Page 53 of The Story Of Us

“There.” Violet’s lovely voice breaks the silence. “Now, that’s one less thing for you to be stressed about.”

I turn in my chair, tilting my head up to look at her. She’s already looking at me with a small smile on her face that doesn’t feel fake at all. I open my mouth to speak, but she interrupts me.

“If you say ‘thank you’ again, I’ll leave right now.”

I can’t help but let out a laugh, glad that she’s broken some of the simmering tension hanging between us in the ghost of my Oxford application.

“Okay, I won’t say it, even though I want to.”

She squeezes my shoulder once again before letting go of me. I keep my chin tilted to look at her, turning in my chair so my whole body faces her now. It feels like I’m praying to her like this, like she’s the personification of every hope and wish and dream I’ve ever had, and I’m completely devoted to her.

She looks away from me, and I’m worried I voiced that thought out loud, but when she looks at my bed, and then at my desk, I realise she just doesn’t want to sit on my bed. I stand up and offer the chair to her. We circle each other closely, both of us taking our seats.

I can’t think of anything to say to her that doesn’t involve my gratitude for her, but then I remember the look she gave me when I was on the phone with my dad.

“Why did you shake your head earlier?”

“Huh?”

“When I said I was staying here for half term?”

“Oh.” She sits forward in the chair, her cheeks turning slightly red in the prettiest way. “I am, too. I decided a few days ago, though. I had no idea you were staying, too. Izzy didn’t mention it to me, but why would she? And it’s not that I’d choose to stay here just because you are or that I’d go home because you’re here. I just wanted to stay anyway.”

She’s rambling, and I have to force down the smile that wants to spread across my face because I haven’t heard her speak like this in so long. I forgot how adorable it is. I decide to take a leap of faith and ask her something that I wouldn’t have dared to do just a few days ago.

“Violet, do you want to spend half term together?”

Her mouth drops a little, gorgeous brown eyes open wide, and I have to catch my breath.

“It would be nice to work together again. As friends, of course,” I add, even though I’d give anything in the world to be so much more than that. But it’s still too early, so I keep the thought to myself.

“Um..” I’m not scared of her hesitation this time. I think we’ve reached a point now where we both want more from each other, but we’re too scared to go for it. So if I have to suggest these things to make it happen, then I will.

“Yeah, I think I’d like that.” She says, nodding her head with a bright smile.

I can’t believe how pretty she is.

I decide to do everything I can to keep her smiling like that forever.

21

VIOLET

Spending the past week with Isaac has felt like an out-of-body experience in the best way possible. The main school building is closed over the break, so we only had access to the dining hall and the dorm buildings. It made sense to both of us for me to keep going to Isaac’s room, and we fell into a routine easily.

Every morning, I would text him when I woke up, and then, about an hour later, I’d show up at his door. He kept it unlocked so I could let myself in, and the simple act of just walking into his room every morning brought me a sense of bliss I didn’t think I would ever experience. It felt like a scene I’d imagined for us when we were older, sharing a home and space with each other. Even though I know that’s not meant for us anymore, it still felt nice to imagine it.

The first day I went to his room, there was another chair at his desk, and he told me he had stolen it from Luke’s room so that we could both use the desk. Initially, I thought it would be difficult to sit so close to him, to work together again, especially on a joint project, but we fell back into our old way of doing it easily. We always studied with a timer, taking short breaks every thirty minutes, and when I got to Isaac’s room that day, he already had one set up like he’d been waiting for me to get here before he started doing anything. We alternated between catching up on homework and working on the project. It was easy to tell that Isaac had been spending more time on it than he let on because he already had a few seconds of footage completed.

The clip starts with the two characters sitting next to each other on a train, and then one ends up falling asleep on the morning commute and leaning their head on the other. When Isaac showed me what he’d done, I was stunned. He managed to capture what I wrote so well, the early morning light coming through the window, the packed train with the two characters slightly off to the side, and the frame gradually closing in on them to centre them as the protagonists of our story. The characters were exactly how I’d imagined them, too, and I don’t know how he managed to draw them so perfectly based on the few notes I’d given him. Watching him work on it throughout the week was fascinating, and I couldn’t help but compliment him every time he showed me a new update.

Now it’s Saturday, and everyone else is coming back to school tomorrow and I don’t know how to feel about it. This week with him didn’t feel like we were back in that bubble we created in the past - it felt more like a snow globe instead. It feels like something I want to store in my memory forever, take it out whenever I want to remember how good we used to be together, how well we balance each other out. It feels like something I only want to let myself see once a year, so it doesn’t hurt too much.

When I showed up at his room today, he wasn’t set up at the desk, and Luke’s chair was gone. I approached where he was sitting on the bed, and he explained before I could even ask.

“I wanted to make sure it was in his room before he got back.”

“Oh, right.”

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