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Brad raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you haven’t yet realized you’re a nerd.”
Zander grinned. “Whatever I am, it’s not the guy who is here to find a woman. This is your gig, not mine. I’m just here for some cheap beer. And to make sure you don’t do anything you regret.”
“Life’s no fun without regrets.”
“Well, I have plenty of them to last a lifetime,” Zander quipped, taking a deep breath.
And it was true. Regret wasn’t a novel concept to Zander. He’d spent the latter half of his twenties swimming in the concept, thinking about how things could’ve been different.
Brad asked if Zander would be okay for a bit as he wandered over to a tall, lanky blonde in the corner sitting with a group of friends. Zander assured him he could entertain himself and didn’t think he was at risk of being kidnapped. Once he had walked away, Zander pulled out his phone to look busy and not like some lame, lonely guy sitting in the corner of a bar on a Friday night.
He mindlessly scrolled through social media and news websites, not taking in a single word or image. His mind was in a different place, a different time, when at seventeen he was unknowingly ready to step onto a path that would change everything about his life. He hated how his mind was going there, but sometimes it just couldn’t be helped.
* * *
He’d been working in the pizza shop down the street from his house when life changed forever. He was seventeen that summer, a week away from starting his senior year. He’d been saving money working full-time at Joe’s Pizza all summer so he would have a decent savings account for next year. He’d need it when he headed to the city the following year to start his acting career—as long as he was accepted. If all went well, in exactly a year, he’d be getting ready to start his journey to his dream, to Broadway.
It was a Thursday afternoon when Zander’s life and plans changed without him even knowing it. Like love often does, it wandered into Zander’s life and catapulted him into a different direction on a random, dreary day without any warning.
The bells to the pizza shop jingled as the blonde walked in. She was legs, legs, legs, and a whole lot of confidence, her short shorts and tight shirt showing off enough of her to catch Zander’s attention.
“Hi,” she said warmly, smiling at him, and in that instant, he was magnetized to her. Her voice was a sinuous siren calling to him as her green eyes pierced into his.
“Hi,” he replied, awkwardly, a theater guy suddenly at a loss for words. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, actually. So I’m new in town, and I’m looking for the high school. I’m supposed to be there to register in a half hour, but I have no clue where it is. I’ve driven back and forth like a hundred times, and I can’t seem to find it. I feel like such an idiot. Do you know where it is?”
Zander smiled as the blonde animatedly talked with her hands. “You’re not an idiot. It’s actually kind of a pain to find. It’s tucked back on Charter Street, but you have to go to the end of Wilson Street and then make a slight right at the end. It’s kind of buried back in the woods. You can’t see it from the road.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I felt like such an idiot. I’m Sheila, by the way. Sheila Carlisle.”
“Zander Riley,” he said, smiling. “Where did you move from?”
“Ohio. Dad got transferred. Go figure. It’s my freaking senior year, and I’m stuck moving to a new town and all. Anyway, thank you so much.”
“Can I get you something to eat before you go? On the house? I was just about to take my break. Maybe I could fill you in on some of the school stuff. You know, the inside scoop.” It was true that Zander needed a break. It just technically wasn’t scheduled for another hour. It was a sleepy day, though, at Joe’s Pizza, and he wasn’t about to let this girl get away without learning more about her.
He was typically shy when it came to girls and relationships, spending his time with his theater friends. Most of them were hardly interested in starting a romance with the somewhat nerdy guy in the drama club, especially when his brother, Ian, was so much better with the ladies. When it came to the Rileys, there was one of them getting dates and one left in the wings.
But today, Ian wasn’t there to overshadow him, and he wasn’t about to let the gorgeous Sheila Carlisle slip away. He’d never been so entranced by a girl before. Not that he didn’t notice the hot girls at school—he wasn’t blind, after all. But this was different. She was different.
“I’d like that,” she said, and Zander got some plates of pizza ready, gave her a cup to get soda, and quickly joined her at a corner booth.
They spent the next twenty minutes chatting about Sheila’s life back home in Ohio, her plans for after high school, and a little bit about Zander. He’d admitted to her he was a bit of a theater geek, and she smiled.
“That’s cool. I could never do something like that,” she said, and for once Zander didn’t feel judged or like the uncool brother. He felt like Sheila’s smile was genuine. He thought that when she got up to leave and gave him her number with encouragement to call her sometime soon, she meant it.
And she did. Because over the next year, there was hardly a time when you would find Sheila without Zander or vice versa. They grew together over pizza, kissing underneath the bleachers at football games, a few romantic dates, and a whole lot of laughter. She was his first love, and he was convinced she’d be his only love.
So when graduation came and Sheila looked at him with those green eyes he couldn’t say no to, he knew he was in trouble.
He knew without a doubt that all the money he’d saved for the school in New York would be going somewhere else, as was his life.
Still, he convinced himself it was worth it. When he doubted if he was making the right decision, he would think back to that sleepy Thursday and how Sheila Carlisle had brightened his world just by walking through the door. He thought back to the magnetism he felt toward her, to the genuineness in her smile. And he convinced himself that it was her love that would fulfill him, not a career or being on stage. He didn’t need to be in the spotlight or have an entire audience on their feet. He just needed to be her spotlight, her focus. That was all it would take for him to be truly happy.
Or so he thought. It was a cruel world, after all, and sometimes first loves aren’t always forgiving, genuine, or forever. Sometimes they’re just a cruel fantasy, as Zander would find out when Sheila Carlisle shattered his entire world a couple of years later.
But he didn’t know that then. He couldn’t have known. He was a seventeen-year-old who had never been kissed, who had never known love, and who had never suspected that sometimes appearances really were deceiving.
