Behind the Cherry Tree, A Not-So-Short Story

Prologue

I'm dedicating this story to a very wonderful new friend of mine called ThePoetryGirl. If you haven't read her stuff yet, GO READ IT! She only has one story at the moment but it's AMAZING!

PM to PoetryGirl:

You're beautiful in every single way, words won't bring you down. So don't let no-one bring you down today.

This story (of course) is just for you, tailored for your own little daydreams. Life ain't all bad, it has its ups and downs, but in the end it somehow works out alright. Ummm... idk what else to say, I already sound unbelievably mushy. Just know I'm here for you if you need me, kay?

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The cherry tree was our favourite place as kids. 

Mike and I had always met there when he came home from his prestigous boys-only school. I had been home-schooled back then. Our childhood had been bathed in the honey gold of late noon sunlight. We'd always come home before evening fell, just in time for dinner. 

You might be wondering how we met. Well it's easy, we'd met in the park. It had been in those glorious days of post toddler-dom, the days when you were 6, you were a big kid now. Mike had come with his mother, as had I. Mike had played with his friends, I had played with mine. Then Mike got sand in his eyes and his friends laughed, I saw this and left my friends and hit the boy nearest me laughing. When the mothers looked over there were two boys crying, the others looking confused, bordering on upset, and I was stood there looking defiant. Needless to say his mother and Mike's friend's mother began to yell at my mum for not watching me and letting me bully their sons.

I was told off. I was put in the naughty corner. I wasn't allowed my ice cream that night. Of course I remember the day I'd met Mike.

The next week when mum took me back to the park, Mike had been there. He sat by himself and his friends played with toy trucks in the sand pit. He saw me and gave me evils, I tried to ignore him, but every time I peaked at him, he looked more and more lonely. I wanted to invite him to play with my friends and I, but I was scared that I'd get in trouble again. So I didn't.

This went on for a few more weeks, and every week Mike was progressively left out to a greater and greater extent. Finally my pity for him made me bold and I asked him to come play with me. He tried to look tough, he said I was a girl and I was icky, of course he wouldn't play with me. I gave him my best grumpy face and harumphed off. I caught him looking at my toys every time after that though.

Over time, he crept closer and closer until he sat by my side, watching me play. I ignored him. The more I ignored him, the more comfortable he got around me, until one day he took one of my toys and played with it silently. My six-year-old self got possessive then and I demanded the toy back, he got mad and pushed me off balance and ran off, I cried, this time it was my mum that yelled at his. The next day he sat next to me again. This time I let him play... even though he was a boy... and had cooties.

We'd "played" like that for a few months until we finally began talking. By this time we were very curious about each other, we never spoke and our parents always tried to separate us, until one day Mike said to me:

"Your face looks funny."

"So does your hair." I replied.

He obviously approved of my answer. From there it's ancient history. We talked more and more, got closer and closer, but our parents never saw. As far as they were concerned, when we're together, there'd be trouble. We soon learned that our parents had grown to dislike each other and so we hid from our parents. We hid in the slides in the park. As we grew up we found we didn't fit in the slides anymore so we found the cherry tree.

 Fast forwards a few years and we'd become best friends, not that our parents realised. I did ballet and he did football, as society dictated. I got the bitchy friends and he got into fist fights every so often, and we were there for each other at the end of it, always meeting at the cherry tree (that, by then, had been christened with our names in an amateur hand-chipped style).

Before we knew it we were 15 and the world began to get serious. School got serious, choices got serious, and relationships got serious. Romantically, we'd never crossed each other's mind. But when he got his first "serious" girlfriend at the very end of the age 14, something went twang inside my heart. It hadn't lasted long but I never really figured out what it had meant. Things changed after that, I was still homeschooled, but he'd recently moved to a mixed school and I had no clue who this girlfriend was...