Ethan insisted on carrying me all the way home. He didn't even take any of the shortcuts, he just stuck to the main road, past the school and around the corner, all the way down to my front gate.

I was ready to get down and say goodbye when we arrived, but he refused to let me go and carried me on his back right into my bedroom, unceremoniously dumping me on my bed. Putting me down gently would be way too proper for him to stand.

"Why, thank you, my trusty steed," I giggle, trying to get myself into a seated position and regain at least some of my dignity while he falls down on the foot-end of my bed, lying on his back, pretending to be dying of exhaustion. Hmph!

I slap him on the shoulder, pressing my lips together, narrowing my eyes at him, and he just laughs at me and sits up.

To be honest, I'm touched and grateful because, despite all my talk of it being just a scratch and nothing to bother about, the little cut has started to burn and throb quite unpleasantly and might not have been fun to deal with, walking all this way. 

"I think we should put this on the list of ideal boyfriend tasks," I tell him. "You can just carry me everywhere I have to go."

Ethan snorts and leaves the room, returning a few seconds later with the first aid kit we store in the cabinet in the bathroom across the hallway from my room. He sits down next to me on the edge of my bed and, bending over, takes hold of my ankle and yanking it into the air, topples me, once again causing me to land on my back with my legs in the air.

Seriously! This guy!

"Wait! What are you going to do?!" I squeak, trying to resist the assault on my person.

"I'm going to clean and disinfect it and put some ointment on it, and if it needs a band-aid, I'll stick one on too. Why? Did you want me to kiss it better instead?"

I reward him with a spectacular eye roll. "No, thank you. This just suddenly feels like déjà vu, and in the incident I'm reminded of, I ended up in worse pain than I'd been in before you started taking care of me."

Ethan is frowning at me, clearly not remembering the occasion.

"Turn onto your stomach; it will be easier to reach."

"No! You're going to torture me!"

He laughs, easily flipping me onto my stomach, bending my leg so that my foot is pointing at the ceiling, giving him easier access. This dude has never heard of the word gentle!

A sudden mental flashback to being held in the pool is making a liar of me; he'd been extremely gentle then. 

"I think I know what you're talking about, and I did not torture you that day because I tried to look after your injuries,' he informs me, opening the kit to retrieve some torture devices from it. "I tortured you because you made me carry you on my back from Dobson's Park, about a gazillion miles away, all the way here, because you stepped in thorns and were apparently dying of pain."

Oh, right, the memory is becoming clearer to me now too. I shouldn't have brought it up while I'm at his mercy.

"You refused to let us stop to get rid of them for you, saying that they're in too deep and we'll need tweezers to get them out," he is really remembering way too much detail. "I had to carry you to your room so Deli could have a look. And she did..."

"I really thought I stepped in thorns!" I try to defend myself, but my giggle is giving me away now, just as it had that day.

"Right," he snorts.

"I seriously did! I could feel them building nests under my skin."

"Weird-ass thorns on your planet," he chuckles. "Besides, wiping my sweat on you doesn't officially fall in the category of torture."

"That's just your opinion; besides, spanking me does!"

"It was a rolled-up newsletter! A floppy one!" he exclaims, throwing his hands in the air just as exasperated now as he'd been that day. It was decades ago! About two months, to be exact. 

"The only reason you think you were in worse pain after I started looking at your feet is because you weren't in any pain before it. You're such a drama queen!" he laughs, and I hiss softly when he applies cotton wool and iodine to the cut, blowing on it to lessen the sting before applying some more.

"It's a little red, but it's not deep; it should feel much better by tomorrow. Might be best to leave it open; I'm just gonna dab some salve on it."

"Thanks," I mutter, surprised that everything he did actually succeeded in making it feel better. I roll over now that my ankle is no longer his captive and sit up with a startled gasp when he suddenly pulls off his t-shirt and lies down next to me. Before I can protest, run away, hide under my bed... or do all of the above, he is handing me a tube of muscle gel he'd taken from the kit.

"Your turn."

"To do what exactly?"

"I got thrown around quite a bit this morning," he reminds me. "Some of these bruised areas are starting to hurt, and my muscles are cramping a bit." 

Now I feel guilty for not fighting harder to stop him from carrying me such a long distance. I saw him being mangled over and over this morning. He must be in some serious pain. Looking him over, I realise again just how scraped up the poor guy is. There is a rather big bruise over his ribs, and I vividly recall that nasty boy ramming him.

"Maybe you should go to the clinic for a check-up. You might have cracked ribs or internal bleeding."

"Nah," he says, pulling a face. "I've had worse."

Uncomfortable with him studying my face, while I'm studying his body, I lower my head and gingerly apply the gel to all the areas he points out to me. This is weird. I've applied suntan lotion to his skin and heat creams to his muscles more times than should qualify as decent. It used to be an unwelcome task that I got assigned whenever Dell or his mom wasn't able to help him. Just something one human being does for another one. This is just a job. I don't know why I'm suddenly overly aware of the texture of his skin and the shapes of the muscles under it.

When I'm finally done covering all the sections of his chest and abdomen, he rolls onto his stomach for more of the same on his back.

"Do you remember in fourth grade when we got married in our class's stupid segment of the school variety show?" Ethan asks me while I'm massaging his back.

Why is everybody suddenly remembering that?

"Vaguely..."

I remember every detail. I enjoyed it so much because they let me wear a real princess-style bridal dress, costume jewellery and a veil. I know they chose me because I was the smallest girl in class and the only one who could fit into it, and I had thick, long hair that made me look like Rapunzel. Ethan was chosen because he was Ethan, the boy all the girls wanted to marry, though he wasn't quite as hunky and sexy as he is these days. He was a rowdy, mischievous ruffian.

I wanted Robert Kingsley to be the groom... but I had no say.

"Deli did some research for us on brides and grooms and told us that we're supposed to have a wedding night and a honeymoon," he chuckles, sounding way too happy about it. Where is he heading with this?

"Oh! Don't remind me!" I giggle, my cheeks flaring up.

"Why not? It's one of my best memories!"

"You should get out more..."

We bought some sticky, gooey, raw honeycomb, and since there was no moon that night after the concert for us to eat it under, we cut it into two half-moon shapes. We also knew the wedding night involved being in a bed together, so we got into my bed and proceeded to feed the honeymoons to each other, making a horrid mess of my sheets. 

I'll never be able to look at raw honeycomb the same way again.

"It was so sweet and sticky," I laugh, grimacing.

"When your dad came into your room and saw us-"

"Stop!" I shriek, leaning over his back, trying to put a hand over his mouth, but he just grabs my wrist.

Did he just kiss my palm?!

"You simply explained to him in that Little Miss Logical way of yours that we're newlyweds having our wedding night and honeymoon." Ethan continues down memory lane when I take up my work on his back muscles again.

What is that supposed to mean? I'm not Little Miss Logical! That would be Delia! I'm Little Miss Organized!

"First, your dad turned kinda green, and then he just pushed his glasses up his nose in that calm way he has and said that he knew of a much better way for us to spend our wedding night and honeymoon," Ethan laughs. "If it were my dad, he would probably have taken his flip-flop to me, but yours is just so friggin' relaxed."

He's right; when Ethan was younger and constantly getting into impossible situations, his dad would sometimes slip off his shoe and give him a wallop on his bottom. It didn't help, and he eventually stopped doing that. Now that Ethan is older and constantly getting into impossible situations, they usually just have shouting matches. Mr Fletcher is not even remotely relaxed or calm, and Ethan is like a spark to his powder keg.

I used to hate it when Ethan got hit, but I somehow hate the shouting matches more. I think the things his dad shouts at him in anger hurt him a lot more than the one or two strokes with the sole of a shoe ever did.

"I don't think Daddy was feeling relaxed, Ethy," I giggle. "He is just an eerily calm person, which makes him great to have around in a crisis. Besides, for some reason, he adores you. Always has."

"He gave us ice cream, drizzled some of our honey over it, and binge-watched the first three Star Wars movies with us... again," Ethan says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. "He said that's the way married couples under 21 usually have their wedding night and honeymoon, and we needn't worry about how the ones over 21 do it until we're 29."

"Oh, my word! Why are you talking about this now? It is so embarrassing!" I exclaim, turning my hands from massaging to tickling him instead, digging my fingers into his sides.

"Why?" he gasps and squirms and grabs my hands, rolling onto his back to face me. "We were really innocent then."

We sure were!

"Wish we could get it back," he says, looking up into my face, sounding wistful. Wistful and Ethan do not belong in the same sentence, and the way he is looking into my eyes is making me incredibly nervous. "Well, I guess you still have it; it's just me who lost my innocence."

"Golly! I'm 17 years old now, not seven! I know some things now..." and there I go, blushing again! At this rate, I'm going to combust spontaneously!

"Yeah?" Ethan grins in that let's-mess-with-Kira way he is so good at. "Care to demonstrate? I would like to know some things too."

"No, I think you know more than enough," feeling freaked out, I try to get up, but he grabs me by the wrist, plucking me off balance, causing me to land on top of him. "Ethan!"

Laughing, he starts to tickle me. "Come on, show me, Kicks. Teach me all those things you know!"

I wrestle to get away from him, his fingers causing me to shriek and giggle and shout at him to stop. If he doesn't stop, I'm going to wet the bed!

He finally does stop, and now I wish he'd rather tickle me again because he has me semi-trapped beneath him, and his eyes seem so dark, not their ocean blue at all, and I can see the dimples in his cheeks and his smile is the real one, not the one he uses to get girls to give him their lunch.

His smile slowly starts to slip away, the look in his eyes softening, and suddenly, he looks confused, as if he doesn't know how we ended up in this situation. His glance shifts to my parted lips, and I might be wrong, but I think Ethan is about to kiss me! My heart is beating so fast; I'm sure it is going to cause me to time travel.

"Now, go away," I say, sounding as breathless as I'm feeling. I push against his chest, and he releases me so that I can sit up again and replace all the spilt plasters, bandages, ointments and bottles in the first aid kit after the wild ride they had on my bed. "I want to get out of this swimsuit before I lose my fingers and toes due to gangrene."

Ethan sits up too, grinning at me, nodding his head. "Oh? I thought that suit is so comfy," he says, and his voice is sounding even more husky than usual.

"Yes!" I chuckle. "Losing the blood flow to one's limbs is very comfy, but too much of a good thing could lead to amputations."

"You're such a weirdo, Kicks," he laughs, getting off the bed and pulling his t-shirt on over his head. I am relieved and also a little disappointed to see his torso disappearing from sight. I agree with the bright red, spikey letters on Ethan's black t-shirt shouting BAKA! I always think it's a good thing when an idiot wears a t-shirt warning the world that he's one... but right now, I think I might be the idiot in this equation.

"I want coffee," he says. "Do you want some?"

Ethan is not much of a cook, but his coffee is so gooood... and so is his toasted cheese. Knowing that he can at least make those two things gives me peace of mind about his chances of survival when our fridge is not around for him to raid for leftovers. Ethan is a very effective refrigerator cleaner. Thanks to his frequent visits, we never need to throw out spoilt food.

"Yes, please!" I say eagerly, making me happy to realise that I might not be an idiot after all. "I'll join you in a minute, then we can make our lists."

I wait for the groans and protests, but he simply nods his head.

"What? No mocking? No complaints?"

"And risk losing a limb?" he laughs. "Nobody can ever stand between you and your need for a good list, Kicks."

♂♀