“i love you” with drakepad?
“I love you,” Launchpad says, and he means it every time.
When he’s eleven he falls in love with Theo Robinson, the boy living down the street. Theo’s a year older and he has a discolored patch of feathers around his right eye, and even though he can do all the tricks on his bike that Launchpad is too clumsy to do, he thinks that Launchpad having a family of airshow pilots is “pretty wicked.”
Launchpad falls in love in the way children do, instantly and wholly, and without reservation.
He and Theo are at the park one day in summer, racing along the concrete paths cutting through the grass. Launchpad’s crashed his bike half a dozen times by now, and sports an impressive black eye, but the sun is shining and they’re both smiling and he thinks it’s the perfect moment to tell Theo how he feels.
In the perfect sunlight, he watches the smile slide off Theo’s face like it’s something diseased on his visage.
“That’s gross,” Theo bites out. He shoves Launchpad, who trips over his bike, knocking both it and himself to the ground. He falls backward in a tangle of limbs and handlebars, and scrapes his elbows and palms bloody.
When he looks up, it’s to see Theo’s receding figure, disappearing quickly on his bike.
Later, Launchpad will be forced to explain to his mother why he’s returned home in such a state. Birdie will clean the gravel out of her son’s cuts and hold a cold compress to his swollen eye and, unbeknownst to him, her heart will break over a son who loves too much for his own good.
“You have a big heart, sweetie,” Birdie will say, combing her fingers through his hair. “Anyone who doesn’t see that isn’t worth your time.”
But Launchpad finds that falling in love with someone is easier than falling out of it.
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