After that, it was hard to keep track of where Lauren was at the party, because she seemed to move every five minutes. She was sitting on the bleachers next to Elliot, intent in conversation. She was laughing, trying to land a jingle bell in a cup for a chance to win a gift card. She was getting another drink. The band started playing “Last Christmas,” and she was dancing with Kiki.
There was something so endearing about the way Lauren danced. She seemed self-conscious at first, unsure of what to do with her arms. All her moves were in her shoulders, which she shimmied to the beat, doing a cute little head bang when the drums kicked in louder. He found himself smiling, raising his beer to John when his housemate looked up from his guitar solo. It was obvious he was playing the Jimmy Eat World version, but that was okay. Asa could be magnanimous.
By the time Dolores gathered everyone around the bleachers for the gift exchange, Asa was all keyed up. When she handed him his Santa hat, he almost didn’t know what to do with it.
“You’re still handing out, yes?” she asked.
Of course. As he’d done every year. Almost everyone ended up announcing themself when their gift was opened, but in the true spirit of the “secret” part, Asa distributed all the presents to their marked recipients to preserve anonymity. He grabbed one at random, reading Saulo’s name before tossing it to him.
“Hey,” Saulo said, catching the wrapped present. “This could’ve been that crystal snowman I had my eye on in the gift shop.”
But the package was clearly something soft, and Saulo made an exaggerated face of surprise when he opened up a pair of socks with pug faces all over them. “Just like my Chappie!” he said. “Okay, who got this?”
Sonia raised her hand. “I saw them and couldn’t resist.”
Most gifts were pretty spot-on, although Asa couldn’t help but notice that Marcus looked confused when he opened up his shrink-wrapped square of a gift.
“You can load your ten favorite songs on it,” Dolores said, beaming. “And keep it in your pocket to listen to them whenever you want. And it comes with a lanyard in case you want to wear it around your neck.”
“Cool,” Marcus said, instead of So like a minuscule fraction of what my phone already does. It was a Christmas miracle of maturity, coming from him.
Asa grabbed the next present, sloppily wrapped in Charlie Brown wrapping paper, his name written on the tag. “Oh,” he said, grinning. “Looks like it’s mine.”
He slid his finger along the taped seam, and he was just thinking that Lauren hadn’t taken as much of his wrapping tutorial to heart when he flipped it over to see what it was.
“Well?” Kiki demanded, trying to crane her neck to see.
The packaging advertised: Will Make Five Different Fart Noises! The button next to Squeezed Fart could be pushed through an opening in the plastic, next to a sticker that said Try Me! Asa pushed it and actually recoiled from the deep, wet sound that emanated from the gadget.
Well. He didn’t know what he had expected.
“It’s a Fart Maker!” Marcus called out. “They’re hilarious. You can prank all your friends with it. I figured you could get Kiki and, uh, all the other people who are . . . at this party . . . so now know about it. Okay, I didn’t think that part through, but the possibilities are endless.”
Asa glanced up, his gaze connecting immediately with Lauren’s. If he’d thought there’d been some kind of mistake, that Kiki had misunderstood Lauren having him for Secret Santa, the truth was written all over her face. She swallowed, looking down at her drink in her hand, then away.
“Thanks, man,” Asa said, pressing the button one more time for effect before sliding the gadget into his pocket. “And the next one goes to . . . Kiki!”
Saulo had gotten Kiki a gift card to a local coffee shop, always a safe choice. Dolores opened Kiki’s vintage-y flamingo ornament and seemed genuinely thrilled. Sonia gushed over a stack of romance novels from Lauren, which meant that Lauren must’ve traded names with Marcus sometime after Asa had done the same thing. He wondered about the exact timeline—whether Lauren had made the decision after the moment in his room, or after they’d gone ice skating with Eddie. Not that it mattered. The end result was the same.
And now they had reached the last present, and people were already starting to disperse while Lauren looked around, obviously trying to figure out where hers was. He had no idea what to do. The thought of giving her the gift he’d made, watching her open it in front of him, made his insides twist. It was too much, especially for someone who’d actively arranged it so she didn’t have to exchange gifts with him. At the same time, he couldn’t stand to see that look on her face, the disappointment behind the smile she gave to Kiki.
He could tell her he just forgot, and then find something little to give her next week at work. It’d be relatively easy to get her a gift card for a takeout place near work, or a pound of ground coffee. Something impersonal that he knew she’d like.
But then Kiki was pointing down at him, waving her cup until pink punch sloshed over the side. “Asa, you idiot, you didn’t bring Lauren’s present in! It’s still in John’s trunk!”
The next time he added anyone to a lease, he was adding provisions like Knock and actually wait for an invitation before entering a room and Keep your mouth shut about presents if the gift giver himself hasn’t mentioned them first.
“Yeah,” he said, trying to figure a way out of this one. “The only—”
Lauren set her cup down on the bleachers, skipping down them so fast she ran right into Asa. He caught her by the shoulders, the loose waves of her hair tickling his fingertips as she angled her head back to look up at him.
“I’ll come with you,” she said, breathless. “I could use some fresh air.”
He dropped his hands, shoving them into his pockets, where he immediately set off the Fart Maker.
“Not that kind of air,” she laughed, nudging him with her elbow.
The first chance he got, he was throwing the stupid thing away. “All right,” he said gruffly. “Give me a second to get John’s keys from him.”
Once Asa had the keys and no more excuses, he led Lauren out into the cold night air. The afternoon had been deceptively nice when the sun was out, but now that it was dark with nothing but a sliver of moon in the sky, the temperature had dropped considerably. Lauren hugged her arms around herself, and he wished he had a jacket to offer her.
“John’s such a good guitar player,” she said. “Guitarist? What’s the right word? Are they both right?”
He wouldn’t say Lauren was drunk yet, but from the flush on her cheeks and the fast, slightly louder than normal way she was talking, she was definitely a little past tipsy. “He used to be in another band,” he said. “They had that song, ‘If Only’? It was a while ago, but it still plays on the radio sometimes.”
“Oh my god,” Lauren said, stopping in her tracks. “I thought there was something familiar about him. I loved that song! And the singer—what was her name, it started with an M . . .”
“Micah,” Asa said. He hadn’t followed the band, but he’d looked them up after John had moved in. Once, he’d even mentioned Micah to John, but that was all it had taken to teach him not to do it again. The internet had several theories about why the band had broken up, but whatever the reason, it was clearly something John hadn’t wanted to get into. Now he played in a glorified bar band and kept to himself, and Asa respected those boundaries.
“Yes!” She shook her head, shivering a little. “God, that’s really cool. Imagine doing something like that. My biggest dream is to be an accountant.”
“Well, that’s cool, too. And you’re doing it.”
She kicked a bottle cap on the ground. “Not really. I’m a bookkeeper. Which is fine, but I want to go into business for myself. Get my CPA license, do the big-picture stuff for a bunch of different companies and people, not just the smaller-picture stuff for one.” She bent down to pick up the bottle cap, sticking it in her pocket. “I hate litter. And I’m rambling. And I’m boring myself, and probably you. Sorry!”