Cold and Charisma (BoyxBoy)

Chapter Fifty

I've always known what came next.

Freshman year, I planned sophomore year.

Sophomore year, I planned junior year.

Junior year, I planned college.

Every year of my life had a purpose. A next step. A destination waiting for me at the end of it.

I never questioned where I was going because I had already decided.

Until senior year.

Senior year was the first time my plan stopped making sense.

Because for the first time in my entire life, something happened that I couldn't prepare for.

Someone happened.

Riley.

I spent years convincing myself that everything I sacrificed would be worth it in the end. The late nights, the pressure, the constant need to be better than everyone else.

I thought the hardest part of leaving home would be saying goodbye to the place I grew up.

I was wrong.

The hardest part was realizing that home wasn't a place anymore.

It was a person.

People weren't lying when they said high school flies by.

One moment, you're standing in your bedroom ironing your uniform ten times because you're terrified of making the wrong impression.

The next, you're standing at the edge of graduation, looking back at four years you somehow never realized were ending.

I used to think high school was the beginning of my future.

But somehow, somewhere between freshman year and senior year, it became the place where I found the person who changed mine.

Looking back, I realized the people who shaped me weren't only the ones I loved romantically.

Some of them were the ones who showed up when I needed a friend.

It was seventh grade, and while everyone else was busy eating lunch, I sat underneath a tree with a book in my hands.

Then I heard it.

That same loud, familiarly obnoxious voice that gave me no chance to ignore him.

It was Carter Scott.

His hand extended down towards me, holding a turkey sandwich wrapped in foil.

"You need to eat if you wanna become cool like us."

"Like us?"

"Yeah! Like me and the rest of the guys on the football team!"

His big blue eyes glimmered down at me, completely convinced that his offer was something I couldn't refuse.

It was the first time someone like him had ever approached me.

Someone everyone knew.

Someone everyone wanted to be around.

And somehow, he chose me.

Ever since then, we've been inseparable.

I was close with the rest of the football team, but Carter would always be my first friend.

Then, Drew came into the picture freshman year of high school.

He was new to the district, coming in from the next town over, and somehow, within what felt like no time at all, he became someone I couldn't imagine my life without.