Tom's smile quickly melted off of his face as he stared in shock at Joshua, his mouth hung open for a couple of seconds before he regained his wits and a smile once again appeared on his small face, lighting up his face. He was practically glowing, his eyes were shining and his smile was blinding.
He was practically skipping over to Josh before he plopped down onto the sofa next to him joyfully, "Why're you here?" He asked happily, due to his rush his voice came out in a slight squeak, more so than usual, so when Tom heard his voice and processed it he quickly lowered his head slightly in embarrassment as his cheeks reddened slightly.
The light flush on his cheeks were barely noticeable and he rushed to cover his mouth with his hand. His breath also caught in his throat as he worried about Josh's reasons, his voice happened to be somewhat quiet but it still loud enough to be audible, such that Josh was able to catch his words.
Tom was worried that his friend would laugh at him or joke about it and tease him but when Josh didn't say anything about it for a while Tom looked up and slowly let go of his face, his cheeks were still lightly flushed and he still felt slightly embarrassed. However, he instead felt that perhaps Josh hadn't caught it so he let out a sigh mentally and finally let a breath of relief.
Josh had caught it but thought nothing of it as he smiled back at his friend as he observed his weird behaviour, Josh couldn't quite understand why one second Tom was happy and excited and the next he was anxious and embarrassed. Josh let out an indulgent sigh with a warm smile plastered onto his face as he responded to the initial question which had been directed at him.
"Well, it's your birthday. I wanted to play with you and bring you a gift." Josh turned to the side and pulled over a small wrapped-up gift, it was wrapped up somewhat poorly which indicated Josh had wrapped it completely by himself, "And I wrapped it myself too!" Added Joshua.
"Wow… It looks so cool! I tried to do it before and it was hard. You're so cool Josh…" Replied Tom as his eyes sparkled with admiration, he seemed even more excited than compared to before.
"Mn! I-I did it first try! It was super easy." said Josh as his smile widened into a happy grin, his cheeks reddened in happiness from receiving the compliments and adoration, he wanted Tom to think he was always great and didn't want him to think he was lame or anything of the sort.
In truth, Joshua had tried wrapping it multiple times, but his mother had told him to redo it time and time again because she had found that it was too unpresentable each time and she didn't want to have her son give such a mess to his friend on his birthday. She also didn't want her son to bring embarrassment to her by doing something without peeing all of his effort into it, she didn't want him to gift something subpar.
Tom accepted the gift happily from Josh's outstretched arms and placed it down carefully on the table next to the sofa before he instantly began forgetting about it and instead focused his attention on Josh once again. He instantly forgot about the reason for his rush to come downstairs and instead was happy purely due to the reason of being able to talk to and play with a friend.
"So, now that you're here, do you want to play a game? My mum bought me a fun game I saw online last week. It's called Munupoly. I think it's popular, and I saw people play it before and I wanted to play it too." He took a breath and took the chance to observe Josh's expression to see whether or not he looked as though he actually wanted to play the board game with him.
Josh looked at him and began to think back on times he might've seen people play it or times he might've seen advertisements of the game, he happened to be unable to recall such memories and was stumped on what the game was. After he was finished thinking he took the opportunity to respond to Tom's question.
"Sure, okay! But, what's that game? I don't think I've seen it…" he said with a confused and quizzical expression on vid face.
"Oh, uhm… It's a, I think it's called a board game. That's- It's a game on a board, and uhm, you roll dice and buy cards and use money and…" Tom tried his best to explain but couldn't find the words to properly convey his thoughts into proper sentences. Tom felt nervous as he was failing at explaining and was faced with the confused expression on Josh's face, he felt as though Josh were judging him silently and he felt like sweat was about to start dripping down his forehead.
Tom took a breath and tried to calm himself back down, after he'd done that he had then decided that it'd instead be easier to just show Josh the game instead of attempting to explain.
He gently grasped onto Josh's shirt sleeve and stood up from the sofa, "Uhm, let me show you instead. It's easier."
Josh was then promptly pulled up off of the sofa and dragged hurriedly out of the room and up the stairs then across the landing into Tom's room. The door was pushed open roughly and it slammed against the door but neither of the young boys payed it any attention, their attention was instead solely focused on the large number of games in Tom's room, there was a large shelf on one side of his room and the bottom few shelves of that shelf were saved especially for the use of putting away toys.
Tom let go of Josh's arm and Josh went to sit on the edge of the bed as he watched Tom quickly scurrying around and searching through the shelves quickly to find the board game.