Page 117 of The Locker Room
bleakly, and Xander narrowed his eyes.
“I don"t even know which one I"m going to pick,” he all but
snarled, and Chris"s hand tightened, and he bent down to talk privately in
Xander"s ear.
“It hurts me worse when they"re like me,” he whispered, and
Xander looked at him accusingly.
“They"re all like you,” he said, wondering if that came out right.
“Even when I try to pick the ones that aren"t.”
He sighed then and stood up, shaking off Chris"s hand and going to
the bar to get a beer and a spare. He was on his way back, keeping an eye
out for someone who didn"t looktoopredatory, someone who looked
like she could make him laugh, when he practically walked over a tiny
little woman with dark hair, who was urgently texting on her cell phone.
She looked up, an apology on her lips, but when her neck kept
falling back before she could actually see Xander"s face, her mouth
literally swung open at the jaw—but her handsneverstopped texting.
Xander had to laugh. He looked over the front of her and down (a
long way down) to her phone and started to laugh. “OMG,” he read,
“Xander Karcek just ran me over. He"s as tall as an ogre!”
“Oh shit!” The poor girl turned pink, right to the pale end of her
nose, and Xander got a good look at her. She was, in essence, the anti-
Chris. She was tiny and feminine, wearing a frilly little black skirt and a
white blouse that looked like a pirate shirt. She had a wealth of straight,
shiny dark hair, and vaguely Asian features, and she was not laughing or
bubbling or socializing without compunction. Instead, she was clinging
to her phone, and probably to the friend on the other side of it, with a
little bit of terror in her eyes, and looking at Xander with quiet adoration.
Very rarely was Chris quiet.
And Xander liked her already.
“I"m not really an ogre,” he assured her with a smile, and she
