I Love You to Death(16)

"Ash?"
Luke.
"Ash, are you okay?"
I shake my head now, honestly answering his question for once. I still can’t turn around, can’t face him. My whole body is shaking now; at the words Liam said, at his touch on my skin, at his breath in my face. I can’t make it stop.
"I’m so sorry," Luke says quietly. "I shouldn’t have invited him, I’m sorry."
He closes the door and walks over to me. I can feel him standing directly behind me. Still I say nothing.
"I’m really sorry Ash," Luke continues. "I don’t know what else to say."
My tears are falling freely now and I lower my face, covering it with my hands, burying my shame. Luke must step around me because the next thing I know, his arms are around me and he’s holding me. The next thing I know is my face is buried in his chest and I’m crying. He gently strokes my hair and doesn’t say anything more and all I can feel are his arms, wrapped around me. All I can feel is the warmth of his body, pressed against mine. All I can smell is him through my tears.
He doesn’t say anything more to me and I don’t know how he knows how to do this. How can I possibly feel okay standing here with him like this, after what happened back in the bathroom? I don’t want to be this close to him, but I can’t bring myself to move away, because he feels warm, strangely safe. And although I know this is wrong and I should move, I can’t because I feel my shaking body finally start to slow down.
How can any of this feel okay?
∞

When I was a kid, I met someone who was exactly like me. Grace hated making friends too. Neither of us would’ve even known each other, if it wasn’t for school seating arrangements. I still don’t know why we were sat together. It wasn’t alphabetical, I was a Black, she was a Robinson, so we were nowhere near each other. I guess it was just luck.
Or bad luck in her case.
When we first got put together, neither of us said anything for the whole day. I was too shy and she was too shy. I wanted to be friends with her and later on she told me she did too. It just took us a while to get there. Once we got over it though, that was it. We were best friends, at least until the inevitable happened.
The reason we did become friends in the end, is simple. She stuck up for me. She defended me when no one else did and after that, well it was impossible for me not to like her.
Because I was so shy, I used to get picked on. A lot. It was ok when my older brother Seth was around, but by the time I met Grace, he was too far ahead and we weren’t in the same school anymore. He would still walk me to the gate and drop me off, but he wasn’t there during the day. Wasn’t there when the others starting teasing me.
I’d been sitting next to Grace for about three weeks, but we still hadn’t really spoken much. Neither of us could bring ourselves to get past a smile and a hello. After that we both seemed to get stuck. But when art rolled around, well, she became my saviour and then you couldn’t stop us talking.
I’ve never been particularly good at art. I like to think that somewhere inside me I’m creative, but I just can’t find the right way to execute it. I don’t know, maybe I really don’t have any talent. But that day I was going to have to find some because we were starting painting. Each of us had a huge canvas and we were painting whatever we wanted, as long as we only used three colours.
I was using black, red and grey.
"Grey is not a colour." I heard Mike, the biggest instigator of my teasing, say to his two little side-kicks. "It’s just the same as black."
The three of them sniggered at me, and while I wanted to disagree, I didn’t say anything, just kept painting and trying very hard to ignore them. Problem was Mike just kept going, he kept telling everyone I was too stupid to pick three separate colours. That I didn’t even realise black and grey were the same thing and that I couldn’t even paint right. I was desperately trying to ignore what he was saying, desperately trying to ignore the three of them laughing at me, but all I wanted to do was disappear. All I wanted to do was paint myself a colour which hid me from everyone, especially Mike.
Eventually when he saw he wasn’t getting a reaction from me, he walked over to my canvas with his paintbrush. As he pushed me out of the way, he started flicking yellow paint all over my painting. He was holding a pot of it in one hand and he just kept dipping his brush in and flicking more and more paint over it. I stood there mute. I just couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even bring myself to cry.
Then out of the corner of my eye I saw Grace. I saw Grace walk over with her pot of black paint. I saw Grace walk right up to Mike and dump the whole pot over his head. Then I saw Grace reach out and take my hand. Pulling me away from my ruined painting and over to hers, where she was painting with the same three colours as me.
"I don’t like him very much," was all she said to me as the teacher came rushing over to find out what had happened.
I smiled at her. "Neither do I."
After that day, talking to each other was not a problem anymore. And the teasing stopped too, especially from Mike. I think he was kind of afraid of Grace, while I was just in awe of her. We hung out every day after that, sitting together in class and during lunch. We’d spend many afternoons at each other’s house and would often have sleep overs on the weekend. I was so relieved to finally have a friend, someone to talk to and so very glad the teasing had stopped.
And just like that, we became best friends forever.
Well, three years to be exact.
∞