When We Were Almost

UNDERNEATH THE ELM

SARAH

Fridays used to mean nothing. Just the end of the week, the sigh between exhaustion and escape. But ever since Alvin—ever since that look, that almost-conversation—I started marking time differently.

Not by hours, but by glances.

By the way he passed me near the courtyard, hands buried deep in his hoodie, eyes flicking to mine like they weren’t allowed to stay.

It was the third Friday since we spoke. The third time he didn’t say anything again.

Still, I went to the tree.

The elm near the back fence. Where the courtyard cracked with roots and barely anyone ever walked unless they were skipping class or looking for a moment away from everything.

I wasn’t expecting him.

I just wanted to draw.

But he came.

He always came.

Today, he stopped.

His shadow fell beside mine. I kept my pencil moving even as my heart started racing.

“You always sit here?” he asked, voice lower than I remembered.

I looked up. “Only when I want to disappear.”

He gave a quiet laugh. “Same.”

Then silence. But this one wasn’t awkward.

This one held possibility.

“Can I sit?” he asked.

I nodded.

And for the first time, Alvin sat next to me—not near me, not across the room, but next to me. So close I could feel the heat off his skin. So close I forgot how to draw.

He didn’t speak for a while.

Neither did I.

We just sat in the shadow of the tree, like we’d done it a hundred times before.

---

ALVIN

She didn’t ask why I came.

That made it easier to stay.

There’s something about Sarah that doesn’t press. Doesn’t dig. She waits. Observes. Like she knows the value of silence better than most.

I watched her sketch something I couldn’t see. She tucked her hair behind her ear without realizing, and the wind pulled a strand back across her cheek. I had the ridiculous urge to fix it for her.

Instead, I said, “What do you draw when you don’t want to feel something?”

She paused. “Things that don’t exist. Places I wish were real.”

“Do you ever draw people?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Only the ones I miss. Or the ones I don’t understand.”

I didn’t ask which I was.

Maybe I didn’t want to know.

“Do you write?” she asked quietly, after a while.

I looked away. “I used to.”

“Why did you stop?”

I didn’t answer.

Because the truth was: I never really stopped.

I just got afraid of what the words would say.

---

SARAH

His silence didn’t feel like avoidance.

It felt like restraint. Like he was holding something in his hands that might break if he said it out loud.

I didn’t press.

Instead, I said, “I think people who feel too much sometimes forget how to speak.”

He looked at me. Really looked. Like he wasn’t expecting that sentence, or maybe like he’d been waiting for someone to say it.

“I haven’t drawn you,” I whispered before I could stop myself.

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know what you’re made of yet.”

That made him smile. Not the full kind—just a small curve, a private response. But it was real.

“Maybe I don’t either,” he said.

We didn’t speak for a long time after that. The wind moved around us like it knew it had to be gentle.

Then he said something that sat with me long after the bell rang.

“Do you think it’s possible to feel close to someone... before you know them?”

I swallowed.

“Yes,” I whispered.

And that was the beginning.

---

ALVIN

I wasn’t supposed to talk to her.

Not because someone told me not to.

But because I told myself not to.

People like me—people who carry silence like scars—we don’t make space for softness. We don’t risk it.

But with Sarah, it didn’t feel like risk. It felt like recognition.

Like two mirrors angled at just the right slant.

That afternoon, I didn’t go home right away. I walked to the train station, sat at the edge of the platform long after my train had passed.

I wrote.

First time in months.

The words came like a flood. Disjointed. Restless. Honest.

Her silence is louder than most people’s screams.

She draws like she’s trying to save someone.

Maybe me.

I didn’t know what to do with what I was feeling.

So I wrote it down.

And for the first time, I didn’t tear the page out.

---

SARAH

That night, I didn’t draw.

I watched the wind move through the tree outside my bedroom window and replayed every sentence.

“Maybe I don’t either.”

“Do you think it’s possible to feel close to someone... before you know them?”

I thought about his hands. His voice. The way he looked like he wanted to disappear and be seen all at once.

And I whispered the truth to myself before I let sleep take me.

“I think I already know him. Even if I don’t understand him yet.”