"Oh shut up you fat head rascal!" Michael said as he joked with his cousin.

Michael liked visiting his Aunt Joan's house. She had a big house. Four bedrooms and two bathrooms! They even had a second floor. His cousins Lyle and Raina, who were Michael's age, shared a room upstairs and his other two cousins, Tammy and Richard, who were sixteen and eighteen, had their own bedrooms downstairs.

Michael was in Lyle and Raina's room playing a board game and Lyle kept talking smack.

"See Michael, you're losing 'cause you don't got no strategy," Lyle said.

"Oh hush up Lyle," Raina said. "You know Richard had to teach you a billion times how to play this game before you were any good."

Lyle pulled his mouth to the side and rolled his eyes.

"Lyle! I ain't gonna tell you to take this trash out again! Come on down here before I go get a switch" His mother yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

Lyle widened his eyes. "Yes ma'am!" he said as he quickly got up. He turned quick to Michael and Raina before leaving. "Y'all better not move none of my pieces while I'm gone." With that he left.

Raina scooted closer to Michael and raised her eyebrows. "So..."

Michael raised a curious eyebrow. "What?"

"I heard you've got a girlfriend...Parker," she said with a big grin.

Michael rolled his eyes. "She's not my girlfriend...well not officially. We just hang out-how'd you find out anyway?"

"How else would I have found out?" she said.

They both said her name at the same time. "LaToya."

They laughed because the both knew LaToya was the Queen of Gossip.

"Anyway so this Parker, from what 'Toya told me, seems nice. Have you kissed her yet?"

"Well she is and not really..."

Raina squinted her eyes. "What do you mean not really?"

"Well she kissed me...on the cheek." he blushed thinking about it.

Raina shook her head in disapproval. "You are going about this all wrong. You were supposed to kiss her first. It's like the unwritten law of love or something."

"Unwritten law of love?"  Michael said.

"Yeah. If you really like a girl, you gotta kiss her so she knows you like her. And you have to kiss her on the lips or she will want to end whatever you guys have." She reached out and touched his shoulder. "Trust me I'm a girl so I know this stuff."

In reality Raina only knew what she read from sappy magazine articles and those romance novels her mother kept under her bed.

"Well how do I know it's the right time to kiss her?" Michael asked.

"You just know when the moment's right," Raina said as she squeezed his shoulder before letting go.

What Raina said made Michael worried. He really liked Parker and he didn't want to lose her.

**************

Parker arrived at the tree first. She brought her camera again and snapped a photo of the oak tree. When the picture dried, she wrote in the same big letters as the other photos with her sharpie: OAK TREE.

She sat at the base of the tree and watched as people passed by. There were some kids playing football, a woman playing fetch with her dog, and a scatter of people just walking and enjoying the park itself.

A few moments went by and Parker heard footsteps coming toward her. She looked up and smiled when she saw Michael approaching her.

He smiled and waved to her and she waved back.

"Hey," he said as he sat down next to her.

"Hey, how are you? How was your aunt's house?"

"I'm good and it was nice. I got to see my cousins so that was good. How about you? You do anything fun while I was gone?"

"Nah, I just read some more of my book until I got ready to come here."

They talked some more until they heard a familiar jingle in the distance.

The ice cream truck.

"Hey Parker, you want some ice cream? I've got enough money for both of us to get an ice cream sandwich," Michael said as he turned to her.

Parker smiled wide. "I would love that!"

They sat under the tree eating their ice cream sandwiches. As they ate, Parker thought about the things Michael said last night. She finished her ice cream and folded the wrapper and placed it under a rock so it wouldn't blow away.

"Hey Michael?" she said as she licked her fingers.

"Yeah?" He answered as he shoved the rest of his ice cream in his mouth.

"Did you really mean what you were saying last night...about how you feel about me and stuff?"

Michael turned to her and she turned to him. "Yes...I meant every word." He remembered Raina's words.

You just know when the moment's right....

"Do it," he thought. "Kiss her now! The moment is right. Kiss her!"

"WATCH OUT!" yelled a boy from far away but neither Michael nor Parker heard him.

Just as he was about to lean in, the kid's football hit him in the face.

"Oh my gosh Michael are you okay?!"

The kid ran over to the tree. "Holy crap, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?"

Michael couldn't respond by talking so he just groaned and held his face. When the pain went down a little, he removed his hands from his face.  

"How does it look?" Michael asked them.

Their eyes widened.

"What?" Michael felt something like liquid running over his top lip. He used his hand to wipe it away and when he looked down, he saw red. Oh no...

"Let's get you home Michael. Your nose is bleeding pretty bad," Parker said as she got up. She grabbed their wrappers and stuffed them in her pocket and grabbed her camera along with the picture.

"Pinch your nose Michael, that'll help stop the bleeding. If you feel dizzy or if you're about to faint, tell me and I'll go call someone.

Michael nodded and got up. Parker handed the boy his ball back and the boy apologized again. Michael said not to worry about it and he and Parker quickly walked to his house.

********************

By the time they got to Michael's house, his nose had pretty much stopped bleeding. Katherine nearly had a heart attack when she saw all the blood but Parker explained what happened to Michael and they tended to him. Parker's older sister, who is grown and lives on her own now, used to have nosebleeds all the time so Parker knew her way around nosebleed first aid care.

Michael and Parker were sitting alone in the grass in Michael's backyard. Michael had changed his shirt because it had gotten blood it. He had a handful of tissues in case his nose started to bleed again.

"I'm sorry Parker," Michael said as he turned to her.

Parker furrowed her eyebrows in confusion and turned to him as well. "Why are you sorry Michael? It's not your fault you got hit in the face."

"No, I'm sorry because I didn't kiss you on the mouth." He said as he hung his head in shame.

"What are you talking about?" She asked, still confused.

Michael sighed and began to ramble. "When I went to my aunt's house, my cousin Raina told me that if I didn't kiss you on the mouth, it meant I didn't like you because it's some unwritten law of love and that you wouldn't want to hang out with me anymore but I do like you, I swear and-"

"Michael!" she interrupted. "I already know you like me. You don't have to prove that to me by kissing me on the lips," she said with a smile.

"I don't?"

"No, of course not. I like hanging out with you because you're nice and charming and sweet. Also because you taught me how to skip rocks," she said with a wink.

They laughed.

Parker leaned in closer to Michael and whispered. "You want to know a secret?"

"Sure," Michael whispered back.

"You're my first boyfriend."

Michael's heart fluttered when she said boyfriend.

"Well Parker, you're my first girlfriend..."

There was an awkward silence between them then Parker gently laid her hand upon Michael's.

Michael bit his lip nervously and then let out a slow breath. He leaned into Parker's face and placed a soft kiss on her lips. It lasted five seconds but it felt like it lasted a lifetime. Nobody said anything, they just sat there blushing and looking at the blades of grass beneath them.