Winning Skylinn

46

The days til Denver's return were getting closer and closer, and I could hardly wait to pick him up at the airport. I knew that as soon as I saw him, I would squeeze the living daylights out of him. There was no denying that.

At the moment, I was busy filling up my new scrapbook with pictures from the last few years. The scrapbook had been a present from Amelia, and I absolutely loved the white and lavender polka-dots on the front and back cover. It was kind of adorable.

"Thanks for helping me with this," I said to Jonny, who was hard at work gluing a picture to one of the layouts. It was one of my senior photos, and he'd put it against a pretty sunflower background.

"You're welcome. It's actually been kinda fun," he replied.

"I'm lucky you have good handwriting. It's an essential in scrapbooking, ya know."

"You're probably right. But I don't know why we're doing this now. You're just going to take lots more pictures in the next two weeks."

I considered this. Denver would be back in four days, and I'd be taking more than a few photos with him. And then I'd be going to Disney World with Jonny...

Ever since my leg healed and spring break ended, I'd resumed my job at Sunrise. The kids welcomed me back excitedly, and I'd never been more grateful. Because of all the hours I'd put in in the last month, I'd made more than enough money for a ticket to Disney.

Finally I said, "I get your point, but it's better to get all these pictures out of the way before hundreds more come in. Then it would be a little overwhelming, don't you think?"

"True," Jonny agreed. "You know, this was always my favorite picture of you." He held up a photo of me at the beach. It was another of my senior pictures. I'd taken some at Cocoa Beach and some by the railroad tracks in Jake's backyard.

This particular photo was a full-body shot of me in overall shorts and a striped black and white T-shirt underneath. I was barefoot with coral toenails and I was tucking a strand of wind-blown hair behind my ear.The waves on the shore lapped at my feet and I wasn't looking at the camera.

"That's your favorite?" I asked, admiring the shot.

"Yeah. Because you're not posed or anything. You're just you, oblivious little Skylinn, unaware-or at least pretending to be-that someone is taking pictures of you. It's you in your most natural state."

I was shocked by everything he said. It was so...beautiful. I was just expecting a lame response, but he surprised me with all this poetic detail. It made me wonder, how many minutes, hours, days even had he spent just looking at this photo?

"I know I probably sound stupid, but I just like these kind of pictures. Where it doesn't seem so posed, so fake, ya know?"

"Yeah." What else could I do but agree with him?

Jonny cleared his throat. "Anyways. I think I'm gonna put this one on a light blue background. Or maybe a black one? What do you think?"

"Hm...black. Gives it more of an edge. It off-sets the picture, and plus, blue would blend in too much with the water. See?" I held the photo against his blue sheet of paper.

"Yeah, you're right. Thanks." He took the picture from me and began to concentrate on gluing it down and arranging some shell stickers and things around the border.

I shouldn't have been surprised by all his skill. Jonny was good at everything. Crafts, sports, even cooking. At least he was bad at singing. That's about the only thing I had on him. Although it wouldn't be insulting, since I was just as bad.

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A/N: Yikes. Sorry this had a boring ending, and that I haven't updated in like five days. I've been meaning to but it's been a super busy weekend. Mostly because...I SAW PENTATONIX IN CONCERT!!! 😄 (Yes, they were amazing and yes, Mitch is my fav.) Anyways, I'm back to writing so I hope you enjoyed this chapter.