As a child, she never really thought of herself as the type of girl to fall in love. It was a silly idea, she told herself, to care about someone else more than you care about yourself. Who else is going to look out for you? Who else will ever care about you like yourself? Love was for silly girls who couldn't take care of themselves and needed someone else to do it for them. She wasn't like those girls.
Growing up, she told him about her opinions of love a few times, and he always ended the conversation by saying quietly, "I don't think you're right." He would look at her with wide eyes behind thick glasses, very serious, and how was she supposed to argue with someone so passive? So they would move on and play hide-'n'-seek and in the back of her head she would remind herself that she was right, that love was nothing but an invention of the weak.
When they grew up, when she found that if he were to disappear she would die, she decided she must have been wrong.
************************************************************************
AUTHOR'S NOTES
This couple, Karen and Rick from (More) Friends of Mineral Town, is one of my favorites. I can just picture the two of them as childhood sweethearts! *smiles*