The first time I saw Rylan Aiden, sunlight was cutting through the half-open blinds of our classroom and landing right on him. It made the dust in the air shimmer like gold. He was asleep at his desk, chin propped on one hand, hair a mess. Everyone else was taking notes or pretending to, I was pretending too like I wasn’t staring at the guy in class. He was the new student in our school, already everyone's favorite.

I told myself I was only studying how the light worked, how it made everything softer. I’m an artist; observation is a habit. That’s what I thought. That’s what I tried to think while my pencil moved over the page and traced the slope of his nose, the slight curve of his mouth.

When the bell rang, the room filled with scraping chairs and chatter. Rylan stirred, blinked like he didn’t know where he was, then looked straight at me. His eyes were this strange color, like grey in the shade, almost blue in sunlight. For a second, he looked through me. Then he smiled.

“Do you always draw sleeping people?” he asked, standing, voice rough from his nap.

I felt heat crawl up my neck. “You were just… there. The light…”

He leaned closer, grinning. “So I was the light model today?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I laughed awkwardly. He picked up the pencil I’d dropped in my panic and twirled it between his fingers.

“You’re good,” he said, handing it back. “You should show people that.”

“No one would care.”

“I care,” he said simply, and walked off.

Just like that. No hesitation. No awkwardness. As if it was normal to speak kindness so easily.After school I walked home alone, the afternoon bright and restless. My neighborhood smelled like wet soil and new leaves. Spring always makes this town look softer like even the old church on the hill is trying to forgive itself.

I kept seeing that smile. That stupid, careless smile.

Maybe he forgot about it the moment he left the classroom. But for me, it stuck like a song I couldn’t stop humming.

A week later he sat next to me at lunch. Just sat down, tray clattering, like it was the most natural thing in the world. His friends were laughing somewhere across the cafeteria, but he didn’t look back.

“Your name’s Kai Blake, right?”

I nodded.

“I’m Rylan. Rylan Aiden.”

I already knew. Everyone knew him. He played soccer, always had people around him, the kind who fill a room without trying.

“So,” he said between bites of apple, “what do you do after school?”

“Draw.”

“Only that?”

“That’s enough.”

He laughed softly. “Fair. You should show me sometime.”

Something in the way he said it made my chest tighten like he wasn’t teasing this time. Like he meant it.

By the time April ended, we’d fallen into a rhythm. He’d find me behind the gym, where I liked to sketch during breaks, and drop down beside me. Sometimes he’d talk about practice; sometimes he’d just lie on the grass and watch clouds.

He always smelled faintly like rain and soap. I started noticing things like that how he tapped his fingers when thinking, how his voice softened when he said my name.

I didn’t understand why it mattered. I just knew it did.

One afternoon, he asked, “Why don’t you ever draw people smiling?”

“I guess smiles don’t last long,” I said without thinking.

He turned to me, eyes bright. “Then draw them before they fade.”

I looked down at the sketchbook on my knees. Every page felt like something unfinished faces half-hidden, eyes looking away. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was afraid of capturing something too alive, too real.

When I looked up, he was watching me with that unreadable expression he sometimes got, halfway between curiosity and concern.

“You’re weird, Kai Blake,” he said finally.

“I know.”

“That’s probably why I like talking to you.”

My heart stumbled. I looked away, pretending to fix a line on the paper.

Evenings were quieter after that. My parents always asked about school, never really listening to the answers. My mother worried about grades, for father its all about church. When they talked about people, it was always about what others would think.

I never told them about Rylan. Somehow I knew they wouldn’t understand why a few words from him could make a day feel different.

One Friday, the last of the cherry trees near the field bloomed. The petals scattered across the grass like soft snow. Rylan dragged me there after class, said he’d found the “perfect spot” for a sketch.

He was right.

The air smelled of rain even though the sky was clear. The light was gold again, the same gold that first afternoon.

He sprawled under the tree, arms behind his head. “Draw me like this,” he joked. “The great Rylan Aiden, conqueror of naps.”

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t stay still long enough.”

“Bet I can,” he said, eyes closing. “Go on. Try.”

So I did. The world went quiet except for the sound of wind and the pencil moving across paper. I traced the shadow of his lashes, the curve of his jaw, the slight smile tugging at his lips even in sleep.

Halfway through, he opened his eyes. I froze.

He didn’t move, just kept looking at me. Then, softly, “You make me look calm.”

“Maybe you are,” I whispered.

He shook his head, smiling faintly. “Not around you.”

I didn’t know what to do with that sentence. It hung in the air between us, light and dangerous, like a spark before the storm.

I shut the sketchbook gently. “You talk too much,” I said, trying to laugh it off.

“Maybe. But you listen.”

We stayed like that for a while, side by side, watching the petals fall. I thought about how short spring always felt in this town, how everything beautiful disappeared before you could hold onto it.

When the sun dipped low and the air grew cold, he walked me halfway home. Neither of us said much. At my gate, he stopped.

“See you Monday?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He smiled, and for the first time I realized how rare that kind of smile was the one that looked like he meant it.

After he left, I stood there for a long time, sketchbook clutched to my chest, trying to name what I was feeling.

It wasn’t love. Not yet.
 It was something quieter like the first note of a song you know will break your heart before it ends.