There were some angry comments around me that it should've been a red card, but the result was that St Albany's players backed off a little bit more (not a lot), and Ethan finally got to play the game. He scored two of the second-half tries, which Lurch neatly converted by kicking the ball over the horizontal bar and nicely between the two vertical ones. Apparently, he is a good convertor (Dell laughed at the term when I used it) and hardly ever misses.

There were no more outside-of-play attempts to make Ethan part of the rugby field ecosystem, and he survived the match. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because I threatened that awful guy with fudge.

I'm not sure what the score was because I only kept track of Ethan's tries. I think there were more on both sides and a few things Simon called dropped goals which involved players randomly kicking the ball over the goalposts. I don't really care about the details. Ethan survived, he isn't bleeding too much, and his team won an important game.