Page 22 of The Story Of Us

“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?”

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