Entangled: YOU, ME AND THEM

Iconic Detention

Third person's P.O.V

Anyone who saw Riley storming angrily to the extracurricular activities room, knew that they should stay away from her for their own good. And anyone who saw Jayden strolling casually behind her, knew that for some reason he would probably be worse.

"Hurry up!" Riley huffed in annoyance at Jayden who just rolled his eyes at her.

When she slammed open the door of the room, the teacher sitting there for supervision glared at her to which she murmured a soft apology.

But still, she stomped over to the desk at the far end of the room and basically flung her painting supplies onto the table. Jayden soon followed with the canvas that the school had provided and set it up neatly.

Riley was arranging everything properly and setting up the palette, when Jayden softly said, "One might think you want to do something to me in this corner."

Riley just glared at him. "In your dreams."

Jayden couldn't stop the smile from spreading across his face but he didn't know why he smiled. Why did her low voice make him feel warm internally?

She was still dressed in the regular uniform whereas he had changed after class into jeans and a sweatshirt. The sleeves of her blazer were pushed up to her elbows and her hair was tied in a messy knot at the base of her neck.

"I know I am beautiful, but my grades are important to me. Do you mind helping?" She asked, her eyes meeting his.

Jayden nodded and leaned across her to grab a brush and looked at what she had started. She was sketching with a pencil lightly on the canvas, markings and points.

"Ok, uhm so what are you exactly sketching?" Jayden asked Riley as curious as a cat.

" I am sketching a dustbin and a gutter. Little beauties of nature aren't they?" She replied as sarcastically as possible.

"Yeah where you belong." He muttered under his breath so that she doesn't hear it and goes haywire again.

"You can tell me. Atleast, I can help in sketching the other half. Come on Riley, this is a pair assignment. You need to allow me to help you. I am not the kind to let you do the work and sit back, relax and enjoy." He said this time stressing on every word to make sure he gets his point through her thick skull.

"Ok, jesus christ, calm yourself. Fine, I was thinking about portraying a family's love.", she replied softly, not meeting his eyes.

Jayden knew something was wrong when she was not able to look into his eyes. But he knew her too well to ask about it. Instead he just said, "That's deep."

She finally looked up at him, her eyes like the rocks near a violent ocean, "I get things through my thick skull." Jayden freaked out for a second thinking he had said his thoughts out publicly but then realised that she probably knew him well by now.

After they almost finished the sketch together, they got ready to paint it. Wow, it was impressive that they had managed to finish sketching without ripping their heads off. Little did we know, the worst was yet to begin.

"I think we should paint the background bluish like the morning sky. As it contrasts with the sadness associated with death", Jayden said.

"No, we should make it the night sky, it goes more along with death. Like really dark." Riley said, taking the black water paint reading to make a night sky.

"No, we should make it blue, trust me it will look good." He was about to paint the background with light blue paint when Riley pulled him back causing the palette full of paint to drop on his sweatshirt and clatter onto the ground from her hand.