I Love Nico

I don’t remember the exact moment I fell in love with Nico Mallari.

That’s probably the first thing you should know.

There wasn’t a single day I could point to, no particular afternoon where everything suddenly changed and I looked at the boy I’d grown up with and thought, Oh. I’m in love with him.

If anything, it happened so quietly that I didn’t notice until the feeling had already become part of me.

When I try to trace it back, though, I always end up remembering the basketball.

I was eight the first time Mallari stole mine.

It was one of those hot afternoons when the concrete outside our house seemed to hold the sun in it, and I had been trying to practice my shooting while wearing a pair of ridiculous pink plastic slippers that my mother insisted were cute.

They were not cute.

They were also terrible for basketball.

Mallari didn’t care.

He snatched the ball from beside me and ran.

I remember staring at him for a second, completely offended by the audacity of it, before taking off after him.

“Mallari!”

He looked back, laughing.

“Catch me!”

“You stole my ball!”

“You weren’t using it!”

“I was!”

“You were talking!”

“I can do both!”

He laughed harder and kept running.

I chased him down the driveway, one slipper nearly flying off my foot, while our mothers shouted something about not running near the cars. Neither of us listened. We were eight, and apparently nothing in the world was more important than proving a point.

He made it as far as the garden before his foot caught the edge of the path.

He went down.

The ball rolled away.

I stopped beside him, breathing hard, and looked at his scraped knees.

For a second, I was more concerned than angry.

“You okay?”

He immediately sat up straighter.

“I’m fine.”

“You fell.”

“I know.”

“You scraped your knee.”

“I know.”

“You’re bleeding.”

He looked down.

Then back at me.

“Don’t tell my mom.”

I started laughing.

He frowned at me.

“What’s funny?”

“You’re scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

“You are.”

“Parker.”

That was when he threw a handful of dirt at my shoes.

I gasped.

He grinned.

I threw some back.

And somehow, within about thirty seconds, we’d completely forgotten about the basketball, the scraped knee, and the fact that we’d probably be in trouble for getting our clothes dirty.

I don’t remember what happened after that.

I remember laughing.

I remember him laughing.

I remember the warm concrete beneath my bare feet after I kicked off my slippers, and I remember thinking that there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

That part stayed with me.

Not because it was some grand childhood moment.

It wasn’t.

It was just Mallari being Mallari.

And me being happiest when I was around him.

I think that’s how it started.

Or maybe that’s simply the first memory I have that explains it.

There were so many little things after that.

I don’t remember all of them anymore, and honestly, I don’t think I need to.

Some memories have a strange way of staying even when the details disappear.

I remember sitting beside him after basketball practice when we were younger, both of us sweaty and exhausted, while he talked endlessly about something I had already stopped listening to. I remember pretending to be annoyed while secretly enjoying the sound of his voice because, somehow, Mallari could make even the most boring story entertaining.

I remember the first time he called me Parker instead of Alice during a game.

It wasn’t anything special.

Everyone called me Parker.

But coming from him, it felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain.

I think that’s when our names started settling into place.

Parker and Mallari.

It just sounded right.

He’d call across the court, “Parker!”

I’d look.

I’d yell, “Mallari!”

He’d pass.

I’d shoot.

Sometimes he’d score.

Sometimes I would.

Sometimes we’d lose and spend the entire walk home blaming each other for it.

And somehow, we’d still be laughing before we reached the gate.

By the time we were old enough to understand that we were actually good at basketball, everyone else had figured out what we already knew.

We played well together.

Really well.

We didn’t need to talk much on the court because we’d spent years learning each other’s habits. I knew when Mallari was about to drive, and he knew when I was about to take a shot. If he looked at me for half a second, I usually knew what he wanted.

It wasn’t magic.

It was years.

Years of watching each other play, fail, improve, argue, try again.

And I loved that.

I loved that he never treated me like I was fragile.

If I missed, he’d tell me to shoot again.

If I beat him, he’d demand a rematch.

If I played badly, he’d tell me I played badly and then stay until I got it right.

Mallari never made me feel like I had to be less just because I was a girl.

He made me want to be better.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I fell for him.

Maybe it was all of them.

Because when you’re young, you don’t really understand the difference between loving someone and loving the life you’ve built around them.

Mallari was everywhere in mine.

He was the person I looked for when something funny happened.

The first person I wanted to tell when I had good news.

The person I wanted beside me when I was upset, even when I didn’t want to talk about why.

He knew when I was pretending to be fine.

He knew when I was actually fine.

He knew which foods I’d steal from his plate and which ones I’d never touch.

He knew I hated losing.

I knew he hated losing even more.

We knew each other in all those small, ordinary ways that don’t seem important until you realize how much of a person they make up.

And somewhere in the middle of all that knowing, I fell in love with him.

I just didn’t have the words for it yet.

At eight, he was my best friend.

At twelve, he was still my best friend, except my stomach sometimes felt strange when he smiled at me.

At fifteen, I finally understood why.

By seventeen, I had been carrying the secret for long enough that I couldn’t remember what it was like before I knew.

I was in love with him.

Completely.

Quietly.

And, unfortunately, hopelessly.

The funny thing was, Mallari had no idea.

He’d known me practically my entire life, yet somehow he couldn’t see the one thing I’d spent years trying very hard not to show him.

Maybe that’s what happens when you grow up loving someone.

The feeling becomes so familiar that you stop knowing where the friendship ends and the love begins.

For me, there had never been a clean line between the two.

There was just Mallari.

And then there was me, always beside him.