Say Yes (Nostalgic Summer Romance)

I blinked, bringing my gaze to his. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” he said on a laugh. “You left the entire class stunned. It was all they could talk about today. In fact, other than when I was at their easel grading their own projects, they were gathered around yours discussing it.”

“They were?” I asked incredulously.

“We all were.”

My mouth hung open for a long pause before I thought to close it, and I blinked, shaking my head as I digested his words. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, let me get to the point, then,” Professor Beneventi continued. “First, we debated our own interpretations, but if you’d be so kind, I’d love to hear your intention.”

I blew out a slow breath, drinking the last sip of wine from my glass before I set it aside. I leaned a hip against the wall, closing my eyes and recalling the colorful canvas that had taken up my life for weeks now.

“I’ve always found rain to be strangely comforting,” I started. “So, when I began painting, a woman walking on a rainy street was the first thing that came to me. But I didn’t want the rain to be portrayed as gray or dark or bleak, but rather bright and golden, a baptism of sorts.”

I could see it all so clearly — the woman in the distance, umbrella over her head, boots splashing on the wet street as she walked among streetlamps and trees. The water puddled on the street she walked on, reflecting the light and colors.

“The edges of the canvas are dark,” Professor Beneventi noted. “Deep blues and greens in the leaves, black trunks.” He paused. “But as your eye wanders closer to the main subject.”

“They begin to glow,” I finished for him. “The cold hues grow warmer, from blue to red, from green to orange, from black to yellow.”

I smiled, but when I blinked my eyes open, the tears growing behind the lids were free to glide down my cheeks, silent but steady.

“There is a storm of emotion inside each of us,” I whispered. “So many reasons to be sad, to be angry, to feel cheated. So many experiences that have rubbed us raw, broken us down, and begged us to believe their insistence that life is nothing but a miserable prison we are forced to endure.”

Professor Beneventi swallowed, as if he were recalling his own life experiences that made him feel that way.

“But we mustn’t forget we have a choice,” I continued. “We can surrender to those thoughts, those reasons, those dark clouds… or,” I countered. “We can take the lessons they offer us, and we can choose to find gratitude for experiencing them, for having felt such a terrible grief that we come to appreciate joy for the truly magnificent emotion that it is.”

“It’s a reminder to choose happiness,” he remarked.

An amused laugh left me. “No,” I said. “It’s a reminder that the true beauty in life is that we experience both tremendous anguish and remarkable exuberance in tandem, and that neither could exist without the other. We would be numb if we only ever felt happy, and we would be equally as numb if we only experienced pain. It is the fact that they walk together hand in hand that makes life such a wondrous thing. Such a precious thing.”

I shook my head, looking down at my feet with a soft smile as a full summer of memories played out before me.

“I have experienced heartbreak like never before in my life these last few weeks,” I explained. “But I have also come to deeply understand what gratitude feels like. I have felt hope and despair in equal measure.” I lifted my eyes to meet his. “And in this painting, I wanted the viewer to see the beauty in both, and to realize it’s okay to surrender to pain, as long as we don’t get swept away in it. Just as it’s okay to surrender to immense joy, so long as we appreciate its impermanence.”

“Impermanence,” he echoed. “Is that the name of your work?”

“No,” I said with a smile. “I call it The Art of Hope.”

Professor Beneventi’s head snapped back slightly, as if my words had physically hit him and knocked the growing smile on his face.

“Well done, Miss Chambers,” he said after a moment, shaking his head. “Truly. Well done.”

I smiled, cheeks and neck flushing as I dipped my chin to my chest and stared at my shoes once more. “Thank you, Professor.”

“It is my sincere pleasure,” he said. “It is also my honor to inform you that at the end of every summer, the school hosts an art exhibition, and your piece has been selected as the Leonardo da Vinci Award winner for most innovative and skilled artist of the summer session.”

I snapped my gaze back to his, but found I didn’t know what to say.