Page 136 of Deeper

As I reached for my glass, I caught my phone lighting up. It had been like that all day since Zander spoke and dropped “Pride & Failure.” The emotional ballad had garnered me thousands of new followers, tags, and comments on my social media pages. It was overwhelming, but I was flattered.

“To finessing these fellas like dummies for free drinks,” I joked as I toasted with the girls.

Holliston giggled as she clinked her glass against ours. A man had tried to buy her a drink and she’d turned him down, staying loyal to Jake.

Rookie.

“How’s H.?” I asked Victoria, curious how her love life was going.

Tori shrugged. “Groveling. I love to see them sweat.”

Holliston’s auburn brows furrowed. “What did he do?”

“Waste my damn time the first go-round we were together. Now that he sees the grass ain’t greener, he’s crawling back.”

Holliston appeared thoughtful, but said nothing as she sipped on her drink. She needed to leave Jake alone.

“Geez, Bia, you’re popular today.” Victoria spotted my glowing notifications. “Any word from your boy?”

After sending those tweets and dropping the song and cover, I hadn’t heard from Zander.

I grabbed my phone up to scroll through my notifications in case I missed a call or text. I was even prepared to send a cheeky littlefuck youtext if he hadn’t.

Only, as I thumbed through my screen looking for Zander, I noticed countless tags on a post by The CelebriTea. I thought it was just Zander’s new song, but comments started jumping out at me.

Leaked?

I opened my phone and clicked on one of the comments, going and being led to The CelebriTea’s page. Sure enough all of the commotion was not about the song, it was about a leaked video of Zander. Ananonymousleak I read from the caption:Oops, someone sent in an anonymous video of our guy #ZanderKhalil high. The unseen woman in the video doesn’t sound pleased with the singer either. We here at the tea table hope things are okay. This is NO joking matter.

Oh shit.

I pressed Play on the video and sure enough it opened up to someone filming a mirror where a couple of lines of cocaine were cut. A rolled up hundred-dollar bill lay beside the mirror. What really hurt me, was I could hear him. Somewhere offscreen, Zander was singing loudly. The person filming walked off, going and finding Zander and showing his face. His hair was different, messy, and he was topless—skinny, but otherwise energetic. He was shaking, giddy, singing some song by Usher as he smiled towards the camera.

“You’re a fucking cokehead,” a woman’s voice spoke up. It was distinctively female, but low enough to where one couldn’t placewhowas speaking—although it wasn’t too hard to assume. What’s more, her White finger appeared onscreen as she pointed at Zander accusingly. “Like, you’re really disgusting.”

Zander wasn’t offended in the least; he wiped at his nose, once, twice, three times before buzzing about and singing more of “U Don’t Have to Call.” He came closer to the camera and reached out, being silly as he tried to swoon the woman.

The clip ended and my face twisted in anguish.

This was a low blow.

“What? What’s wrong?” Victoria asked, concern washing across her face.

Holliston peered my way as well, a look of worry etched on her face too.

I blinked back tears. “I…I’m ready to go home.”

31

FOOL FOR YOU

Icouldn’t sleep.

After we got in from The Boot, I’d gone to my bedroom to obsessively watch andre-watch the video. I read so many comments my eyes started to hurt after a while through reading with my blurry vision.

As dawn called for a new day, I found myself tired, but unable to rest.

Celebrity exposures and leaked images and videos happened all the time, and now I could trulyfeelfor those it happened to.

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