26. Isaac / Violet
26
ISAAC / VIOLET
ISAAC
Before we leave the store, I buy the copy of Persuasion for Violet, thanking the lady profusely on the way out for all of her help. I spent the past week talking to her a lot, asking her if I could arrange it in her store and then asking for her help to set the clues in each book. She was more than happy to help once I explained the situation, mainly focusing on Violet being someone I really cared about, and I wanted to do something special for her.
It wasn’t hard to think about what clues to use—I’ve kept track of every book she’s ever told me about, my own personal list of recommendations from the person I trust the most. The last one made me the most nervous, though. My heart was beating ridiculously fast as I slipped the necklace to the lady as Violet went looking for the first book. Following her around the store was like taking a walk down memory lane, and I hope it was the same for her .
The way her face dropped when she couldn’t find the last book had my stomach sinking, and I hate that for even a second, she thought I didn’t know her favourite book. She’s spoken about it so much, and from reading her copy of it, the margins filled with annotations and comments, I knew those lines were some of her favourites. It helps that they expressed how I felt, too, constantly on the verge of being optimistic but terrified of what would happen between us.
Then I got worried that giving her the necklace might be too much since it was technically only our first date. But I didn’t want another day to go by without her knowing how I feel about her, even if I can’t say the words just yet.
We hold hands on the way back to my car, and I suddenly wish we were closer to school. The thought of having to let go of her so I can drive us home makes me wish we could just walk instead. I open the door for her and close it after she gets in before going around to the driver's side.
We don’t speak much on the drive back, and I think we’re both just trying to process the day we’ve had. Every time I sneak a glance at her she’s either looking through the book resting in her lap or fiddling with her necklace. It’s been her necklace for over a year now. The matching one I have has been sitting around my neck since she first decided to give me a chance.
I knew even then that it was too soon for my feelings for her to be so strong, and I didn’t expect her to reciprocate them straight away. I’ve always had the sense that I’d love her more than she did me, and I’m completely fine with that. I’ll take anything I can get from her.
Then I planned to give it to her on our seventeenth birthday, but that day went completely wrong, and instead, the necklace has been tucked close to my heart ever since.
When we get back to school, I park up, but neither of us makes a move to get out of the car. We’re back in that bubble again, and there’s a silent fear that it'll pop once we step out of the car and back onto school grounds. I turn in my seat to look at her, and she’s still holding the pendant between her fingers.
“Thank you for today.”
There’s so much else I want to thank her for, but I keep it vague or we’ll be here all day.
Although, I guess that wouldn’t be too terrible.
“I should be saying that to you.” She reaches over for my hand, and I’m quick to give it to her as she intertwines our fingers together and squeezes lightly. “It was the most perfect date.”
She smiles at me, and even though the sun has begun to set, it feels like it’s rising again just in this car.
“I’m glad you liked it.”
We just sit there for a while, hands linked, and even though we’re not saying anything, I know this day has meant a lot to both of us. It feels like a new beginning for us, and I want to ask her where we go from here, what the next step is, but then her phone rings, and the bubble bursts.
She lets go of my hand, and I want to take it back, miss the feeling of it in mine instantly, but I don’t.
“Sorry, it’s Avery. I told her I would see her when I got back.”
“Did you tell her you were with me? ”
“No, I said I was out with my mum. Did you tell anyone?”
“I didn’t. I told my friends I was going home for the day.”
She nods, and I don’t know how we both feel about not being able to tell our friends about us again. But it feels too delicate to let other people in, and I worry that it could crack again before we even get the chance to fix it. Her phone stops ringing and then chimes with a message a few moments later. She glances down at it before looking back up at me.
“I had a great day, Isaac.” She leans over, pressing a kiss to my cheek. It feels like my heart is about to beat out of my chest. “Call me later?”
I nod, lost for words and trying to keep some semblance of calm while my brain is screaming at me not to let her get out of the car, to have it out with her and figure out where we stand, to lean over and kiss her. But she’s already opening the door, book clutched to her chest as I watch her walk away.
VIOLET
I don’t look back at Isaac as I make my way towards the dorms. I know I should have stayed and talked to him about what we’re doing and where we go from here, but it felt like too scary of a conversation to have. I wanted to keep the perfection of the day as it was. When I reach the main door, I want to look back and see if Isaac is behind me, but I know that if I do, I’ll just go running back to him.
I set my new copy of Persuasion on my desk, and go to the bathroom to take my makeup off before I head to Avery’s room. My cheeks are red, and I dread to think how long they’ve been like that, how much blood rushed to them at every thoughtful gesture from Isaac today.
My phone pings again, and I can’t avoid Avery any longer, so I open her texts and reply to tell her that I’ll be at her door in five minutes. I change into comfier clothes, leggings, and a baggy sweater, and then go to her room. Maybe talking to her will distract me, and I won’t think too much about Isaac.
Her door is unlocked, so I just let myself in, dropping next to her on the bed where she’s lying on her side.
“Hey, you,” she says, poking my nose. I scrunch it up as I do the same to her.
“Sorry, I was gone all day. It was hectic.”
I hate that I had to lie to her, but saying I was with my mum felt like an easy excuse to use. Avery knows we’ve been going through a rough patch because of my university decisions so it would make sense for me to spend some time with her.
It’s not a complete lie either because I am seeing my mum tomorrow for dinner. She’s still apprehensive about me moving away, but over the past few weeks, with more reassurances that I’ll still visit her as much as possible and talk to her every day, she’s started warming up to the idea more.
“So hectic that you couldn’t even text me back. I see how it is.”
I push her shoulder, rolling my eyes at her sarcasm.
“I barely checked my phone. How was your day?”
She lets out a groan before responding .
“Boring without you. I caught up on French homework, but I still need to do some translations for Latin.”
“I still don’t know why you thought taking two languages would be a good idea.”
“I was young and foolish then.”
I stare at her blankly. “You mean a year ago?”
“So young! So foolish!” She throws an arm over her eyes dramatically, rolling onto her back, and I have to laugh at how ridiculous she is. “Save me from the clutches of Virgil’s Aeneid!”
We dissolve into fits of laughter as she quotes random Latin phrases to me that I have no clue what they mean. When we both stop giggling, she asks how my day went, and I wish I could tell her everything.
“It was good. I went to a cute bookstore and got a new copy of Persuasion.”
“Ooh, which one?”
“The clothbound edition.”
Avery lets out a little squeal because she’s heard me talk about wanting it for so long but I’ve never got it.
“You finally bought it!”
“Well, actually, he - my mum got it for me.”
I can’t believe I slipped up like that, my excitement getting the best of me. I hope Avery didn’t catch it but the speed at which she sits up tells me that she did.
“He?! Which he is this?!”
I groan as I roll away from her and onto my stomach, my face buried in the covers like maybe if Avery can’t see me, then she’ll forget I’m here, and we can move on.
“Noor Violet Ayaz. ”
“Not the full name,” I say, my voice muffled as I refuse to lift my head.
“I have to use the full name when you lie to me and tell me you were with your mother, but you were with a boy!”
She grabs my shoulder, pulling me until I’m on my back and facing the ceiling. I bring my hands up to cover my face, my mind racing as I try to figure out how I’m going to explain this to her.
“I can’t believe you went on a date and didn’t tell me!”
The last part of her sentence has me realising just how much I haven’t told her. She’s my best friend, but I kept an entire relationship secret from her. Not because I don’t trust her, but because it was something Isaac and I agreed on doing right from the start.
But now, I want to tell her. I want her to know everything. I want her advice on how to move forward. My head and heart are at war, and I need Avery’s help with choosing a side to follow.
“There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”
I sit up, facing her, and cross my legs, and then she does the same, mirroring my position. She places her hand on my knee, and I take it as I begin to tell her the entire story of how I ended up on a date with Isaac today.
She was there for the icebreaker on the first day, so she knew that we had the same birthday, but she didn’t know about the cards.
I tell her about that first birthday in Year 7, how that turned into us meeting again in Year 8, and then turned into talking and meeting more often, and we eventually became friends.
I tell her how we would talk every day and sometimes watch movies together. How he confessed that he liked me after one of them.
I tell her that even though we both liked each other, I said that we should wait until we came back to school to make a real decision about us but then we spent the entire three month break talking every single day.
I tell her that we decided to keep it a secret, how it felt like something fragile and precious and we just wanted to keep it to ourselves.
I tell her about the breakup and that he ended things with me the day after our seventeenth birthday.
I tell her as much as I can without exposing how deeply I feel for him.
I don’t tell her about the devastation I felt after that day.
I don’t tell her that we spoke on the phone every single night until we fell asleep together because I wanted his voice to be the last thing I heard.
I don’t tell her about sneaking into that classroom every chance we could get just to be with each other for a moment between classes because it felt like torture to pretend we weren’t anything to each other.
I don’t tell her that I think he’s the love of my life.
By the time I’m finished, my cheeks are wet, and I’m wiping at them with the sleeves of my sweater.
“That was a lot,” Avery says, but there’s no judgment in her voice. She’s just stating a fact. It was a lot, and saying it all out loud like that has me realising what a huge part of my life Isaac has been.
“I don’t know why I’m crying,” I say quietly, starting at my lap because halfway through, it felt too difficult to look at Avery’s face as she realised just how much I’d been hiding from her.
“It’s because you still love him.”
I let out a huff, but the word hits me right in the chest.
“I never said I loved him.”
I try to play it off, to act like it’s not that big of a deal because I already feel like I’ve told her too much, and admitting that I love him out loud feels like something I can’t do yet.
The entire time I was with Isaac today, that word kept floating around my head and my heart, but I did my best to ignore it because I’m too scared to face it. I don’t know when it happened when I realised that I’d completely fallen for him, and that, as much as I wish could say I stopped, I never did. Everything he’s been doing since we came back to school, all the effort he’s made, and especially with what he did today, confirms to me that he hasn’t stopped either.
During the months we spent apart, he was still at the forefront of my mind, the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last before I fell asleep. I tried my hardest to ignore them, to get rid of them so I could try to recover from breaking up with him, but it was impossible.
We never said the words to each other, and I think we both must have thought it was too big of a thing to say, but there’s no doubt in my mind that what we had was love.
What we still have is love.
“You didn’t have to say it, I could tell. Your face lit up at the start when you spoke about him. I’ve never seen you look like that before. And when you got to the end, you seemed so sad.”
I sniffle, wiping at my face again to stop the seemingly never-ending tears, and I don’t know what to say to her. I wanted her advice, but I don’t know how to ask for it. Avery knows, though, and I listen as she starts to speak.
“Violet, I don’t think it would be a terrible idea if you started seeing him again.”
I finally look at her, and the concern on her face is clear, but she’s also smiling a little.
“I think you had something really special with him. And even though he did that to you, and I kind of hate him for it, it seems like he’s doing everything he can now to make it up to you. I’m not saying you have to rush into anything, but just see where it goes.”
I nod as she pulls me into a hug. I hold on to her tightly, so grateful that she’s not mad at me for hiding this from her for so long.
“I really want to,” I tell her, finding it easier to speak while she’s holding me together.
“That’s good. And this time, you can go into it knowing that if he ever hurts you again, I will string him up-”
“Okay, that’s enough of that.” I let out a small laugh, pulling back from her before she could get into too much detail. She wipes my cheeks with her hand, giving me a reassuring smile.
“I’m sorry for not telling you before.”
“Honestly, I’m a little annoyed that I could have been living vicariously through you this whole time, and you didn’t let me. He sounds so romantic.”
“He is,” I tell her, and then she asks more questions about him, butterflies fluttering through my stomach as I finally get to talk about all of the wonderful things he’s done for me.