The Story Of Us

9. Violet

9

VIOLET

I’m deliberately ten minutes late to meet Isaac, hoping that maybe he’ll get the same sinking feeling in his stomach that I had last year when he didn’t show up. It’s petty, I know, but I feel like I need to show I have some kind of control over this situation because I don’t know how I let myself be convinced that being here with him again is anything but a bad idea.

The door is closed as I approach the room like it always is, so I hold back a bit and tilt my head to peek through the small window. He’s sitting at the same desk we always sat at, his hands clasped together as he leans forward, and one of his legs bounces up and down quickly.

This is the place where everything changed for us. We became friends there and then eventually became something more.

ONE YEAR AGO

I’d never been more excited to come back to school. After Isaac confessed that he liked me just before our sixteenth birthday, I told him that I felt the same way. But I also knew that it felt like a risky move to make just before summer break because we wouldn’t see each other for a few months. I asked him if he could wait until September before we made anything official, and he told me he would wait for me forever. That was enough to get me through what felt like the longest summer of my life.

We spoke every single day, whether it was just for a few minutes or a few hours, but I couldn’t wait to actually see him again. We agreed to meet at our usual spot on the Sunday before classes started, a rarely used classroom hidden in the back corner of the science block that Isaac had discovered a few years ago.

As soon as I get his text telling me that he’s on his way there, I make up an excuse and tell Avery that I have to go and do something before hurrying out of her room. I have to stop myself from bursting into a run just to get there quicker.

When I round the corner of the narrow corridor, Isaac is already standing at the door of the classroom, holding it open with his foot. I stop dead in my tracks, completely overwhelmed at the sight of him.

“Come here, Violet,” he says with a smile, holding his arms out, and then I do run, practically jumping on him as I wrap my arms around his neck.

I feel his arms come around my waist, and he tightens his hold on me, dropping his head into the crook of my neck. I rest my head on his chest, listening to the sound of his quickening heartbeat. We’ve never hugged like this before, always just ones that never lasted for more than a few seconds, but this one is so new and different.

I don’t know how I went so long without holding him like this before.

“I missed you so much.” He whispers, and I close my eyes, wanting to live in this moment forever.

“I missed you, too.” It’s barely audible from where my face is pressed into him, but I know he hears it by the way I feel his shoulders relax like a weight’s been lifted off him just from hearing those words. I brush my nails over the short hair at the back of his head, wanting to feel all the parts of him I’ve never been able to before, and he shivers.

He shuffles backward into the room, not loosening his hold on me even when I stumble over his feet and almost make us fall over. He lets out a small laugh as he closes the door behind us with a kick that has us losing balance again. I bring my hands down from his neck, thinking that we’ll separate now we’re in here, but he doesn’t let go of me.

“Isaac,” I move my head away from his chest, wanting to see his face, but instead, one of his hands comes to the back of my hair and holds me to him again.

“Just let me hold you for a bit. I’ve dreamed about this for so long.”

My heart skips a beat, and I want to ask for how long exactly, to know if it’s as long as I’ve dreamed about a moment like this, too. I don’t say anything, though, not wanting to ruin this moment by saying something silly. It doesn’t matter how long we’ve both waited for this because now feels like the exact right time for it. His hand strokes across my hair, calming my racing heart as I bring my hands around his waist, wanting to hold on to him like he’s doing to me.

He fiddles with one of the butterfly clips on the top of my hair.

“Did you wear these for me?” he asks, and I feel my cheeks going red with embarrassment about being caught. He mentioned a while ago that he thought they were cute, so I’ve been wearing them more, but I didn’t think he would notice.

“No, I just like them.”

I feel his laugh, the shake of his body as he tries to hold it back because he knows I’m lying.

“Well, I like them too.”

He gives it one last tap before letting go of me and allowing me to pull back slightly. His hands move down slightly to rest on my hips, his thumb still moving in soothing circles. There’s a different look in his eyes now when he looks at me like he’s finally showing his true emotions after hiding them for so long.

“I missed you,” he says, gazing deep into my eyes as he says it, and it feels like he’s saying so much more.

“You said that already.”

“I really did, though.”

“I really missed you, too.”

I move my hands from around his waist and bring them up to his face, cradling them as I stroke my thumbs across his cheeks. He closes his eyes for a few seconds and lets out a shaky exhale before smiling. I poke the dimple that appears on his left cheek, not wanting to look away from him. He has the prettiest smile in the world, one that lights up his whole face, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing it .

Everything about him is just so pretty.

He drops his forehead to mine, his thumbs mirroring mine as they graze across my hips. We’ve never been this close before. There’s always been an intimacy in our relationship, something that’s developed over years of being friends in secret, but it feels like it’s shifted to something else now. I’ve never been touched like this, never touched someone else like this, but it feels right with him.

“Let’s go sit down.” He breaks the silence, dropping his hands from my hips and reaching up to take mine from his face. He holds them for a second, then quickly presses a kiss to my knuckles before letting them go. We’re still standing so close to each other, but the sudden loss of contact makes it feel like we’re miles away. I take his hand in mine and thread our fingers together as I walk us over to the desk we usually sit at.

I drop into my seat, and Isaac moves his chair closer to mine before sitting down. I shuffle closer to him, our hands still linked and legs touching as he brings his free hand up to my face.

“Are we doing this, Violet?”

“I think we are.”

The relief on his face is so clear, and I hate that I’ve gone so long making him think we could be anything less than this. Every moment we’ve had together has built up to this, the stars finally aligning so that we can be together the way we’ve always meant to be.

“Thank you,” he says as he pulls my face closer and presses his lips to my forehead.

My mind reels as I imagine what it would have been like if we hadn’t made that leap last September, if we had never solidified what our relationship was and decided to give it a chance. But we did, and there’s no changing that. Now, I don’t even know what to define us as.

He fiddles with the sleeves of his sweater, and seeing him framed by the autumn trees in the window makes me feel suddenly glad that our birthday is in July because he doesn’t suit the gloominess of the weather this time of year. He’s always been so bright to me.

His sketchbook is in front of him, and I try not to wonder if it’s the same one that I gave him a few years ago. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, tapping it to check the time, I guess because as soon as he does, he looks towards the door and catches me looking at him before I have a chance to hide. Any other time he caught me stealing glances, I would be met with a smirk, but this time his mouth just dropped open. I pat my cheeks and take deep breaths before opening the door.

He doesn’t take his eyes off me as I approach him and take the seat at the desk in front of him instead of the one next to him. I sit sideways in the chair, though, so that I can face his desk, but I try to keep as much distance as possible. I still haven’t figured out what to do when we’re so close. All my instincts tell me to make some kind of contact, but I can’t.

“Thanks for coming,” he says, and I mask my confusion. Did he think I wouldn’t show up?

“Let’s just figure out an idea, and then we can work on it separately. We can figure out how to combine it later on.”

I don’t give him any opportunity for small talk, I just want this over and done with as soon as possible because I don’t know how much longer I can be in this room with him.

“Sure, if that’s what you want to do.” He puts both hands on his sketchbook, and I finally look at it properly. It’s not the one I got for him, and I don’t know why I expected it to be or why my chest feels tight because it’s not. “Do you have any ideas?”

I reach into my bag and realise too late that I’ve taken out the one he got for me instead of the empty one. I shove it back inside my bag, grabbing the new one instead, one that doesn’t have any traces of him in it. When I look at him, his eyes are fixed on the space where the green journal was before he gives a tight shake of his head and looks at me. Our eyes meet, and there’s an unspoken question in his and an unspoken answer in mine.

Why do you still carry it around?

The same reason you don’t carry mine. We’re both hurting.

I clear my throat before remembering what his actual question was.

“I have a few, but it depends on what kind of media we want to make.” I hesitate before asking the next question because I already know the answer, but the childish part of me still wants to hurt him a bit. “What kind of stuff do you usually draw?”

He closes his eyes, and I instantly regret saying it. The part of me that wants to hurt him is overwhelmed by the part of me that still knows him better than anyone else.

Of course, I already know what he draws. He would always update me on whatever he was working on, and I would always encourage him. He was the first person aside from a teacher that I showed my writing to, and he would support me in the same way.

So many of our nightly calls were spent with him either showing off a new artwork or me reading a story I’d written to him. When we’d see each other the next day, he’d give me an illustration of whatever his favourite scene was. We’ve already created so much together. This project would have been perfect for us if it had happened only a year ago, but I won’t mention that, and neither will he.

He opens his eyes and looks down at his sketchbook before looking back up at me. I can tell he’s having a silent war in his head, wondering if he should continue acting like we don’t know every little detail about each other.

Isaac doesn’t say anything, though. He just slowly turns his sketchbook around so it’s facing me and opens it up. He sits back in his chair a bit, and I know he’s giving me space to lean forward so that I can look at the pages more closely.

The pages are filled with different backgrounds and character sketches, making up small storyboards that detail his ideas. As I look over them, though, I notice that I haven’t seen these drawings before, and the realisation makes my stomach drop. I was always the first, and sometimes only, person he would show his drawings to, but I haven’t seen these.

“These are great, Isaac.” As much as I don’t like him right now, I can’t lie about something so important to him, and there’s no denying he’s a great artist. Watching him develop his skills over the past few years was so rewarding, and I loved when he would show me comparisons of old pieces that he’d redone to see his progress.

He lets out a breath, causing me to look up at him, and he quickly blinks a few times, but I already saw the glassiness in his eyes. I lean back from the desk, putting distance between us once again.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, quickly turning the sketchbook back to himself and closing it before clearing his throat. “I guess we could make a short film clip or something?”

His suggestion surprises me because I know how much effort that will take from him. He would complain sometimes that he loved animation, but it could feel tedious redrawing the same things over and over. The fact that he wants to make a film together is unexpected.

“Are you sure? That seems like a lot of work for you?”

“Yeah, it’ll be good practice for me.” His words come out emotionless, and I recognise it as the tone he uses when he talks to his parents, when he’s shutting down and building up walls to protect himself. I hate what I’m doing to him, that I’m making him feel like this, but I don’t know how to stop, and I don’t know how to forgive him without getting hurt in the process. “You can just write whatever you want, and I’ll make it work.”

I know he’s giving me an out, and even though I can feel him trying to distance himself from me, I can somehow tell that he still cares about me by trying to let me do the minimal amount of work.

Seeing how much effort he’s putting in, how much he’s trying to make this easier for me, makes me want to be nicer to him, too.

“I’ll think of a few ideas this week, and then on Friday, we can pick one together,” I say quickly, not giving myself a chance to second-guess myself or change my mind.

Isaac’s eyes widen slightly in surprise as he realises I’m willing to work with him on this.

“Yeah, okay. That’s -”

He doesn’t finish his sentence as the sound of his phone ringing breaks his focus. He glances at the screen, his shoulders drop, and he lets out a deep sigh. I don’t need to look to know that it’s his parents, he always reacted like this whenever they called. It would instantly sour his mood, and I would try to bring him back and distract him with something so that he could put off thinking about them for just a few minutes longer. But they’re persistent, and that hasn’t changed as his phone silences and then immediately begins to ring again.

He stands up, picking his bag up from the floor and stuffing his sketchbook in it before taking his phone from the desk.

“I have to take this.”

It stops ringing again, and he looks back and forth between it and me. I can see the battle written on his face—he can either ignore the call and stay here with me, or he can answer it and leave.

The noise starts up again and it seems the decision is made for him.

“We’ll talk more on Friday. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

I want to smooth away the crease between his eyebrows and poke his cheeks to make him smile instead of frown, but I don’t get to do that anymore. He walks to the door and looks back at me once before leaving the room.