Loving You in Slience
974 Words
Chapter One: The Girl Who Didn’t Speak
The world was a noisy place too noisy for Elena James.
Her silence wasn’t a choice. It was a scar, carved into her life the night the fire took everything. Her voice, once bright with laughter and music, had vanished in the smoke, leaving behind a quiet girl with too many things left unsaid.
At eighteen, Elena moved to a new town, a fresh start she didn’t ask for. Her mother believed a change would help, but no amount of relocation could fill the silence in her chest. Cresthill was just another place to disappear in.
On her first day at Cresthill College, the corridors buzzed with chatter and laughter, none of which included her. She walked through the halls like a ghost, unnoticed by most. She kept her gaze low, clutching her sketchbook like a shield. It was her way of communicating with a world that had forgotten how to listen.
In the silence of the school library, she found peace. There, she would sit for hours sketching faces she saw in the hallways faces full of noise and life. None of them ever looked back. None, until Aiden Reed.
Chapter Two: Aiden's Curiosity
Aiden Reed was the kind of guy everyone noticed.
With his laid-back grin and air of casual confidence, he floated through the world as if it bent itself to make room for him. His friends followed his lead, his professors remembered his name, and his jokes landed more often than not.
But even in the center of attention, he noticed her.
"Who’s the girl with the notebook?" he asked Marcus as they passed through the library.
Marcus followed his line of sight. "Elena James. Doesn’t talk. Some accident or something. People say she’s... different."
Different. That word stuck with Aiden. Different wasn’t something to avoid; it was something to explore.
He started watching her from a distance, not in a creepy way, but with the kind of attention no one had given her in a long time. She sketched, always the same expression of quiet focus on her face, her fingers moving gracefully across the page. Her silence intrigued him.
One day, he walked past her table and casually dropped a note onto her sketchbook.
"Nice drawing. I think the guy with the messy curls looks like me. Should I be flattered or worried? - Aiden"
She looked up, startled. He smiled and walked away without waiting for a reply.
The next day, there was a folded note waiting for him at the same table.
"Worried. Definitely worried."
It was the beginning of something neither of them had a name for yet.
Chapter Three: First Words Without Sound
Their conversation continued entirely on paper.
Every afternoon in the library, Aiden would leave a note. Elena would read it, sometimes rolling her eyes, sometimes smiling quietly. And then she’d respond.
"What’s your favorite song?"
"Do you like spicy food?"
"What do you see when you look at people?"
Their notes grew longer, more personal. They shared secrets, dreams, and scars.
One day, Aiden wrote:
"You know, I’ve never met someone who could say so much without ever saying a word."
Elena hesitated before replying. Her handwriting was shakier that day.
"I lost my voice. But not my words."
Aiden stared at the paper for a long time before writing his reply.
"Then let me be the one who listens. Always."
From that moment, she started to trust him.
He walked her to class, even though they weren’t in the same course. He started learning sign language, slowly, just the basics. She taught him a few signs here and there, their fingers brushing more than once. Neither pulled away.
It wasn’t a loud kind of love that bloomed between them. It was gentle, patient, quiet. A love that lived in glances, in shared sketches, in the way their hands would find each other under the library table.
But even the quietest love has its storms.
Chapter Four: Cracks in the Calm
Rain tapped softly against the windowpane as Elena sat in her usual spot, the light from the overcast sky casting silver shadows across the library table. She was sketching Aiden again this time from memory. His lopsided grin, the dimple on his left cheek, the way his eyes always looked like they were holding a secret.
Her pencil froze the moment she saw him walk in.
He looked tired. Not his usual, carefree self. Something was off.
He sat down across from her, dropped his backpack, and pulled out a blank note. But instead of his usual witty opening or playful question, he simply wrote:
"Can I ask you something real?"
She nodded, her heart picking up pace.
He scribbled again:
"If I mess up... like really mess up... would you still talk to me?"
Elena frowned. She wrote back quickly:
"What did you do?"
He hesitated, tapping the pen against the table.
"Nothing yet. But my dad wants me to transfer. Out of state."
The words hit her like a gust of cold wind. She stared at the page, unblinking.
"When?" she finally wrote.
"End of term. Three weeks."
Elena stood up so fast she nearly knocked her chair back. Aiden reached out, but she had already slipped away.
He found her outside, under the library's stone archway, tears mixing with the rain on her cheeks.
She didn’t need a voice to scream, and yet, the silence between them roared.
Aiden took her hand gently. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t look at him either.
He signed clumsily: I’m sorry.
She stared at his hands, at the awkward effort behind each letter. Then, after a long moment, she signed back: Don’t go.
He didn’t know how to promise that.
And that was the beginning of the breaking point.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
- Writer
