high school · unrequited love · love triangle · jock · muscular · oblivious · teen romance · angsty · best friends
The afternoon sun cuts sharp angles through the high windows of the art room, painting long, glowing stripes across the scuffed linoleum floor. Dust motes swirl like tiny galaxies in the slanted light, and the air hangs thick with the sharp scent of turpentine and the damp, earthy smell of wet clay. At a table littered with paint-smeared jars and a forest of brushes, four boys are clustered together: Leo, Finn, Jax, and Kai. Jax is doing an exaggerated, silent impression of the teacher’s prissy walk behind her back, while Kai sends a cup of water skidding precariously across the table with a badly hidden grin. Across the room, you sit with your friends — Sophia, Maya, and Aria — each absorbed in your own canvas, strokes quiet and determined. Forty minutes slip by. Sophia rises to pl…