We're sitting on the boulder, and I shift uncomfortably to adjust my skirt to form a complete barrier between the warm rock face and my bum.

Until very recently, the sun must've baked down on the stone; it has shifted since, granting us some pleasant shade, but...

"It's like sitting on a heater," I remark, shifting again.

"We can go sit on the bridge if you don't like frying your fanny," Ethan suggests, grinning at me again.

Being tossed in the water is starting to look pretty good right now. The weather has been hot and humid all day, and sitting on the warm rock is not doing me any favours.

"Do you have to be so vulgar?" I ask instead, and Ethan shrugs as if it wasn't just a rhetorical question.

"I don't have to."

He is making himself comfortable, loosening his tie more, undoing another button and stretching out, leans back on his hands.

"Are we just here to catch a tan, or was there a reason for this awesome occasion?" I finally ask when I can no longer stand how awkward I feel.

It's strange, really. I've known the guy for 12 years, and I interact with him virtually every day. Mostly just to tell him to shut up and leave me alone, but still, it counts. I'm used to his existence; I'm used to hearing his voice, to seeing him.

Nothing warrants me feeling all nervous and agitated. I'm used to Ethan Fletcher.

"If we're trying to catch a tan, we're doing it wrong," he makes what could be seen as a valid point since there's no sun shining directly on us, but it only succeeds in annoying me more.

"Ethan, why are we here?"

"I need your help."

That's a surprise!

"Oooo... kay?" Awkwardness has gone; apprehension has taken its place.

And now Ethan is looking... No! Awkward! He is now the one looking awkward! This might be a historical event.

"Ethan," I probe cautiously. "I am not digging thorns out of hard-to-reach places for you again."

He snorts a laugh and sits up straight, running the fingers of one hand through his cocky fringe.

"Believe me; you enjoyed that event more than I did."

Just for the record, he'd fallen into a shrub while escaping from his bedroom window and had tiny thorns all over his back, from his waste to the insides of his knees, and I helped Delia de-thorn him. I did not dig anywhere strange.

"I want you to tutor me again."

Oh, dear! Another week of attempting to mentor a recalcitrant child is loading.

Ugh...

Well, to be honest, there were some fun moments in there the last time. Ethan can occasionally be entertaining.

"Which subject this time?" Delia could probably tutor him much better in most subjects than I could, but when it comes to academics, she has no patience with the beast, and they always end up fighting. Apparently, I create the illusion of having patience. I probably do have some since, as I've mentioned before, I haven't murdered the dolt yet.

I've assaulted him with textbooks and stationery quite a few times.

"Dating," he says, making no sense at all.

"History?"

Neither of us has History as a subject; I can, therefore, understand the befuddled look he is giving me.

"I want you to teach me how to be a good boyfriend."

I gape at him for a few seconds, trying out various combinations of his words in my mind, searching for one that makes sense, but there's none.

"Great, so you chose the hottest day of the year to make me wrestle up the hill and through the jungle so that I can climb onto this rock, which I have no idea how I'm going to get off again, just so that you can make a stupid joke?"

Ethan gives me a look and a frown and rolls his eyes. "No, drama queen, this is not the hottest day of the year; that will be next week Tuesday." He cannot possibly know that. "I didn't make you wrestle anything. You could've just taken the footpath like a sane person, and it's easy to get down from here; you've done it a million times before. Do it the same way you got up here, just in reverse, from the side behind us, where the boulder is closer to the ground."

I sigh, pulling my legs up to cross them and then, remembering that I'm wearing a skirt, I drop my feet over the edge again in a more modest pose. I'm not much of a skirt-and-dress girl because I tend to crawl around in the forest, looking for rare insects and interesting mini-ecosystems. Dresses don't go well with most of my hobbies.

"Stop spewing facts at me, and please explain yourself in five sentences or less, using words that actually make sense," I request, causing Ethan to scoff at me.

"You sound like an English language test."

"I'll be checking your grammar."

"Fine," Ethan says, turning to look at me. "I want you to date me and help me become the ideal boyfriend."

"I'm sorry, I should've explained that the words should make sense in the sentence they're used in."

"I thought you were bright."

I clench my teeth and glare at him, ready to knock him off the boulder, but looking into his eyes, I'm surprised to see that his pupils are semi-dilated, and the irises are the deep ocean blue colour they become when he is concentrating hard and being earnest. The usual mischievous imps are not dancing in their depths now... perhaps they drowned in that ocean.

He is being dead serious.

"Is there some kind of good reason behind this weird-ass request of yours?" I relent, pulling a face at him.

"You know my grandfather's Citroën DS?"

He means the avocado green car with the brown roof that looks like it just stepped out of the 1970s and probably did. Ethan loves that car. When he was a child, and his grandparents came for visits using the Citroën instead of their more modern vehicle, he'd sit in it for hours making weird driving sounds. He still does that, but now he makes those sounds while he's actually driving it.

Ethan is a little odd sometimes.

"I have no idea what car you mean, but please do go on."

He gives me a look, narrowing his eyes and raps me on the head with his fingertips.

"Ow!"

"My granddad said that he'll give it to me next year when I'm ready to start Uni."

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

"Yes," Ethan agrees with a grimace, "but now he has a condition."

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

"There's another one now," he grunts, giving my already crooked ponytail a hard yank.

"Seriously, Dude, stop with the violence!"

"Do you want to hear my story or not?!"

"Not particularly." Actually, I'm dying of curiosity.

"I could toss you in the water from here, you know?" he warns, and I know there's no way that he could since we're surrounded by trees, but I don't want to inspire him to try. I smile demurely and flip my hand palm up towards him, indicating that he has the floor.

"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."

I've heard his grandfather call him exactly that on many occasions, and I'm pretty sure he's the only person using that elaborate term to describe people. Grandpa Alistair loves stringing words together, making them one entity and then using his creation to categorise people.

"I'm sorry, that sucks... How about a nice scooter instead?"

"Shut up," Ethan says, chuckling.

"I don't get it," I state when he doesn't say any more; he just sits quietly, gazing out over the footpath a little further down the hill and the bridge visible through the trees. "Where do the words date, boyfriend and... well... me fit into that story?"

"Right!" he exclaims, realising that he'd left out a vital part of his story. "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."

Nope, not to be mistaken with equipment used for flossing one's teeth; it is another one of Grandpa Alistair's favourites. He uses this one to indicate a goodtime girl. Honestly, I'm impressed that Ethan is able to remember all these odd made-up terms.

"Then she can go: Ooooh, Ethan is just the best boyfriend ever!" he adds in a high voice, flapping his hands around... scaring me a little.

I giggle, brushing escaped hair from my face. My hair is a bit too short on top and at the front to form one decent ponytail for school; I first have to make one with the top and front sections and then bring them all together in a second ponytail underneath it. Snagging on branches has messed it up completely; I must be quite wild-looking right now.

"So," I clear my throat to say. "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...?" I don't flap my hands, and I say it in a low, toneless voice devoid of any joy.

"No," Ethan groans, looking appalled. That is supposed to be my default expression when I'm looking at him. He has no right to appropriate my facial expression! "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."

I'm laughing now; I mean, seriously, how can I not laugh? The guy has fallen off his rocker.

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

"Only now?" I sigh, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. "I'm flattered," I finally say. "For some reason, you have a lot of faith in my abilities."

"Well, 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!" he snaps, making me laugh again. "My score went up from a D minus to a B plus, which is equivalent to acing it."

"Though I'm rather impressed that you know the word equivalent," I say, blinking at him to show how impressed I am. "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."

"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?"

"Right," that is indeed true; Ethan is a very hands-on approach kind of guy. I don't like thinking about that term and the word girlfriend in the same scenario when Ethan is a part of it, but I have a feeling that they are going to get joined together pretty soon.

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

I have no idea what to say to that ridiculous statement, and there is that word hands-on still mocking me from the bleachers.

"Ethan."

"Yes, Dear."

"You're being creepy."

He chuckles and puts his hands behind him on the rock again to lean back.

"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," I explain and wrinkle my nose. "Besides, your slate is not clean; it's covered in confusing, annoying scribbles."

Ethan gives me a squinty-eyed look, a slow grin spreading on his face. There's a fine dusting of stubble along his jaw, a startling reminder that we are in the inevitable process of leaving our childhood behind. His stubble, same as his brows, is brown rather than the dark blond colour of his hair or black like his lashes.

Looking at these finer details, I'm suddenly sad, wondering where life is going to take us next year.

I like my current life.

♂♀