Page 5 of The Story Of Us

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.

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