Page 13 of The Story Of Us

I manage to make it to the English classroom without bumping into him. He has art club right now, so our paths would never usually cross unless we wanted them to. We’d always meet afterward, stealing a quick half an hour together before dinner to show off our work to each other. I loved seeing what he created, whether it was a small project that he finished in one session or one that took a few weeks, and he sent me constant progress updates on.

The thought that I won’t be seeing him after today’s club has me dropping into my chair and taking some steadying breaths as I pull out my two notebooks, one completely full and one completely empty. I try to tell myself that force of habit is why I still carry the full one around, but I know deep down that’s not the real reason - the six words written on the first page are.

THREE YEARS AGO

My hands tremble as I hold the gift I’ve bought for Isaac. I’m standing outside the classroom we usually meet in, but I’m too nervous to enter and see him sitting there. Taking a deep breath, I push the door open, and my shoulders drop when I realise Isaac isn’t even here yet.

I walk over to the desk we usually sit at, in the back corner of the room, and drop the gift on the desk. I pull out one of the chairs to sit and fix my eyes on the clock above the whiteboard, watching as the minutes tick by, and there’s no sign of him.

He’s never been late before, and I can’t help but feel worried. It starts needling into my brain as I remember that I haven’t seen him since lunch. He didn’t show up to the last few lessons of the day, but surely he would have told me if we weren’t meeting today? I give him the benefit of the doubt and just fiddle with the wrapping paper on the gift, making sure all the creases are sharp and the tape hasn’t lifted.

Ten minutes pass by, and just as I’ve resigned myself to the fact that he’s not showing up, the door opens, and he stands there, panting.

“I’m so sorry I’m late.”

He rushes over to me and drops into the seat next to mine, throwing his bag on the floor and sliding down the chair slightly so he can lean back with his head turned to the ceiling.

His eyes are closed, his breaths heavy, and my eyes drift to the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down when he swallows. I hadn’t noticed before, but looking at him from this new angle, I can see that his eyelashes touch the lenses of his glasses. No wonder he’s always wearing them low on his nose and constantly pushing them up. He hasn’t had his hair cut in a while, I think. The way it hangs over his ears and covers his forehead makes that clear. There’s only a week left of school, so I guess he’s just waiting until he goes home to get it cut. I want to tell him that I like it when it’s this length, that I think it makes him look softer, but then I shake that thought away.

I don’t know when I started noticing the way he looks and taking account of the way his features have changed over the years, but it’s something I need to stop. We’re just friends. I don’t need to care about how he looks. But then he finally opens his eyes and tilts his head to the side to look at me. The sunlight catches him in a way that makes it look like he’s glowing like the rest of the world around him has dulled. He gives me a small smile, and I have to turn away from him. It feels like my cheeks are on fire.

“Everything okay?” I ask him, fiddling with the gift on the desk so I don’t have to look at him.

I hear him sitting up and shuffling his chair closer to mine, but I still don’t look.

“Yeah, all good. I just needed to catch my breath. I had to run from the car park.”

That has me looking at him, and he’s still smiling at me.

“Why were you there?”

His smile falters a little, and I regret asking. It feels like clouds just came out and covered all the sunlight.

“I had to go somewhere at lunch with my parents, so they just dropped me off.” I nod my head with an ‘ah’ and then he says something I don’t expect. “I came back as early as I could. They wanted to have dinner together but I told them I had something important to do.”

He can’t mean this, can he? Seeing me? That can’t be more important than having dinner with his parents. He must be doing something after this with his friends or something.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

We’re sitting facing each other, and for a few moments, we don’t say anything. The silence hangs between us in a way that doesn’t feel heavy at all, considering what he just said. I’ve noticed that we’ve started having more of these moments when we see each other, ones where neither of us feels the need to fill the gaps in conversation, and it’s a comfort I don’t think I share with many other people, really only my mum and Avery. I don’t want to think too much about why Isaac seems like he belongs in the same category as them or what that category even is.

Isaac clears his throat, breaking the silence as he leans down to get his bag from the floor and pulls a small wrapped box out of it.

“Happy birthday, Violet.” His smile is back, and I think I missed it for these past few seconds.

“Happy birthday, Isaac,” I echo, taking the gift from the desk and passing it to him. He gives the box in his hand to me, and for just a second our fingers brush and it feels like my entire body is alight.

“Do you want to open yours first?” He asks, tipping his head towards the box in my hands.

It’s the first year we’ve had gifts for each other at the same time. The past few years have been full of awkward exchanges, starting with Isaac giving me a card on our first joint birthday in Year 7 and me rushing to make him one for the next day. The next year, we planned to meet and swap cards, but he bought a book for me as well, and I hadn’t even thought of getting him anything. The year after that, I got him a copy of one of my favourite books, Persuasion, because he’d started taking an interest in reading. After that, we decided to actually swap gifts, and I spent pretty much the whole year thinking about what to get for him. I just hope he likes it.

“Let’s do it at the same time,” I suggest, and even though he nods in agreement, I notice that he still waits for me to start undoing the paper on my gift before he starts on his own. We don’t speak, the only noise in the room is the sound of paper rustling as we both take care to open our gifts like they’re something precious. I do it slowly, not wanting to tear the paper, as I peel the tape away and finally get it open.

It’s a plain black box, and I lift the lid to find a journal, sage green, with a small butterfly in gold foil on the cover. I lift it up, and when I turn it around, I catch something on the spine—VA. My initials are embossed in gold. This isn’t just something he’s picked up from a store and wrapped up.

He’s got this just for me.

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