Puddle Jumping
Authors: Amber L. Johnson
Copyright 2014 Amber L. Johnson
Edited by Kathie L. Spitz
Cover design by Annie Rockwell
Book design by Lindsey Gray
Cover art by Anna Ismagilova via Shutterstock
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author.
When it comes to love there’s no such thing as conventional.
Everyone thinks Colton Neely is special.
Lilly Evans just thinks he’s fascinating.
Once friends when they were younger, their bond is cut short due to her accident prone nature and they go their separate ways. Years later, they meet again and Lilly learns that there
is
something special about the boy she once knew, but she has no idea what it all means. And she’s not sure if she’s ready to find out.
When he walks through the corridor of her school the first day of her senior year, she knows that it’s time to get to know the real Colton Neely. The more she learns, the deeper she falls.
Their friendship grows into love, even as Colton does not express it in words. But one decision threatens to break down the world that Lilly has tried to hard to integrate into and she must figure out if the relationship
can survive if they are apart.
To Aaron who taught me at the age of seventeen that we love the way we love, and it’s not the same as anyone else’s.
And for Emory.
Someday you will find your own Lilly Grace.
You paint the world in colors I’ve never seen and I’ll always love you blue because you always love me yellow.
“Last night my world exploded.”
Fall Out Boy
I
t begins with a boy.
It begins with a boy and it ends with a boy, but what story doesn’t?
In my eyes, this one is the most amazing person I’ve ever met. And maybe some people would say that I loved him too much and forgot myself in the process, but from what I’ve seen of relationships, there’s always that one person who does.
Last night, my world that had been so small and wrapped up in everything about him, came to a grinding halt. I can’t sleep. I need to do
something
. I’ve decided to write it out from beginning to end. How we arrived at this place.
This is my story. Our story.
It’s about an incredible guy who changed my mind about everything I thought I knew. And maybe I helped change his world, too.
So here it is.
This isn’t your run-of-the-mill fairy tale. It’s not some Harlequin romance. I wouldn’t even categorize this as much of a romance at all.
Because I’m not the kind of person to fall in love.
And neither is the guy I’m head over heels for.
I’m Lilly Grace Evans and this is the true account of how I ended up falling for a boy who made me believe love is anything but conventional.
Love, for those lucky enough to experience it, is extraordinary.
I
wasn’t supposed to meet him.
My best friend, Harper, had been told she could no longer babysit for Wednesday Night Prayer Meetings because she’d been stupid enough to put a three year old on a window sill – (“It was CLOSED!”) – The poor toddler leaned against the screen until it popped out, sending him tilting out the window and almost to his death.
This is quite unacceptable anywhere, but God help you if it happens in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Luckily, he was okay, but our pastor got involved and suggested maybe she wasn’t the best fit for the job. That’s how I got asked to take her place. I’d shown up at the Neely house, and while my mom dropped off a crockpot of meatballs, I was pointed towards a bonus room holding exactly one other occupant: a boy.
It was the first time I met Colton Neely. Nine years old. Dark brown bowl cut hair and eyes that strayed everywhere but on me. The room was filled to the brim with coloring books, art pads, and paints. And trains. Oh my God, don’t get me started on the trains . . . bins of them in every corner.
He wanted to color for the two hours I was with him. At the time, I barely thought anything of being paid to sit with a boy so close to my age while our parents were in the next room – I was getting
paid
, after all. Halfway through the first picture in his coloring book, that he refused to share with me by the way, I looked over and gently grabbed hold of his hand to stop him from what he was doing.
“You need to color inside the lines. That’s what they’re for.” I admonished him with the brazen bitchiness only a ten year old girl with a superiority complex could muster.
See, I believed you could tell a lot about a person by the way they color.
I used to think there were two kinds of Crayola artists: Ones who color inside the lines and ones who don’t stay within the rigid boundaries set by thick black perimeters that make up a cuddly koala.
But it seems that inside and outside the lines is just the main basis for comparison. You also have those who color lightly inside and fill each space according to the chosen and appropriate shade.
Then you have those who scribble and slap any color anywhere. And sometimes these people have purple turkeys and shit that drives me absofreakinglutely crazy because, seriously . . .
who has purple turkeys?
Then you have people who take the time to outline each portion of the picture with color before filling it in, so it not only looks cohesive, but it seems like they actually give a damn about the big-eyed My Little Pony they’re giving definition to.
Or, you have those who make little polka dots in the middle of a bear’s face and then cry excitedly that the bear has chicken pox.
See where I’m going with this? Society has pretty much taught us that it’s inside the lines, or outside. But there’s so much more in between.
I wanted to correct Colton so he’d be like everyone else.
He didn’t even look up from the paper, but flinched and quickly pulled his hand away from mine. “You’re mean,” he whispered and continued to make sweeping motions across the paper, coloring in wide strokes of every vibrant hue he could get his little fingers on. It was the first words he’d spoken to me, and they would reverberate through my brain for years to come.
Was
I mean?
I don’t like people being mad at me, or not liking me, so I tried to make up for it.
“Wanna go outside?” I’d asked, afraid he’d tell my mom I’d hurt his feelings.
“It’s raining.” He’d said it so matter-of-fact, like he was the adult and I was some stupid little kid.
Colton was not going to get the best of me, you see. I was going to make $15 that day. And I was going to get this kid to give a good report to his mother.
“It’s not raining that bad.”
“My mom says I’m not allowed.”
“No one will notice. Come on. Let’s go outside.”
It was the first time I’d get him to do something he wasn’t too sure of. We’d gone out into the rain on that balmy summer day. He’d looked into the sky with wide, pale blue eyes that appeared much too mature for his age, and he’d simply muttered something about the chances of getting hit by lightning.
