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Chapter 8
Zander
“Come on, Zander. It’s Friday. Please don’t tell me you’ve got to get home to Jon Snow or that you’re really busy this weekend or whatever other lame excuse you try to use. Stop being so boring,” Brad argued once they were finished with work on Friday. Zander was cleaning up his classroom after all the kids had left. He turned to face Brad, who was leaning on the threshold to Zander’s classroom.
“You really make me sound lame.”
“Well, if the shoe fits, Zander,” Brad teased, walking into the room and taking a seat on one of the beanbag chairs in the corner.
Brad had been working at the Highline Private School for the Developmentally Disabled for three years with Zander, and in that time, they’d bonded over their love for hockey and video games. Brad, though, was a bit more social than Zander, preferring to spend Friday nights out at local haunts looking for love.
Zander, of course, had been there, done that years ago. He’d preferred in recent years to spend his time at home on the couch with a bottle of beer in his hand, Jon Snow nearby, and some mindless television. If it was a really rocking night, he might stay up to eleven.
Yeah, maybe Brad was just a little bit right about Zander being lame.
Still, the bar scene had never been his thing. It was either too pretentious or too fake or too everything. Women and men trying too hard to find someone for the night or with the false hope of finding someone for forever in an alcohol-infused stupor. Not really his definition of fun.
“Zander, come on. Help a guy out. You might be okay with being a lonely bachelor, but I’ve got needs, man. I’m not opposed to finding a gorgeous woman to be mine, and I really could use a buddy to go with so I don’t come off as creepy or a playboy.”
Zander stopped organizing the markers to turn and look at Brad. “Wow, how could I turn down an invitation like that?”
“Well, and who knows. Maybe you’ll find someone to break your rut. If you ask me, you could use someone in your life besides your dang cat and work.”
“I really wasn’t asking you,” Zander quipped, and Brad shook his head.
“Come on. I know there’s a partier deep down. And I know there’s a man desperate to hold a sexy woman deep down, too. You can’t lie to me.”
Zander sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “Fine, Brad. I’ll go. But only because I could use a beer. Not because I’m looking for a woman.”
“Yes,” Brad cheered, leaping up. “I knew I could convince you. Now let’s get out of here.”
Zander grabbed his keys, took one last look around the classroom, and followed Brad out to the hallway, closing the door behind him.
“And you don’t have to tell me you’re not looking for a woman because you tell me every time we go out. Look, I don’t know this Sheila chick who burned you, but she must be something. How many years has it been?”
“A while,” Zander said, embarrassed to admit how long he’d let her stunt affect him. In fairness, she had pulled quite the number on him, had shattered his heart and his life into a million pieces. When he finally pulled it together and got it all on track, he knew he’d learned a very important lesson.
Love wasn’t worth it.
But as they hailed a cab and Brad babbled on about some young blonde he’d met at the bar around the corner last weekend, Zander couldn’t help but notice his thoughts wandering to a certain black-haired beauty who just wouldn’t let him go.
* * *
They settledinto a corner booth at O’Finnigan’s, the edgy bar Brad loved because it was a good single’s scene, or so Brad assured Zander. They ordered their usual drinks, and Brad began scoping the area, his gaze landing on a woman in the corner.
“Oh, look at that chick. What do you think? The redhead?”
Zander glanced at the corner by the jukebox, studying the woman in a short black dress with flowing red hair.
“She’s good,” Zander said, shrugging noncommittally.
“Perfect, go talk to her,” Brad urged before taking a swig of his beer.
“What? Me? I thought you meant for you,” Zander replied, shaking his head.
“Come on. She looks too nerdy for my type. She’d be perfect for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
