The Story Of Us

1. Violet

1

VIOLET

PRESENT

“This is the last one,” I tell Mum as we drop the heavy box we’re balancing between us onto my desk. It’s filled with books, and I deliberately left it for last, knowing that both of us would need to carry it.

“Are you even going to have time to read all of these?”

“I like having options,” I say with a shrug as I begin opening the box and taking books out, but my mum places her hand over mine to stop me.

“You can unpack them when I leave. Sit down, let’s talk for a bit.” Her gentle tone makes me instantly realise what she wants to talk about, but I don’t want to yet.

Somehow, on the multiple trips back and forth from the car to my room, I’ve managed to avoid seeing him, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about him . As soon as we pulled up to school, he was the first thing on my mind, and a small part of me wanted to catch a glimpse to see if he looked as worn down as I felt. Now it feels like if I talk about him with my mum, just mentioning his name will have him appearing in front of me, and I’m not ready to face him yet.

“Mum, it’s fine. I’m over it now.”

She gives me a stern look, and I sigh before pulling out the chair under my desk and taking a seat. Mum perches on the edge of the bed that she’s just made up for me. Even though I’m old enough to do it myself now, it’s the same routine every time she drops me off at school as she helps to set up my bed and organise my clothes and toiletries. Coates lets students keep the same room for all seven years, so most of my stuff stays here over the summer, but Mum still insists on tidying it all whenever she comes to visit, especially on the first day back.

“You know it’s okay if you’re not fine. You don’t have to pretend with me.” She reaches over to take my hand, stroking her thumb across the back as she continues in a soft voice. “Your first heartbreak stays with you for a long time, and it’s only been a few months for you.”

“I’m not heartbroken,” I scoff. Maybe if I say it out loud, I’ll start to believe it myself because there’s no other explanation for the way it feels like my chest has been hollowed out since July.

“The lack of ice cream in my freezer over the summer proves otherwise.”

“We had a heatwave!”

She ignores the glare I give her, and I ignore the way she rolls her eyes at me. I hadn’t even told her when I started dating him, so I wasn’t planning on telling her that we had broken up, either. She even had to come and pick me up a week before the year officially ended because I told her I was sick and wanted to come home. It didn’t take long for me to break down and tell her the whole story, and she just listened carefully, stroking my hair and holding me like she’d done before so many times when I was younger.

“I just want you to be happy. It’s your last year of living away at school, and I want you to enjoy it instead of being upset over a silly boy.”

I try not to react too much to the ‘living away’ part because I still haven’t figured out how to tell my mum that I want to move away for university, too. Even if the plans I made with him aren’t going to happen, I still want to follow the goals I set for myself.

“I am happy. Avery is getting here soon and we’re going to have dinner, watch a movie, and have a great weekend before school starts. Stop worrying about me.” I don’t mean to be harsh when I say that last part, but towards the end of summer, it got exhausting trying to deal with my mum and the way she tiptoed around me.

“You can come home any weekend you want, and if you don’t want to travel all that way, then you can call me any time. I love you, meri jaan.” She stands up, and I do the same because I know she wants a hug. I think the constant reassurance is more for her than me at this point.

“I love you, too. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

We leave my room and make our way towards the front entrance, passing other students who are in the middle of moving back in. Mum continues reassuring me that I can call her any time, day or night, and I keep telling her I’ll be fine. Once we reach her car, she kisses my cheek before getting in and driving away.

My shoulders drop as soon as she’s out of view, and I let out a deep sigh, letting my head fall back to stare at the grey cloudy sky. I know I’ll have to have a conversation with her soon about university but I think it’ll be easier to do it over the phone.

I start walking back to my room and can’t help but scan the car park to look for him. I don’t want to see him, but I feel on edge, not knowing where he is. The thought that he could appear in front of me at any time makes me race back to my room. I’ve almost reached the door when I hear my name being called by a familiar voice, and I’m stopped in my tracks.

I turn to see Isabelle walking towards me, and I quickly look around her. Luckily, her brother is nowhere to be seen.

“Hi, Izzy. Did you just get in?”

“Yeah, Isaac’s parking the car so he dropped me off and told me to go unlock my room.”

I try not to show how much that sentence has affected me, covering up my sharp inhale with a cough as Izzy gives me a concerned look. Before we broke up, he told me his main plan for summer was to get his license as quickly as possible and then drive to my house so he could take me out on a real date. It hits me then that this is just the first plan that we made together that won’t ever happen. I can feel the sting of tears in my eyes.

“Oh, I’ll let you carry on then. I need to finish unpacking my stuff.”

“Let’s walk together!” She grabs my arm, holding on to me as we head into the dorm building. I think clinginess must run in the family.

Whenever we were together, Isaac would always find a way to touch me, whether it was fingers linked underneath a desk, his leg against mine any time we sat next to each other, or his hands cradling my face before he would kiss me.

I force myself to stop thinking about him and instead focus on what Izzy is saying. She’s been babbling on with no idea that I’ve been trying to forget all the memories that I have with her brother. I murmur in all the right places, and I quicken my pace so we can reach our rooms sooner. We’re both on the ground floor, but Izzy’s room is further down the corridor than mine.

When we get to my door, I push it open and tell Izzy that I’ll catch up with her later. All the while, I try to forget the fact that I’ll have to see him soon. If Izzy had her way, I’d be going to her room with her, but I know Isaac can’t be far behind us, and I just want to hide away and prolong the inevitable for as long as possible.

My door is only closed for a few seconds before there’s a knock and a silly part of my brain expects Isaac to be standing out there when I open it. Avery’s smiling face greets me instead, and even though she’s my best friend and I missed her over summer break, I feel a strange disappointment at seeing her instead of him.

“When did you get here?” I ask her, still standing in the door so she doesn’t try to come in because I just need a few minutes to compose myself before I can see anyone.

“Like five minutes ago, my parents were sorting my room out, so I thought I’d come and see you first.”

“Can you give me a couple minutes? I just have something to do, and then I’ll come to your room.”

She gives me a puzzled look, and I don’t know what my expression looks like, but it’s enough for her to take a step back.

“Okay, just come over when you’re ready.” She says as I give her a weak smile, and she walks the few feet back to her room.

Once I hear her door click shut, I close mine too and lean against the wall next to it to try and get myself together. I take deep breaths, willing myself not to cry because I already did enough of that over the summer, but the hollow feeling in my chest just feels like it’s gotten deeper. It’s like there’s a cavern inside of me, like I’ve been excavated, and there’s no way to fill the space again because my heart was taken by someone who didn’t deserve it.

I tap my fingers to my thumb repeatedly, but then I have to stop myself because it’s something that Isaac taught me to do to calm down. The repetitive motion gives me something else to focus on instead of whatever I am stressed out about. I go towards my bed instead, flopping back onto it and covering my face with my hands as the tears finally start to fall.

It was easy not to think about him as much when I was at home over the summer, easy to pretend that life at school was completely different to life at home, and so he had no part of it. But being back here, in a room that’s filled with memories of him even though he’s never stepped foot in it, it’s harder to pretend. It feels like he’s everywhere here.

Memories of laying in bed at night on the phone with him, Isaac always waiting for me to fall asleep first because he wanted his voice to be the last thing I heard before I slept, telling me that it would bring nothing but sweet dreams.

I hate how much I missed having that over the summer, and it felt like I only had sleepless nights or bad dreams. I hate that I convinced myself it was all because I hadn’t spoken to him. On my weakest nights, I wanted to respond to all his unanswered messages, call him for just a few seconds to hear those words so I could sleep easily. I hate that I didn’t and settled instead for a bad sleep schedule that I still haven’t fixed.

I get up, forcing myself to stop crying as I walk to the bathroom and splash some water on my face so I can go and see Avery without her worrying why my face is red. I apply a bit of concealer where I need it to cover up my dark eye bags and hope that Avery won’t notice.

I decide to apologise to her because she probably felt hurt by my reaction to her turning up at my door when we hadn’t seen each other for a few months. I wish I could just tell her what happened and why I’m acting like this, but Isaac and I decided between us that we didn’t want anyone to know, and I still don’t want to break that promise to him. We wanted to stay in the bubble we’d created on our birthday, just the two of us separate from everyone else in an empty classroom, exchanging cards, gifts, and eventually pieces of our hearts too.

I run a brush through my hair, I didn’t bother doing anything special with it either, and put some lip balm on before I leave my room and go to Avery’s. She opens the door after one knock and I pull her into a hug.

“I’m sorry, I just had a weird summer. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. And you don’t need to apologise either. My parents just left. Come in.”

We sway side to side for a bit before she pulls back, and we go deeper into her room. I know she won’t ask for an explanation, and she knows I’ll give one if I want to, but I can’t bring myself to tell her about Isaac yet .

We sit on her bed together, catching up on our summers, and I conveniently leave out details of all the crying I did while scrolling through old messages with him and looking at the very few pictures and videos we had together.

“I’m starving. Let’s go eat,” Avery says as she stands up, pulling me off the bed with her. “The dining hall always has that really nice pizza on the first day back.”

“Why don’t we go off campus? We’re stuck with dining hall food all year. Why do you want to start early?”

I try to play it off as wanting to eat something else, but the reality is that I know Isaac will be there. I know I’ll have to see him in class on Monday, but if I can avoid him until then, it will give me a bit more time to prepare myself for it.

“Okay, where shall we go then?” Avery knows something's wrong, but she won’t push me to talk about it, trusting that I’ll do so when I feel up to it.

We decide on a new Italian restaurant that’s about a twenty-minute walk away from school. She pulls on a cardigan and we stop by my room so I can grab a jacket before starting our walk to the restaurant. I decide not to think about Isaac for the rest of the night and just enjoy that I’m back at school with my best friend.