When the Paint dries 🎨🤎

Brushstrokes

Alana didn't mean to start looking for Elijah.

But she found herself noticing him more. The way he always sat in the back, headphones tucked around his neck even when he wasn't using them. How he never raised his hand in class but still turned in pieces that made their teacher go quiet for a second before speaking. He never bragged. Never explained.

He just created.

And it pulled at something in her chest she wasn't ready to name.

At lunch, Poppy and Bria dragged her into the chaos of the theater wing. Apparently, the spring musical was Into the Woods, and they were in full prep mode.

"You have good hands," Bria observed one day, watching Alana idly sketching during their hangout in the auditorium wings. "You ever painted set pieces?"

"No," Alana said slowly.

"You do now," Poppy declared. "We need someone to help with trees and backdrops. It's kind of therapeutic. We play showtunes. Sometimes someone cries."

Alana opened her mouth to say no—but didn't. Something about the idea of painting something that didn't have to be perfect or personal felt... right.

So that's how she ended up staying late after school on a Thursday, covered in green paint, standing on a ladder painting leaves onto an oversized plywood tree. She hadn't felt this physically tired in a while, but it was a good tired.

"Hey."

She turned.

Elijah stood by the stage steps, sketchpad in hand, his hood up.

"You're helping with the play?" he asked.

"Yeah. Sort of got tricked into it," she said, smirking slightly.

He nodded like he understood.

"You gonna draw it?" she asked, eyeing the pad.

He shrugged. "Maybe."

She climbed down, wiped her hands on her already-ruined hoodie. "You stay late a lot?"

"Yeah. School's quieter then. Easier to think."

He said it like a confession.

Alana tilted her head. "What do you think about?"

Elijah looked down at his sketchpad, then back at her.

"Stuff I'm not ready to say out loud," he said softly.

And somehow, that felt more honest than anything anyone had said to her in months.

They stood there for a minute. No pressure to talk. Just paint and quiet and the hum of distant music from someone's Bluetooth speaker.

Then he looked at her, really looked at her.

"You still talk to him?"

She froze. Her heart jumped into her throat.

"Who?" she asked, even though she knew.

"Your boyfriend," he said gently. "You wear his name on your wrist."

She instinctively covered the tattoo on her inner arm with her sleeve. Malik, in simple script. She'd gotten it on what would've been his eighteenth birthday.

"Sometimes," she admitted. "In my head, mostly."

Elijah didn't say anything. Just nodded like he got it. Like he talked to someone, too.

She didn't ask who.

That night, she went home and tried to draw a tree but ended up drawing Elijah again.

This time, she didn't close the sketchbook.

But she did cry.

Just a little.

Because the guilt was growing.

Not just that she was thinking about someone else.

But that a part of her didn't hate it.