True Love <3 by Brittany Richards (best books for 7th graders TXT) 📕

I made it look like I didn’t care for a minute and returned the nudge with one of my own. He looked over at me and nudged me again, this time doing it when I was expecting it, and this time with a little more force than the first. 

I had to do it. I reached over and messed up his hair, making it go in every direction. Darren hated his hair when it was really messy and he glared at me.

"Now it's on!" he yelled. He jumped towards where I had scooted myself after messing up his hair. Reaching out he tried to mess up mine, but I leaned back and refused to let him. I jumped back at him and messed up his hair again. Darren proceeded to keep trying to mess up his hair. 

In a matter of minutes Darren was on top of me. He held his hands against the couch and kept himself up, trying not to squish me underneath. He bent down and kissed me. It was another one of his sweet kisses that I loved so much. 

His mouth seemed to always taste like cherry Chap Stick, no matter what he did or ate. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him down. His hands gave way and he fell on top of me, but nor he or I let this break our kiss. He eventually stopped the kiss and now was supporting himself on his hands again. 

"Now you're trapped," he said with a small smirk on his face, and while still supporting himself on one hand, messed up my hair. He bent down again and gave me a small kiss. “I love you, Collin. I always have." he continued.

I gave him a smile and replied, "I love you too, and I always will." he gave me a smile at this and gave me yet another quick kiss. 

The way he kisses me makes me melt inside. So sweet yet passionate. So careful yet loving. 

Darren climbed off of me and stood next to the couch, outstretching his hand. I took a hold of it and sat up. He took a seat next to me without letting go of my hand. I didn't want him to though. I leaned my head against his shoulder and scooted myself even closer to him. He let go of my hand and wrapped it around my waist, cradling me next to him.

When I got home everyone was gone. I couldn't quite put my finger on it though, and then I remembered, my sister went to a friend's sleep over nd my parents were out still. It was around nine in the afternoon and I was getting tired.

I slowly dragged my feet to my room and plopped myself onto the bed, and feel asleep. 

I woke up around eight and sat in bed for awhile, just staring at the walls. 

My sister, Peyton, came quickly out of her room and walked over to me. 

"So where were you yesterday?" she asked, putting emphasis on the word 'yesterday'.

I looked at her with a startled look. I could feel my eyes widen. 'Did she know?' I asked myself. I worried.

"It's none of your business, and if you really want to know I was at a friend's house, " I answered hoping that she wouldn't figure it out, but I knew she would.

She started walking back towards the doorway of my room, only to stop and turn back to me to say:

"Yeah, friend's house," She said it with finger quotes around 'friend's'. My sister either like to piss me off with her exaggerations or she didn't notice them, cause she did it a lot. "Don't worry I wont tell mom, but you're going to have to explain it to her," she said as she walked away. I didn't quite know what to do next, how was I to explain this to my mother

My sister was a year younger then me but still was almost, what felt like, a foot taller then me. Last year she had decided to die her hair black and her bangs blonde. Along with this she had cut her hair short. It now feel a few inches above her shoulders. Peyton had always been the tallest in our family, which confused me, cause the rest of us were kind of short. She might as well be my older sister with her looks. 

She had known from the beginning that I was gay. She knew that I liked Darren too. I had trusted her with the secret for years now and she still hadn't told our parents yet. I knew in the inside, though, I would have to tell the eventually. 

She was always the quiet type, if you met her you would think that anyways, but she seemed to be really loud around me. So loud it was almost obnoxious. Not that I didn't mind it. My sister never really had friends until last year, when I introduced her to some of my friends that were around her age. Ever since then I had the feeling that she liked one of them, Jay. With an amazingly, hot, "emo" look who could resist though. Even I thought he was kind of cute.

School the next day was something. It was like everyone knew, for everywhere I went people seemed to be staring at me. 

During lunch I took my lunch and headed towards Darren, who was sitting by himself at the table in the far corner. The café wasn't very large but it seemed to take me forever to get to him.

When I got to him, I placed my tray down onto the table and sat in the seat next to him. He was looking down at his food, which he hadn’t even touched. 

I nudged him with my arm, but he didn't look up. I did it again, this time he jumped and looked over at me with a tired look.

"Were you sleeping?" I asked him.

"Yeah a little," he replied.

"How comes you didn't sleep?"

"'Cause I was thinking about you," he said with a smile, finally waking up.
I smiled back, blushing a little, and before he could say anything I gave him a small kiss, but not before looking around to see if anyone was watching.

He kissed me back, but it seemed to startle him.

"What? Can't I kiss you?" I asked with a huge smile on my face.

"Of course you can, but what about everyone else? Don't you care?" he asked.

"Nope, not really."

"Well in that case," he said as he lean towards me, grabbed my chin and kissed me. This wasn't like a kiss you would do in public, this was like the ones we shared during the night together, but I didn’t really care. When we stopped kissing I looked around. Nearly every eye in that room was on us.

"What?" I quietly asked, mostly to the people closest to us. Some of them went back to eatting or whatever they were doing, while others continued to stare.

I grabbed ahold of Darren's hand and went back to eatting.

I didn't get to see him till the end of the day, till English, but he sat two rows back and four desks away from me. So really it wasn't until after English.

I found out that the gossip today was about us, but I really didn't care. Until Reese came along.

"Hey Collin!" he yelled at the end of English. He reached over and grabbed one of his friends and they pretended to make out. "Look I'm 'emo' boy making out with my 'emo' boyfriend!" he continued.

This sort of pissed me off. I hung my head and took a step back. I tried hiding behind my books.

"Hey!" Darren yelled, jumping up out of his seat. He walked quickly over to me and grabbed my hand. "If you want to make fun of him, you got to go through me!" he snapped back.

"Oh look at that, lover boy coming to save his little boyfriend. How cute," Reese said in a sarcastic tone. "It's on lover boy!" he said putting emphasis on 'lover boy.'

After they walked away I turned to Darren.

"What are you going to do?" I asked. I was scared for him, I mean Reese was the school's bully.

He looked at me with calm expression. "Nothing, absolutely nothing."

I didn't know how that was possible. Avoid Reese?

"But -" Darren cut me off. There were a pair of lips on mine before I could say anything.

"Don't worry about it, but we do have to leave the school before we are locked in here," he said scurrying out the door, his hand holding mine.

Being only a few miles away, we walked back home instead of taking the bus. 

As I walked I thought about the first time we met. How we became best friends almost immediately, but I was still so shy around him.

Darren and I were in third grade together. I walked into