I Don't Mean That

Chris looked up, his head still resting on Jonny's chest. “Jonny, what's wrong?”

Jonny's eyes met Chris's and he ran his hand over Chris's shoulder blades. “Nothing's wrong,” he quietly replied. “I'm just tired of waiting for tomorrow to come.”

“Oh...” Chris turned away, then moved to the other side of the bed and faced the wall. “Well, goodnight.”

Jonny sat up and leaned on his elbow. “Wait, Chris, what are you doing?”

“Going to sleep,” Chris bitterly replied.

“Why are you upset?”

“I'm not upset, I just didn't realize that it was so awful to be with me.”

“What?”

Chris rolled his eyes and turned over. Jonny could see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. “It's OK, I understand that I'm not the most exciting person in the world. Really, it's not a surprise that you want to leave me.”

“I don't want to leave you-”

“Really? Because you made it sound like you don't want to be here right now.”

“Where are you getting that from?” Jonny asked, raising his voice a little.

Chris put on a fake voice to imitate Jonny, saying, “'I'm just tired of waiting for tomorrow to come.' Because obviously you're not happy enough being with me.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Jonny sighed. “I'm excited to go to America. This is something that I've wanted to do my entire life. But that doesn't mean that I don't hate leaving you behind.” He looked into Chris's eyes for a while, but had to turn away as he softly said, “And I was gonna ask you to come with me...”

“You were?” Chris's voice cracked a bit and his anger seemed to wash away relatively quickly. “Jonny, I'm glad that you're excited about it. I love seeing you get excited about things. It's just that when you leave I'll be stuck here with all these people who annoy me, but I won't have you to come home to and... I'm gonna miss you so much.”

Jonny reached his hand out and brushed his fingers through some of Chris's hair. “I'm gonna miss you, too. And that offer still stands, you know.”

“You still want me to come with you?”

“Yeah, of course,” Jonny said.

Chris smiled enthusiastically. “We'll go to America together.”

“Yeah, and while we're there, we may as well...” Jonny slipped his hand under his pillow, pulling out a black box. It was obvious already what it was, but Jonny opened it anyway and showed off the silver ring inside.

“Jonny!” Chris gasped, and the tears that had disappeared before returned once more. “Oh, I'm so sorry that I acted like a tosser before.”

“You didn't. I shouldn't have said what I did so... insensitively.” Jonny wiped away a few of the tears that spilled down Chris's cheek, and Chris snuggled up against him and rested his head on Jonny's chest again.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”