Seduction Tips For Dummies

The bell at St. Jude’s High School rang, releasing a stampede of hormonal teenagers into the humid afternoon air. By all accounts, Kris should have been living his best life. He was blonde, possessed eyes the color of liquid amber, and had a face that facial-recognition software routinely mistook for an anime protagonist. Girls routinely dropped their books in front of him.

The tragic catch? They only dropped their books so they could bend over and ask if Tyler Vance was single.

“Kris! Oh, my god, Kris, wait up!”

Kris paused by his locker, letting out a heavy, dramatic sigh that rustled his bangs. Chloe Harrison—a cheerleader whose mascara could deflect gamma radiation—came skidding to a halt beside him. She clutched her pom-poms to her chest like a shield of purity.

“Hey, Chloe,” Kris said flatly, his golden eyes dull with the infinite exhaustion of a man working a retail job that paid in psychological damage. “Let me guess. You want to know if Tyler is going to the spring formal.”

“Shut up, no way! Really?” Chloe squealed, completely ignoring the fact that Kris had answered her question before she even asked it. “Is he? Does he have a date? Does he even like blondes? Wait, do you think he’d notice if I dyed my hair the exact shade of caramel as his morning macchiato?”

Kris closed his locker door with a hollow clank. “Chloe, Tyler drinks black coffee. He doesn’t look at caramel anything unless it’s on a dessert menu. And no, he’s not going to the formal. He’s going to stay home and brood over his economics textbook like a Victorian orphan with consumption.”

“Ugh, he’s so mysterious,” Chloe sighed, pressing her palms to her burning cheeks. “Such a cold emperor. Like, he literally glared at Jessica when she tried to give him a cupcake yesterday. It was so hot. Do you think you could slip him a love letter for me, Kris? You’re his best friend! You share a soul!”

“I share a locker room with him, Chloe, which is mostly composed of Axe body spray and unresolved tension,” Kris muttered, shoving his backpack over his shoulders. “And no, I am not your carrier pigeon. Last time I delivered a letter for you, Tyler used it to scrape gum off the bottom of his desk.”

Before Chloe could beg further, a heavy arm slung itself casually over Kris’s shoulders. The temperature in the hallway seemed to drop three degrees, not because of air conditioning, but because of the sheer, brooding aura radiating from the boy who just arrived.

Tyler Vance didn’t do casual smiles. He did a slight twitch of the lip that passed for amusement among the student body. With jet-black hair falling carelessly over sharp, obsidian eyes and a jawline carved from pure architectural spite, Tyler looked like he had been genetically engineered in a lab to ruin women’s lives—and, apparently, Kris’s social life.

“Hurry up, blondie,” Tyler said, his voice a deep, effortless baritone that made Chloe instantly forget how to form vowels. “Coach is going to bench us if we’re late for track, and I’m not running laps because you were busy playing agony aunt to the cheer squad.”

“Tyler!” Chloe squeaked, taking a frantic step backward while smoothing her skirt. “H-hi! Are you... are you going to track? I’ll come cheer! I have pom-poms!”

Tyler didn’t even look at her. His gaze remained fixed entirely on Kris, his dark eyebrows knitting together in mild irritation. “We have practice, Kris. Move.”

“Right, right. Coming, your majesty,” Kris grumbled, letting Tyler drag him away down the corridor.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Kris whipped his head around. “You know, one of these days, a girl is actually going to talk to me because she likes my face, Tyler. Just my face! Not my proximity to your majestic, brooding cheekbones!”

“Doubtful,” Tyler replied smoothly, not breaking stride. “Your face is okay, I guess. A bit too girly. If you put on a wig, you’d probably pass for a sophomore girl.”

“I am a majestic specimen of modern youth!” Kris squawked, jabbing a finger into Tyler’s muscular ribs. The finger bounced off as if it had hit a slab of concrete. “Ow! Why are you so hard? Do you consume drywall for breakfast?”

“Protein shakes. And stop poking me, idiot.” Tyler shoved Kris’s hand away, finally offering a microscopic smirk. “Besides, you should be thanking me. Think of all the free snacks girls give you just to get to me. Remember that triple-chocolate brownie from Tuesday?”

“It had a tracking device in it, Tyler! Or a love potion! I felt weird for six hours!”

Ten minutes later, sitting on the metal bleachers behind the gymnasium while the rest of the team stretched, Kris decided he had reached his breaking point. He watched Tyler casually toss a baseball into the air and catch it, looking entirely indifferent to the three sophomore girls whispering and giggling behind the chain-link fence.

“Tyler,” Kris said solemnly, crossing his legs Indian-style.

“Hm.”

“We need to talk about your love life.”

Tyler didn’t look up from the baseball. “My love life is fine. It doesn’t exist, which means it requires zero maintenance.”

“That is precisely the problem!” Kris threw his hands up in theatrical exasperation. “We are eighteen! We are in our final semester of high school! Do you know what normal teenagers do at eighteen? They go to prom, they hold hands in the rain, they make out behind the bleachers instead of sitting on them like depressed gargoyles!”

“I like the bleachers. They have good structural integrity,” Tyler deadpanned.

“I am serious, Tyler! You are a walking human hazard. You look like a K-pop idol crossed with a serial killer, and it’s ruining my chances of ever getting a girlfriend. Every time I ask a girl out, she looks past my shoulder, sees you standing there like a gothic statue, and says, ‘Oh, is Tyler single?’ I am sick of being the appetizer, Tyler! I want to be the main course!”

“Then tell them no,” Tyler said simply.

“I do! But then they cry, and then you look at me like I’ve personally murdered a puppy!”

Tyler finally lowered the baseball, turning his dark, piercing eyes toward his best friend. A slow, aggravating smirk touched his lips. “You’d look terrible with a girlfriend anyway, Kris. You’d probably forget her birthday, accidentally wear her clothes, and cry during romantic comedies. Oh wait—you already do that by yourself.”

“I am a sensitive, multi-dimensional man!” Kris protested, turning bright red. “Unlike you, who has the emotional range of a damp basement wall! Seriously, when was the last time you even looked at a girl with romantic intent? Name one! I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you can name a single girl in this entire zip code you’ve wanted to date!”

Tyler’s smirk vanished. The casual, teasing air evaporated from him instantly, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence. He dropped the baseball into his lap, his jaw tightening as he stared fixedly at the turf.

Kris blinked, instantly regretting his tone. “Uh... Ty? Dude, I was joking. You don’t have to—”

“No,” Tyler cut him off, his voice dropping an octave, losing all its usual sarcastic bite. “You’re right. I can’t.”

Kris frowned, shifting closer. “What do you mean?”

Tyler looked away, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of the bleacher seat. “Drop it, Kris.”

“No way, you opened the door. Why can’t you date anyone? Are you secretly a monk? Are you allergic to estrogen?”

“Because,” Tyler muttered, his voice barely louder than the wind rustling the chain-link fence, “it wouldn’t matter anyway.”

Kris stared at him, bewildered, before a sudden, dawning realization hit him like a physical blow. The teasing died in his throat. He looked at his best friend—really looked at him—and saw the tight, miserable set of his shoulders.

Oh, Kris thought. Oh no.

Fast forward six months. High school was a memory, and they were standing in the grand, overly air-conditioned ballroom of a five-star hotel.

It was Zara’s wedding day.

Kris’s older sister, Zara—twenty-eight, impossibly chic, and possessing a terrifying intellect that could make grown men weep—was currently getting married to a man named Richard, a venture capitalist whose teeth were so white they looked like they glowed in the dark. The reception was a swirling vortex of rich people, clinking champagne flutes, and classical string quartets playing covers of pop songs.

Kris was standing near the chocolate fountain, wearing a tailored tuxedo that made him look like a princely angel, desperately trying to keep track of how many miniature éclairs he had consumed.

Beside him stood Tyler. Tyler was wearing a custom black tux that fit his broad shoulders and muscular frame like a second skin. He looked like an aristocratic villain who had just inherited a haunted estate, and consequently, three different bridesmaids had already tried to hand him their room keys. Tyler had ignored all of them, his eyes locked entirely on the dance floor where Zara was currently doing a surprisingly aggressive salsa with her new husband.

As the clock struck midnight and the guests began to clear out, Kris found Tyler standing alone by the balcony doors, a half-empty glass of scotch clutched tightly in his hand.

Kris walked over, handing him a napkin. “Heavy night, brother-in-law-adjacent?”

Tyler didn’t take the napkin. He stared out into the dark night sky, his breath fogging the glass slightly. “She’s married.”

“Yes, Tyler. That is generally what happens at weddings. Usually, there’s a certificate involved.”

“She’s gone to Paris, Kris.”

“For her honeymoon, yes. That’s how honeymoons work. You don’t usually go to Ohio.”

Tyler turned his head slowly, his dark brown eyes glassy with a mixture of profound melancholy and liquid courage. He looked at Kris with an expression so utterly devastated that Kris actually took a step back, shocked.

“I love her, Kris,” Tyler whispered.

The ballroom music swelled faintly from inside, playing a soft, romantic waltz. Kris froze, a half-eaten éclair stopping midway to his mouth.

“You... what?”

“I’ve loved her since I was fourteen years old,” Tyler said, his voice cracking slightly—a sound Kris had literally never heard in the decade they had been friends. “Since the day she came home from college and helped us fix our broken treehouse. Since she bought me that stupid comic book when I had chicken pox. I love Zara.”

Kris’s brain short-circuited. He stared at Tyler, his golden eyes wide. “My sister? My sister Zara? The one who once locked you in the basement because you ate her artisanal yogurt?”

“She didn’t know it was artisanal! It was hidden behind the frozen peas!” Tyler snapped defensively, before slumping back against the glass door, looking like a tragic Shakespearean hero who had just been stabbed by his best friend. “And she married Richard. Richard with the glowing teeth. Richard who invests in cryptocurrency.”

Kris let out a sudden, involuntary snort. Then he tried to turn it into a cough. Then he full-on wheezed.

“Don’t laugh,” Tyler warned darkly, pointing a finger at him. “This is a tragedy of Greek proportions. My life is over. I am a hollow shell of a man. I will die alone surrounded by stray cats and financial spreadsheets.”

“Tyler, man, she’s twenty-eight! She was literally holding me when I dropped my first pacifier! When we were ten, she used to chase us around the yard with a garden hose screaming about patriarchy!”

“She was fierce,” Tyler sighed dreamily, gazing up at the ceiling. “She was a magnificent, terrifying storm.”

Kris pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a migraine building behind his amber eyes. Memories flashed through his mind: Tyler volunteering to carry Zara’s heavy psychology textbooks all through middle school; Tyler memorizing Zara’s birthday months in advance and buying her a rare first-edition book while Kris couldn’t even remember what grade he was in; Tyler lurking around their kitchen like a lost puppy whenever Zara came home for the weekend, offering to fix her car, clean her gutters, or basically throw himself into traffic if she looked mildly inconvenienced.

How did I never notice? Kris thought, staring at the pathetic wreck of a cold emperor standing before him. He was playing long-term psychological chess, and the queen was my sister!

“Okay, okay, stop, stop looking like a kicked puppy,” Kris sighed, walking over and patting Tyler awkwardly on his muscular shoulder. “Look, Ty. I love you like a brother, but you cannot spend the rest of your life pining after a married woman who now has ‘Mrs. Sterling’ monogrammed on her bathrobes. You need to move on.”

“I can’t,” Tyler mumbled into his scotch. “My heart is buried in Paris with Richard’s luggage.”

“Your heart is going to be buried under a rock if you don’t snap out of it,” Kris said firmly. “And more importantly—if you don’t get a girlfriend, all these college girls are still going to use me as their personal messenger service to get to you! Do you know how humiliating it is to explain to a girl that my best friend is emotionally unavailable because he’s mourning my sister’s matrimonial bliss? They look at me like I’m speaking ancient Aramaic!”

Tyler finally looked at him, a faint, ghost-like flicker of his old smirk returning. “Well, what do you propose, genius? You’re the fashion major. You read all those ridiculous magazines with titles like Seduction Tips for Dummies. How do I ‘get a life’?”

Kris puffed out his chest, a spark of pure, chaotic energy igniting in his amber eyes. “Oh, no, buddy. You aren’t going to look for one. I am going to find you one. I am going to turn you into a normal, functioning, non-obsessive boyfriend, whether it kills me or you!”

“God help whoever tries to date me,” Tyler muttered into his glass.

“Amen to that,” Kris chirped happily, completely unaware that within a few months, he would be the one wearing a blonde wig, desperately trying to seduce his own best friend just to save his sanity.