Dear Isabella,
Hey, it's me, Lucas. I'm your first friend since we were seven and you were new to the neighborhood. Hey . . .
To be honest, why am I writing this to you . . . I should have just . . . whatever.
So, um, hey . . . I . . . I like you. I'm sorry . . . I can't help it. I fell in love with you since you fell from that big old tree near the playground . . . and that was nine years ago.
***
"Bella!" I called her as I was halfway further from the ground, tightly grabbing on the branches as she swung up her feet. I was climbing with her, but I couldn't make it any further by just squeezing my whole body tightly and wrapping my arms and legs to the big trunk, muscling my tiny body up, but kept failing.
"Come on Lucas! Climb higher will you?" she exclaimed as she laughed.
"I . . . I can't! I'm scared!" I cried.
"Oh please, don't be such a wimp," she said as she climbed higher to the other branch. "We can't be kings if we can't climb this tree to the very top! So come on, Lucas!"
"I . . . I can't, I'm tired!"
"You're a boy, you will never get tired!"
"I'm not like any one of them!"
"Too bad, heeya -" she reached your hand to the other branch. As she stepped her one foot on the thin branch without noticing, that branch suddenly broke apart, and her, falling hard to the ground. I heard her scream as she fell, I looked up in a split second as she was falling . . . I saw her fall.
"Bella!" I cried as I jumped back down from a two feet trunk climbing.
"Isabella!" I cried again as I was stumbling my way to see her. I leaned and looked at the fresh dripping blood on her wounded right knee; I screamed with fear.
"Don't worry about me, Lucas. It's just a wound, it kinda hurts a bit but I'm okay," she said. "Welp, I guess we need to go home, the sun is setting," she looked up to the dimming sky, trying her best to move up afterwards.
"No!" I cried as I tried to push her down.
"Hey! I said I'm -"
I completely pushed her down.
"I'll carry you! Like my dad did . . . when . . . I was. . . a baby."
She looked at me in the eyes, seeing my sorrowful look as I looked down on the ground . . . about to cry. She realized I missed having a dad to carry me, and now I was trying to do it to someone else . . . She finally let me carry her.
I carried her on my back on the way home; we were silent during that, but I felt happy and eased somehow. That was the first time . . . my heart beat fast; I never felt that before, nor I didn't know about love or anything since I was seven, but it reminded me of the two most important people in my life . . . my mom and dad. She reminded me of what love felt like, and how much my mom kept telling me how much she loved my father, and to my father how much he loved my mother and will protect her no matter what.
"I love you Bella," I said to myself, yet I didn't understand why I was afraid to say it out loud.
"I'm going to protect you," I promised.
***
Since we were six and older, we went to the same schools together. We were always the "seatmate buds' ' as you called it, well, you still kind of do, and we wouldn't be too happy if a teacher tried to separate us together.
