There’s a lot to be said about dating Colton. He’s smart and interesting and full of important facts and information. He’s focused and reliable. He listens. I learn when I’m with him. He sees things around us so differently and he makes me think.
I’ve always heard your best match in life is the person who is the opposite of you that makes a complete whole. If that’s the case, then we were made for each other. My need to be spontaneous and scratch the itch to do dangerous things outweighed a lot of my ability to make responsible decisions.
His mom said she wanted him to have an authentic teenage experience – though I doubt she wanted things to progress in an unhealthy way. I wasn’t going to take him to concerts all night and not bring him home until the sun came up. I don’t drink. I’m not a rule-breaker in the true sense. But being with someone who doesn’t vocalize his affections made it that more important to express ourselves in other ways. I won’t go into it, but if I’ve learned one thing over this year, it’s that some things between a boy and a girl are very, very normal.
I wasn’t going to let some doctor’s opinion of my boyfriend stop me from having the kind of relationship we both deserved. It would be a learning experience and there are things that are slightly different in approach and practice. But I’m always up for a challenge. Especially when it’s with him. Or for him. Because it always comes back to him.
* * *
As the weather turned colder, I couldn’t go and see him at night. I originally didn’t have a hard time getting up the lattice and into the window, but once it started to ice and snow and freeze over, I couldn’t justify breaking my neck to get alone time with my boyfriend. Stupid winter.
Our parents began to spend more time together and eventually our mothers were inseparable. Their blooming friendship meant that I got to see my boyfriend more than I would have otherwise. And no one ever said anything when we would claim to be going upstairs to watch a movie or whatever excuse we made at the time to get away from the boredom that parents bring. Especially when all we wanted to do was go anywhere else and suck face for a few hours.
Which we totally did.
Repeatedly.
When winter break came, my parents decided they were going to leave town to go see my grandparents. But I really didn’t want to go. The thought of being away from my boyfriend during our first Christmas made me anxious and it did the same for him. It was decided I could stay at his house over the holiday. I thought the adults around us were oblivious to the goings on behind closed doors and we had been stealthy enough to pull the wool over their eyes, but the night I brought all of my stuff over to the Neely’s place, I found out I was sorely mistaken.
Sheila and Rick made sure I had everything I needed in the guest room and then Rick had kind of given his wife this . . . look . . . and I got a feeling in my stomach like I was in trouble or that perhaps they knew something I didn’t.
It’s at times like those that your mind quickly goes through worst-case scenarios back to back in your brain. I thought maybe Colton wanted to break up with me, but couldn’t say it. Or maybe he had a terminal illness and I would have to marry him like that stupid book they made into a movie with Mandy Moore in it.
I mean, I would definitely marry him at seventeen, if that were the case.
Instead, it was much worse than a terminal illness.
Much, much worse.
Sheila Neely wanted to talk about sex.
The majority of the conversation was lost due to the sound of rushing blood in my ears and humiliation in my brain. I can’t remember word for word what was said, but they knew we’d been fooling around. She never came out and said she had heard us but she mentioned something about an increase in dirty laundry and a towel or something. I’m not a hundred percent sure. It was mortifying, though.
I assured her I was a virgin. That Colton was a virgin. And she laughed and said she knew that much, but she wanted to make sure I was okay.
And that made me fall in love with her at the same time I wanted to fall into a hole and disappear forever.
She wanted nothing more than for her son to have as many predictable teenage experiences as possible. Even if it meant he was groping his girlfriend in her house. I probably should have thanked her or something but my inability to form words was back in full force, and by the time she left the room, I curled up on the guest bed and went fetal, wondering if I could pretend to be in a coma for three months until spring finally came.
Instead, Colton knocked on my door, giving me that disarming smile of his that made me lose all coherent thought. It made the embarrassing conversation with his mom worth it.
That night we celebrated Christmas Eve with his family; mostly with me avoiding eye contact with his mom for fear I would just die on the spot. When everyone was ready to go to bed, he and I walked up the stairs together, hand in hand before he steered me toward his studio instead of escorting me to the guest room.
“I want to give you your present privately, if that’s all right with you.” He looked shy and . . . come on . . . I’m a girl. Like I was gonna say no?
“Then you get yours, too.” It seemed only fair. And I guess as long as I was willing to take his gift early then he was willing to take mine as well. I ran back to the room to get the wrapped box and held it out to him like the proudest girlfriend in the world.
On my insistence, he opened mine first and I was pleasantly surprised he seemed to like what I had given him. I bought him new brushes. They were these freakishly expensive ones he had goo-goo eyes over all the time. He looked at them online like other guys would look at porn. Seriously. Sometimes I wondered if he wanted to feel up those brushes more than me.
He didn’t.
But nothing compared to his gift for me. It was leaning in the back of the room, covered in a tarp. A medium sized canvas, transformed with vibrant colors that practically stepped off the painting and onto the floor.
It was of us.
He had painted the two of us staring into one another’s faces. Frozen for all of eternity at seventeen and eighteen years old. Perfect and beautiful. Hands holding hands. Eyes staring lovingly into eyes.
It was, as far as I could tell, his way of showing me how he saw us.
His way of expressing his adoration.
And possibly his way of communicating that he loved me.
I didn’t cry. It would have been the obvious reaction but I wanted him to know that it made me happy. So I smiled until my face hurt and hugged him until my arms felt numb. He put his hands in my hair and rested his chin on my head, not letting on once that he minded if I held him too long.
“I take it that you liked it?” It almost sounded like he was chuckling when he said it.
“I more than like it. I love it.”
After thanking him one last time, I went to the guest room, trying in vain to fall asleep. The boy had painted a picture of the two of us and I couldn’t rest, thinking of his eyes and his face and how incredibly sweet he was without even knowing it. It was probably ten degrees outside, but under the covers in that foreign bed, I was sweating. I was hot and bothered and wishing I could sneak into his room. But I still felt weird about the talk with his mom earlier.
It made me feel like I needed a shower.
I huffed and puffed and rolled around until the comforter was tangled around one of my legs and the other leg was hanging off the mattress, along with an arm that had gone rogue in my fit of unrest.
I thought about writing. I thought about listening to music. I thought about running in place until I couldn’t stand anymore.
Just when I had talked myself into just ignoring it, I heard a sound at the door. It was like one of those horror movies where the doorknob jiggles just a bit, enough to get your attention. I was freaking out thinking about that weird movie where the crazy guy dressed like Santa comes in and slaughters everyone on Christmas Eve . . .
But the door opened and I could see it was, in fact, not a psychotic Santa.
It was Colton.
In just his pajama pants again.
I knew without a doubt what he was there for. But he was sneaking in to see me that time, which made it a thousand times better.
“I wanted to see you,” he whispered.
There wasn’t any hesitation as I shifted the covers and slid my back against the headboard, inviting him in. He simply crawled under the comforter, his skin feeling chilly from the walk down the hall compared to the blazing inferno I had going on between the sheets. His hands on my face gave my arms chill bumps and I was acutely aware of how my body was reacting.
I whispered hello and he smiled in the limited lighting, his fingers sweeping across my shoulder like he was memorizing every inch with his fingertips. Over the tree branches branded into my skin and lower to graze my fingers. I didn’t flinch when he touched me. I welcomed it.
I told him again I loved his present and he kissed the side of my mouth in response.
“I hoped that it was an appropriate Christmas gift. My mom said she thought you would like it.”
“Your mom was right.”
“I’ll tell her that.”
It wasn’t too soon for me to tell him I loved him. I knew it wasn’t. But I was so damn afraid, you see. Because I wasn’t sure how that worked with him.
Instead, I kissed him as softly as I could, hoping he would feel it there instead of me saying it.
Things heated up pretty quickly and soon we were wrapped around each other. We were pros at it by then. Touching. Kissing. Exploring without hesitation. By then almost all of our clothes were off, and even though we’d mostly just done a little stuff and kissed, it almost happened. Because kissing can lead to touching and touching can lead to shorts being tugged and then you’re right there and you’re almost doing it. IT. The IT.
Not to be confused with The It I was touching while we were naked.
It was the first time we’d been that way. The first time we’d actually put our hands on anything other than over the shirt and pants and stuff.
So I, once again, had to stop it from going further than we were ready for. I mean, I don’t know if he was ready or not. I wasn’t. It was when he realized we’d been so close to doing something major that he jumped off the bed, his eyes wide and hands in his hair again before he bee-lined for the bathroom.
I think a cuddle would have been better than falling off the mattress as he slammed the bathroom door.
But it is what it is.