All The Love Stories I've Ever Written

The First

I met him when I was 8 years old. I know what you're gonna say, wasn't I a bit too young to have been feeling whatever it was I felt?. Well, I was a kid. I didn't know what it was that I was feeling but I knew that I felt something.

Fred (Not his real name) transferred to our school near the middle of the school year. Since he was a transfer student, they didn't let him into the star section I was in. In fact, most of the year passed without me even acknowledging his existence. I was a spoiled kid growing up and was used to the attention being on me, so what did I care about some boy right?

Right.

Until it was wrong.

I met Fred face to face for the first time on my birthday. Well, our birthday really. A common teacher introduced us and all I could think about was how this kidwas stealing my spotlight on my birthday! I spent a week fuming about how on earth was it possible for someone to have the same birthday as me. I can't believe how self-centered I was then but apparently, it was so. After that week though, I had completely forgotten about him. I had moved on to more pressing matters like was I going to win the game of Chinese garter or was I going to still be in the top rank. This went on until the end of the school year.

Come June, we were already in Grade 4. Fred got transferred to our class because according to the teachers, he was quite a smart one. Since I had forgotten about how this jerk stole my birthday away from me, I didn't care much about his presence. That is until he kept beating me in math and science. At the time all I thought was, how can this newbie be upstaging me when I'm one of the smartest people here (i was a clown yes). I didn't like losing to pretty much anyone, so I fought for my place in the rankings a bit more. This was around the time that I got nastily competitive. I'd glare at Fred just cause he got the right answer before I did. Apparently, to our classmates, this made it look like I liked him. We all know where that goes. A few hundred teasing taunts about how "the more you hate, the more you love" and in a second, I actually was thinking the same way.

Don't get confused though, Fred and I weren't always at each other's throats. Most days we would get along. Both of us were actually interested in how math and science worked and it always seemed to get us talking. Of course, since we were both capable in math and science, we used to be the representatives for quiz contests a lot. Not only did they have us working together, but we were also studying together long after class hours. Now as a kid I didn't KNOW that my love language was quality time, but I was feeling more and more of those butterflies in my stomach as I spent more time with him.

I won't go into the gory details of how Fred's smile made me want to punch his face in and then hug him in the next second, cause then this story would never end. I won't tell you about how we used to pass notes to each other in class just plain teasing. I won't tell you how we listened to the same music and how I wondered how much more could we be the same. I won't tell you how Fred would stand up for me against some awful people cause what would that matter now. I won't tell you how my mom liked his personality and how his mom would always give me that knowing smile cause really this isn't relevant anymore.

See, you'd have thought, reading all that, that the way things were going, at some point Fred and I would get together right?

Wrong.

Fred transferred away the next year. Did Fred come back again? Yes, he did at some point but that's for another chapter,