Puddle Jumping

by Amber L. Johnson

  He kissed me.

  Warm and soft. Gentle at first until his lips had acclimated to mine. It wasn’t like any kiss I’d ever experienced before because my knees felt nonexistent and I wanted to fall, taking him with me in a pile on the ground so I could curl into him and never let go.

  He was shaking and then grew more confident as I parted my lips and caught his in between mine.

  We both pulled away at the same time. I must have been bright red and he, I know, he was flushed, all hard breathing and starting to sweat a little from the tension. But I didn’t care. He’d totally kissed me. And it was amazing.

  I didn’t even mention the fact he was pretty much feeling up my left boob with his thumb. I just moved a little and maneuvered it away so I didn’t draw attention.

  “We should do that again,” he mumbled and looked away into the white lights above my head.

  I just held him tighter while I whispered, “Any time.”

  * * *

  I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: Colton is very literal. I told him he could kiss me anytime. He did just that. It was cool on the one hand because he wasn’t one of those guys who was an asshole and had to look out for his appearance in front of others. It was a drawback on the other because sometimes he did it without warning, like in the middle of a conversation.

  I often wonder if there’s judgment directed at me because of the physical relationship I have with him. If there’s a stigma attached to me that I’m taking advantage of him.

  I’m not, if you’re wondering.

  Like I said, no matter what a doctor once said about him, he’s still a teenage boy. And that’s pretty standard across the board, if you catch my drift.

  What I’d like to really stress about this is when you love someone, their differences fall away. I don’t look at him and see anything but him, and how sweet he is. I know how my stomach erupts in excitement when he simply holds my hand. How my heart reacts when we kiss. I know, above anything else, that when we’re together, it’s because we both want it. Not because of any other reason.

  The one thing I wish I could explain to people is he’s not what they think he is. Words he’s been branded with could never describe him. He’s not special. He’s extraordinary. To me.

  And I feel like I am, too, when I’m with him.

  * * *

  I was glad we had gone to the dance together because it was basically a back to school thing, being only six weeks into the year. The next dance was Homecoming, and I’d learned Colton was going to be attending the opening of one of his shows that night, so he wouldn’t be able to make it at all. Mrs. Neely invited me to join them and the decision was easy to make.

  One night after I ate dinner with his family, we went up to the art room and I took a look around at some of his newer pieces while he cleaned up from dinner and changed into some clothes that could be ruined if paint flew. I really loved the way he looked in his painting clothes. He was at ease. Comfortable.

  The art room above the garage was his safe place and I still couldn’t believe he trusted me so much to let me in.

  That he was going to trust me to watch him work.

  I wandered through the room looking at the canvases when I remembered he had that one painting in the corner that had been trashed. It wasn’t there anymore so I continued to walk the outer walls and move the art around so I could see them more clearly. My attention was on some of the more abstract ones and I was flipping through them carefully when I stopped cold.

  I was staring right into a perfect replica of my face.

  “Holy shit on a stick.” I probably said it louder than intended because I heard Colton’s feet pause in the hall before they came to rest behind me a foot away.

  “I couldn’t get the eyes right,” he’d said quietly and I turned around to look at his face, completely and utter flattered and breathless at what I held in my hands. “The other one. I couldn’t get the eyes right. That’s why I broke it.”

  “It’s perfect,” I whispered and turned to look back over at the picture. “You made me look really pretty.” The words were hard to say but they were true. He’d captured something with his brush I’d never seen in myself through the reflection of a mirror.

  “I believe I got the symmetry correct this time.” His feet shuffled a little on the carpet.

  After a moment, I turned back to him and offered a smile, unsure why there were tears in my eyes. But he noticed them and looked a little caught off guard.

  “Did it upset you?”

  “No.” I wiped the ridiculous tears away and shook my head.

  “Is there something I should do?” It was that question that made my heart crack down the middle and I started crying for real, just overwhelmed with all the feelings I was experiencing and not quite sure of them myself. “Lilly?”

  I had finally gotten up the nerve to ask the question I wanted the answer to “Am I your girlfriend?”

  “Of course.” Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  His answer made my heart soar and I just sort of stepped forward and blinked up at him . . . and asked him to kiss me.

  That little shy smile of his pulled up one of his cheeks and he met me halfway, dipping his face to plant a kiss on my lips. Once. Twice. And the third time, I got brave and pulled on the back of his neck and opened my mouth to . . . ya know . . . slip him a little tongue.

  I was in the moment and wasn’t thinking clearly, so it hadn’t occurred to me he might think it was gross or whatnot, but he’d pulled back a little and frowned, making me feel weird and self-conscious.

  “I’m sorry. Was that gross?” I asked, wanting to melt into the floor and just die.

  He shook his head slowly and then looked at me for a second. “I’d like to try this after you’ve brushed your teeth.”

  Oh my God. So embarrassing.

  Now, if he were any other guy, I would have probably hit him. Somewhere. Face. Arm. Nuts. But he was Colton and he was brutally honest about everything and had no filter to stop it, so my only reaction was to laugh and step back, assuring him I would brush my teeth next time.

  Then he caught me off-guard again. “My mother keeps extra toothbrushes in the guest bathroom for my grandparents when they visit.”

  I couldn’t get down the hall fast enough. His parents were still downstairs and they’d never had a reason to come up to the room before, so I wasn’t worried about Mrs. Neely catching me freshening up. What I didn’t account for was Colton coming to watch me from the doorway.

  “Are you checking to see if I brushed correctly?” I joked and then realized he actually was when he intently watched me rinse. I felt like maybe I needed one of those little white mirrors on a stick the dentist uses so he could count my fillings.

  I smiled and pointed at my teeth. “All clean. Will you kiss me now?” He just stared at my mouth and I felt dumb asking, but it was getting claustrophobic being in that little space. He took a step into the bathroom, making me take a step back to settle against the sink. I’d invited him in, so I’m not sure why it shocked me as much as it did. I guess it was just the way he was coming at me.

  I was used to him holding his hands by his sides or gripping onto the belt loops of my jeans. But this time he held my cheeks in his palms, firm and rough while he moved in to kiss me again. I had no qualms about slipping my hands up into his hair to fist it because I knew he liked being touched a little harder than most.

  My tongue flicked out again and his snuck out a little to touch it and somehow, somewhere in the universe, a switch got flipped on because he was really into it within seconds. My whole body reacted and I angled into him to hold on for dear life as he attacked me with his mouth, over and over again in unrelenting sweet torture.

  Then it happened.

  His hands weren’t on my face anymore. They were on my chest and he was groping me so roughly I had to pull back and I’m pretty sure I said, “ow,” because he was immediately off me with his back against
the wall looking as if he had done something wrong.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  I shook my head and then nodded once. “It was a little too hard.” My mouth almost felt bruised and I faintly tasted blood. “But it’s okay.” I wanted to assure him so he wouldn’t be scared to try it again. “Come here,” I motioned for him and he stepped forward so I could shut the door behind him.

  “Are you aroused? I am.”

  I did actually laugh at that because he was so blunt sometimes I had no other choice but to do so.

  “Yes.” I pulled him closer and took his right hand in my left, squeezing it to let him feel safer. “Very.” I was a ball of excited girl and he was my boyfriend and, yes, we were in the bathroom at his house . . . but it didn’t matter.

  I stepped up on my tiptoes and kissed him firmly again, his hand still in mine. His eyes closed and he stiffly kissed me back.

  “Relax, Colton,” I whispered between kisses. It took a moment before he did and once he had loosened up and gotten into the rhythm of kissing again, I parted my lips inviting him in for the next step.

  We concentrated there for a good minute until I could feel him getting warmed up again and hesitantly, I pressed his open palm to my chest.

  I knew him. I wanted him.

  It felt really, really good.

  It was too much for me so it had to have been too much for him. I took a deep breath and leaned away, giving him one last kiss before slipping his hand back down to my waist.

  “Are you all right?” I asked and he opened his eyes, droopy lids and hot breath accentuated by pink cheeks.

  “Yes.”

  A smile. A nod. Another small kiss.

  “I should go.” I had planned on staying to watch him paint, but the tension was too thick and I didn’t think I’d last an hour more in his room, watching him work.

  He stood in the doorway for a second and said goodbye before shutting the door on me. I made sure I looked presentable before escaping his house like my ass was on fire.

  * * *

  It never occurred to me that people thought a certain way about Colton. Like, if they didn’t know him and he did something they would consider to be strange or rude, you could see their faces turn bitter and I could almost hear them thinking he was a jerk for not initiating conversation or looking at them when speaking. Or, if he became easily distracted by something that caught his interest, others would seem to think he was ignoring them.

  But as soon as it was brought to their attention that his brain worked differently, they just accepted it and after that it was, “Oh, Colton is a wonderful young man. He’s just a little different. He doesn’t make eye contact and he hugs too hard.”

  Colton doesn’t care about things like that. He cares about art and making friends. He works in a space within his mind that allows him to do what he wants to, without feeling like he’s wrong for it. There are no rules as far as his passion is concerned. And I envy him.

  I wanted, more than anything, to take his paints and stand in his art room in just my underwear and throw buckets of colors at a canvas just to see what kind of chaos would bleed down the face and mix to make new shades of colors that possibly hadn’t even been invented yet.

  But I didn’t.

  Because I don’t have it in me.

  I ate dinner weekly at his house and spent time with his family. I always took him to and from his PEERS classes. I never really minded that he didn’t call me every night, and that we didn’t go out on real dates. What Colton lacked, I tried to overcompensate for. He would most likely never be interested in the things I liked, but if I could meet him on his same ground, then we’d have a chance. I was sure of it.

  I drew the line at learning about architecture because that is just boring. You can’t say I didn’t try, though.

  We could hang out for a short time after school with people in small groups that he was comfortable with. But he seemed to really be most at ease when it was just the two of us, and I can’t say it bothered me at all to have alone time with him.

  What I had failed to realize during all of that was, even though I was going out of my way to see things through his eyes . . . to understand him more and more each day in order to make our relationship work . . . learning about things was not enough.

  There’s a huge difference in reading about it and experiencing it.

  * * *

  The night of the Homecoming dance, Colton had an art exhibit downtown. I got all prettied up in a new dress my mom gave me money for. I bought new shoes, did my hair, and even wore a little more makeup than usual. I did all of that because I was going to be seen with Colton in public at one of his shows and I wanted to present myself the best way I knew how.

  He looked incredible, as always, in a casual suit and I couldn’t take my eyes off him the entire ride downtown. Nor could I hide the immense pride and happiness I felt when he took the stage, looking bashful and blushing, to acknowledge the crowd with a couple short sentences, his eyes focused on the exit sign at the far end of the room.

  People clapped and fawned all over his work and I hadn’t really thought about the fact he’d taken the portrait of me and hung it as well. The people who passed by would look the picture over and then their attention would fall on me and I would get these strange looks. It made me very uneasy to think people were being judgmental about our relationship by thinking I was with him for any other reason than being in love with him. Like I was, as my mom would say, hitching my wagon to his star.

  It made me uncomfortable and, after a while, I moved to the back of the room and waited at a table, people-watching.

  But that feeling of insecurity was nothing compared to the pit I got in my stomach when my gaze had roamed the room for Colton and found him in the farthest corner next to the stage . . . speaking one-on-one with a gorgeous girl who reminded me of a young Nicole Kidman. She was tall and slender with light, almost red, curly tresses.

  Jealousy flew through me faster than I’d ever thought possible. I was on my feet, crossing the room with my stare deadlocked on him. But when I arrived by his side, he didn’t seem to acknowledge I was there. Neither did the girl.

  It wasn’t until Mrs. Neely swept by us that she stopped their conversation and introduced me to Talia Benton, a girl Colton had been chatting with online in an Asperger’s forum, as he had been instructed to do by his PEERS teacher.

  My heart once again felt frail and useless in my chest because I fully understood at that moment that all my good intentions were for nothing if I was just trying to learn about Colton’s likes and dislikes. The reality of it was it was not the same as being like Talia.

  She got it. She probably understood the way Colton thought. She totally got how he felt.

  Because she was the same.

  And for the first time, I wished I was too.

  The ride home was torturous.

  In most relationships, you can say to the person: Who was that? How long have you been talking to her? Do you want to be with her?

  That just wasn’t the case with us, and it was killing me not to be able to address what was making me feel so horrible inside.

  He held my hand. He talked art and answered his parents’ questions with an unusual amount of excitement. I was trying my hardest not to cry, but it was out of character for him to be so vocal and my only thought was Talia’s presence had made him that way.

  When we arrived back at their house, he got straight out of the car and headed inside. Even though my heart was breaking, I started to follow him. But Mrs. Neely stopped me before I made it to the door, asking if we could chat.

  Now, my first thought was Colton had somehow slipped that he’d been all over my bunny slopes and she would be mad and tell me we needed to only visit with supervision. My head was spinning all over the place with misplaced anxiety and the fresh pictures in my head of Talia, so tears were welling in my eyes as she led me to the side of the house where the porch swing was and took my hand to sit me down.
>
  What I didn’t expect was for her pat my hand softly and sigh before she wiped one of my tears away.

  “Are you okay?”

  She asked it like she really cared and I could only nod because I was afraid using my voice would cause me to start wailing like a psycho. Apparently she didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have, either. I’m a terrible actress.

  “I should have told you that she was coming. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it affecting you.” Her eyes were soft, like she meant it. “You’re so good with him. To him. He’s grown exponentially over the past few months just by having you around. You should know that.”

  “I don’t know if it’s enough.”

  She nodded, all-knowing and Gandhi-like.

  “Then let me say it for him, since he can’t.” She smiled a little. “Yet.” Thoughtfully, she held my hand tighter, reminding me of her son. “He talks about you all the time.”

  Panic hit me pretty hard and I braced myself for the discomfort I was sure to experience when she started talking about my boobs.

  “He talks about you to us because he’s not going to talk about you to you. He talks to her online because his teacher suggested it. But that girl is obsessed with Math and Physics. It bores him no end, but he does it because he was told to in order to reach his end goal. The reason she was there tonight was because it was part of his homework to invite her into a social setting.”

  “But she’s so pretty,” I finally managed to get out before my voice cracked.

  Mrs. Neely’s eyes were shining and she smiled again. “Sure, she’s pretty. But Colton didn’t say one thing about that when she left. He said she was . . . what was it?” She thought for a moment and then giggled. “He said she was unnaturally tall for a girl her age. And that she smelled like chlorine.”

  It made me laugh, too, because I could hear him saying it in my head.

  She took my chin in her hand and pulled my face up to look at hers. “He painted you. It’s as close as he’ll get to saying how much he cares for you right now. I knew the day you came to play with him all those years ago that you would be good friends, Lilly. It just wasn’t the right time. Everything he lacks, you have. Spirit. A sense of adventure.”