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The last few days and nights had flown by, but the hours dragged by gruelingly. Johnny and I both hated this church. We hated eating bologna sandwiches for every meal. We hated the cold. We hated our new haircuts. I know I hated mine, at least.
We hated that the Soc boy was dead. No matter how many times I told myself he got what was coming to him, or how many times I thought about the burning in my lungs from being bathed in the park fountain, or how many times I compared the shape of his rings to that of the scars on Johnny’s face, I couldn’t convince myself that it was right. He was a kid, no more than two or three years older than me. A kid with a family, friends, and a future.
I couldn’t even imagine how Johnny felt, but I will never forget what he did for me.
Though maybe murder is not the best circumstance, I have to admit I like how close staying in the church brought us. Me and Johnny had always been good friends, but this felt different, somehow.
We fell asleep holding each other, me scared out of my mind of the noises I could hear outside. Once, I told Johnny there was a monster outside after hearing a raccoon digging through our trash.
In the mornings, we woke up with stiffness in our spines and shoulders that I would rub out for him and he would rub out for me. We passed the time together, his head on my lap and my hand in his hair as I read Gone With the Wind to him or him beating me in poker. I let him win, obviously.
It reminded me, vaguely, of the stories Sodapop told me of him and Sandy. He had told me of a feeling he got in his stomach when she was around. Butterflies, he’d call it. I took it to be a soft fluttering in your stomach that makes your face split into a giddy grin. Though he hadn’t mentioned the underlying feeling of sickness.
The sticky, gross feeling of guilt that sits in my stomach when Johnny looks me in the eye is the worst one I’ve ever felt. I felt it first when we were watching the sunset together behind the church, and he commented on how he never even looked at sunsets before I came around. “It’s like they were never there before.” He had said, with a look on his face that I couldn’t quite place. I smiled widely before my gut wrenched and my face straightened back up.
The next time I felt it was when Johnny fell asleep on one of the church benches with a weed still smoking between his fingers. It fell from his hand and I scolded him gently before stomping it out. He mumbled something that I couldn’t make out before his features softened fully.
He looked so peaceful like that, with his eyelashes laying against his tanned cheeks and his lips curved in a way that made me just want to lean down and kiss him.
Then, there was the third night. It was especially cold that night. I was wearing Dally’s leather jacket he had lent to me and Johnny was in his denim jacket with the collar popped. We were lying next to each other on our sides, with his head on my chest and my arms around him. We were both shivering.
“So cold..” Johnny stuttered into the inside of my jacket, his teeth chattering quietly.
I moved one of my hands to cradle the back of his head as I pressed my cheek into the top of it. “I know, I know. I’m cold too, Johnny..” I felt his arms wrap around my waist to pull me closer as that familiar feeling arose in my stomach. I still couldn’t place why I felt so bad about this. Soda had said that most of the time, love was real nice. Had he lied?
“You’re warm, though.” Johnny continued. I felt him lift the hem of my shirt to slide his cold hands onto my back, making me inhale sharply through my teeth.
“Johnny!” I gasped, my eyes shooting open as I felt his cold fingers splay out across my back. I huffed as he mumbled an apology that I knew he didn’t mean, but i wan’t angry at all.
I took my hands and quickly slid them under his clothes, my hands feeling much better on the warm skin of his hips. Johnny gasped just as I had, but made no complaints.
Johnny pressed himself impossibly closer into me, and I felt his lips curl into a smile against my chest. He moved his hands slowly from my back to my chest, and the feeling of sickness in my stomach subsided, giving way to a much softer, happier feeling spreading through my chest.
I looked down at Johnny’s head lying against me with a proud smile on my face. He looked up at me through his eyelashes, which made my face heat up. I turned my head away and stared at the ceiling for a long while, rather contented with where I was. I only turned back to him when I felt his lips pressing small kisses to my jaw, trailing down towards my neck.
“Johnny, what’re you doin’?” I asked, my voice coming out shakily, nearly a whimper. My hands, still on his hips, gripped him tighter.
“Shh,” he whispered, kissing down the column of my throat. “I know what you’re thinkin’, but we ain’t gotta tell nobody, Pony. Can I keep goin’? Please?” He looked up at me with those puppy-dog eyes I loved so much, and I was like putty in his hands.
I tilted my head back further, and Johnny continued, pushing me onto my back and moving to straddle my hips. I let out a soft groan as he kissed my mouth, his tongue dancing with mine as we swapped spit. When he finally pulled back, we were both breathing heavily, our chests rising and falling rapidly. I tried to speak, tried to tell Johnny that I loved him, maybe even that he was my first kiss, but my words were taken out of my mouth and swallowed.
He ground his hips into my own, making me whine into his mouth again. This time when he pulled away, I hid my face in the crook of his neck.
I swallowed nervously as I caught my breath. “Johnny, I love you..” I whispered into his skin, unsure if he could even hear me.
“I love you too, Ponyboy.” He said, his voice just as breathy as my own.
When I finally looked up at him, the darkness in his eyes had been replaced by something far sweeter. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he smiled down at me.
I returned his smile. “You gotta stop sayin’ you’re sorry when you ain’t.”
He climbed off of me to lay on his back beside me and interlocked his fingers with my own, sighing. I looked over and i could see his breath.
“Gee, it sure is cold out here.” I said, the heat of the moment we had just shared seeping out of my bones and making room for the cold of the night to find its way back in.
Johnny sighed, but it wasn’t a tired or annoyed sound. It was something else entirely. He opened his arms for me to climb into. “C’mere.”