Me & Mine

15. Charmed

[a/n] This is one of my favorite chapters I've written so far, so please let me know what you think! Thanks to everyone who has been reading and voting on this story, it means a lot!

Max drives me to a local diner, just past the lake and away from the city center. His hands rest casually on the steering wheel, his thumbs tapping on the beat of the music. I watch the setting sun frame his profile, its last rays coloring his fiery red hair golden. A smile creeps up on my face and I relax against the brown leather of the car.

"How's Harley doing?" Max asks in his low, husky voice. I cross my legs and notice him stealing a glimpse at my thighs. I smirk.

"Better," I say, "she's still pretty shaken up from the whole picture-thing. But she doesn't get harassed or laughed at anymore."

Max sighs and clenches his jaw. "That was such a low blow," he murmurs.

"Yeah," I whispered, "and all because of me."

He looked at me and the corners of his mouth curled upwards. "Don't blame yourself," he says, turning his gaze back to the road again. The diner appears on the horizon. I shrug.

"Besides, you fixed it, right?"

"Sort of," I say, pulling on a strain of hair, "we got the picture down and Cammie sure knows her place now, but..." I sigh and stare at the diner. We turn in onto the parking lot and the red neon lights reflect on the road. If there was one thing the American midlands had that the City had not, it was roadside diners. They always made me reminiscent of an age I never even experienced. I guess it feeds into my obsession with fiction – movie-like romances, eighties music and road trips...

"Fay?" Max turns of the engine and turns his body to mine. I blink, forcing myself out of my head and into the moment again. I smile and he returns it. "You never got your revenge," he smirks, "is that it?"

I roll my eyes and nod. "Yeah, it doesn't feel like she paid for it, you know?"

He gets the keys from his car and opens the door. I follow him outside and stretch my back. "Makes sense," he says, waiting for me to walk over to his side of the car, "and it kinda surprised me that you didn't go through with the rest of your plan. Stage two?"

I chuckle and shake my head. Max opens the door for me and my pop culture geek heart skips a beat. We walk on a checkered floor and past a sheeny white counter. The diner is dimly lit, but the burgundy colored booths are littered with all kinds of people, young and old. Max finds us a booth in the corner by the window, looking out over a deserted road lit by the neon glow of the Diner's sign and a flickering streetlight.

I take a deep breath and smile, my fingers trailing the greasy surface of the table. I don't care if a hundred hamburgers were wiped over this surface, I am living out some weird eighties-road-trip-fantasy right now and I am loving it.

I look up to see Max smirking at me, his eyes filled with a twinkling wonder. "What?" I cock my head to the side and smile. He shrugs and leans back in the booth. "Have you never been to a diner before?" He raises his eyebrows. I lean forward and shrug. "Maybe."

"It's pretty amazing, isn't it?" He looks around and nods at the woman behind the counter. The waitress wears a red and white striped dress with a white apron, her hair neatly tucked in a ponytail. I can feel a smile spread across my face and Max just stares at me. "As if time doesn't pass in here," he says. I inhale deeply and nod. "Yeah, pretty amazing."

The waitress comes over and takes our order. Max orders pancakes for the both of us, his with maple syrup and mine with chocolate. For drinks he orders two milkshakes, banana and strawberry flavored. The waitress thanks us and walks away again.