Forever and always

Chapter twenty-two

We thankfully changed the subject after a few minutes, but I could still feel the disappointment in dad, about my own brother and mom. Fingers crossed that Victoria won't be like that, but who knows.

After a few hours catching up with my dad where we talked a lot, he asked a lot about Charles which was cute. He wanted to hear about the season so far.
Charles and I then decided to drive to my old school, since it would be fun to show him where I went.

"So this is the bus stop where I waited almost everyday. My best friend, Julie, always braided my hair when we were on the bus. Because I couldn't do it myself, and dad was terrible at doing my hair!" I said and pointed at the yellow bus stop that was still here.
"That must have looked so cute! Little Oli, with braids" he said and laughed..
"oh god no, I looked terrible with them, they made my head so big!! I wasn't until sixth grade I decided to ditch the braids" I laughed. What an embarrassing time, I always had Dutch braids but they made my head look so big, it was terrible to be honest.

"This is my school from first to tenth grade.." I said and parked the car outside the big building. It was a huge school, with many levels. "Jesus it's huge, my school in Monaco couldn't fit in here a few times!" Charles said, surprised. "Monaco could almost fit in here" I joked, because Monaco is such a tiny country.
"Yeah yeah, show me something cool" he said and walked into the schools property.
"Alright, I didn't have the most exciting school time to be honest. I wasn't that popular and got bullied a bit. But this place down here was my favorite place" I said and led the way in between some trees. "You got bullied? You have never told me this?" He asked, concerned. "Yeah, there's nothing to tell really".. "I'm sure there is, I know you".. "It's fine, I'll tell you sometime" I said and stopped as we arrived at the spot.

"This is it, it may not look like anything but is where I felt most safe in my school time" I said and sat down on a tree stump, so did he. "Is there a story about this place? It's just trees and bushes?" He asked.
The place was a little hole in between lots of trees, not many have clearly found this place, but who would have since it's hidden so deep in?.

"Whenever someone bullied me I went in here to be alone, my best friend had just moved away so I was all alone really. But someday Max saw them bullying me, and followed me into this place. I didn't see him but he followed me, so this became our spot.." I said and smiled a bit. "Aw mon amour, it's good you had Max by your side, he sounds like the most protective brother ever" he said and held his arm around my shoulder.
"He is, he's one of my best friends! Well- after the time he followed me in here, we ended up spending all the time out here together whenever we had a break from classes, he never wanted me to feel alone again. We ate our lunch snacks out here and exchanged stories together. Sometimes time even flew by and we got back late to class.." I said and laughed, which he did too. "Cute! I wished I had some memories like that with my brothers in school, but we never really saw each other since we were in different grades" he said. "Yeah, that's the same with Vic, we never actually saw her either. Only because Max and I are twins and went to the same class we saw each other, I was really lucky there" I said and he nodded..

We sat in the little secret spot talking about our childhood and school time, which we never really had talked about before. It was nice to get an insight of how it was to go to a fancy school in the middle of Monaco, and how different it had been to bring in a big school in the countryside of the Netherlands. Let's just say there weren't that many similarities.

"Shall we head to a few other places?" I asked. "Let's do it!" He said he seemed to be really interested in this little childhood tour I gave him. I showed the classroom which was my first ever classroom, of course we couldn't enter the school but we looked through the windows. Then I showed him where I got my first kiss in seventh grade, where we had art class which was my favorite subject and then a few other places.