When We Were Almost

ECHOES OF SOMETHING UNSAID

SARAH

I told Lily it didn’t mean anything.

The hallway conversation. The sketchbook. The brush of fingers. The way he said, “You’re noticed.”

Like I hadn’t spent the past year pretending I wasn’t.

But I lied.

It meant everything.

I replayed it over and over—each silence, each glance, each syllable that slipped from his lips like it was an accident. Because it wasn’t a real conversation, not really. It was more like the shadow of one. A beginning that didn’t know what it was becoming yet.

And it haunted me.

I sat by the window in the art room the next afternoon, my sketchbook closed on my lap. I didn’t want to draw. I wanted to feel something that wasn’t confusion. Wanted to make sense of the ache in my chest when I thought of him walking away.

“Why now?” I whispered to no one.

For so long, he’d been a ghost in the margins of my days. And then suddenly, he wasn’t.

Now I knew what his voice sounded like. What his eyes did when they lingered. How he looked at the world like he was holding something heavy just beneath the surface.

And I wanted to know what it was.

---

ALVIN

I didn’t mean to open the sketchbook.

I saw her name on the cover, and something in me said don’t, but I did anyway. Curiosity, maybe. Or the part of me that wanted to understand her before I said something I couldn’t take back.

The girl in the pages wasn’t drawn perfectly, but she was real. Real in a way that made my chest ache. She looked the way I felt most days—quietly breaking, hoping no one noticed but praying someone would.

I recognized her before I realized it was her.

When she caught me looking, I expected anger. Embarrassment. Maybe that soft kind of sadness some people carry like a scent. But she surprised me.

She spoke first.

And in that one moment, she felt more brave than I’ve ever been.

Now, I can’t stop thinking about her voice—gentle, unsure, but honest. Or the way she pulled her sketchbook to her chest like it was armor. Or the fact that I saw myself in one of her drawings.

I shouldn’t be thinking about her. I don’t do... this. I don’t let people close. Not anymore.

But she’s different.

And that terrifies me.

---

SARAH

By Thursday, he hadn’t spoken to me again.

I saw him—twice, maybe three times—but it was like we’d gone back to the beginning. Passing glances. Silent hallways. Invisible space stretching between us like elastic.

It was worse now, though, because I knew what his voice sounded like. I knew he had thoughts, and softness, and maybe even secrets.

And I wanted to ask about all of it.

So I waited.

At the library.

At his usual table.

He came in twenty minutes later than usual, earbuds in, hair damp like he’d run through the rain. He paused when he saw me sitting there—half surprise, half hesitation in his eyes.

“Hi,” I said, my voice small but steady.

He pulled out one earbud. “Hi.”

Silence.

“I was wondering,” I said slowly, tracing a finger along the edge of the table, “if you ever write in that notebook. Or if you just carry it around to look mysterious.”

A small smile. Barely there, but it happened.

“I write,” he said.

“What about?”

“Things I don’t know how to say out loud.”

I nodded. I understood that.

“I draw for the same reason.”

We sat in silence after that, not awkward this time—just quiet. Like two people breathing in the same question.

Finally, he spoke. “You scare me a little.”

My heart stuttered. “Why?”

“Because you see too much.”

He stood before I could reply, notebook clutched to his chest like it was full of words he’d never let me read.

And just like before, he left.

But this time, he looked back.

Only once.

But it was enough.

---

ALVIN

I looked back.

It was stupid. Reckless.

But she was sitting there in the library, waiting like she wanted to hear something true. And I gave her half of it. Just enough to make her curious. Just enough to get her under my skin again.

She scares me.

Because she sees me—not the version I give to the world, not the silence I wear like armor—but the me I’ve spent years hiding behind locked ribs.

And if she keeps looking... she might find what I’ve buried.

What I’ve lost.

Who I was before the world taught me how to disappear.