The Build-Up
The days after his last outburst dragged like heavy chains.
Jayden kept his routine tight: up at seven, oatmeal at eight, school by nine. He followed the rules, but the weight of his silence with Tasha hung over him like a shadow.
Every time he saw her in the hallway, his stomach twisted. She never looked at him long. Sometimes she glanced his way, then turned back to her friends. Other times she walked by like he wasn't there at all.
It cut deeper than he wanted to admit.
He told himself it didn't matter.
He told himself she was just another person who'd leave eventually.
But at night, when he opened his sketchbook, her face kept appearing on the page.
---
The Moment
It happened on a gray Tuesday after school. Jayden was sitting in the art room, hunched over his sketchbook, trying to force his pencil into lines that didn't want to come. His hands shook, his jaw clenched.
Then the door opened.
Tasha stepped in, her bag slung over her shoulder. She froze when she saw him, eyes narrowing slightly, like she wasn't sure if she wanted to stay.
Jayden's chest tightened. This was it.
"Hey," he muttered, his voice low.
"Hey," she said, cautious, standing by the door.
He stared at the page in front of him. "About the other day… I was outta line."
She didn't answer. Just crossed her arms.
"I shouldn't've snapped at you," he added, the words heavy in his throat. "You didn't deserve that."
---
The Silence
The silence that followed felt endless.
Jayden could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights above them, the faint scrape of a chair leg on the tile.
Finally, Tasha sighed, walking closer. "You think you're the only one scared of people leaving? You're not."
Jayden looked up, surprised.
"You push people away before they can hurt you," she said, her eyes sharp but not cruel. "I get it. But it still hurts when you do it."
Jayden swallowed hard. His fingers dug into the edge of his sketchbook.
"I don't know how to be different," he admitted, voice almost a whisper.
---
The Fragile Step
For the first time in days, Tasha's expression softened. She sat down across from him, pulling her notebook out of her bag.
"Then learn," she said simply. "You don't have to get it right all at once."
Jayden nodded slowly. "So… we good?"
She smirked faintly. "We're better than we were yesterday."
It wasn't forgiveness. Not completely.
But it was something.
Jayden let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He opened his sketchbook, slid it across the desk toward her. "You can look. Just… don't laugh."
She flipped through the pages — the city skylines, the shadows, the broken faces, and finally, the sketch of her on the swing.
Her eyes lingered there. "You really drew me?"
Jayden shrugged, embarrassed. "Couldn't help it."
For the first time in weeks, she smiled at him — not the polite smile she gave everyone else, but the real one that made him feel like maybe, just maybe, he wasn't completely lost.
---
That night, Jayden wrote on the back page of his sketchbook:
Apologies don't fix everything. But they open the door.