[Skylar]

Age 17

"I'll have two cookie dough flavoured ones please!" I peek over the tall ice cream truck, wanting to see the machine in action but sadly my forehead barely passes the counter even when I am on my toes. All of a sudden I feel hands under my arms and I am hoisted up into the air and onto a pair of strong shoulders. "Thank you Jelly Bean."

I place my tiny hands in Felix's hair, who only grunts his response while we wait for the ice cream to be made, it is quite interesting to see the old man working and sprinkling the little decorations on my cone. "Stop moving around so much." Felix grips onto my legs to stop me. It's a very hot summer day, I wish there was a portable air conditioner but ice cream will have to do. Plus, I don't think it's possible to bring it with us on our camping trip at the park.

"Thanks!" I grab the two cones and Felix hands the man his money, the man immediately goes to tend to other people. "Where are we going now?" Slightly lowering my arm so Felix can get a bite out of his ice cream.

"Beach. I don't want you to get a heat stroke." I kick my legs, I've rarely been to the beach since it's so crowded, but this is perfect because it's still early. The closest beach is a 20 minute walk from the park where we are currently at so I am guessing we are packing our bags to go there right away. "You sit there, I'll pack our shit up."

"But your ice-cream is going to melt..." I look at it, half eating with part of the cone missing. I hate when I waste food, it's very hard for Felix and I to make money, so we don't have opportunities to each ice cream very often but today is special, Felix said it's a special day.

He walks over, ruffles my hair and fixes the collar of my polo shirt. "You can have the rest of it." I shake my head, he bought me the ice cream, he has to eat it or else it's not fair. "Sit in the shade alright? I'll be back." He runs over to our tent, very quickly packing it up as I try my best to catch the dripping ice cream with my tongue.

"Can I help?" I ask, standing next to Felix as he hauls everything onto his shoulder, his sun glasses sitting on his nose.

"I'm done, I told you to sit under the tree." He frowns, takes off his sun glasses and puts it on me. I give him his ice cream and he smiles very slightly, he's been smiling more lately, I like it when he smiles. "We should move quick, you're going to get a sunburn." He places a hand on my shoulder and starts walking.

"Do you think there will be many people today?"

"Not sure. It's still early in the morning so I doubt it." I walk beside him, swinging my head while humming and biting into my ice cream, Felix is at his last bite and he gives me the bottom of the cone. He knows it's the most tasty bit. "You have cookie dough on your cheek." He chuckles deep but briefly.

"Where?" I say while sticking my tongue out trying to reach it. "Where? Where?" I poke him in the side, he doesn't answer and swipes it away with his finger then licks it clean. "You just ate my spit!" I fall into him, even with the heavy bag he is still standing tall and strong like he always does.

"As if I haven't done that before in the past year..." He says with an unamused stare. "You are the ultimate cookie hoarder."

"More like a little cookie monster!" The blue fluffy thing has a very wide mouth but I think he's pretty cute.

"You are far from a monster." Felix says, shifting his bag further up his shoulders. "You're just a Cookie."

~

"Bring me more water please!" I hand the bucket to Felix, who walks over to the shore and fills it up, taking the heavy bucket back with no problem. Weak people problems are especially bad under the summer heat. "Thanks Felix."

We were wrong when we thought the beach would be empty, it has less people than it would have if it were later in the day, but definitely not empty! Oh well, at least I get to spend the weekend at Felix's new apartment, it's very small but he is renting it all by himself now since he graduated high school. I'm nearly there, but not quite. And when I do, I am sure it will be the happiest day of my life.

"Don't you want to make a bigger castle?" Felix stands right where his wide shadow covers my body, I don't like it when he throws away his body like that, but I can't make him stop.

"Nah, I want just enough space for the two of us."

"What about your brother?" Felix spits out, he hates Ryland because my family doesn't treat me right, but he's the smarter one, so it's my fault for being stupid. Even though Felix hates Ryland, he still deals with him, albeit not very willingly, but it means a lot to me when he does make the effort.

"Ryland will build his own castle. I need you around to keep me entertained though, so this castle is for you and me, together." Felix wraps his arms around me from behind with me sitting in his lap, sometimes he likes to cuddle, which is nice, I like being held.

"You are very entertaining, minus the part where you never fucking wake up. That's annoying." He digs his fingers into my side making me squirm away, I hate being tickled. It makes me feel like I'm going to pee. Felix takes a clump of sand and starts building a wall around the castle. And finally a leaning watch tower with a green leaf on the top. "That's where I will live, keep the monsters from getting you."

I pluck the leaf out and place it at the top of the castle, where my petal sits. "No, no, no. We will live together inside." Felix frowns, not understanding what I am implying. I don't usually like thinking, but monsters are everywhere, the most dangerous ones don't come from the outside though.

"What if something hurts you?" His hand lifts the bottom of my shorts, uncovering some of the scars on my thigh. I'm not nearly as cool as Felix though, he is my knight in shining armour.

"Nothing will hurt me if we are together. Best friends stay together for many, many years."

"And what if something destroys your castle?" Pushing his sunglasses further up my nose, and tucking my wet hair behind my ear. "People break shit for the fun of it."

"Then let them." I shrug, "Castles are made to protect the people inside. As long as the people inside are safe, then everything is fine. I don't need a castle." There are more important things in this world than a castle.

Things like best friends, people that care about me. Even when there is no one out there that will enjoy being with me, as long as I have Felix, I will live on just to see him smile more. One day when he finds someone he loves more than me, he will smile lots and lots.

And that alone will make me smile lots and lots too.

"Have you ever thought about getting tattoos?" I ask upon seeing a guy with a tattoo across his back, turning around and placing my hands on Felix's thighs and sitting on his knees. He isn't wearing a shirt and I can see that a tattoo on his chest would be cool looking. "Maybe one right here." I lift his heavy arm up and point where his ribs are. He has a lot of muscle so the side of his ribs look like fish gills, which is kind of weird... But it looks good on him! I think...

"No Cookie. Tattoos are expensive, and I'm not getting one right on top of a bone. That shit hurts." He chuckles, giving me a kiss to the forehead. I let his arm fall back in place, and not even a second later he holds me tight against his chest and ducks to the side, taking me with him.

I look up past Felix's shoulder, seeing a bunch of girls waving and yelling towards us. Felix stands up quickly, making my eyes drift towards the track of a volleyball collision right where the sand castle was, making it nothing but a pile of sand. The petal and leaf laying half in the mountain.

Felix angrily sets me down and grabs the volleyball, giving it a toss in the air and smashing the ball back where it came from, knocking over a chair with their bags on it. "Fucking assholes... Aim at your friends, not mine!" He yells at them, making the girls scramble away from the court to collect their belongings. Felix is quite scary sometimes.

"You alright, Cookie?" He twists my body around to find that I have grazed my shoulder against a piece of rock, it's nothing major but I can see that Felix doesn't like the look of it. "I should've landed first..." He mumbles then looks over at the broken castle with a flame burning in his eyes.

"I told you. Castles break apart." My fingers find the leaf and the soft purple petal. Placing them safely in Felix's hands. "They are only made to protect the people inside."

Felix frowns again, looking at me with a strange expression. "People break too. You just don't see it until it's too late." I place a dried leaf next to the lush green one from the destroyed castle. "But the difference between people and castles is that we can have friends. Castles can't. And friends make us ten thousand times stronger."

I gather a handful of sand and pour water onto it from the bucket. "We can always build another castle. No biggie."

Without much effort, a mountain of damp sand sits in front of me. I place the lush green leaf and purple petal on top of the hill. Felix sits across from me.

"And sometimes we don't even need a castle."

"We just need each other." He finishes.