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I say boys. It's only ever really been one. And yeah, I know how pathetic that makes me. Believe me.
But as I was saying, I was eight. He was chasing me around the junkyard - we were poor, and that was the kind of play that irritated our rather irritable fathers least. I was screaming my head off quite contentedly, secure in my childhood and enjoying the game.
And then I fell.
I'm not talking metaphorically, not yet anyway. I mean I did a faceplant in the tarmac. I skinned my knees up proper, and got gravel imprinted into my palms.
I stopped screaming, rolled over and sat there inspecting my knees, my eyes starting to get blurry as tears of pain stung them. And then suddenly he was kneeling there in front of me, using the tail of his shirt to wipe off my scrapes. I watched him silently, knowing he'd get in trouble for that later. I noticed for the first time how dark brown his eyes were, like chocolate. "Don't cry, Is," he said, and I remember thinking 'wolves mate for life, don't they? Maybe we will too.'
I was wrong. It happens. When you're eight you believe in lots of things that you realise later isn't going to happen. But so far, for me, it's been for life.
(It seems silly writing drivel like this twenty years later. I don't talk about how I feel. Ever. To anyone, and definitely not with him. I told him once. It went badly. I have accepted that it's not going to happen, and I've moved on with my life. But still, writing this and pretending someday he might read it...It's mortifying, but it's also a relief. You know?)