Not Who You Thought (BxB Drama-Romance)

Charlie and Lucas's Road Trip Tunes

Then

It took us six hours to drive to Portland.

For the ride, Charlie had made a carefully curated playlist. It was titled Charlie and Lucas's Road Trip Tunes, and there were three hours of songs. I knew he had gone through both of our music libraries and selected my favorite songs as well as his, then added songs he thought I would like as well as some of the popular hits that always played on the radio.

The problem with Maine is that it gets hit with major snowstorms all winter, and the weather is worse and more unpredictable than in Connecticut. We only had two days we could spend in Portland before we needed to go back for school, but thankfully the weather forecast looked mostly clear, albeit bitterly cold.

We made a loose plan of what we wanted to do. I'd been to Portland numerous times to visit my sister, and Charlie had never been. I wanted to show him the lighthouse at Fort Williams Park, the kitschy shops downtown, and the ice cream place I always went to with my mom and sister where they churned the milk in-house. He wanted to eat vegan food and buy vintage clothes.

The atmosphere surrounding him changed the further we drove from Connecticut. When I first picked him up in my car, he kept glancing at me almost suspiciously, sitting up very straight in the passenger seat. As we drove he slumped, his posture relaxing and his smile genuine. I thought he was embarrassed about our exchange on New Year's when he had said that he loved me, which neither of us spoke about since it happened. I decided he must have not meant it, and that it was just a drunken confession fueled by alcohol and gratitude for me saving him from my shitty friends.

My sister graduated with a bachelor's in business and worked as a real estate agent. She lived in a loft apartment in the Pearl District, and wouldn't be home until dinnertime. Charlie and I left at eight in the morning and arrived at the city by two.

The first thing we did was go to some crunchy restaurant Charlie found and was excited to try. Inside there was a canopy of fake tree branches and ivy, which I thought was extra. The vegan menu confused me because I didn't know what seitan or nutritional yeast was, but he helped me find something he promised I would like. I didn't care that I didn't understand the menu or that I was skeptical of eating some weird vegan concoction, I was glad he was happy and actually eating a whole meal.

The waiter was a cute guy who was probably in his mid-twenties, and was pretty much eye-fucking Charlie the whole time he took our orders. Charlie obliviously told the waiter that he was so excited to be at an entirely vegan restaurant because there weren't any near us in Connecticut. The waiter called him 'honey' and winked at him before sashaying away with our order.

I will admit, the food was delicious. Charlie kept glancing at me to see if I liked it, I kept glancing at him to see if he liked it, and then we were grinning at one another all goofy underneath this ridiculous vine of plastic ivy hanging from the ceiling. While we ate I couldn't help but think about how nice it was to be with him away from our hometown, acting like we were on a real date.

We polished off the food then sat back in a satisfied stupor.

"Can I convince you to convert to vegetarianism now?" Charlie raised an eyebrow.

"If I could eat here three meals a day, maybe." I took a sip of my water, the ice slipping into my mouth. I crunched the ice between my teeth and added, "But maybe I can be convinced to try and make some vegan meals if you help me."

It was an open-ended invitation. You help me cook, and we can eat together. Which meant spending time together doing something we'd both enjoy.

He looked pleased. We gazed at one another over our empty plates, and I tapped the toe of my sneaker against the toe of his chunky combat boot when the eye contact became too much for me. Sometimes the way he looked at me scared me, like when we had sex and I was on top of him, and his blue eyes were full of some emotion I never saw anyone look at me with before. He had that same look in the restaurant, and it was hard to tear my eyes away from his face. Whenever he looked at me like that a lump would form in my throat, my heart rate increasing until my chest started to hurt.