A Favor
“Have you given any more thought to your dissertation topic?”
“Not really,” Zac replied. He knew it wasn’t at all what Dr. Gould wanted to hear, but it was the truth. He could have lied, and perhaps he should have, but he was too tired to bother.
The real truth was that for days all he had thought about was Jordan, yet he had come no closer to understanding what had happened.
Jordan had assured Zac that he had done nothing wrong and that the reason they couldn’t see each other again lie entirely on his shoulders, but Zac didn’t buy it. What could have changed? What did change other than the sober light of day making Jordan realize he didn’t want a supposedly straight guy like Zac with tons and tons of baggage?
Abruptly, Zac realized that Dr. Gould was still droning on. “Now, your work last semester was very insightful. I thought you had some very unique things to say about Georgia O’Keeffe, and I would fully support exploring those ideas further.”
He nearly snorted at that. When his entire sexuality had suddenly been called into question, Zac couldn’t really imagine himself devoting a year’s work to analyzing glorified vagina paintings. Of course, he couldn’t tell his advisor that, and so he just nodded politely and made a small murmur that he hoped Dr. Gould would interpret as consideration of his suggestion.
“But ultimately, it comes to down what you want to work on. This is going to be your focus for the next several months, so it has to be something that interests you.”
Zac found himself suddenly flashing back to an afternoon spent at a museum with Taylor. It had been one of the last times they’d gotten to spend a lot of time before shit had hit the fan. They’d laughed about how lame it was for two teenage boys to go the museum together, but to Zac, it was the best Saturday afternoon he could have imagined.
“Cannon,” Zac blurted out. “I mean, T. C. Cannon. There’s an exhibit of his art back in Tulsa. I always liked it. Maybe I can do something with that—he’s from Oklahoma, and there are definite Native American themes in his work, but it’s modern, too.”
“Part of the Kiowa Six, I think?” Dr. Gould replied, nodding. “You could do something with that, yes. You would have an interesting perspective on his work.”
With something of a decision made, they wrapped up the meeting quickly—Zac perhaps a little more quickly than his professor. He felt guilty for wanting to be gone so soon, but he couldn’t take much more lecturing about the declining quality of his classwork. He’d hit rock bottom when things ended with Carly, but with thoughts of Jordan distracting him all hours of the day, he was drifting even further away from his classes.
Who was Zac kidding? He was drifting away from his entire life.
He hadn’t even paid attention to where he was going when he left the meeting, and in spite of the sheer size of the University of Texas’s campus, it seemed the universe conspired to make it that much smaller just for him. Every time he was on campus lately, he had spotted Carly and a few of those times, she had spotted him, too.
And this time, just to make things that much better, she wasn’t alone.
While her head was turned, laughing obnoxiously at some no doubt stupid joke Byron had just made, Zac ducked around the nearest corner. Maybe neither of them had spotted him. He could only hope. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing back to make sure—only to collide with something small and soft.
“Oh, Zac!” Melissa cried out in surprise.
Zac blinked, and the sight of Melissa trying to gather up the papers he had apparently knocked out of her hands came into focus in front of him. He shouldn’t have been surprised, he supposed. If there was a way for his day to get worse, it was bound to happen. With a heavy sigh, he bent down and picked up some of Melissa’s books and papers.
“Thank you so much,” she said, smiling. “I’m so clumsy sometimes, I swear.”
Zac shook his head. “No, no… it was me. Sorry.”
“Were you headed to the library? I’m actually not working this afternoon. For once.”
“Oh, no,” Zac replied, trying to ignore the obvious desperation in Melissa’s voice. “I’m actually on my way home. I just had a meeting with my—”
“Zac, hey!” Another voice called out from behind, and Zac knew before he turned around that it was Shaun. Anything to make his day worse. Anything. And everything. Shaun clapped Zac on the back a little too hard, nearly sending him flying into Melissa, and said, “Hey, man. Haven’t seen you around for a while.”
“I’ve been busy.” It wasn’t a total lie. It was just that the truth involved a lot more thinking about Jordan than working on his thesis.
“Well, it’s good to see you around,” Shaun replied, then turned to Melissa and slipped on the charm. “And you, too. It’s Melissa, right? My man Zac here was telling me about how you’re his favorite librarian.”
Melissa blushed, and Zac contemplated whether or not he could just crawl under the sidewalk and hide.
“I’m sure he didn’t say that,” she said softly. “And anyway, I’m just a work study. I love it, but I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“You’re an English major, though, aren’t you?” Shaun asked, and Zac wondered how he could even know that, even if he did work in admissions. He was probably just trying to show off. “You liberal arts majors. I just don’t get you guys. But I’m sure you two would have plenty to talk about that I wouldn’t understand at all.”
Zac shot Shaun a warning look. He had a feeling he knew where Shaun was going with this, and he was definitely going to have to kill him for it. There was no way around it.
“In fact, weren’t you talking about getting together Freedman’s this weekend? I meant to tell you; I can’t make it. But I’m sure Melissa here would be fantastic company. You like Freedman’s, right?”
The last question was directed at Melissa, and she nodded eagerly. Zac doubted that. She didn’t look like the beer garden and barbecue type. But the deed was done. Shaun had finally accomplished his goal of getting Zac a date, and so there was no way Zac could back out now.
“Yeah, it’s great,” Melissa replied, a smile on her face that seemed more sincere than her words.
Shaun clapped Zac on the back again. “Well, that’s settled. You guys enjoy dinner for me, alright? Thursday at seven, wasn’t it?”
“Umm, yeah,” Zac choked out. He was going to kill Shaun. He was definitely going to kill Shaun.
Melissa actually batted her eyelashes at Zac, although it came off more awkward than flirty. “I’ll see you then.”
“We can, just, umm,” Zac sputtered. “We can meet there. My car’s a deathtrap; I couldn’t drive you there.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I’m sure we’ll have a great time anyway.”
Zac just nodded and waved weakly as Melissa bid him goodbye and walked away. Once she was gone, he spun around to look at Shaun.
“What?” Shaun threw his hands up, as is to feign innocence. “Tell me what I did wrong by getting you date. Seriously. Because that? That was a favor. You should be thanking me, not trying to shoot death rays at me out of your eyes.”
Zac gritted his teeth. “They clearly aren’t working. You’re not dead.”
“Look, man, she’s a dork, but she’s cute. Get a few drinks in her and I’m sure she’ll loosen up.”
“That’s really not the problem,” Zac replied.
“Then what’s the problem?” Shaun asked. “I know you don’t have any other plans.”
Zac sighed. He couldn’t explain the problem to Shaun, he realized. Shaun had no clue about the Jordan thing, because he knew he would never live it down if he told his friends he had a pathetic crush on a drag queen. There was just no way to make that sound good. And so there was nothing he could tell Shaun to explain why going on a date with Melissa was one of the last things he wanted to spend his Friday night doing.
“That’s what I thought,” Shaun replied after several seconds of awkward silence from Zac. “You’ll have a great time, I promise. And if you don’t, I don’t want to hear about it, because I know the only problem here is you being depressed. Sometimes you really just gotta snap out of it, and I can’t think of a better way than with a hot chick.”
There was no way Zac could reason or argue with that. Shaun was a good friend. He really was. But he was too relentlessly upbeat, and too lucky to be able to go through his life that way, to understand Zac’s life. Zac was realizing that would always be their problem, and it was just easiest to stop trying to fight it. If that meant enduring what would probably be the worst date of his life just to get Shaun off his back, then that was just what it meant.
“Yeah, alright,” Zac said. He heaved a sigh. Hopefully that would be the end of the conversation; if he just agreed and went along with what Shaun said, maybe his friend would drop it.
Shaun grinned. “Alright. And I don’t wanna hear any whining about it. You’ll have fun. I know it.”
Zac let Shaun go on for a minute or two longer about what he should and shouldn’t do on his first first date in years, but he quickly tuned him out. Zac didn’t care. If he simply showed up and managed not to panic and leave early, he figured that was a big enough success. He doubted Melissa would be expecting much more of him than that anyway.
Finally, satisfied that he had done his part and played matchmaker, Shaun bid Zac goodbye and rushed off to some freshmen orientation or something. Zac was’t really listening. He was just glad Shaun was finally done.
Once the two went their separate ways, Zac scurried off campus as quickly as possible, before he could have a run-in with someone else he didn’t want to see. Not that there was anyone he did want to see—except Jordan, of course.
He still had no clue what had happened there, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about it constantly.
What could be so horrible that Jordan thought Zac would never want to see him again? What could be that horrible about anyone, aside from ax murderers or pedophiles? He highly doubted Jordan was either of those.
No, it had to be an excuse. Jordan didn’t want to see him. No one did.
Except Melissa.
The worst part of being all but forced to go on a date with her, Zac decided, wasn’t that it would be just this side of torture for him. It was that she didn’t deserve to be brought into the clusterfuck that his life was. Still not over his ex, yet falling for a crossdresser—he had no doubt at all that neither of those were qualities Melissa was looking for in a boyfriend. She might have what seemed like a pretty hopeless crush on him, but even she had to have some standards. He hoped that she would decide, without having to learn all of his deep dark secrets, that she could do so, so much better than a hot mess like him.
If she didn’t figure that out on her own… well, Zac was a little afraid of the lengths he might have to go to in order to prove it to her.