Puddle Jumping(33)

Watching him paint in the open was beautiful. He seemed to capture the colors of nature so perfectly and it was almost magical to see him get lost in what he loved so much. By then, the silence between us was comfortable. We had all the time in the world, it seemed.

Those months made me appreciate a lot of things I had probably taken for granted for a long, long time.

John Lennon once said life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. He was pretty awesome and I get what he meant now.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve been writing about my relationship with Colton. Aside from the obvious hurdles we’d faced. Aside from the fact we’re young. There has to be more to the story, right?

Sometimes change makes you sit up and pay attention, opening your eyes to so many new things, it’s as if you’d been asleep for the first eighteen years of your life.

Plans change.

Life changes.

And as an after effect, love changes, too.

* * *

I helped plan his eighteenth birthday party with Sheila. Obviously, a surprise party wasn’t going to work, so we made sure to have plans set in stone and told him well in advance and that it was a big deal for us to celebrate the fact he was amazing, alive, and in our lives.

Of course, it rained on his birthday and the plans we’d made had to be altered because we couldn’t be outside for a barbecue in a downpour. His mom and I were clearly more disappointed than he was about things not going over as well as we hoped. But all our friends were there and we kept the amount of guests to a minimum so it could be intimate. So it would mean something.

He seemed to genuinely have a good time, and Sheila kissed me on the head as she was cleaning up while the last of the guests were preparing to leave. She didn’t need to say it out loud, but it was obvious Colton hadn’t had a birthday party with friends in attendance ever. The fact we had to make a list of who to invite in order to keep the numbers low made her teary eyed.

I’ll admit . . . it made me a little teary eyed, too.

After everyone left, the rain let up to almost nothing and I asked Colton if he wanted to take a walk.

Honestly, I just wanted some alone time with him on his birthday and I would take anything I could get. We set out down the street, hand in hand, walking the sidewalk in silence as the night turned darker. And it suddenly dawned on me what his birthday meant in terms of our relationship.

“We’re the same age, now.” I laughed and held his hand tighter.

“Did that bother you?” he asked, his head tilting in a really cute way.

I shook my head. “No. I just like we’re the same age right now.”

“Technically, you are still older than me by quite a few months . . .” he started and I cut him off with a playful squeeze to his shoulder.

“I don’t care about technicalities. We’re the same age. Don’t argue.”

It had gotten easier over time. He was still very literal and always would be, but if I stated my case well enough, he would find the humor. We walked to the edge of the woods and I leaned against an old tree that was huge, with thick leaves dripping rain all down on the top of my head. But watching Colton in the moonlight made any discomfort I had seem so insignificant, that, at some point, I just stopped paying attention to it all together.

I whispered into his ear I loved him and told him Happy Birthday, promising him the next one would be even better. And the one after that. I kissed him until I was sure the moon was jealous.

Then, all at once, the moonlight disappeared and the skies opened with a torrential downpour. Forget being upset about the raindrops from the tree leaves. I was a drowned rat, laughing hysterically as buckets and buckets fell from the sky.

And as lightning flashed overhead followed by thunder so loud it made the ground beneath my feet shake, I caught a glimpse of that child-like wonder on Colton’s face that he’d had all those years ago on the first day I went over to his house to pretend to babysit him.

This time he didn’t cover his ears. Instead he grabbed my hand and started to run, jumping over puddles as we raced back to his house.

I love that memory.

Maybe the most.

* * *

Summer was almost over and I was so focused, had tunnel vision so badly, I must not have been paying attention. To any of it. Because now when I look back on it, there were little clues, I think.

I think there were.

Mrs. Neely called and asked me to invite my family over for a cook-out at their house. It was short notice, which was unexpected. But she was really excited about it, encouraging me to bring our friends as well. It didn’t seem all out of the ordinary to invite them anymore. We just usually had more than a day’s notice.

Either way, I showed up with my parents in tow. I’d barely had enough time to set my things down in the coat closet before being accosted by Harper and pulled away into the far corner of the backyard where the old swing set once stood.

Between her talking my ear off, and Mrs. Neely rushing back and forth between the backyard and the house, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

I should have.

Contentment, you see . . . it causes blindness.

Later I would find out that Sheila let Colton make the decision to have all of us there for his big news. Unlike when he got the job at the museum and I found out through her, it had been arranged for her son to announce it himself. To everyone.