Puddle Jumping(19)

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.