Page 46 of Ravenous

“Are you kidding? A comfort food restaurant with vegetarian options? It’s wonderful. I can see why you like it.” Standing, Ollie took a picture of the retro comic book art near their table, where a heavily outlined woman said into a phone“Oh, Jeff…I love you too...but I’m plant-based.”

“Are you ready to order?” The waitress wandered up, notepad out. She had pretty magenta hair, more tattoos than skin, and the largest septum piercing Ollie had ever seen. He immediately wanted to introduce her to Biz.

“Yes.” Ollie quickly sat down.

“You didn’t even look at the menu?” Finn held it up, confused.

“Oh, I uh…I looked at it online.” Ollie’s cheeks burned but as long as Finn didn’t know that he’d cried over the choices for hours, then he was fine. “Do you need some time?”

“I’m good! I’ve been here enough.” Finn’s smirk held some self-deprecation. “I’ll have the bacon double cheeseburger with the sweet potato fries.”

“Cool.” She turned to Ollie. “And you?”

Ollie took a long slow breath. He could do this. “I’ll have the mac and cheese.”

Finn almost dropped his water glass. “I didn’t think you’d order that,” he stated as the waitress left.

“Why? Because I’m a health nut?” Ollie teased, but his heart was in his throat. This had to go well.

“Kind of.” Finn was talking slowly, carefully, and Ollie didn’t want that.

“I’m allowed a cheat day every once in a while, right?” Except he wasn’t. Extra food made him nervous. Anxious. Reinforced that he needed to be faster, quicker, so he could slip away from disaster’s hold; however, keeping Finn was also avoiding disaster so tonight required some strength.

“Yeah, I guess you do.” Finn gave him a crooked smile, his face clearing. It seemed like Ollie’s plan was working.

The deal was to eat two-thirds of the mac and cheese but it was so dense that Ollie could barely make his way through half. That appeared to be normal, because Finn ended up pushing his extra-large burger away, leaving some on the plate. But Ollie wasn’t done yet. When the waitress came over, offering to box up the leftovers, he solidified his cheat day facade by ordering vanilla ice cream for dessert.

“Is vanilla an actual flavor or is it like…plain?” Finn rubbed his chin. He’d opted for the carrot cake and Ollie was beginning to see a pattern. First the carrot cake muffin at Vice and Virtue and now actual carrot cake?

“It’s a flavor. It’svanilla. Oh my god, I can’t believe that I have to explain this to you when you ordered vegetables for dessert.”

“It’s carrot cake. Cake and icing, not just carrots. I thought you liked vegetables?”

“I do. But not fordessert.”

Finn laughed. “You have some strong opinions about sweets.”

“And you have some bad takes about ice cream.”

“Do I? Hear me out.” Finn’s eyes were full of mischief. “Chocolate is a flavor. So is rocky road. And pistachio. But vanilla is a base. The beginning. You need to add things like chocolate chips or caramel to it to make it an actualflavor.”

“It’s still a flavor though. Otherwise, it would be called plain. It’s called vanilla because it tastes like vanilla.” Why were they even debating this?

“It tastes like paper. No flavor, hence it isnota flavor.” Finn waggled his finger as if he were a scientist making a point and Ollie couldn’t help but smile.

“How do you know what paper tastes like?” Ollie asked as the waitress came back, putting their desserts in front of them and giving Finn a raised eyebrow before she left. “And just because you say it’s not a flavor doesn’t mean that you’re right.”

“I’m going to need to see a citation on that.” Finn winked, digging into his cake.

Ollie ignored his ice cream, typing on his phone. “Aha!” He turned the screen toward Finn, gesturing around it like he was presenting a prize on a game show. “It says right here that vanilla is the world’s most popular aroma andflavor.”

“You know you can’t trust everything you read on the internet.” Finn held out a little carrot cake on his fork. “Would you like to try some?”

“Of your vegetable cake? Nope, I’ll stick with my delicious flavor of ice cream,” Ollie grinned, prodding the vanilla scoops with his spoon, delighted that some of it had melted. It would give the impression that he’d eaten more. “By the way,whereare you taking me after this? Do I get to know now?”

Finn gave him one of his sultry grins. “Not yet, it’s better to see it in person.”

Finn was right. As they pulled up in front of the glowing movie theater, the large and impressive bulb-lined marquee withDraculaon it had Ollie’s jaw on the floor. Apparently, they were going to see the nineteen ninety-two film version of Bram Stoker’s novel and Ollie was beyond okay with that.

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