Page 97 of The Story Of Us

“Don’t you have football?”

“I can be a little late. Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“We’ve all been in the same class for nearly seven years. What introduction do you need?”

Luke frees himself from Isaac’s grip and walks back to me. His playful smile and quick raise of his brows tell me that he’s going to do something that will mess with Isaac.

“Violet, would you say we know each other?”

I glance at Isaac, and the way he’s standing there like he can’t believe what he’s just set into motion is so cute that I decide to play along.

“I don’t think I even know your name. Duke, was it?”

“Ah yes, my fair lady,” Luke says with an accent like he’s in a regency drama as he bows his head, his arm held out as though he’s asking for my hand. I stifle a laugh while Isaac lets out a groan, spinning around and pressing his head to the wall, his arms limp at his side.

“A pleasure to meet you.” I copy his accent, and just as I’m about to put my hand on top of Luke’s, Isaac is in between us and pushing Luke away.

“Okay, you’re done.”

Luke and I burst out laughing, and Isaac looks back and forth between us, probably regretting all the times he’s said he wants me to get to know his friends.

“I was just messing with you.” Luke claps Isaac on the shoulder before turning his attention to me. “Violet, I hope we can see each other again soon when Isaac isn’t on the verge of a breakdown.”

“That would be lovely,” I tell him, and then he walks towards the door, pulling Isaac with him.

They duck their heads together, and Luke whispers something in Isaac’s ear that has him shaking his head. I can only see his side profile, but the smile on his face is clear. He closes the door after Luke and then comes to where I’m sitting on the bed.

“I like him, he’s funny,” I tell Isaac, smiling brightly up at him and hoping that the whole interaction wasn’t actually too bad for him.

“Please, don’t tell him that. That boy does not need his ego inflated any more than it already is.”

Isaac lets out a soft laugh before he goes through the bag and takes out whatever he asked Luke to bring. He pulls out his laptop first, followed by some snacks and then two hoodies. He passes one to me, and I have to stop myself from grabbing it from him too quickly. I missed wearing his hoodies so much, and I hate that I’d given him back the only one I had just before we broke up. I notice it’s my favourite one, the one he wore on our date, and I pull it over my head as quickly as I can, the smell of his cologne comforting me, bringing back so many fond memories.

“I missed seeing you in my clothes,” he says, his voice as soft as the look in his eyes as he pulls the hood over my head and tugs at the strings. He smooths the fabric over my hair before planting a kiss on the crown of my head and then sits next to me.

Isaac opens up his laptop and clicks through a few things, creating a new folder to copy some files into it. I study him while he does it, how his fingers move over the keyboard, how his glasses fall down the bridge of his nose because of how his head is ducked to look at the screen.

“These are all the ones that are pretty much finished. They just need some refining.” He highlights a few of them, and I notice that none of them have real titles, all some kind of variation of random letters with ‘final,’ ‘real final,’ and ‘actual final’ attached at the end, apart from one.

“What’s that one?” I ask, leaning closer to him to point at the file that is simply called 18.

Isaac hovers over it but doesn’t open it, turning to face me instead.

“It’s not finished yet.” He pauses for a second, biting his bottom lip. “It was meant to be a surprise.”

“For what?”

“Our eighteenth birthday.”

He can see the confusion on my face and hears the unasked question, but he just shakes his head slightly before turning back to the screen and clicking on it.

The movie starts to play, and I instantly recognise the setting - our Year 7 classroom. Soft instrumental music plays in the background, and it takes me a few seconds to realise it’s one of our favourite songs.

A cartoon version of Isaac and I stand next to each other, our friends surrounding us but they’re blurry and not quite in focus, as if we’re the only two that exist in the world. The scene ends with the butterflies in my hair flying around until they transform into the birthday card he gave me that first year.

I watch as every birthday we shared plays out in front of me, watch how the cartoon version of ourselves grows closer, sparks starting to fly between us until they turn into hearts somewhere around our fourteenth birthday.

When it gets to what should be our seventeenth birthday, the screen goes dark, the music fading until it’s silent, and I can see the reflection of Isaac’s worried face. A part of me wishes he would have just made something up, and created some kind of happy story for it instead of leaving it blank. But that’s the truth of what happened, and it’s led to where we are today.

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