Not Who You Thought (BxB Drama-Romance)

Trying Something New

Then

I didn't know Charlie very well. My memories of him had gaps, years of him aging disappeared even though we've always gone to the same public schools. I remember when we were both in little league baseball. He always wore long sleeved shirts underneath his jersey, which was embroidered with his name and team number screen printed on the back. His two sharp shoulder blades poked into the material, like the beginning of wings. We were nine and I didn't get why he always wore sleeves no matter how hot it was. Our coach told us he had eczema and I accepted that answer, though I didn't know what that meant.

Then skip forward a few years, and he's playing drums in the marching band during middle school. Same long sleeves. He marched in the Memorial Day parade they did yearly down Main Street, his towhead haloed by the sun. Charlie was almost translucent in the light, his skin so pale it looked as if he had no melanin. That kid could really play the drums; he was slamming down his drumsticks with a fervor I never saw before, his skin flush from exertion underneath the soft spattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose.

In highschool I saw him in the hallway but we never said hello. Charlie became taller and lean. His lips were bowed, his eyes a gray-blue, and his facial features still petite. Now that he was older, there was a gaunt angle to his chin and cheeks. I never knew what sports he was into or what he liked to do, all I knew was sometimes when I went to the parking lot after school to drive home he'd be riding his skateboard in lazy circles there while I climbed into my car. He'd do jump tricks until the board skittered away underneath his feet, and he would go chase it down before it rolled into the road.

Me and Charlie didn't start up together until the beginning of Junior year. Was it fate? I guess so. Was it good or bad karma? That's up to you to decide. All I know is how we began.

"Hey, Lucas!"

I looked up with surprise, my bleary eyes taking in the person who stood above me. I was sitting on the pool patio of some chick's house in a newly developed cul-de-sac, nursing my third beer of the night. At this point I was drunk and thinking about walking home. I wasn't a big drinker. All my art class friends had ditched the party an hour earlier. The remaining crowd consisted of jocks and cheerleaders, and I was tired of socializing with people I used to be friends with when I participated in sports. I didn't want to participate in the beer-pong game that started up and I was too drunk to safely swim in the heated swimming pool.

Charlie's face was split by slices of light from the porch lights, his hair a mess. The thin silver ring in his nose glinted, capturing the yellow light. When he smiled it was all white teeth, his cupid's bow lip curling. He was wearing grubby, white Reeboks and a cropped sweater that showed a line of taut stomach and fell off one shoulder. He wasn't wearing anything underneath the striped sweater, so a sharp line of collarbone jutted out where it fell off of him. "What're you doing out here?"

"Watching them play chicken fight." I gestured to the pool, where my classmates had teamed up. Each guy had a pretty girl on their shoulders, and they were attempting to knock the girls off one another's shoulders. Everyone was in their underwear or swimsuits, no skinny dipping yet. "I'm hoping some of the girls take their tops off."

"Ah," he said. "Can I sit with you?"

I nodded.

He sat cross legged beside me, and pulled a joint in a plastic tube out of his pocket. I couldn't stop staring at him for some reason, mesmerized by the way the water reflected on his face. He had a ski slope nose and he rubbed the tip of it on his sleeve. I thought he was cute, then thought I was really fucking drunk to be thinking like that.

"I'll share," he offered, placing the spliff between his lips, then leaning close to me and pressed a bic lighter into the center of my palm. "Can you light it?" He mumbled around the joint.