I apparently misinterpreted the tone of his repeated “whatever.” I was reading it in more of an angry tone. Like, “Fine, whatever!” But then when we were texting later, he was very light and joking around like all was fine. So then I realized I had his tone wrong, that it had been more like, “sure, whatever, I don’t care!” Probably doing a poor job of explaining (awake in middle of the night), but I think I’d expected him to be annoyed so was projecting.