I Need You Here With Me

Chapter Five

Awaiting The Day

Ian’s POV

“Hey, I just made this poem. Wanna hear it?” I asked happily, taking a seat across from Anthony at the dining table. His dark eyes gazed down at the paper in my hands and he smirked. “You’re writing poetry now?” I shrugged, thinking about my own writing skills. “I wrote one other poem before this but this one is the best. I just made it this morning. Care to hear it?” Anthony paused for a few seconds before he nodded.

“Let’s run into the spring. We will sing; we will sing. I’ll pick a flower from the meadow we’ll walk in and put it in your hair. The warm sun will shine down, lighting up your russet-colored eyes as they gaze into my soul; deep into my soul. My heart beats only for you, my dear. Before all this, if we walked in the valley, our words would be much different. Nothing nice would be sincere, no cute comments and lovely conversations. Your hand wouldn’t be in mine and you wouldn’t tell me how much you love me; indeed how much you love me. But you made me change; I changed you, too. Now your arms wrap around me like twisted vines, your lips collide with mine like waves clashing against a cliff. And now that your heart is mine and my heart is yours, we’ll walk on every path bathed with bright love as gorgeous as a new dawn.”

The warm and fuzzy feeling I got when I was writing my poem came back and I was grinning at Anthony, waiting to hear his opinion. With a blank expression on his face he said bluntly: “Gay.” His response made me smirk. “Gayer than you?” He nodded with a “duh” expression on his cleanly-shaved and smooth, creamy face. “Way gayer. I’m not even gay; I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.” His pure denial made me scoff. “Then what do you call us?” Anthony didn’t mean to come off as an asshole; he was just joking so it didn’t make me annoyed. “Friends with benefits. And you’re like a woman now so it’s appropriate for a straight man like myself.” He said that with such a straight face and it made me wonder if he really thought I was losing almost all of my manhood. “So in two months you believe I’ll be a total woman when I have manly parts.” Anthony gave me another “duh” look. “A baby will be coming out of your stomach. Sorry, your uterus. And if I faint when watching it happen, you better wait for me to wake up to name it.” Picturing it in my head made me chuckle. “Are you afraid I’ll name it Anthony Sucks Hecox?” He nodded.

“If it’s a girl then Antoinette Sucks Hecox. God, don’t you want to know the gender already? It’s annoying how I have to keep calling my child it.” A fuzzy feeling surrounded me when he said it was his child. “I want it to be a surprise. I want the doctor to lift the baby out and announce if it’s a boy or girl. That’ll make it way more awesome.” Anthony was looking at me not amused when I was smiling dreamily in front of him, me imagining the best day ever. “Yeah, see Ian, it’s hard to say you’re still manly when you act like a woman gagaing over shoes.” The freaky pop diva woman replaced the image of my newborn. “Gagaing? I admit I’m becoming more sensitive and…needy. I’m not what I used to be. My back hurts often, I run out of breath easy, I get tired after simple tasks, and I’m always hungry and moody…but I appreciate you taking care of me.” It looked like he got the warm and fuzzy feeling by the way he smiled at me bashfully.

“Yeah…but after the baby is born in May, you’ll have to get everything yourself. And when you get upset over something, I can finally tell you to man up.” Anthony had a good point; I was freaking out over simple things a lot more. A lot. But Anthony was always there waiting patiently to finish my rant of dumb things, comforting me after when I was the one yelling at him. So I meant it when I said I appreciated his help. “Sounds about right. But why you hating on my poetry, man? Can you do better?” Anthony nodded cockily, acting like a boss when it was just poetry. “Tch, yeah. Check this out: Roses are red. Violets are blue. I got my man-friend pregnant. Can you?” He waited for me to give my opinion but the lyrics puzzled me. “Man-friend? Do you still have trouble saying it?” I smirked while he got all flustered, pounding his fist on the table. “No! I’m your boyfriend! And you’re my…” He paused and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed. “…You’re my Ian.” Eh, it was close enough. “It does sound kind of weird considering it’s us. Smosh, you know? We don’t have to say it out loud because we both know. It’s just me and you.” My sweet words kicked the asshole out of him by the way Anthony’s eyes lit up and he reached his hands out over the table and slipped into mine. “We don’t have to say it…but we are.” That sounded like something out of a chick flick, but it was our moment, and it made me think back to the time when Anthony really couldn’t say what he felt for me.