WHEN IT GOT TO lunch, I hadn't seen or heard from Archie all day, so I guessed no news was good news.
And when I saw him coming through the door, wincing as he held it open for Rob behind him, I'd never been more glad to see him. Before he sees me checking on him though, I put my head back down and focus on the Ottoman research I have on my laptop screen instead.
He comes and sits opposite me, patiently waiting for me to look up. When I do, I snort. He has aligned his eyes just above the top of my laptop screen, so his eyes and the top of his head are the only part I could see of him.
"Good day so far?" I ask, closing my laptop lid. I reach across the table to cover his hand with mine.
He shrugs, brushing his thumb over my hand before pulling it to his mouth to kiss my knuckles. "It was okay. I was late to everything but I was fine." He beams and leans back in his chair. "I do feel like I want to call your dad now though." He sighs. "I'm exhausted."
I look at him and I can see he's in pain, but before I can tell him he should if he wants, he says something else.
"But I have a double free and then Art last period, so I don't see the point. I can just chill up here."
"Arch, you can still go if you want. Dad would come and pick you up."
He shakes his head as he stands. "Nah, it's okay," he tells me, gesturing with his head to the dwindling lunch queue. "Hey, did you actually hand in our Art project yet?" He asks, changing the subject.
I take his hand as we walk. "Nope. Figured we could do it together. She gave us an extension and we're the last presenters on Friday."
He lets me go for a second so I can get my lunch.
"But we're done right?" I ask as we sit down.
"Yeah we are." He takes a huge mouthful of pasta. "But I have a replacement for one of my cards. I can add it whilst you're in English and meet you in the Art room later."
I narrow my eyes. "Arch, what are you adding?"
He holds up his hands in defence. "It's not that picture from the other day is it?"
He laughs. "No, it's not."
He'd drawn a picture of me asleep. It was so detailed, making me feel like he'd been watching me sleep for hours, but I didn't really want a picture of me asleep on our Art project. Not to mention it was private.
"What have you drawn?" I press again and he pretends to zip his mouth shut.
"You'll see!" He smiles, leaning across the table and kissing me, ceasing all conversation on the topic.
***
WHEN FRIDAY FINALLY CAME around, all of us were really ready for the Christmas holidays.
Dad still hadn't spoken to us about what I'd asked him on Tuesday, because he'd been working, but I felt like I didn't want to push it either. I asked Archie again, but he shut down immediately and went quiet, so it was obviously something bad.
School was becoming normal for us again though. And with Archie's ribs getting better by the day, and less people staring too, by the time we came into the Art classroom, we were in good spirits. Well as good as my spirits could be when I didn't know what picture he was using.
I was about to ask him one final time when Mrs Doctor called our names.
"And last but not least... Archie and Tessa?"
We turn our heads in sync and stand. Our first lesson back, his arrival was met with gasps of horror. Now, people are barely batting an eyelid at the sight of his bruised face.
Archie waves awkwardly to the class and I have to hide my smile with my hand. For someone who hates presenting, he's good at it.
"So our project," he gestures to the easel which is covered with a sheet in a stupid reveal that he had organised, "was based on a table top card game idea."
"Not like a casino," I quickly add. "We've gone for Solitaire."
Mrs Doctor nods and marks it down in her book. "What theme did you go for?"
"Well the theme was something important to us, so we've gone with family, friends and hobbies. We've used different cards to show different things. And we split the deck, so to speak. I went with spades and clubs, whilst Tessa did hearts and diamonds, each of us having about seven or eight cards to draw before we came together."
"I remember you guys saying you had an interesting idea for your backboard. Can you explain the logic behind it?"
Archie hands over to me. "Tess?"
I take a step forward, fiddling with my jumper. "Erm, yeah, so I actually got the inspiration for this from a film. Have any of you guys seen The Princess Diaries?"
A couple of girls raise their hands, but the boys all shake their heads emphatically. I'm fairly certain they probably had, but I don't dwell on it.
"Okay, well, there's a scene where Mia and her mum are throwing darts at balloons on a blank canvas, and I wanted to do that. So Archie and I filled hundreds of balloons with various paints; glitter paint, metallic paint, Pantone paint, primary paint... and we blew them up enough to cause the paint to splatter when it popped."
The two girls smile and giggle as they remember the scene.
"It took us a couple of days, and we got completely covered in paint, but I think we did it pretty well, as you'll see in a minute. The paint splatters mixed together and ran off, and it's almost a kind of less fluorescent version of Tye-Dye."
I finish up and smile at Mrs Doctor.
"Great. I can't wait to see the finished product," she smiles as she notes something else down.
"Yeah, we're pretty proud of it actually. Nice idea, Tess." He nudges me playfully and smiles widely as Mrs Doctor looks back up.
"Did you guys work together on any cards? Or are each other's cards just as much a surprise as to us?" She asks.
"We knew about each other's cards. We're around each other so much that we needed to make sure none of them were the same," he laughs and everyone joins in.
"You guys are joined at the hip!" I don't know who it was but it looks like Rob's friend Nick. He doesn't hang out with us much, but he's a sub on the football team with Archie so probably knows him quite well.
Archie smiles but looks back at Mrs Doctor and then at me. His cheeks then redden and I curse in my head. He's planning something, and it's going to be embarrassing for me. I just knew it.
"So you didn't amalgamate on any?" She asks and he looks harder at me.
He sighs, not moving his eyes from mine. "We did... on one. Kind of."
The last time I saw our project, we hadn't amalgamated on any of them, and the pick-up card we kept as neutral, going for a landscape of a Scottish holiday we went on when we were nine. Now what had he added?
"Go on..." Mrs Doctor encourages him. She's smiling, so I get the feeling she may know about this.
Archie closes his eyes and tips his head back. "She's going to kill me for this."
I cover my eyes and curse under my breath.
"So a couple of months ago, before all of this happened," he starts, gesturing to his face, "Tessa showed me one of the cards she was working on. A seemingly innocent picture of us from a few years ago, watching the guys play football, us laughing... blah, blah, blah."
I furrow my brow. I remember the day I showed him. He told me not to, but I ripped it up because I didn't want it on the project if it meant it would remind him of a bad day.
He looks at me again and he turns around and starts unbuttoning his shirt. When he has it undone all the way, he pulls the back of it down, showing the class the top of the scars on his back. He doesn't pull it down far enough for people to see his ribs, but I hear Mrs Doctor gasp and she cups her mouth, so do several people in the class, but I'm wondering what he's doing. After a few seconds, he does the buttons up again and turns around.
"Sorry..." he looks at Mrs Doctor, who has tears in her eyes, but she swallows and nods. "He did that to me that night. The picture Tessa originally drew, although she didn't know it at the time." He holds my hand for a second before continuing. "I was off for two weeks because the cuts got infected, and now I've got to carry these scars with me my whole life. But that wasn't what I was getting at here, sorry." He pulls his shirt back on and buttons it up.
"On the night a few weeks ago, he was holding this picture in his hands." He points behind him at the covered board. "He said she was holding me back, and that she was nothing more than a waste of space and that she was only using me for the money."
He shakes his head as he looks at me.
"Tessa was what helped me fight back that day. Seeing that picture again, hearing him completely contradict exactly who she is, it gave me hope and strength to finally step out from underneath him. And yes," he rolls his eyes, "it may not have gone so well, but I see it as a win."
"A win?" I ask, my voice soft from the lump in my throat.
He nods. "Yeah. I finally stood up to him. And I would never have been able to do it without you." He shakes his head again. "Sorry, I keep getting off topic. So, anyway, it made me realise just how important family is, how important Tessa is, so I drew it again. From memory."
He walks backwards and pulls away the sheet, and just like he'd said, there was a new card in there. It was being held in the hand in the drawing of the hand we had done, and it was an Ace card, a trump card, with the hand holding what was essentially a Royal Flush, if it had been a Poker table.
I step towards it and I cup my mouth. The detail was so fine and pronounced, it was as if we would suddenly start moving. He'd done it to all of his cards. But I was amazed at how you could even see the finer details, all the way to the stripe of mud from where Charlotte's dog Buster had jumped at me the week before with muddy paws.
I hadn't seen this photo before though, it was similar to the one I had started drawing, but this one was from more recently. I don't know who took it, but it was similarly private moment. Archie is kissing the side of my head, my eyes are shut, and he has his arms around my front. It was probably Charlotte come to think of it.
But I loved it. It captures us really well. Archie and I are just comfortable with each other, we always have been. Ever since that first day I met him. He held my hand for an entire story, not saying anything, and yet he spoke volumes.
Even now we can go hours without saying anything to one another. We speak in the way we hold or look at each other. I don't need him to say he loves me to know that he does. I can see everything he's feeling in his eyes, just as he can for me, and he's the one person I can truly trust with every inch of anything. I can feel his pain as though it's my own sometimes, and the bond between us is so strong I don't think anything will shatter it now.
"Anyway, so yeah." I turn to my left to see that Archie is no longer next to me, he's behind me. And not only is he behind me, he's on one knee.
I look around at the class. The boys are staring shocked, eyes wide, and the girls have tears in their eyes. Mrs Doctor has a smile on her face as well, so I bet he's asked her if this was okay, whatever this is.
"Holy..." He has a rose in one of his hands, and he is holding a small, black velvet box in the other and I cup my hands over my mouth as he begins to speak again.
"Don't worry," he whispers, so I only I can hear. "This isn't what it looks like."
I half laugh, half sob. "Not what it looks like? Archie, get up!"
"No. I need to say this."
I roll my eyes as I give him the hand he's asking for.
"The last four months have been incredible Tessa. The laughter, the friendship, the fighting... everything. Everything has been an adventure and, when I was lying in the hospital over the last few weeks I've had a lot of time to think about it. No matter how hard I thought about something, you were there. When I wanted to draw, you were there, when I wanted to dream, you were there." He smiles. "It made me realise that, even though we've only been officially together for four months, we've been made for each other for so much longer than that."
He beams up at me and I feel like it's just the two of us in here. I have tears cascading down my cheeks now as I smile back at him and I don't even care if everyone sees. The words he's saying are so beautiful, I'd dare anyone not to cry.
"When you go through an ordeal like I did, you realise who the people closest to you are. And Tess?" He looks down at the box and then up at me again. "You're it. You're my home, my heart, my everything. You always have, and you always will be."
He lets my hand go to open the box and my other hand flies back to my mouth when I see what's in there. It isn't an engagement ring, but it looks like a promise ring.
It's thin, but it is so beautiful. The band is silver, with tiny diamonds set into it, with both ends finishing in a small diamond heart. The diamonds are glinting in the afternoon sun coming through the window behind us, and I don't have any words.
"Tessa, say something!" I hear someone in the front row shout at me.
Archie looks at whoever it is but I can't see through the tears in my eyes. Everything is blurry.
"Tessa, do you love me?" Archie asks, his voice wobbly and emotional as he takes me in. He reaches up and takes one of my hands from my face, my right one.
"Yeah." I nod. "Yeah, of course I do," I sob.
He laughs and a tear escapes from him as well. "And would you forever?"
I nod again and he smiles, slowly pushing the ring up on my fourth finger just as I lean down to kiss him, which is met with an echo of applause and cheers.
The kiss only lasts a few seconds, but I knew it would be one that was continued at home. When I pull away, his eyes are dancing again and he has the most beautiful smile on his face, even more beautiful than I can ever remember it.
"I can't believe you just did that," I whisper it but just as I say it, the bell goes for last period and people start filtering out, some of them offering us congratulations on their way out.
"I can. Tess, I'm completely serious." He pulls me closer to him and looks at me. "When I was lying there I remember thinking when I was talking to Millie the other day. She said we lucked out on you guys, and I really have. And that made me realise that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, and I just didn't want to hold it in any longer."
I shake my head. "You could have said it in a more private setting," I joke. "But I absolutely love it." I look down at my hand and touch the two heart-shaped stones gently with my forefinger.
"Where did you get it from?"
He narrows his eyes and shakes his head. "I ordered it the day after I spoke to Millie and it came on Wednesday while I was at home. I've been carrying it around in my pocket for the last two days, wondering when the best time was to give it to you. Believe it or not, that was not planned."
I laugh as Mrs Doctor comes back over to us. "Did you have a clue?" I ask her, testing his story.
She shakes her head as she wipes her eyes. "Absolutely none. He'd shown me your art board though, and you should know that you guys have completely aced this project. Marks will be posted in January, but you've done really well with this."
My eyes widen. "You're not going to display it are you?" She usually displayed her top artworks and I didn't want it to be up on the wall.
She shakes her head. "No, not unless you want me to. I have a feeling you guys might want to take it home."
Archie nods at the same time as me before kissing the side of my head.
"In any case, I'm happy for you guys. If anyone deserves some great things, it's you guys. Especially after the last few weeks." She puts a hand on both of our shoulders before leaving us alone.
When we reach the Tower, he sees me looking down at my ring again and I feel his lips on my forehead before I look up.
"You've made me the happiest boy alive you know."
I beam a smile at him before leaning up on my tiptoes to kiss his lips. "And you've made me the happiest girl alive..." I kiss him once more.
"After such a crappy month full of hospitals, crying, pain, angst and more crying, I felt like we needed something to look forward to, to plan for... and now I know everything is going onwards and upwards."
"I definitely agree with that. "
And with that, we pick up our stuff and head out the gates to get home.