With Love, from Cold World(54)
Asa’s gaze slid to Lauren’s, and she gave a defensive shake of her head. “Part of the initiative for us to work in other departments,” she said. “Learn more about Cold World.”
Ah. So what she was really saying was that, in a roundabout way, Asa had no one but himself to blame for the teeth-gritting presence of Daniel Alvarez in the shop. It had been his original idea, after all, when he’d wanted to get Lauren to have to work the Snow Globe.
“We’re not busy right now,” Asa said. They weren’t busy at all. It was only three thirty, a relatively dead hour before the after-work crowd started trickling in. He hadn’t seen a customer in at least twenty minutes. “We could get by with one person on wrapping duty. Lauren, if you have more experience, maybe you’d . . .”
Daniel cut him off. “My mother was very specific. She wanted both of us to work together. Just show us where to set up and we’ll be good to go.”
What was Dolores up to? It hadn’t made much sense to Asa to have him work the gift shop with Kiki in the first place, although he’d been grateful for the change. But it really didn’t make any sense to have two people on gift-wrap duty, especially two people who presumably had much higher-level tasks to work on.
He glanced at Lauren, hoping for a clue, but she was fiddling with the pen display. Trust her to find the one powder blue pen he’d accidentally left behind with the silver ones.
Kiki reached under the counter, pulling out two rolls of metallic wrapping paper, two rolls of tape, and some scissors. “You’ll have to share,” she said. “We only have the one pair of scissors. Asa, you’re the expert—want to show them how to do it?”
“It’s wrapping a present,” he said. “Not brain surgery.”
But he grabbed an empty box meant for one of their display snow globes, flipping it facedown onto an unfurled sheet of candy-cane-striped paper. He grabbed a Sharpie from under the counter but didn’t bother to uncap it. “On a real present, you’ll black out or remove any price first,” he said. “Put the best side of the box on the flat of the paper so the uglier taped underside ends up on the bottom of the gift. Cut the paper—” He sliced the scissors through the metallic wrapping, a sensation that always gave him a shoot of satisfaction whenever they slid right through. “Fold it under at the edges to create a clean seam, leave enough paper at the ends to fold into neat triangles but not so much that it gets crumpled, and if you’ve done it right you should only need three pieces of tape, one here—” He pressed a long piece down the center seam before adding two shorter pieces to each of the triangles folded into the sides. “And one each here. Voilà, the present is wrapped.”
Lauren was staring at him like he’d just demonstrated advanced necromancy.
“Why do you black out the price?” Daniel asked.
Asa shifted his attention to him with some difficulty. “Because it’s the class move, Daniel.”
“And why do we wrap at all? Gift bags would be easier and more efficient.”
“Wrapping is more cost-effective,” Lauren pointed out. “A roll of that paper probably costs as much as a single bag, and we can get several gifts out of it.”
A couple days ago, the human cash register joke would’ve written itself. But now he didn’t know where he stood with Lauren, didn’t know if humor would move him forward or set him back. “More importantly,” he said, directing his words more to her than to Daniel, “gift-wrapping shows a certain amount of care. It shows that you took time and effort with your present, that you thought of the recipient. That you wanted them to have that moment when their pulse quickens, right before they tear off the paper. Or maybe they open it carefully, undoing each piece of tape, savoring the anticipation of revealing what’s underneath.”
Lauren’s dark eyes looked big and luminous behind her glasses. He wouldn’t have known she was up half the night except for the slight purple shadows there. And under that cardigan and button-up shirt, he knew she probably still had a small rosy circle on the curve of her neck, where he’d sucked at her skin.
“Are we still talking about wrapping up snow globes?” Daniel asked derisively. “I doubt there’s anything in this shop worth being that precious about.”
Kiki gestured over at a table in the corner, which they’d intended to be a gift-wrapping station once it got a little closer to Christmas. “You can set up over there,” she said. “Just don’t be surprised if no one comes.”
Lauren gathered up the supplies and headed over to the table, but Asa called Daniel back, holding up the Sharpie. “You forgot this,” he said. The way the other man snatched it from Asa’s fingers, he seemed to understand that there was some kind of implied insult in the gesture, even if he couldn’t figure out what it was.
“What do you think that’s about?” Kiki whispered once Daniel and Lauren were settled in at the table on the other side of the gift shop.
“You know how Dolores gets around the holidays,” Asa said gruffly. “She’s obviously in the middle of some frenzied game of workplace musical chairs.”
“The dinner date last night must’ve gone really well,” Kiki said, ignoring him. “I tried to ask her about it this morning, but she was her usual Lauren self about it.”