Sneak Peek Wednesday: Finding Zaide by Kim Deister

I texted Nic before brunch, begging him to take it easy on Zaide. But even as I typed the message, I knew it was pointless. Instead, Nic reminded me of our previously established “Dating Other People” rules. And the consequences of not following said rules, which were severe. The punishments to be doled out to the offending party would involve extreme embarrassment, the nature of which would be determined by the wronged party. That person would also set the date, time, location, and circumstances of said punishment, which would be dutifully captured for eternity on video. Only Nic had suffered thus far, his penance involving dressing in an outfit appropriate for a midnight ballerina—complete with a towering pair of Lucite heels, a wig, a full face of makeup—while meandering around Times Square mid-afternoon. I didn’t relish even the thought of what he’d dream up for me, so I stopped begging out of pure fear.Even though these rules had been created while under the influence of far too many tequila shots a few weeks after we broke up, and while naked on his living room rug, we treated them like they were law. We had drunkenly decided that we needed them in order to preserve our friendship, even going so far as to scrawl them on the back of his electric bill and signing them with a flourish.

First, we had a four-date max before we had to make introductions. The only allowed exception to this rule was the death of one or both of us. In hindsight, that exception left a loophole in the case of an unfortunate demise of the third person. Since neither of us had any desire to introduce or be introduced to a corpse, we amended this rule after the fact. The second rule was that no relationship would be allowed to ruin our friendship. We had decided that most other people sucked, and we were too awesome to lose each other over their suckage. That rule led to the creation of the third and final rule. That we had to be ourselves when we met each other’s potential love muffins (his term, not mine) in order to determine if the love interest was worth our combined awesomeness. After all, if a person couldn’t deal with our friendship and the way we were with each other, teasing and all, then they probably weren’t the person for us. Despite the obvious inebriated influence on the creation of these eloquent rules, they served an important purpose and we took them seriously.

However, having respect for the rules didn’t stop me from being red with mortification from almost the moment Zaide and I walked into his apartment. They hit it off instantly, as if they’d known each other for years, not just five minutes at a pizza shop. That made me happy… right until I somehow became their combined target. They tag-teamed me mercilessly, although Nic was definitely the ringleader. He regaled Zaide with story after embarrassing story of my past, making me thoroughly regret sharing so much with him. It seemed that the only thing that was off-limits was our sex stories, a fact for which I was infinitely grateful. But everything else was apparently fair game. The torture continued between bites and only ended when I threatened to put Nic on any and every STD mailing list I could find. That brought me some blessed peace.