Cut Above All the Rest

Thankfully, that was a conversation that he was able to avoid, as Ryan's phone rang. It was the label again, saying there was a Christmas party in Chicago on Christmas Eve. Jon took his phone from a distracted Ryan and made his escape to his bunk, sitting down tiredly, never mind the fact that he'd only been up for a few hours.

He didn't want his friends knowing about Caddy. She was part of another life of his, if that made sense. Jon lay down, staring up at the top of his bunk -the bottom of Spencers- and sighed. He had his Panic! At the Disco life, full of craziness and touring and fangirls and interviews, and then he had home, with his family and his cat and his best friend. He wanted to keep them separate, because he almost felt dangerous that way.

Plus, he knew that the guys would make endless fun of him if they knew his best friend was a girl.

Oh, and even more fun of him when they found out he was completely and irrevocably in love with her.

She was his dirty little secret and he liked it that way. He liked sneaking in the phone calls and the texts and the AIM conversations when the guys weren't around. He liked staying up all night just so he could talk to her, no matter how far away from each other they were.

It was almost sad what he'd do for that girl.

He'd saved her from drowning once, Jon had. They were eight, almost nine, the pair of them, and playing in the pool of one of the elderly neighbours down the street who liked to make them lemonade in the summer. Jon and Caddy wanted to see who could hold their breath the longest, so they swam down to the bottom of the pool and grabbed onto the little filter grates that were there.

After about fifty seconds, Jon surfaced, waiting for his friend to do the same. Not long later, she started kicking her legs, kicking water every which way, alerting Jon to a problem. He swam down to the bottom again and saw that her fingers were all stuck in the thin wire of the grate.

He had to help her pull her fingers out, causing a lot of blood, and the rest of that summer spent on the Walkers couch with a lot of ice cream.

Jon smiled softly to himself. That was the day that concreted their friendship; the day that it became known to everyone that Jon and Caddy's friendship would last forever. Through middle and high school, no one really bothered trying to rip them apart, they were that fucking close. Neither Caddy's science group nor Jon's basketball team tried anything to un-join their hips.

Well, there was that one guy in Cad's science group that wasn't exactly fun to deal with on Jon's part, but his almost-obsession with Cad was no match for the binding friendship they shared and it was just one of those many things they had conquered together.

Hey Cad, Jon texted to his amazingly gorgeous and amazing best friend, grinning from ear to ear. Remember that day I saved your life? You still owe me. His phone buzzed again only a moment later and Jon slid it open, reading the small black text across the bottom of the screen.

Yeah, talk it up, superman. I'll give you a kiss when you get home, under the mistletoe and everything, then we're even.

Hah, Jon slid his phone shut again and didn't bother messaging back, to busy indulging himself in fantasies of her actually being serious about that.