I need a reason?!

I mean, other than the obvious one... I want her to be my girlfriend... full stop. What reason could I possibly have for my request that will make sense to her and not cause her to run away screaming or assault me with her huge vocabulary of words, all synonyms for "idiot"?

Kira is no dating guru; she really couldn't teach me anything about dating.

I've had more girlfriends in one month than she's had boyfriends in her entire life. Sure, most of those girlfriends just kinda happened without me really wanting it to. One minute I think I'm getting along great with a girl; we might even be heading towards some kind of friendship, and the next, I'm informed that we're actually dating. Then the kissing starts, and I think to myself, okay, maybe I could make this work... but then I see Kicks in our living room, rubbing Lazy-Bones' tummy and playing with his long ears, telling the ten-year-old Basset Hound that he is still the cutest puppy at the pound and I know I'm lying to myself.

Yes, we got him from a pound when he was about a year old and the saddest animal I've ever seen in my life with his drooping face, short legs and long floppy ears the colour of rust. The three of us (Deli, Kira and me) fell in love with him at first sight. It was our eighth birthday, and I wanted a dog. Deli wanted an elaborate art set with pencils and paints packed into a wooden case.

Our parents never made us share the same present, except one year when we both really wanted a swing set.

When I see Kira being all sweet and gentle with my dog or glaring at me, not being sweet and gentle at all, I always realise that I cannot use another girl to plug the hole in my heart. It is not fair to the girl, and I'll never feel what she wants me to feel, so I end it.

The point is Kicks cannot go around giving out dating advice. She knows even less about being in a relationship than I do! I could tell her that I think our dating is a good idea because that way she can take me for a test drive and learn some things... so, I'd actually be doing her a favour, more than she would be doing me one. Yeah, how kind of me...

What could possibly go wrong when I offer her that reason? The idea almost makes me laugh out loud. So many things, Ethan, so many things...

Actually...

"You know my grandfather's Citroën DS?"

"I have no idea what car you mean, but please do go on," Kira says, innocently blinking her eyes like a cheeky little bird.

I narrow my eyes and rap her on the head with my fingertips. This girl is always messing with me!

"Ow!"

Kira knows exactly which car I mean! It looks like something out of an old James Bond movie. Avocado green with a brown roof. It's not the prettiest car ever, but it's so cool. Maybe I love it so much because inside, it smells like Grandpa and Grandma and fond memories.

When we were kids, the three of us and Lazy-Bones used to go for picnics in that car. Kira and Deli would pack a basket with loads of edible goodies, and we'd get in the car. Deli and the dog were in the back seat, and Kicks was in the front with me because we were always married in our games, and Deli was our child. A seriously bossy child that kept on referring to me as her little brother...

Maybe I was the only one who knew that Kicks and I were married and that Deli was our child in our games...

Anyway, I would pretend to drive, providing sound effects to make it realistic and then when we decided that we were hungry and we'd found a good spot, I would pretend to park the car, and we'd have our picnic on a blanket under the trees. The end of the driving and finding the good spot was usually done by Delia. She would simply say that she's bored and open the door and jump out with Lazy-Bones on her heels, completely ignoring the fact that the car is still moving and I haven't made the sounds for parking it yet.

Good times!

"My granddad said that he'll give it to me next year when I'm ready to start Uni." She knows about my deal with Grandpa Alistair, but I feel that I should refresh her memory since she just claimed to suffer from amnesia about the car.

"Hasn't he been saying that since you were born?"

"Yes," I grimace. Oh, shit, that was a good point... now what? "But now he has a condition." That was some quick thinking, Ethan Fletcher! Good job!

"I thought the condition was that you pass your matric and get into university."

Fine, maybe it wasn't all that quick. Come on! Stop with the questions, Kicks; just go with it! I can literally hear her bullshit meter ticking away. This is going nowhere really fast.

"There's another one now," I grunt and reaching out, I grab her messed-up ponytail and give it a sharp tug, hoping to shift her focus away from all the holes in my story and onto the target I want it to be aimed at, namely... crap, what's the target? Me, my heart... but not in the let's shoot Ethan way. I have no idea what I'm doing here!

"Seriously, Dude, stop with the violence!" Kira complains, trying to pull her ponytail back into its place. How is it possible for a girl to be so dirty and dishevelled and still look so friggin' hot? She even has some grimy smears on her face, and she's not wearing any makeup of any kind. Kira never breaks any of the school rules. 

She is the prettiest girl I know, and I think a lot of it has to do with the person she is and not just her big eyes, soft brown hair and sweet smile... and the way her school shirt is riding up now while she's adjusting her hair, flashing glimpses of her stomach at me. I can feel the colour rising in my cheeks. I'm over-heating! I might need to get off this boulder and go jump off the bridge!

Shit! Focus!

"Do you want to hear my story or not?!" That came out a little more aggressive than I meant it to.

"Not particularly," Kira says, giving her head a defiant tilt. I know she is messing with me again, but she has lowered her arms, sitting neatly with her hands primly folded in her lap - the image of piety - and the oxygen-rich blood is able to fight its way to my brain again.

"I could toss you in the water from here, you know?" I warn her, my voice sounding a bit hoarse to me now. Kira smiles demurely, flipping her hand palm up towards me, giving me permission to speak. Brat!

Awesome... I would also like to hear my story... Wish I actually had one... Well, here goes! I open my mouth, and yup, words are coming out, and these words don't even realise that the future of my heart might very well be up to them.

"He now says he'll only give it to me when I can give him solid proof that I've become a decent upstanding citizen and am no longer a ne'er-do-well-ruff-a-tuff."

Well, I'm impressed! He does sometimes say stuff like that to me when I get out of hand, and Kira is also constantly throwing words at me about being decent and upstanding and a citizen (of crazy town)... this should be right up her alley. It sounded very plausible to me.

She should definitely understand how tough it would be for me if my grandfather ever came up with a condition like that. I've actually scared myself a little now!

"I'm sorry, that sucks... How about a nice scooter instead?" See, she gets how impossible it will be!

"Shut up," I chuckle. Well, that was all I could come up with, and I think it is friggin' brilliant. Kira is a decent upstanding citizen of most normal places, and she has a huge capacity for compassion. She has, without being asked and contrary to expectations, come to my rescue many times before. She might be messing with me now, teasing me, giving me a hard time, but she has never let me down.

I always wonder why that doesn't tell her anything about how she really feels about me, but then I remember Lurch and his many siblings. He has a brother he always claims to hate, but he'll risk his life to save him at the drop of a hat. So... I'm back to the irritating-brother-she-got-stuck-with theory.

Still, she really went all out last year when that psycho harpy, whom I didn't know I was dating, tried to frame me for the theft of some seriously expensive photographic equipment from the school library. The evidence (false) was stacked against me, and my love for photography is no secret; I've often admired the school's equipment. The case against me was so convincing I almost believed that I took it.

I really thought I was going down, and so did my parents and the teachers, who got dragged into the mess against their will and were unwilling to believe that I would do something like that because they know me. One day we were all gathered in Principal Blake's office; my parents, Mr Samuels, the disciplinary head and some policemen and suddenly, in came Kira, looking like a canary trapped in a cattery.

She started off by explaining to everybody how awesome I am... Well, she used words like obnoxious, perverted, nasty... a pain in the butt... and so on, but still, she was actually singing my praises, ending by stating that she knows without a shadow of a doubt that I'm not a criminal. That didn't help much, it mostly confused people and made them wonder about the perverted and nasty bits, but it still hit me right in the heart, and for the first time, I had hope that she might actually love me back.

Fortunately, she had more than just that speech up her sleeve, she played a recording she'd made of Harmony Harper talking about her scheme, and that was that. The new clues were investigated, the equipment was found, and Harmony and the two love-sick puppies who helped her got suspended for a few weeks. Life went back to normal. I might have punched those two lovers out of their stupor and into a better level of consciousness, and Harmony still runs when she sees Delia coming... or any of my friends.

So, Kira will help me get that car I love. I know she will. I know this with a deeper certainty than I knew she'd help build new habitats for the almost extinct species I'm pretty sure Burlap made up. Kicks would already know about them and be doing stuff to save them if there were any around here.

"I don't get it," she says after a long silence in which I ran down memory lane, waiting for the words, "Oh, yes, Ethy, of course, I'll help you!" Those are not the words I'm hearing, though. "Where do the words date, boyfriend and... well... me fit into that story?"

"Right!" I exclaim, realising that it probably doesn't make any sense at all outside of my head since the vital part of my story is still stuck in there. "What better way to prove that I'm now an upstanding member of society than presenting my very respectable girlfriend to my grandfather? I mean a real girlfriend, not a flooser-fancy." 

That is a real term in Grandpa Alistair's homemade dictionary. He has many others in there; ne'er-do-well-ruff-a-tuff is one of his favourites. 

"Then she can go: Ooooh, Ethan is just the best boyfriend ever!" I add, and just to give her a hint that I mean her and not some random girl, I make it very clear by mimicking Kira's voice and flapping my hands around cutely... I hope...

I'm relieved... and a little alarmed when she giggles. She's either climbing on board, or she's getting ready to kick my ass. Things could go either way from here.

"So," she says, clearing her throat and sounding very serious. "If I understand you correctly, you want me to pretend to be your girlfriend and say to your grandfather: Ooooh, Ethan is just the best boyfriend ever...?" She forgot to flap her hands cutely, and if she's going to do it in that flat voice, it is not going to be convincing at all... Besides, she's missing the point.

"No," I groan. "I won't lie to my grandfather! I mean it, I'll have a real girlfriend, and I'll really be the best boyfriend ever because you are going to turn me into one." And that real girlfriend is going to be you and only you and nobody but you, but I obviously don't tell her that part.

Shoot, she's really laughing now and not just a cute little giggle to make my heart do flip-flops. We're once again going in the "stop being an idiot" direction that always ends my attempts to talk to her about how I feel about her.

This is not good!

"Hey!" I growl. "I'm starting to feel a little bit offended now."

"Only now?" She sighs, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes and blending some of the dirt streaks on her cheeks to cover a wider range. She's going to be so embarrassed when she gets home and looks in a mirror. Maybe I should use my shirt to clean her up a bit. 

"I'm flattered," she finally says. "For some reason, you have a lot of faith in my abilities."

"Well," I say, taking hold of the edge of my shirt, planning to pull it up so that I can use it to clean Kira's face, but I suddenly hear Deli's voice in my head telling me to think before I act for a change. Remembering where we are, I'm thinking of the possible conclusions Kira could jump to if I pulled up my shirt and I hastily let go of it, knowing that Delia would be so proud of my moment of personal growth.

"When my dad said that I couldn't play rugby this year unless I get my maths scores up in the very first test of the year, you tutored me so well; I aced it."

"You got a B plus, not an A."

"Alphabet snob!" I snap at Little-Miss-Precise, making her laugh again. "My score went up from a D minus to a B plus, which is equivalent to acing it." I think it was blooming amazing!

"Though I'm rather impressed that you know the word equivalent," Kira snubs blinking her eyes at me... she is so friggin' cheeky! "I believe that an actual A is required in the score for a test to be declared aced."

"And I believe that I'm going to throw you off this boulder if you don't stop being a snooty brat."

"Golly! And five seconds ago, you wanted to date me."

Seriously, this girl!

I clench my teeth not to grin at her or grab her and yank loose that weird double ponytail she's got going on back there, the way I always do when she's frustrating me. She gets really mad when I do that... which is why it is the best punishment for when she's being a brat.

"When you were tutoring me for the math test, you made me do a gazillion exercises of each problem type because I learn better from doing than just listening or observing, right?" Wow! I am on fire! I can just imagine what we'd need to do over and over to get right if we're doing the perfect boyfriend thing! I just hope it's not stuff like doing her chores for her...

"Right." Yes! We're finally agreeing on something!

"So, you can teach me to be the best boyfriend ever by being my girlfriend and having me be your boyfriend."

Things cannot get any clearer than that. That sentence is the most sensible thing I've said all afternoon and sums it all up perfectly.

"Ethan."

"Yes, Dear."

"You're being creepy."

No! Chuckling, I lean back on my hands and search the branches above us for wisdom, patience and inspiration... I'm running out of ideas here.

"I thought girls liked the idea of changing guys to fit their ideal of what a man should be. I'm giving you a clean slate here."

"That only happens when they date incompatible partners and are too lazy or too comfortable to go out and find someone else," Kira once again counters the only logical argument I could find among the leaves and branches with a better one of her own. "Besides, your slate is not clean; it's covered in confusing, annoying scribbles."

I have no idea what to say to that. She made some valid points, and she is not wrong about me... my slate is covered in scribbles, all of them involving Kira's name and hearts and friggin' cupids. Why can't she see that?

Looking at her, I cannot stop myself from smiling. Even with her hair standing up around her head, some of it constantly getting into her eyes, she is the only girl who has ever made my heart beat this fast. She's the only girl who has me so annoyed at her one moment, I want to put her over my lap and slap her bum, and then the next, I just want to hold her and protect her and never let her go.

Best of all, whenever I'm with Kira, we always end up laughing a lot.

I guess I should just call it a day. Regroup and try again when this moment has faded to a vague memory of yet another failed attempt. Until then, I'll just sit here and enjoy looking at her for as long as she remains here on the boulder next to me.

♂♀