Page 68 of The Story Of Us

“I barely checked my phone. How was your day?”

She lets out a groan before responding.

“Boring without you. I caught up on French homework, but I still need to do some translations for Latin.”

“I still don’t know why you thought taking two languages would be a good idea.”

“I was young and foolish then.”

I stare at her blankly. “You mean a year ago?”

“So young! So foolish!” She throws an arm over her eyes dramatically, rolling onto her back, and I have to laugh at how ridiculous she is. “Save me from the clutches of Virgil’s Aeneid!”

We dissolve into fits of laughter as she quotes random Latin phrases to me that I have no clue what they mean. When we both stop giggling, she asks how my day went, and I wish I could tell her everything.

“It was good. I went to a cute bookstore and got a new copy of Persuasion.”

“Ooh, which one?”

“The clothbound edition.”

Avery lets out a little squeal because she’s heard me talk about wanting it for so long but I’ve never got it.

“You finally bought it!”

“Well, actually, he - my mum got it for me.”

I can’t believe I slipped up like that, my excitement getting the best of me. I hope Avery didn’t catch it but the speed at which she sits up tells me that she did.

“He?! Which he is this?!”

I groan as I roll away from her and onto my stomach, my face buried in the covers like maybe if Avery can’t see me, then she’ll forget I’m here, and we can move on.

“Noor Violet Ayaz.”

“Not the full name,” I say, my voice muffled as I refuse to lift my head.

“I have to use the full name when you lie to me and tell me you were with your mother, but you were with a boy!”

She grabs my shoulder, pulling me until I’m on my back and facing the ceiling. I bring my hands up to cover my face, my mind racing as I try to figure out how I’m going to explain this to her.

“I can’t believe you went on a date and didn’t tell me!”

The last part of her sentence has me realising just how much I haven’t told her. She’s my best friend, but I kept an entire relationship secret from her. Not because I don’t trust her, but because it was something Isaac and I agreed on doing right from the start.

But now, I want to tell her. I want her to know everything. I want her advice on how to move forward. My head and heart are at war, and I need Avery’s help with choosing a side to follow.

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”

I sit up, facing her, and cross my legs, and then she does the same, mirroring my position. She places her hand on my knee, and I take it as I begin to tell her the entire story of how I ended up on a date with Isaac today.

She was there for the icebreaker on the first day, so she knew that we had the same birthday, but she didn’t know about the cards.

I tell her about that first birthday in Year 7, how that turned into us meeting again in Year 8, and then turned into talking and meeting more often, and we eventually became friends.

I tell her how we would talk every day and sometimes watch movies together. How he confessed that he liked me after one of them.

I tell her that even though we both liked each other, I said that we should wait until we came back to school to make a real decision about us but then we spent the entire three month break talking every single day.

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