Everything seems brighter when you're happy. The sky is bluer, the leaves on the trees are greener, and Jet, trying to annoy you, makes you smile, even while you're sitting on his head.

I've been having the best day ever! 

I got to hold Kira's hand in math class, and she only hit me with her textbook once. The rest of the time, she simply sighed and grumbled and learned to write with her left hand. I was exposing her to the joys of being ambidextrous. 

I probably shouldn't have stolen kisses from her, though, but come on, seeing her eyes light up and spark with my indisputably upcoming death was just awesome. Don't get me started on what happens when she blushes... 

Seriously, that girl can kill me without lifting a finger!

"Ethe, get your fat ass off my head! I'm dying here!" Yup, being told I have a fat ass is music to my ears.

"Are you ready to stop telling Lurch he's whipped?" I ask reasonably, settling in for a comfortable post-rugby afternoon of sitting on Jet's head while wearing muddy shorts.

"He is whipped!" Jet insists, squirming when Lurch, sitting on his legs, pokes him in the ribs. We're on the rugby field, done with practice for the day. When Lurch told us that he had to hurry to meet Tonia and informed us of his plans, Jet nearly lost his marbles. He was laughing his head off, which is why I'm now kindly keeping it in place for him.

When Lurch finally had enough of Jet's mockery and dove at him, I had to help the guy out. I'm all for true love these days, and I know it when I see it. Lurch is a guy in love. He is not whipped and tied up in a tutu with a pretty pink bow... or whatever the hell Jet said, trying to insult the guy.

"Come on, Ethe! The guy is going to a poetry reading with his girlfriend. Poetry!" Jet chortles breathlessly because Lurch is being merciless with his tickling fingers.

"Perhaps he meant pottery," Barn suggests, trying to be helpful, leaning one of his muscled forearms on Burlap's shoulder. I'm surprised that Burlap hasn't intervened to save Jet yet; he generally does when it seems like one of us is about to die. I think he is still baffled by the idea of Lurch sitting still on a chair, facing forward... like a normal person, listening to someone reading poetry. I'm baffled too, but I'm Love's Champion, so...

"How would pottery make it any better?" Jet gasps, wiggling his head, trying to throw me off since his hands, trapped beneath him, are of no help to him now.

"He could make stuff with his hands," I point out. Lurch likes making stuff with his hands. "And then we could all throw it at you."

"Seriously! Get off my head!" Jet snarls, and he finally gets his face in a position to sink his vampire-like fangs into my thigh. I jump up with a howl, inspecting the tooth indentations for any signs of bleeding.

"Now I'm going to have to go for a rabies shot!" I growl, glaring at the two boys still wrestling at my feet. Their fight doesn't last long because Lurch needs to hit the showers to be ready in time to meet up with Tonia.

"Yeah, well," Jet grumbles, dragged to his feet by our helpful buddy, Barn. "You're always so violent, Fletcher. Why would you want to throw pottery at me?"

We're all blinking at Jet now. He is, without a doubt, the most violent among us, and we all know that, including himself.

"Same reason you ran his feet out from under him with your skateboard the last time we went to a skatepark," Lurch explains, shaking his head with a grin.

"It was an accident."

"Four times."

"He kept on getting in my way!"

"He was at the bench far away from the bowls!" Barn chuckles.

"Fine," Jet shrugs. "It was fun."

At the time, I thought he was just being uncharacteristically uncoordinated, constantly losing his board in my direction, causing me to fall on my butt. The fourth time I got knocked over like a bowling pin, I realised that the bastard was launching his board at me on purpose, causing it to race at me and tangle with my feet while I was walking.

I think I sat on his head for a bit that day too. It's the best way to subdue the moron.

The memory makes me grin, and reaching out, I grab his T-shirt by the sleeve and pull him closer for a sweaty hug. It's gross, but... whatever... he's my idiot brother, and now I'm going to show him some brotherly love until he screams for mercy.

Or not... Burlap and Lurch are strolling towards the changing rooms, and Barn is yanking Jet from my grasp to run after them.

"I'm not whipped, Jet," Lurch explains while we're scrubbing in the showers. We waited too long, and the other players had used up most of the hot water, leaving us to shower in water the temperature of pee. It doesn't really matter as long as we can get clean. It's really hot again today; some pee might cool us off nicely.

"Tonia and I had a long chat last night, and I realised that I've been a bit selfish."

"A bit?" Burlap snorts, and Lurch gives him a guilty grin.

"A lot. She's always hanging out with me, doing what I want to do, usually with you guys. I asked her what kind of things she wanted to do, and we made a deal that I'd do some of the things with her that she liked, she'd do some of what I liked, and we'd do stuff without each other, too. So, I'm going to a poetry reading tonight, and she'll go see that new grizzly bear movie with me you're all turning your noses up at."

"Zombie bears are not a thing, Dude," Barn assures him.

"Still, poetry, Lurch? That's cruel and unusual punishment," Jet insists. He finds the idea of Lurch sitting still and listening to poetry even more unlikely to be a success than poor Tonia having to live through a zombie bear attack. "Only sociopaths like Burlap like reading poetry."

"That was very poetic, thank you, Jet," Burlap grins because Jet is not wrong about the guy being some kind of path. I personally believe that if Burlap weren't such an inherently good guy, he would've been an evil mastermind.

"I offered to go with her; she didn't ask me to," Lurch shrugs, turning off his shower, stepping out of it and grabbing his towel from the bench. Finally, as clean as we'll ever be using these crappy showers, we all close the taps and cross to the bench to get dressed. I can see that the others are as baffled by that statement as I am. When it comes to sitting still and paying attention, Lurch makes me look like a docile pageboy. Why would he volunteer for something that would definitely cause him severe discomfort?

"They're serving cake and stuff. Tonia is making a tray of those little sausage rolls I like so much to take with her," he clarifies, pulling on clean underwear. Now, we all get it, and the world is not suddenly standing on its head. Tonia might be an evil mastermind, too.

"Well, good for you, Lurch," I smile, thumping him on the shoulder blade. There was something a bit different about the way Lurch and Tonia interacted today. I think the guy realised how hard he would take it if she dumped him, and I'm glad they had a talk.

They seemed a lot closer today without being all over each other, which was nice to see and a lot less awkward to be around. The guy is clearly happy, which is why I sat on Jet's head. I don't want his bitterness about love—and life in general—to sour what Lurch and Tonia have. Jet won't deliberately set out to ruin it, but he has a way of influencing people without even trying too hard.

It would be awesome if Jet could really fall in love too, and act all cutesy and sweet, the way I saw Lurch act today. Just once, I would love to sit around, drinking a cold beer, watching... cold beer... Yeah! I'm seriously thirsty!

"I could really do with a cold beer right now!"

The others agree with that idea, obviously, since it's like a million degrees outside, and we're hot and thirsty after getting drilled by our rugby coach for over an hour. As usual, Burlap has at least six beers in the refrigerator—leftovers from the weekend. When Lurch says goodbye and runs off to meet Tonia for some poetry fun, Barn, Jet, and I walk home with Burlap.

I'm not surprised to find Wendy at his house, casually camped out in his living room. I'm pretty sure she moved in at some point but the Hessians just didn't notice yet. She's here more often than at her own house a few properties down the road, whether Burlap is here or not. There is something a bit off about her, though, which makes me worry about her reasons for being here today.

I hope there's not trouble at home again.

If Burlap is surprised to see her playing on his console in the living room, he doesn't show it. It's possible that he thinks she came with the beanbag she's almost always lounging on.

"Your mom put food in the refrigerator for you to eat," she tells Burlap when we pass through the living room, heading for the kitchen. We lose Barn and Jet to a couple of bean bags along the way. "She took Grandpa for his swim."

The municipal swimming pool offers light exercise programs for seniors and people with disabilities a couple of times per week, and it's been doing the old man a lot of good, keeping his muscles from atrophying and giving him some joy. He'd always been fond of swimming when he was still a healthy man.

"Did you leave me some?" Burlap asks, his grin just begging for an ass-kicking from Wendy, but she just sticks her tongue out at him. 

"Hey, Wends," I say, returning from the kitchen with an armload of beer to hand around. She turns her head to give me a narrow look when I plop down next to her and offer her an open bottle.

"What now, Fletcher?" she frowns, and I wonder how exactly she knew that I actually had something on my mind and wasn't just being social. I take a long, almost painful draught of my crispy beer, slicing through the thirst I'd built up during practice. I actually only enjoy the first few fast, icy sips of beer; after that, it's just bitter, and I don't care for the taste anymore. When I lower the bottle, she is still frowning at me.

"Yeah, that look," I sigh, shaking my head. "Today, during the break, before I fell asleep on Kira's lap, you kept on giving her that look."

Breaktime is starting to become my favourite time of day, and I'm not just talking about when I'm at school—any day, any time. I get to eat yummy stuff Kicks made for me, and then I sleep with my head in her lap. Today, Sy joined us too, because Delia was practicing hockey. I'm living the dream!

 Well, sure... doing other stuff with Kira is a much bigger, more fun dream, but that's for later when she's accepted that what we have is real and she really loves me, and we're getting married and...

"What look?" Wendy interrupts, scowling at me, causing my dreams to shatter into the very strong possibility of being attacked by death-harpy nails.

"Like you're going to eat the girl," Barn explains helpfully. Now he's the recipient of that look and hopefully will be the one getting the nails instead of me... despite the fact that he was really helping me out. Barn can handle those nails better than I can. "Not worth it; there's not much to snack on."

"Hey!" Now, I'm the one glaring at Barn, and I'm disappointed that he is not getting any nails dug into sensitive areas. "My girlfriend is nobody's food."

"I know, Dude, I'm just saying..."

"Come on," Jet interrupts, crawling from his bag over to Wendy's to pull her into a one-arm hug, almost causing her to drop her beer. He might also just be trying to strangle her. "Wendy cannot help it. Bitch-face is her default look, which is why I distracted her with some videos of you guys' pathetic attempts to climb the wall at the mall in Silverview."

Silverview Mall has a pretty formidable climbing wall, but the only reason our attempts to climb it were pathetic was because he kept on throwing stuff at us, laughing while Barn video-taped us falling. We did the same to them, so... we're even... and the videos are pretty funny.

"I don't have a bitch face," Wendy growls, digging her nails into Jet's arm, but he is immune to her nails and is only hugging her tighter. This time, I have to rescue her beer because their hug is turning into a light brawl, the way it always does. 

"I was just..." she pulls away from Jet, and sensing the change in her mood, he lets her go. "I don't know," she shrugs, getting back into her seat and taking the beer I hold out to her. "Seeing you so ridiculously happy while she's so oblivious is kinda... I don't know... scary... I guess..."

That is actually very sweet... I think...

"I get it, Wendy," Burlap says, entering the living room with a platter of snacks he places on the low coffee table in our midst. This guy is an awesome host, which is why we're always crashing at his place. He thinks nothing of sharing whatever treats his mom left him with the rest of us. Today, it is a large pizza, which he heated up and arranged in neatly cut pieces, among crackers, cheese and cold cuts. He pulls a bean bag to Wendy's other side, sits down and accepts a beer from me. I'm the barman for today... though my job is done now that we've all had one.

"You care about Ethan, and you're afraid that she'll hurt him, but I'm really confident that she won't."

I like hearing that, but I would love to know what he's basing his confidence on. The jury is still out on whether Kicks really loves me or not.

"You're just looking out for Ethe, but I really don't think she's getting that message," Burlap explains, and Wendy, as always, listens to him with rapt attention. The guy is gifted! "She probably thinks she's getting in your way."

"What?" Wendy frowns and turns her head to look me up and down rather insultingly. "I don't want to date Ethan," she grumbles, taking a couple of swigs from her bottle.

"Why not? I'm delightful!" I exclaim, glaring at her now.

"Really, you want to date Wendy?" Burlap laughs.

"Hell, no!"

"Hey! I'm delightful too!" Wendy growls, and when I grin at her, she starts to giggle. "We've crossed that bridge ages ago," she finally says when we're done laughing. "Ethe and I are what we are, and it's got nothing to do with romance. I want Kira to know that, but I also want her to know that I'll punch her in the face if she hurts him... just like I punched Amber... and Harmony..."

That's news to me!

"Harmony didn't hurt me..."

"She tried to friggin' frame you for theft!" Wendy huffs angrily.

"Yeah, that wasn't fun..."

Still...

"Wends," I say, laying a hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes. "Thank you, but please don't go around punching people on my account; you could get hurt or get into trouble."

"I punched Lilac Davidson too," she shrugs, causing Jet to choke on his last sip of beer. "I wanted to punch Tertia too, but she moved away before I could..."

"Why did you want to punch her?" Barn wants to know, as surprised to hear that as the rest of us. "She didn't break his heart until after she left."

"She treated him like an underling and..."

I'm never entirely sure if talking about Tertia still hurts Burlap. He generally just turns his head and gazes off into the distance, even if that distance is the living room wall, just a couple of steps away from him. Still, I'd rather not have people bring up that girl's name, whether I agree with Wendy or not. I think she regrets saying the name because she leaves the rest of her sentence unsaid.

"You actually punched Lilac?" I change the topic, not really all that interested whether Wendy punched the woman, old enough almost to be Jet's mother. Come to think of it, she's probably another subject we should avoid. I'm not sure how Jet feels about anything ever, he is grinning at Wendy as if he likes the idea of her punching the woman who played with him, warping him even more than he already was. Perhaps he thinks it's hot.

"Did you punch Elana too?" he asks, his grin widening when Wendy gives a casual shrug.

"Yeah, and I would punch Tonia too if she hurts Lurch and Kira if-"

"No! No punching Kira, even if she tears my heart out and stomps on it."

The idea of anybody hurting Kira is enough to make my stomach turn. I smile, trying to soften my outburst, but they're all grinning at me, and I think Jet is about to start another mocking event, calling me whipped or something, but I don't care. 

"Promise me? Seriously, Wends, you might look rather fragile, but one punch from you could launch Kicks to the moon."

"Fine," she huffs. "I won't punch her... even if she breaks your heart... but I will glare and growl at her a lot, and I might pull her hair a little bit."

"She won't break his heart," Burlap assures her again and to my surprise, Jet and Barn agree with him. "Why don't you try making friends with her, huh?"

"We're going to have to teach Wends the art of making friends first; Kiki is terrified of her," Jet points out, ignoring the look Wendy gives him while he happily helps himself to some of the snacks Burlap brought.

"Yeah, start with not looking at her as if you're going to snack on her," Barn offers and I lean over to slide the platter of snacks closer to him.

"Seriously, Dude, eat something so you can stop thinking about my girlfriend as something edible."

Barn shows me his teeth in a wide, appreciative grin, and when he lays into the snacks, I regret pushing it towards him.

After eating some snacks and playing games, I finally headed home, arriving just in time to open the gate for my dad to drive into the yard. He's home a bit earlier today. I'm hoping that the fact that he's having dinner with us more and more often means that he is finally relaxing about his company a bit more. There was a time when I didn't see him for days on end. He worked almost all night and went off again after only a couple of hours' sleep.

Having him home generally means arguments, but at least he's home. Speaking of arguments, I'm not in the mood for another one right now, so I hurry into the house to avoid him. Last night, after Kicks left, I was relieved when he got a call from a construction site and took off. Selfish of me, I know.

I hate how crappy our relationship has become.

I'm glad he doesn't join me in the laundry, where I'm getting my school uniform and rugby practice clothes ready to wash. He is still nowhere in sight when I take the stairs two at a time up to my room. I can hear him talking to Delia somewhere in the bowels of the house, probably in her bedroom.

Kira is sitting at her desk, doing homework or studying up on the mating habits of the dung beetle or something weird, when I enter my bedroom, carrying my school and rugby bags and automatically look towards her bedroom window. She smiles when I whistle and gives me a friendly wave, immediately cheering me up. Well, that is a good sign. Usually, she gets all pouty and mad when I whistle at her.

I'm burning to go over there, but Deli told me to play it cool and give the girl loads of space so I don't scare her. I, therefore, sit down at my desk like the good schoolboy I am and take some books from the schoolbag I dumped next to my desk. This is such an excellent idea. I'll be doing my homework and getting good marks, which might make my dad change his mind about me not being good enough to join him at his company, and it will impress Kira, causing her to believe that her boyfriend is not just a... What did she call me the other day? A brute with muscles in all the right places except his head.

That made no sense to me. Was she saying that I've got a hot build or that my head is too small? What does a muscled head look like anyway? 

Pulling my laptop out of retirement in a corner of my desk, I open it and google 'muscled head′, only to be confronted by gnarly images of people without skin. That's just gross. My girlfriend is a weirdo.

I know that Kira knows that the brain is an organ, not a muscle, so... Ugh... I hate it when she's being confusing... Uhm... no, I don't, because if she's teasing while being confusing, her eyes twinkle, and her smile is so friggin' cute, and if she's angry while being confusing, she's all kinds of hot.

I glance over at her window to show her that I have no idea what she was on about that day, but she is looking at me with a very strange look on her face, and I hurry to make sure that I have all my clothes on and wasn't doing anything weird just now. Nope, I'm just sitting here at my desk with my books open in front of me. Most of them are upside down and maths and English homework don't usually combine, but she won't know that.

When I look at her again, she's writing, her head bent over her work, her hair - sparkling in the sunlight slanting through her window - hiding her face.

Sighing, I turn back to my desk. While my mind has my fingers running through that tawny hair with the red highlights, my body has them plucking pieces of plywood and wire from the containers stacked on the shelves above my desk.

I am, once again, building models of the possible structure of our dream home. I've always loved creating buildings from whatever I can find lying around, but for the last year or so, all of these structures were ideas I'm forming around the house I'll one day build for Kira. When the breeze from my open window blows a sheet of paper, I was scribbling a rough plan on off the desk, and I turn to pick it up, I see Kira smiling at me across the great divide, and I lift my creation from the desk to show her the structure I'm working on.

I cannot tell whether she likes the house I'm planning or not, but she smiles and gives me a thumbs-up. It still looks like nothing. It's just a frame with some wires sticking out of it... most of it is still only in my mind. She always liked the houses and other buildings Dad and I built to create a world for my train set. I'm sure she'll like our home too.

I'll obviously ask for her input and tweak it until she's happy when I actually get to the point where my drawings and models look like an actual house. At the moment, I keep on changing my mind a lot.

She's no longer in her room when I finally realise that it's almost time for dinner. I want to shower first, so I close my curtains, take my shower, and am done dressing just in time to hear my mother call me downstairs.

Dinner goes surprisingly well... at first. Dad seems hungry, eating with even more dedication than I am, but I catch him giving me looks every now and then. When I glance up at Deli across the table from me, I can see that she is worried. She's also seeing those looks. They never end well.

He's not glaring or giving me deadly looks—it's the opposite. He seems worried and uncertain, his jaw tightening as if he is chewing on the words he wants to say to me. I know I'm not going to like them even before he finally gives up on holding them back and turns to look me squarely in the face when we're done eating.

"I got a call from Hummelton University yesterday," he says. I know what he is going to say next, and I do not want to hear it. "They need you to acknowledge acceptance of the scholarship by Monday or they are giving your spot to another candidate."

"Good," I mutter, ignoring Deli's freaked-out look and the worried glances my mother is flicking between my father and me. "They should give it to the other candidate."

"Ethan!"

"No, Dad! I've told you a thousand times, I'm not going to Hummelton, I'm going to Silverview..."

"Ethe, do you have any idea what you'll be giving up?" he groans. "Hummelton University has an excellent reputation, and the city itself is much bigger than Silverview. If you put in the work and get your degree from Hummelton Uni, every large, successful construction or architectural company in that city and even in our country will be knocking at your door to offer you a wonderful career."

"I'm not interested in large and successful companies, Dad!" I snap. "I'm only interested in yours... in our..."

"Exactly, mine is not large nor successful," he grunts. "It is small and floundering; it would be professional suicide for you to join me."

"That was not what I meant, and you know it. You're building it up again... You have loads of projects... I want to help you-"

"Ethan! You won't be able to join me for another four years at least. I could go under in that time and-"

"You won't! You're good at what you do, and people trust you!"

"That's beside the point! Things change in a heartbeat," he grumbles, and I can tell that he is either getting angry or desperate or both. I can no longer tell the difference. To me, he always seems angry. "I am your father and as your father, I need to make decisions that serve your interest the best."

"And what serves me best is to not work with you like we..." I swallow against the bile rising in my throat. 

"Look, if you don't want to go to Hummelton... what about Thunder Ridge? Hunter is there and-"

"Thunder Ridge? What? Hummelton isn't far away enough for you?" Just how far away does he need me to be to feel like he's finally rid of me? "Dad, Thunder Ridge is almost 12 hours away from here. This is my home. If I don't want to go to Hummelton because it's too far, why would I want to go to Thunder Ridge?"

"It's not about the distance, Ethe," he sighs, rubbing a tired hand over his face. "It's about the opportunities. Both Thunder Ridge and Hummelton will open incredible doors for you... Doors that simply don't exist in Summerfields. Also, if you were to decide that you want to pursue a career in professional rugby after all, they are both your best chances at that-"

"Rugby?!" I cannot believe that he is bringing that up again! He is confirming my worst fear openly like this. He's mentioned the rugby career opportunities in the past, but I thought he'd finally got it into his head that I want to build buildings, not play rugby for a career. He doesn't think I can do it. He doesn't think I'll be able to get a degree in Architectural Engineering!

I can understand why he would think that, but it really hurts.

I have to get out of here. I cannot take this anymore. I shove my chair back and jump to my feet, my heart pounding in my ears as I run up the stairs to my room. Behind me I can hear my mom calling my name and Delia shouting that it was not what my dad meant. 

If it wasn't what he meant, how does she even know what I think he meant?

♂♀