Chapter Forty-One


    Despite Lila’s inner turmoil, she woke up that Friday morning far more refreshed than she had been since the beginning of the school year. This realisation bewildered her as she brushed her teeth with a frown. Perhaps she’d achieved some form of clarity in her subconscious whilst she was asleep, though she couldn’t think of what that clarity would be now.


    Checking her schedule, Lila noted that she had English with Asher before lunch today. Lila hoped that he was feeling better after leaving early yesterday. With her newfound pep, Lila felt ready to help Asher. Whatever he was going through, enduring it alone was clearly not doing him any good.


    It wasn’t to say that Lila had entirely unravelled her own emotions and thoughts about the issue, but she was confident that she was ready to put it aside to focus on Asher. It still wasn’t about her.


    But by the time English was due to start, Lila hadn’t seen Asher around campus at all. As the seconds ticked by with Lila sitting next to his empty seat, she began to feel a pit in her stomach forming. With a minute to spare before class commenced, Ms Shard quietly approached Lila and let her know that Asher was not joining class that day. Lila briefly wondered why Ms Shard told her this, but with a glance over at Asher’s desk, she conceded that it may have been because she had brought Asher’s bookbag and placed it on his desk in anticipation of his arrival.


    Lila couldn’t remember a time when Asher had ever missed school. Being the Dux, Lila had observed him coming to school sick as a dog, if only to take home requisite homework. The dawning appreciation of this fact only tightened her chest further as Ms Shard began analysing the balcony scene.


    Throughout Ms Shard’s analysis, Lila began to understand, with a pang in her heart, why the scene was so famous. Not only was the declaration of love between Romeo and Juliet beautiful, but it solidified the bond of love for both characters. Additionally, it was the scene where their secret marriage was organised. Knowing that Asher had broken up with Holly, there was no mystery to Lila about why Asher stormed out now.


    Upon being dismissed for lunch, Lila decided to try and hunt down Isaac. Even though Asher had said he hadn’t told Isaac about the breakup yesterday, he may have since. ‘Particularly as he left during the first class and still hasn’t shown up to school…’ Lila thought with a sigh.


    Trying to find Isaac manually would be difficult, though. Lila supposed that she could see if he was sitting outside the Home Ec building…


    ‘I’ll just Snap him,’ Lila decided, pulling out her phone.


    Hey, can we meet up? Lila sent, slowly making her way to the locker room. Isaac opened it up immediately and she could see him start and stop typing.


    Sure, he eventually sent. Locker room? Isaac sent immediately after.


    Sounds good, Lila replied, slipping her phone back into her pocket.


    It didn’t take Lila long to reach the locker room. Isaac was standing outside her locker, surreptitiously eating a banana as though he was worried someone would take it off him.


    “Hey,” he smiled when she approached. “You wanted to meet up?”


    “Yeah,” Lila sighed, tossing her bookbag into her locker along with Asher’s. “Just wondering if you knew where Asher was.”


    “Honestly,” Isaac said, swallowing hard, “beats me. I was actually gonna ask if I can hang out with you guys today.”


    “Ah,” Lila said, slowly closing her locker shut. “Grace has a music lesson today, and Elise has a meeting with her German teacher about going on exchange to Germany at the end of the year.”


    “So, looks like it’s just us, then,” Isaac noted, shrugging. “Welp, if that’s cool with you, that’s cool with me.”


    “Consider it ‘cool’,” Lila said with a small smile. They began to head off towards the tuckshop. Lila asked Isaac how far he’d gotten through the book she’d lent him.


    “I’m almost done,” Isaac said conversationally, wiggling his empty banana peel into his soft plastic lunchbox. He pulled out a sandwich and unwrapped it promptly. “I had to force myself to stop, otherwise I would’ve been reading it until, like, 6am or something stupid.”


    They began discussing some of the plot points Isaac had encountered, stopping only for Lila to grab some food and rejoin Isaac outside. Isaac led Lila to the same patch of grass they’d sat at, all the way in the beginning of last term after he’d found her crying. This time, though, Lila felt far lighter than she did back then.


    “Well,” Isaac began, eyeing Lila over his half-eaten sandwich. “I’m thinking that you want to talk about more than whether or not I know where Asher is.”


    “You caught me,” Lila replied in a resigned tone, unwrapping her cheeseburger and taking a bite.


    “Is it about your crush on Asher?” he asked, still looking at Lila. Lila immediately started choking on her cheeseburger, quickly washing it down with juice. Her face was red as she wiped her mouth on her blazer sleeve.


    “I-I don’t have a crush on Asher,” she said, attempting to sound firm. It clearly didn’t convince Isaac as he raised an eyebrow at her and started chewing his sandwich again.


    “Righto,” he said, after swallowing again. “I’ll just forget I have eyes, then.”


    Lila began to splutter, but he silenced her with another raised eyebrow.


    “I’ll go along with your say-so that you don’t have a crush on Asher,” he said, scrunching up the plastic wrap of his sandwich and leaning on his elbows. He looked up towards the tree they were sitting underneath, inhaling deeply. “But if you’d seen the way you were ogling him at semi, you’d probably throw up,” he continued, cheekily grinning at her.


    Lila fell silent, her knees trembling slightly. Had she been ogling at Asher? Surely Isaac was just pulling her leg.


    “Anyway,” he sighed, lying down on the grass now, using his hands as a pillow, “what’s up, then?”


    Lila looked at him for a moment before pulling her legs up to her chest and resting her head on her knees.


    “I saw Asher yelling at you at soccer practice.”


    “Ah. That again. Not one of our finer moments as a dynamic duo.”


    “Do you know what’s been going on with him lately?”


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    Isaac gave her a hard look, made only more severe by the glare of the sun in his eyes.


    “Well, I know that he’s not with Holly anymore.”


    ‘So Asher did tell Isaac that, at least,’ Lila thought before pressing on.


    “Did he tell you why?” she asked, maintaining eye contact with Isaac.


    “No,” Isaac sighed again, this time with a distinct note of frustration. “He said it was messy and he didn’t have it straight in his head yet.”


    Lila looked at her cheeseburger and slowly took another bite.


    “I thought you’d be ecstatic,” Isaac said with another cheeky grin.


    “Why do you think he’s not at school?” Lila asked quietly, pointedly not addressing Isaac’s comment.


    “I mean, I didn’t think it would be related to Holly. Though, now that you’ve mentioned it just now, he’d been with Holly for, like, six months, maybe a little more. That’s like eleven years in high school,” Isaac replied, shrugging in the grass. “Probably a bit sad. Or sick.”


    “But he never misses school for anything,” Lila said sullenly, tracing her fingers along a few blades of grass by her hip.


    “You’ve noticed that much, aye?” Isaac asked, glancing at her before shaking his head.


    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Lila asked forcefully.


    “Nothing, nothing,” Isaac replied lazily. “Anyway, yeah, he’s never missed school before, even when he had food poisoning. But after COVID and all that, I just reckoned he got the flu and was taking the whole ‘stay at home if you’re unwell’ thing a bit more seriously.”


    “You didn’t ask?”


    Isaac gave a long-suffering sigh, staring back up at the knotted and gnarled branches of the tree they were under.


    “’Course I asked. He just hasn’t replied. I’ve texted him about ten times this morning alone.”


    Lila watched Isaac’s face for a couple of moments. He seemed to be avoiding her gaze, so she looked back down and ate some more of her cheeseburger.


    “… are you worried?” Lila finally asked.


    “Trying not to be,” Isaac replied simply, closing his eyes. “I know that Asher isn’t telling me anything because he doesn’t want me to worry. But, man, he still doesn’t understand that he’s making me worry anyway.”


    Lila sighed, taking one final bite of her cheeseburger before slipping the wrapper into her blazer pocket and dusting her hands.


    “Do you think he’ll go to soccer tomorrow?” Isaac asked abruptly.


    “Why’re you asking me?” Lila asked, blinking rapidly at Isaac in surprise.


    “You’re a bit dense, you know,” Isaac huffed, sitting back up. “He’s my best mate. Of course I’m going to notice when he’s hanging out with you a whole lot more. He blew me off a couple times over the holidays when I asked to hang out ‘cause you were going over. You probably know as much as I do about him at this point now.”


    There was a hint of emotion in Isaac’s voice as he spoke.


    “Are you… jealous?” Lila asked, her brow furrowed as she took in Isaac’s face.


    “No,” Isaac replied, looking off in the distance past Lila’s left shoulder. “But I don’t think it’s healthy. Well, I didn’t when he was dating Holly. I guess now that that’s busted, I don’t know what I think anymore.”


    Isaac brushed the dirt off his hands. He seemed slightly restless, but Lila didn’t comment on it.


    “I hope he goes to soccer tomorrow,” Lila said softly.


    “Same,” Isaac replied. “You kinda need the goalie to play.”


    “Yeah…” Lila trailed off, watching an ant assess how best to carry a crumb of her cheeseburger that had fallen into the grass.


    “For the record,” Isaac said suddenly, looking up at the sky. “I never really liked Holly.”


    “Why’s that?” Lila asked, shocked. “Everyone likes Holly.”


    “I guess it would be more accurate to say that I never really liked Holly for Asher.”


    “Huh…”


    “There’s just something about her, when they’re together. I went out with them a couple of times, but it just seemed like… she wasn’t looking at Asher like a boyfriend. More like a meal ticket.”


    “I didn’t get that impression,” Lila said, sitting up straight, her interest definitely piqued.


    “I guess I’ve just gotten really good at spotting the fakes,” Isaac sighed, rotating his ankles slowly. “He’s had a lot of fake people around him all the time. It… well, that’s another reason why I decided we shouldn’t date anymore. It felt like I was being fake with him, after realising how much he liked you back then.”


    Lila remembered when Asher told her that he’d never talked to Isaac about how he felt, about people taking advantage of Asher. ‘Isaac is way too perceptive for his own good,’ Lila thought wryly.


    “If you thought Holly was fake, why didn’t you say anything to Asher?” Lila enquired, observing Isaac intently. His eyes flickered to hers before he looked down at his knees.


    “She’s his first girlfriend. He looked so happy. I kinda convinced myself I was just being overprotective and seeing things that weren’t there.”


    “Why do you think they’ve broken up?” Lila queried after a brief pause.


    “Dunno,” Isaac replied, exhaling slowly. “But it clearly wasn’t a good break-up. Maybe he figured out that Holly was using him.”


    “Am I fake?” Lila eventually wondered, her shoulders tensing up for some reason. Isaac surveyed her with seriousness for a moment, before shaking his head.


    “If you were, I wouldn’t have tried to help you out with the rumours. Probably would’ve spread more rumours about you, not spent my mornings before class taking down photos and yelling about how they were all lies in the locker room,” he said with a dry laugh. “I also don’t think a fake person would’ve told me that he was having a hard time after the Piper fiasco. You could’ve just left him to it, and I would’ve been none the wiser until he talked to me about it a few days after.”


    Lila didn’t respond, though she brought her shoulders forward, as if to make herself smaller.


    “It’s not a bad thing if you have a crush on Asher,” Isaac eventually said. “I know you probably don’t want to, after the whole Piper thing. And ‘cause he was in a relationship. But you can’t help what you can’t help.”


    “I… don’t have a crush on him,” Lila said faintly.


    “I know. I’ve stowed away my eyes, remember,” Isaac said, placing his hands over his eyes. “Just saying it’s not a bad thing if you do.” He flopped back down onto the grass with a small ‘oof’.


    Lila laced her fingers together, giving her palms a squeeze. She recalled her grin from yesterday, a disgusted shiver running through her spine. She couldn’t help but think that she was fake, really. She’d been happy at his devastation. She wasn’t any better than someone who took advantage of Asher for their own gain. It felt like she’d had ulterior motives this whole time, but… had she?


    “… you kinda make it sound like you want me to have a crush on Asher,” Lila murmured. As soon as she’d heard what she said, she hid her burning face with her hands. What a bizarre thing to say.


    “It’d be a lie if I said I didn’t,” Isaac said slowly. Lila quickly looked down at Isaac, her eyes wide and searching for the reason for his response in his face. He gave nothing away as he gave her a lazy grin.


    “This’ll probably come off as really weird, since we dated, but I just think you guys would be really good together,” he shrugged. “Asher… needs someone like you, I think.”


    He looked away from Lila and gave another humourless laugh before saying, “It’s almost like I vetted you as a girlfriend.”


    “Yeah, that does come off as really weird,” Lila replied with an awkward chuckle. They sat in silence for a few minutes before a new thought occurred to Lila.


    “Do… you have a crush on Asher?” she asked. Isaac immediately sat upright, staring at her incredulously. She simply stared back at him and he began to laugh so hard he was wheezing.


    “Oh my God, you’re serious,” he said eventually, clutching his sides.


    “I mean, yeah,” Lila said monotonously. Isaac sobered up, wiping his eyes.


    “Nah. Not at all,” he said confidently, looking right into Lila’s eyes as he continued. “Genuinely, I thought I did, maybe a few years ago. Before you and I started dating, anyway. But I eventually realised that it was admiration, not a crush. I did think for a hot minute that I might be bisexual, but I realised that I’m very straight.”


    “Did you ever tell him?”


    “You think I’m only this honest with you?” Isaac asked, raising an eyebrow. “’Course I told him. We had a big laugh about it. He’s straight, anyway, so it’s not like anything would’ve happened.”


    “Sounds like you’re disappointed,” Lila said with a playful smile.


    “Trust me, I did go down that road until I found the answer that resonated with me,” Isaac said, shrugging. “I’m not ashamed of it.”


    “That’s good,” Lila replied softly, looking back down at her knees. “We’d be pretty close to a true love triangle if I had a crush on Asher. Which I don’t.”


    Isaac snorted, lowering himself back onto the grass.


    “The difference between me saying I don’t have a crush on Asher, and you saying you don’t have a crush on Asher, is that I can look you right in the eye as I say it,” Isaac eventually said. Lila’s breath caught in her throat. Her whole body felt rigid as she tried to argue, but couldn’t move her mouth. Isaac gave her a sideways glance before smirking.


    “I’m glad you ate your cheeseburger, though,” Isaac said, nodding. “Better than the last time we had a chat here.”


    “Figured you would keep staring at it if I didn’t finish it,” Lila replied, her mood lightening slightly. He grinned widely at her, before looking back up at the sky.


    “I won’t tell Asher we had this conversation, yeah?” he said, a gentle breeze rippling through his hair.


    “… yeah. Thanks.”