Gentlemen Don't Ask Questions

Isabelle Clarke was the girl to get me into songwriting. Sure, my grandma was the one who got me into singing, my brother the one who persuaded me to pursue music, but Isabelle was the one who made me start writing. My first song was about her. It was badly written and your typical clichè 'you broke my heart, wah', but it was a song nonetheless.
No matter what I did to try and erase her from my memory, the one thing that always stayed burned in my mind was her eyes; those Goddamn eyes still haunted me during lonely nights. I've never met someone with eyes so green, and I was convinced for weeks that they were contacts, but they weren't. She was simply perfect in every single way.

I was seventeen when I first met her. I was the school's chubby outcast, who was used to sitting by himself during lunch, or spending last period behind the bicycle sheds with all of the other losers getting blitzed out of my mind on cheap vodka.
Her and her sister, Megan, were the new kids from California, and I had already heard all about them before I had even seen them. Megan was eighteen, Isabelle sixteen, and both were apparently your typical California beach babes; tall, tanned and 'smokin' hot', according to the jocks. I was giving it a week before one of them was dating the captain of the football team, while the other slipped on her stilettos and stomped all over me and all of the other weirdos.
I was sitting by myself reading a comic book when a shadow was cast over my tray of food. My body tensed, waiting for someone to pour a drink down the back of my shirt and call me a fagot, but when I looked up I saw that I didn't recognize the girl standing in front of me. She was around my height, with sun kissed freckles dancing across the bridge of her nose and honey blonde highlights streaking her chestnut brown hair. And those eyes; they were hypnotizing.
She was wearing a faded pair of ripped jeans and a green Holister top, and I groaned inwardly. She was only here a day and already I was on her radar.

"Hey, is someone sitting here?"

"N-no," I mumbled, waiting for whatever she had in store for me.

"Can I sit down? I'm new here and I don't know anyone."

I nodded and eyed her suspiciously as she plonked herself down in front of me. I couldn't help but notice all of the whispers starting around me, all eyes on us.

"Megan Clarke?"

We both looked up to see Krista, the school's queen bee, standing beside us.

"Isabelle," Isabelle smiled up at her.

"You're new, right? I'm Krista," she extended her hand to Isabelle, turning her back to me completely,
"I heard you're from California? I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you don't know anyone or anything here?"

Isabelle let out a light laugh, and I rolled my eyes as I turned back to my comic. Fan-fucking-tastic, they were going to start a conversation with me smack-bang in the middle of it, and still completely ignore me.

"Well, you know me now," Krista grinned, resting her hand on her hip as she flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder,
"And I'm gonna give you a little advice, the number one rule here."

Isabelle dropped her fork and gave Krista her undivided attention.

"Weirdo," she pointed at me, before pointing out a few other kids in the cafeteria,
"Weirdo, weirdo, weirdo. Those guys, you wanna avoid them. Trust me, it's like social suicide. My friends and I are sitting over there, you're more than welcome to join us."

And to my complete and utter shock, Isabelle didn't miss a beat in picking up her fork and turning back to her salad.

"Thank you, but I'm okay here."

Krista blinked rapidly a few times, before smiling sweetly once again.

"I think you misunderstood me-"

"No, I understood you perfectly, and I said I am okay here. I like to get to know someone before I judge them. Thank you for the advice though."

Krista looked at Isabelle like she had just sprouted horns and a tail, she was so used to people thinking the sun shined out of her butt.
"Let me make this perfectly clear to you. I can crush you," Krista brought her face close to hers, but Isabelle didn't so much as beat an eyelash.

"And what? You think I'm just going to lie down and let you use me as a doormat? Be careful with your threats, Krista. Trust me when I tell you that it won't be worth it."

Krista glared at her for a few moments before storming off, but not before calling me a knob-jockey. I could feel my cheeks growing red as Isabelle looked at me, her green eyes piercing.

"I'm Isabelle. Not Izzy, not Belle, Isabelle."

I smiled despite myself and put down my comic.

"I'm Gerard."

She returned my smile before she pointed her plastic fork at me.

"What are you reading?"

"Oh...just a comic. Do you read them?"

"No," she shook her head and took a forkful of food.

I just nodded and anxiously shifted in my seat.

"What's it about?"

I looked at her cautiously, trying to see if she was ripping the piss out of me, but she looked like she was genuinely interested. When you're seventeen and in high school, trying to fit in with everyone else seems to be every students goal. It was the first time anyone had ever told me that they didn't share an interest with me, but still wanted to know about it.
I nervously held up the cover to show her and briefly explained the storyline.

"Hmm," she nodded when I finished, letting us slip back into silence again.

I pushed my food about my plate, avoiding eye contact with her when she stood up and called out her sister's name across the food hall. Megan was basically a taller, slimmer version of Isabelle, and people used to always say that Megan was the better looking of the two, solely because of her figure, which I thought was unfair. But I appreciated a girl with curves, a girl with breasts and a butt. Isabelle, to me, was always the best looking one. The beautiful one.

"A new friend?" Megan smiled down at me, and I'm sure I looked astonished when Isabelle said yes.

"This is Gerard. This is my sister, Megan. She's a senior."

Megan gave me a sunny smile before one of the older girls in Krista's group signaled her over to their table. Megan shot her a confused look before saying goodbye and leaving Isabelle and I alone.

For the first few months that the Clarke's were in town, people used to always grumble about their parents. Both of their parents were surgeons with the army, and, while they provided a decent living for their daughters, they worked insane hours and were very rarely home. But whatever way they raised those girls, they clearly did something right, because not once did they give into peer pressure. Not over drinking, sex, or even over who it was cool to hang out with. They were their own people, they both appreciated that and never let anyone try to bully them into thinking anything else, and because of that, I thought they were so courageous, especially in high school where kids chew you up and spit you out.

++++++

Seven years later and I was standing on their doorstep, my heart racing as I knocked on their door. I nervously tried to loosen my tie without making myself look like an absolute riff-raff, the collar of my shirt starting to feel like it was choking me.
Megan was the one to answer the door, and she looked the exact same. I gave her a feeble smile, wondering if she would remember me.

"Gerard," she managed to give me a warm smile, despite the circumstances, and pulled me in for a hug,
"I didn't expect you to come. You really didn't have to."

"It's the least I could do. I'm so sorry for your loss, Megan."

Her smile was tight as she led me into the sitting room, and I swallowed thickly when I saw the coffin. I fucking hated funerals, ever since my own grandmother passed away the year before. I was always that asshole who got so nervous he'd start laughing at inappropriate moments.

"I'll be back in a second," Megan left the room, and I was suddenly alone, sans a couple of old women who were talking in the corner.

I gave them a slight nod, acknowledging that they were there, before I moved over to the coffin. I always remembered Isabelle's mother as being the typical housewife. Whenever she was home, she always had an apron on and flour up to her elbows, always baking something. She'd laugh and say that she couldn't help herself and that she was too far gone in life to care about her waistline anymore.
She looked so skinny lying in that coffin, the skin tight across her bones. I didn't recognize the woman lying in front of me.

"Gerard?"

I turned and felt my breath hitch when those green eyes connected with mine.
Fucking hell, I still loved her.