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“Okay, I need to tell you something,” Jonah blurted and dropped my hand. “And you have to promise not to be mad.”
I smiled up at my boyfriend. “You could never make me mad. Well, apart from the cheese on the popcorn thing.” I winked at him, because we could tease each other for hours over what is and isn’t appropriate to add to cinema popcorn, and we did, and it always ended up with more kissing.
“Well, you’re the odd one out not liking that,” he defended with the standard script, but then, he stopped teasing and instead took a step away from me. “Promise me you won’t get mad, or react badly, or think less of me.”
We didn’t have many secrets the two of us. We talked about everything, from his family to mine, and all the things in between, about bullying, and being bullied, and regrets, and happy parts, and sad parts. In between kissing that is, because I really liked the kissing.
“I promise.” It was an easy thing to say. “I love you,” I added, and his smile reappeared for a moment.
“And I love you too,” he said back, and I took a step toward him for the kissing that needed to be happening right now.
“No. Stay there,” he said, then tapped something next to him. I glanced down to see the suggestion box, the one where complaints ranged from exactly how many burgers we were restricted to, right up to the complaint that had gotten Jonah in trouble at the beginning of our story.
“What’s wrong?” A panic circled my chest—was he breaking up with me? Was this the end before we’d even begun? Was I being dramatic?
“It was me,” he said and tapped it again. “I was the one who put the complaint in about me and Miles.”
I blinked at him. The thump of music in the building seemed to synch with my heart.
“I don’t understand.”
“I was so scared, Ty,” he began. “I couldn’t see a way out. I couldn’t get away. I was desperate, and I knew what it would do, how it would put the spotlight on me, but I was messed up, and in a spiral I couldn’t see a way out of.”
“That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever heard—”
“Don’t say that.” Jonah sounded miserable. “If I’d stayed quiet, then you wouldn’t have been even more of a target for Miles and—”
I stepped right up to him and placed a hand over his mouth. “That was the bravest thing you could have done. You owned what happened; you became a target; your honesty got you punched in the face for protecting me.”
“You don’t hate me for painting a target on your back?”
I cradled his face, pressed a quick kiss to his soft lips, then smiled up at him.
“I love you. I admire what you did. You’re mine. And I’m yours.”
The kiss was easy, and the rest of our lives shone brightly, right there in front of the box that had started it all.
THE END
