Friendly Dating - Kira

Chapter 36 - Contemplating Grossness

So, I spent most of the afternoon lying on my bed, acting like a disturbed girl from a teenage movie, intermittently giggling, hiding my head in a pillow and staring at the ceiling. I am losing my mind!

It's the whole kissing thing!

I've known Ethan for 12 years, and we never kissed each other... not like that. There has always been the obligatory peck on birthdays, but that was it, and for the first seven years of our life together, we would make a big show of wiping off the grossness after the kiss.

Did I ever really think that kissing him was gross? I'm not sure anymore. I thought I did... I definitely don't think so now. I've been going into a flat spin about him randomly kissing me and been doing all kinds of things to try and reset our boundaries, such as preaching at him, running away, hitting him with stuff that is conveniently within reach for the purpose of teaching him not just to kiss me all the time.

And then I go and just randomly kiss him... while he's stirring fudge, no less! That was not only insane and against the rules, but it was also a serious safety risk.

I loved it!

That's where the giggling and wiggling and kicking my feet like a toddler throwing a tantrum on my bed come in. I love kissing Ethan! There, I've admitted it.

I didn't like Cole slobbering all over me on the one date we had. And Liam and I didn't really kiss each other much during our dating project. Twice at the most, I think. He instigated it, and I hung around for it but didn't enjoy it much. I did not hate it; I was just indifferent to it. Those two are the only boys I've ever kissed. I'm not really the kissing kind.

I'm the digging in mud to find bugs and climbing trees (low, easily climbable ones) to peek into nests kind of girl.

While I was rolling around on my bed, trying to make sense of the weirdness going on in my mind, I could hear Ethan and his father arguing in their driveway. They were changing a tyre, taking out the garbage bins or trying to invade a small country; I'm not sure which, but it became heated at intervals. I know that doing any task with Ethan can be a challenge on occasion, as he loves nothing more than to be a pest. Sometimes, the challenging part happens by accident because he is so easily distracted, but more often than not, he deliberately tries to make mundane tasks more fun.

Why am I grinning?!

Ethan and his dad used to be really close, but over the last 18 months, their relationship has been deteriorating bit by bit, and it is not all Ethan's fault. He didn't change much. He's just being who he's always been.

Two years ago, Mr Fletcher's business partner was arrested for tax evasion, embezzlement, and fraud. It nearly destroyed the company, and Mr Fletcher himself was also charged, despite the fact that he was the one who discovered the irregularities and reported his partner. His innocence was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but his reputation suffered, and the construction company he'd built from scratch almost went bankrupt.

Though they keep it lowkey, I know that Daddy has been helping them out a lot financially, something that doesn't sit well with Mr Fletcher. He is not the help-taking kind; he finds it a lot easier to give help to others. Daddy doesn't think anything about helping them out. They were there for us when Mommy died, after all. Our need had been emotional rather than financial, but it was just as great.

The last two years have been sheer hell for Mr Fletcher, but he is slowly rebuilding his good name and regaining the trust of his clients. There's been a definite shift towards success in the last few months, but the ordeal has taken its toll on him. He changed from being a fairly – not extremely, like Daddy, but a little above average - patient man, with a big heart and a great sense of fun, into someone who is rather short-fused and grumpy, always busy, always angry.