Loveland's Sweethearts.

Loveland was a tangerine pulchritude upon summertime, an organic oeuvre sculpted by intelligent minds and delicate fingers upholding paintbrushes of all sizes to fulfil their melancholic mural with the soft hues of vermillion and sanguine, two faces being the nucleus of such pulchritudinous illustrations, faces genderless and lower bodies not portrayed, creating a distortion mirage of the mind, love and reverence dripping from the artwork into soft honeyed trickles on the thick wooden frame of the canvas.

Aria Wakefield’s petite fingers gently fondled one of her ligneous paintbrushes, dipping the calloused tresses into the cantaloupe mixture of the aureate and cardinal oil colours she had amalgamated together earlier to form the desired haze she wanted to illustrate the empyrean of her drawing with. Muffled murmurs reverberated through the classroom walls, the seventeen and eighteen year olds beside her chattering quietly amongst themselves, yet the brunette did not twist her cranium to peer at them, instead pausing the paintbrush from touching the translucent canvas a millimetre away upon hearing the name of a boy she quietly admired from the wooden benches of the school during lunchtime, silently admiring his obsidian curls of hair and ivory skin, along with the roseate lips and viridian irises focused only on the tarmac ground or the cerulean horizon of the midday.

Declan Smith was the vocalist of the school’s punk band, yet he didn’t conform by the stereotypes created for such boys. Albeit wearing the trademark leather jacket all fictional characters from the books Aria read wore, Declan was a timid boy, and she had only heard him speak in her Literature lessons, which he sat in front of her in, explaining quietly the context behind the book they were currently studying, a personal favourite of hers: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Aria remembered vividly his knowledge of Stevenson’s reasons for conveying such psychotic ideologies into his work of fiction, the girl listening carefully to his reasoning, and she wasn’t the only one who did so. All the class was enthralled by his hushed and tranquil intonation, his British accent lingering at the end of his words prettily, his slender fingers folded together over the table as he shared his ideas with the remainder of the students.

The teacher thanked him profusely for being courageous enough to speak, and for expressing such intelligent ideas, and then the lesson had resumed, Aria barely hearing the exultant hum from the boy ahead of her as he picked his black pen, scribbling what the teacher was dictating in such an immaculate and cursive handwriting that was worth admiring over.

She too, had gently grabbed her pen, resuming from engraving important quotations from the novella into the specialised pages of the books, the ones including every theme mentioned indirectly, such as secrecy and duality of man.

Ever since, a seed of adoration towards the boy had plummeted itself into the aortas of her heart, blossoming into pretty roseate petals as time passed, days folding away sweetly only to visit for twenty-four hours the next year, and the one after that. Temperate afternoons consisted of her riding the bus to arrive at home only to discover Declan had the identical way of transport too, and her phone was placed into the pocket of her denim jacket, faint contemporary R&B music resonating from her blanc headphones, her almond irises flickering from the translucent windows to the boy’s facial canvas, the girl smiling softly for a moment before looking away once more.

She’d then arrive home to her mother giving her a saccharine peck on the cheek and catechising tenderly about her day at school, and the two would wait for her father to arrive as well before indulging into the meal prepared by Mrs. Wakefield, both her and her father praising her mother for her cooking, who’d smile before recalling her annoyance at her fellow colleagues from her workplace and rant them to the two, Aria droning out halfway as she’d ponder over what to paint.

“Have you been painting recently?” Her father questioned the evening prior, and she hummed, swirling some of the carbonara in her dish with her fork, savouring it before responding.

“Yes, I just finished a painting about nature for my art class a couple of days ago, Monday I think?”

“That’s good. You still enjoy painting, don’t you?” A soft smile accompanied those words as her father refocused on the television, waiting patiently for his daughter’s answer.

“I do, indeed. It liberates me, I guess.”

“Do what you enjoy, love. If ever you feel you begin disliking something, test whether it’s just a momentary sensation or whether it’s permanent. If permanent, drop it before you start despising it.”

“Okay, dad.” She smiled, fingers intertwined as the inspiration for her upcoming canvas bloomed inside her cerebrum, and the girl quickly rose from her chair, pecking her father on the cheek before announcing her leave, wishing her mother a good night when she got upstairs. Dropping onto her bed, she sketched the painting onto the notebook she used for her ideas, throwing it into her backpack and plugging her dead phone in, falling asleep soon after.

Now here she was attempting to taint the translucent canvas with the colours she had interspersed together, yet she paused when hearing the latest news of the boy she soundlessly admired upon the mornings of her Literature class, or the afternoons when she’d witness him getting into the same bus as her a stop after the one she got on, revering his endearing timidity and rubicund epidermis, although the words about him didn’t seem too pleasant.

“Apparently, someone attempted to beat him up yesterday after school. I saw him today, and his face didn’t look too pretty.” Her classmate, Eva, whispered, voice laced with nostalgia and sympathy for the boy. Aria placed her paintbrush down, the shade of concern painting her features as she raised her hand up, the teacher humming upon noticing her.

“Can I go to the bathroom, please?”

“You may; be quick.”

“Thank you, miss.” She murmured, and she waited until the teacher focused on the student she was helping to gather her belongings, slinging her bag over her right shoulder and exiting the classroom a moment later. Slow footsteps metamorphosed into quick ones as she wandered around the school corridors, halting when a possibility crossed her mind, one she hadn’t thought about before exiting her art class.

What if he’s in lessons? What if he left school already?

Yet Aria continued strolling across the desolate corridors, the silence enveloped around her abruptly too suffocating when she noticed the soft obsidian tresses of hair barely evident from the staircase, the boy’s physique gradually becoming clearer when she approached him.

Crouching down adjacent to him, Aria grasped her knees and brought them to her chin, resting her head on them when the boy peered at her inquisitively, delicate mahogany orbs questioning her presence.

“Skipping?” Declan asked softly, voice barely above a murmur.

“As of now.” She responded in an identical tone, irises analysing his features. Amethyst and pomegranate hues littered the sensitive skin underneath his irises, and dainty bruises painted the tip of his knuckles, and now he fit the stereotype conveyed for boys like him, although his elegant, kind voice showed his poorly masked vulnerability, his dislike of the fellow students in the school, his reluctance of being in the organisation in that moment.

“Why are you here, Wakefield? You shouldn’t be seen with a boy like me.” Declan expressed in a whisper, orbs fixating themselves on the asphalt of the staircase as he breathed in the susceptibility fulfilling his pneuma once more, intoxicating himself in it.

Aria sighed ruefully, petite fingers curling around the boy’s shoulder temperately, a sentiment of affection and empathy blossoming within her being at the fact that he knew of her presence, but that he felt such low things about himself. “Boys like you?”

Dejectedly, Declan responded. “Yeah, boys like me. You know, the ones who speak marmalade infused lies in the ears of lovesick females, the so-called bad boys created by female authors who always admired them from afar, and never spoke to them to know the sadness lingering in their circulatory system, only writing parables of them changing because of the good girls entering their lives with excuses of them being different, and the boys obviously falling for it.”

“It’s silly, right? How such happy endings have such hateful beginnings, how there’s always a need for stereotypes to form a love story. Well, what about the ones metamorphosed from friendships? Those are cliché too, such as I always loved my best friend, when mostly, you don’t know until you’re eighteen, and love is already a known concept to you.” Aria hummed, hand unknowingly remaining on the boy’s shoulder, smothering his flesh through the material of his hoodie.

Declan sighed. “You’re quite poetic, Wakefield.”

“So are you, Smith.” She smiled, roseate lips curling further when seeing a glimmer of jouissance reflect over Declan’s features, embellishing his beauty.

“Now, tell me why you’re here. With me.”

“To accompany you, Smith. To hopefully bring a smile to your features once more.”

“I can’t smile.” He sighed. “My cheeks hurt.”

“I can imagine. Luckily, I have a first aid kit in my vehicle offered by my father in case of injuries, so if you want, I can treat them for you.” She offered gently, the boy smiling gently just as the ring of the bell resonated through the staircase, awaking them from their nostalgia.

“Let’s go, Smith.” Aria extended a hand to the boy, who timidly took it as she led him to her vehicle.

Loveland’s skyline blossomed with the golden medallion and the sanguine hazes of aqua as the two strolled to the vermillion vehicle of the girl, settling in the comfort of the material cladded seats for the remainder of the lunch; for the first time, her fictional artwork was forgotten in the space of her classroom, and her teenage fantasy was sat in the passenger’s seat, expertly picking a old music station, Prince’s Purple Rain resonating in the car as the two drove home, Aria dropping Declan to his home – a blanc beauty a few streets away from her home – and she mentally thanked herself for driving today, for the few hours spent in her vehicle with the boy were the best ones in a while.