The Lovely Story

“I have something to tell you,” he whispered in my ear. I started to worry; what could Chris possibly tell me now? This was a rather odd time for conversation, anyway. Was my timing off? Was I somehow playing the wrong notes without realizing it?

But surely then Chris would just say that, and not mess around. After all, he's kind, but he's also honest. Chris would tell you whatever you wanted to hear, as long as you wanted to hear the truth.

Of course, it being a very untimely utterance, I didn't receive a follow-up. By the time I had even looked up from my guitar, Chris was already a few feet down the ramp. Which was just as well; we were still performing. There were a bunch of people reaching their arms out to him, as if they could somehow stretch far enough to touch him.

He did his usual dancing about while the solo played- well, I mean, while I was playing the solo. It's just become second-nature now, so much so that oftentimes I forget I'm even the one strumming the guitar. I just watch Chris do his thing, and magically the music comes out.

He pranced back to where I was standing, and he reached his arm out and swung it around my neck. It's a bit more difficult to play when he does that, of course, but I can always manage. I find that it actually causes more of a distraction for me to try to fight him off. So I just let him, to the best of his ability, press himself against me. I have to wonder sometimes what it would be like if he accidentally bumped up against the guitar. I'd imagine it wouldn't feel too good.

Then he tried to turn me around, probably to face the crowd, because sometimes I forget to do that. After a while he started to move more slowly, until we were just basically standing still. I felt him move his other arm as he brought the mic up to his mouth.

“Jonny Buckland, the greatest guitar player in the world,” he announced, and the stadium of people began to scream their lungs out. I could hear him laugh away from the microphone, and he pulled back a little.

Then our eyes met, and everything seemed to go very quiet. Chris's face turned suddenly serious, and for a few brief moments I wondered if there hadn't just been some sort of shooting or something, and so time was slowing down as either Chris or myself were reaching what were to be the final moments of life. But that wasn't the case.

Everything really had gone quiet, because my fingers had stopped moving along the guitar. The drums and bass weren't present either, and if I'd had the strength to look away from Chris I might have seen Will and Guy staring, confused, in our direction. The crowd's hushed silence was broken as a thud sounded throughout the room, the result of Chris dropping his mic, and a few people nearby gasped audibly.

Did either of us know what was going on? Could either of us have predicted our proceeding actions? Why was there so much sweat pouring off my body? It wasn't because of the jacket, I knew that, though it certainly was a contributing factor. Chris's lips quivered until there was no longer a sense in standing around and not doing anything, and so he leaped forward in a way and grabbed my head in his hands, pressing our lips together. Oddly enough, no gasps were heard at that. Maybe they had expected it at that point.

I hadn't, but I certainly wasn't going to stop Chris. In fact, I probably enabled him, since I reached around and placed my hands on his back, pulling him a little closer. He opened his mouth and I followed; since I couldn't think anymore, I just went along with whatever Chris was doing. The feeling of his tongue was... indescribable. Had it not been for the tens of thousands of people around us, I might have let it keep going, until there was nothing left to do. God knows I wanted to.

But the first bit of consciousness that returned to me was the thought that, hey, there are people here who probably don't want to see you make out with your friend (the 'friend' part I was now unsure of- could I really call him only my friend now?), and so I broke off the kiss. Plus, maybe it should have been a much more private moment, especially since I had just done something I had never even considered doing in the entire time that I had known Chris, and now I had to face all of these feelings that I wasn't aware had been there.

Everyone seemed to be very patient with us, which was great. If I were any one of the crowd I might not have been so understanding- I mean, we were in the middle of a freaking concert! This was certainly not the time to be doing this.

For a while Chris and I kept our eyes still set upon each other, his hands still stroking my cheeks. Then he seemed to have brought himself back to the stadium, and he pulled his arms away and went to pick up the mic.

He slowly stood back up and placed the mic to his lips. “I love you,” he told me, and the crowd burst into a chorus of “aww”s. I blinked at him several times.

How was I supposed to respond to that? When was I supposed to respond to that? “I love you, too,” right then and there? But I didn't even know that I did. I actually began to feel a little angry, being put on the spot like that, and in front of so many people.

He seemed to have noticed, judging by the frown his lips had turned down into. “Sorry,” he said, away from the microphone, and he walked down the ramp, back toward the stage. The show must go on.

Everyone's energy disappeared then. For the rest of the gig, we all played dully, the crowd was barely moving, and Chris in particular was not as peppy as usual. No surprises there.

But it wasn't my fault entirely. He was the one who had opened his mouth in the first place, and I don't mean when we kissed (though it was true then as well). If he hadn't said anything, then we would have been going about the night as usual. Instead I was left to watch Chris bow his head down further into the piano than he normally did, favor Guy's side of the crowd more than most other nights.

It was during this time that I allowed myself to think. Did I love him? Certainly I did, we all loved each other, but this was a different type of love. Was I in love with Chris?

All right, so sometimes I laughed at things he said that weren't actually that funny. Sometimes I smiled only because he did. Sometimes I wondered how his eyes could be such an amazing shade of blue. Sometimes I thought about him as I was going to sleep... None of that meant that I was in love with him, though, let's be honest- there's not doubting that I clearly had feelings for him deeper than friendship, but love?

I had to imagine what it would be like if I were to be with Chris for a very long time. He had never really annoyed me before like he had others, and I figured that that probably meant something. In fact, many times I wondered why he never annoyed me, or why everyone else grew tired so easily of his antics. I could hear him go on and on all day about how little he thinks of himself, but not once would I tell him to get over it. He shouldn't feel like that, but when he does I just want to try to make him see that. I would never tell him to shut up, because then I could never hear that voice, that oh so lovely voice of his that soothes me and makes the blood pump quicker through my system.

That night when we went back on for the encore, Chris was singing with his eyes closed, as he quite often did, but his voice was so much purer and more raw than it had ever sounded before, which I know sounds quite impossible. But that performance of The Scientist may have been the best one ever, or at the very least the best one yet.

Everyone could hear and feel the heartbreak in his voice, and I couldn't help feeling just a bit responsible. Well, I felt completely responsible. Despite my earlier belief that Chris was also at fault, all I now wanted to do was to run up to him and apologize, to tell him that I do love him. I've always loved him.

Why was it so hard for me to see? Or an even better question- why had I been trying for so long to hide it, to deny that I felt this way? I can remember meeting him and thinking that it would be nice to find a girl like him, a girl who could balance my quiet, stable personality perfectly. But the thought never seemed to have crossed my mind that maybe I could just have Chris instead. I did have him, in a way.

I almost forgot that the rest of us were supposed to join in on the song at a point, but luckily Will's drums always came first, and it gave me a nice warning. I played, but I just wanted the whole thing to be over so that I could let Chris know what I had discovered. I think it showed.

“Playing a little fast, eh, Jon?” Guy tried to casually say to me once we gathered in the middle of the stage for our final bow. I walked right past him without saying anything, headed straight for the tall man who was interacting with the crowd closest to where Guy had been standing only minutes before.

Chris saw me. I know he did. But he tried, rather unsuccessfully in my opinion, to pretend that he didn't. He waved at the people who were screaming in his direction, smiled halfheartedly at them. Finally, I decided to grab his shoulder and pull him back to get him to look at me.

“Chris,” I said to him, as loudly as I could, “I have to apologize to you. What happened earlier... well, I don't know why it took me forever to realize it, but, Chris-”

“Jonny, I can't hear you-”

“-I love you.” He seemed to hear me then. Everything slowed down again, and I noticed that not only sweat was dripping from his cheeks and down his chin. I took a step forward so that he could hear me better. “I'm sorry that I didn't say it before, I think maybe my brain must have stopped working or something.” Yeah, for the past fifteen years. What a lame excuse.

Then Chris did what I hadn't expected him to do, and he turned back to the crowd. Eventually, we had to actually do our final bow, and by that point Chris had moved so that Guy was standing between us. I always feel bad for Guy when he's put in that position, though I think that's another story.

I knew I had messed up, but I was thinking that Chris would forgive me. Maybe it was just a stupid and naive assumption. Real life is not like fairytales, if you hurt someone they're not just going to forget it as soon as you say you're sorry. You could be saying sorry for the rest of your life, and it would never amount to anything. I hoped Chris didn't hate me now.

He wouldn't even look at me. He turned his head in the direction that Will, Guy, and I were standing, and I know he looked at Will. Then his eyes sort of wandered to the ground, and stayed there for a while. Guy said something to him, he looked back up, replied, and he even laughed a bit. I felt even worse than I had during the encore.

While we were backstage, after getting changed quickly to head off in the cars in a cleaner state, I tried to find Chris. Even if he didn't want to see me, I had to at least ask him what was going on between us now. I just wanted to be clear, so that if he were to have hated me, I could deal with it accordingly. But I couldn't find him, and there were a lot of people ushering me out of the stadium.

I almost stopped walking as we came into view of the cars. Most likely I would find Chris there, but I would also be in the presence of several other people, and I wanted to speak to Chris in private.

“Jonny,” someone said in an annoyingly annoyed voice. “Come on, man.”

But I couldn't bring myself to walk any faster. It was like I was walking towards my death or something, because if Chris was still mad at me I may as well have been dead. It was an overreaction, sure, but that's how I felt at the time. I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared at the ground as I inched my way forward. They were all gonna be angry with me soon enough, just for taking so long to get out of the place.

Then someone walked up beside me, and I would have instantly recognized the sneakers this person donned had I actually looked over at them. But I was too self-involved at that moment to care. For a few feet he walked beside me without making his presence known, then I felt his skin against my skin as his hand reached for mine. I removed my hand from my pocket and our fingers laced together, almost as if they had been waiting to do that since the moment they were created. It was a perfect fit.

We walked the rest of the way to the car without saying a word, without even looking at each other, just holding hands and knowing that everything was all right.