Invincible

eighty-two

     All that week Isaac was halogen-bright, full of false smiles and lightly-worded surface conversations. Willa tried to speak to him properly but he wouldn't let her, was more defensive now than he had ever been. Something had happened that she couldn't put her finger on.

     On Thursday it rained and the girl who usually gave Willa a lift home was ill. She stood mournfully at the school door for a moment, facing the prospect of a horrible wet walk home, before she remembered that Isaac lived pretty near her and phoned to ask him whether he might be able to pick her up on his way home.

    "Sure," he said. "We'll be by in like ten minutes."

     In the car Isaac smiled at her and she forced a smile back, knowing full well that his was faked too. Jared was sat in the passenger seat and turned round to say hello (but there was that weird vulnerable tightness in him again, that nervousness). Willa knew that Isaac'd wasn't really sharing much with him right now, and that Jared was upset about it, but the tension between them seemed to hint at more than that. She thought that maybe they might've had an argument.

     Eventually they pulled up on the street outside Jared's house.

    "See you tomorrow," said Isaac, voice forcedly casual. Willa said goodbye to Jared but her focus was on Isaac as he sat so carefully still, hands deliberately loose on the wheel. She watched him watch Jared get out of the car, watched his eyes follow Jared up the path, lips slightly parted. Something clicked, then, all of a sudden, and she fell back stunned into her seat. She didn't know how she hadn't noticed it before.

    "You like him," she said in realisation, almost before she could think. Isaac snapped round to face her, colour staining his cheeks as he paused just a second too long before saying,

    "No- I-"

     He ran out of words and she hastily undid her seatbelt.

    "Wait," she told him, getting out of the back to go round the car and slip into the passenger seat. The moments of her being out had given Isaac time to gather himself and as soon as she was in again he said,

    "I don't know what you mean." 

     She gave an incredulous, breathless little laugh, not sure whether she should be laughing or crying.

    "You like him. Come on, Isaac, be honest with me-"

    "No- it's not- just leave it-"

    "I've never noticed it before, I've been fucking blind," she said dazedly, still too stunned to see how white Isaac's knuckles were as he gripped the steering wheel. "You watch him like he's your whole world."

     Isaac gave this distressed little sound that sounded like a plea, another 'no'. Inside the stationary car, it felt to them both like the very air around them was shifting.

    "Isaac-"

    "Leave it."

    "I can't!"

     For a few seconds neither of them spoke, the tension between them taut and electric. Willa cleared her throat, began,

    "I just-", but she'd hardly got the words out of her mouth before Isaac's control finally snapped.

    "Okay, fine, what do you want me to say Willa?" He swallowed, voice desperate and reckless and rising. "Yes, I'm gay, yes, I'm in love with your fucking boyfriend. Alright? Happy now?"

     Willa stopped, mouth slightly open. It was so silent she could hear his unsteady breaths.

    "Isaac," she said. He swiped a hand over his eyes, and continued in a dull, defeated tone.