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I furrowed my brow. “Was this guy a total monster? Who could hate that stuff?”
He snorted. “Not a monster, just a big classical, orchestra music and opera nerd,” Charlie explained. “It was cool that he had his own interests, but he would scrunch his nose up anytime I played an electric guitar. And if I put distortion on it? Forget it. Needless to say, we broke up after a few months.”
“Good riddance.”
“And then life got busy, and contracting work started picking up, and I just never went back to the guitar as much as I used to. I really do miss it. And I’m sad that my younger self let a guy’s opinion change the music I listened to, even if it was only for a few months.”
“Yeah. I like you better like this,” I said. “Loud and proud. The Charlie I know.”
The drinks and tacos came out, and the moment we dug in, Charlie’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“Not possible,” he said, shaking his head. “Holy fuck, this is one of the best tacos I’ve ever had.”
“I told you. I don’t know how they do it.”
“We’re going to have to order about six more things off of the menu in between rounds of games,” he said.
We devoured the food and then sipped on our drinks, which were just as good.
“I know it’s too early to say this,” Charlie told me, “but this is a contender for one of the best dates I’ve gone on.”
“And you haven’t even lost to me in the racing game yet,” I said, leaning back in the booth and giving him a playful, challenging stare.
“Like hell I’m going to lose,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. “Let’s go. Right now. I was a goddamn champion on those race cars as a kid. I know the exact sensitivity of those plastic wheels.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never played against me. You owe me a candlelit blow job if you lose.”
“Candlelit blow job?” he said, amused.
“Maybe even some rose petals on the floor. Yes.”
He laughed. “And if I win?”
I held his gaze. “Then I owe you a second date.”
“Sounds like either way, I get what I want, then. I accept your offer.”
He reached across the table, shaking my hand firmly.
“Wait. Bro,” I heard from beside the table, and in an instant I was broken from my little bubble with Charlie. I looked up and did a double take when I saw Stevie, heading over to another booth with a couple of his friends I didn’t know as well.
“Oh,” I said, stunned, my hand still clasped in a handshake with Charlie. I let his hand go, suddenly feeling like I was in limbo. “Stevie. I—I didn’t know you were coming here tonight. Charlie, this is one of my frat brothers, Stevie.”
They shook hands now, and I felt like I’d just been plunged into some other timeline. It was a meeting of two worlds. Two worlds that never met.
I’d never really looked at it that way, but in an instant, I realized how true it was. I had my life down here in Boulder, with my frat brothers, my studies, and sports. But ever since I’d started working at the brewery up the mountain in Jade River, I’d built a little circle of friends up there, too. Those worlds crashing together gave me a very strange feeling of vertigo.
“Nice to meet you, man,” Stevie told Charlie before turning back to me. “So what happened, Jax? Thought you had a hot date tonight. You’re still in your pretty boy sweater and everything.”
I swallowed. It was a repeat of the same moment from earlier, only now, I was across the table from Charlie. For a split second I was frozen, not knowing how to explain such a monumental shift in my life in a simple, direct way.
But then I looked over at Charlie.
Charlie—my Charlie—had clearly sensed the awkwardness that I felt. And everything about his demeanor had changed.
No one else would have noticed it, but by now, I was so attuned to all of Charlie’s little expressions, and all of the ways he showed how he was really feeling, at all times. Even if it was invisible to most other people.
And right now, there was some small portion of him that seemed crushed. Like he knew I felt weird. Like he knew I had no clue what to say. And my heart cratered as I realized that Charlie probably expected me to brush everything off and tell Stevie that he was just a friend. He was used to being brushed off, treated poorly, and often, kept as a secret.
Fuck that.
There was no shot in hell that I was ever going to put him through that. I cleared my throat, sitting up a little straighter in the booth.
“I am on a date, bro,” I told Stevie, as confidently and casually as if I were telling him I’d hooked up with a girl last night. “And it’s going pretty damn well, if you ask me.”
