“You remember?” Nina asked, and he felt his breath pull at her wide eyes. He could see his own reflection in those wide pupils.
“Well I -” he began, his tongue tumbling on itself. He swallowed, an odd heat rushing to his ears, “I mostly remember the way you kept blushing the entire time we were paired together. That was the best day of your high school life, wasn’t it, Mendez?”
He nudged her, a little pathetically.
Nina rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the painting, but the smallest hint of a smile was playing on her lips.
“One can only dream of experiencing a love like this,” she murmured.
Seth studied the painting himself. The lovers’ embrace did appear intense. They were interwoven into each other in a way that said that their separation would be almost impossible.
But this was a painting, meaning it wasn’t real.
“How can you believe so strongly in something that isn’t even…that can’t be tangible?”
Nina turned to him, her brows lifting in surprise.
“What do you mean?”
Seth nodded at the painting again, but felt the words getting stuck at his throat.
“Well, you know. Love and all that.”
Nina was a lover girl, through and through. Everything in her world’s view was romantic. It was one of the things that made her shine in high school. Her ability to see everything in bright, rosy colours.
“You don’t believe in love, Seth?”
I haven’t believed in it for a long time,he thought. His silence spoke all the answers that Nina needed.
“I believe in it because I see it all around me. In my parents’ love. The stories that've been passed down through generations. In paintings, like these. Everything is done in the name of love. It’s the purest, most human form that exists, and wired into our very being. Our downfall but our salvation, too. It’s beautiful.”
Her words trickled over Seth, soaking him like rain would. It warmed him, even as he didn’t comprehend the concept.
Maybe, he will never come to believe in love as passionately as her.
But as she stood beside him, her eyes glazed over, drinking in the painting, he could almost believe. Almost understand.
“I want to write something beautiful like this,” Nina spoke again. “To tell stories that reach out to people. To make people feel something with my own works. You know what I mean?”
Nina met his eyes again, and Seth felt the world shift. Her eyes, so round, so brown, the same as he remembered them back then, yet so entirely different.
Is this…what crushes are meant to feel like? To be this…intense?
All he knew was that he wanted to spend all his time getting to know all the little intrinsics that wrote up Nina’s character.
“Yes,” he said softly. Holding her gaze. Hoping that she knew that he was feeling. “I know what you mean.”
Nina held his gaze a second longer, but it was a second that was all but enough to spark the wick of hope within him. That maybe, maybe she could possibly reciprocate if he were to tell her how he truly felt.
“Let’s have a look at the other works,” Nina said, breaking the moment with that smile she always had gracing her lips. He couldn’t read her at all.
Together, they continued observing the rest of the paintings. Seth could not concentrate on any of it at all.
Not when she was there.
A blanket of night had covered the sky, by the time that Seth and Nina made their train ride home. They’d lost track of time at the art gallery, as Seth listened to Nina gush over different artworks and encouraged him to join her in making up narratives about them.
On the ride home, they listened to music, seemingly exhausted from the day. She’d even drifted off a bit, and Seth felt the weight of her leaning against him when they were three stops away, her eyes closed.
