For lani48116, I hope you'll like it. I know it's a bit longer, but I got carried away with those flashbacks :P
~Flashback #1: Waterford, Michigan, summer 2003~
"Dylaaaaaaaaaan, give me my ducky back!" small girl cries out and stretches her arms towards brown-haired boy about six years of age, who has her rubber duck in his hands.
"Come and get it, Y/N," the boy, Dylan chuckles and runs away. His friend pouts and sits down in the grass next to small inflatable swimming pool where they were playing. When Dylan realizes she doesn't follow him, he comes back and sits down next to her, handing her a ducky: "Here, I am sorry for taking your toy."
He awkwardly pecks her cheek and she smiles: "Thank you, Dy. We can share it..."
"No, you have it. You are a girl and girls should have all the pretty toys."
~Present day, Detroit~
It has been few months since your family finally started a new non-nomad life in Detroit. Before that you've moved around a lot and lived in about twenty states already. Your longest stay in one state was right in Michigan and it lasted five years, few months more or less. The photo in your hands is a photo, taken during your last summer before your family moved to Nebraska. Your fingers touch another photo and another memory flashes through your head...
~Flashback #2, Michigan, winter 2007~
Four years later, the same pair of kids, an eleven-year-old boy in an oversized hockey jersey and a ten-year-old girl in pink tutu skirt, skates around the frozen pond. The boy has his stick in his hands and babbles excitedly: "And guess what, Y/N?"
She skates past him and smiles: "What, Dy?"
He stops next to her and grins goofily: " I missed you."
She smiles back and hugs her friend: "I missed you too. I am happy we came back for few days."
He opens his mouth to say something, but his friend's parents, calling her to get back because they are leaving, interrupt him. She sighs and smiles sadly: "We will see each other again soon."
Little she knows that will be the last time he'll see her best friend again. And he never got a chance to tell her he got named the best scorer of his hockey team.
~Present day, Detroit~
You sigh as your fingertips touch the photo and you fight the urge to spend the rest of your day looking at random photos of you and Dylan from your childhood. You haven't heard of him or seen him since that winter of 2007. Well, if you exclude news you've read about him. About his debut in the NHL.
"Y/N, are you ready to go?" you mother yells and enters your room without knocking. When she sees you on a bed, her face changes: "Y/N, why are you still not dressed? What are you doing?"
"Mom, do I really have to go?"
"Don't be like that, missy. It's just a little formal dinner with your father's business partners."
"But mom, those dinners bore me to death!"
"Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N, get dressed," she orders and snatches the picture from your grasp. Before putting it away, she looks at it and then back at you: "Are those photos with Dylan?"
"Clearly."
"Oh, sweetie, do you miss him?"
"I barely remember him, but what I remember makes me miss him and all those careless hours we spent messing around," you admit, tears watering your eyes. You have never really thought of how much you miss him, how much you miss spending careless hours with him swimming or skating or doing whatever you felt like doing it.
