“That’s right, you like to hear about people’s dreams.”
The wind blew her hair across her mouth, and she tossed her head, giving a little laugh. He wondered what she would do if he cradled her face in his hands and kissed her. Soft, hard, every which way he could get his mouth on hers.
He wished he could ask her why she’d traded his name away for Secret Santa. But he wasn’t even supposed to know she’d had him in the first place, and he didn’t really want to get into how he’d traded, too.
“You said once that you’d quit,” Asa said, “if nothing happened with your proposal to improve Cold World. Do you still feel that way?”
“Probably.” She laughed again, but this time there was a manic edge to it. “I guess I should pack up my desk, huh? Considering it’s almost Christmas and I don’t even have an idea yet. Not one! Zip! A not-so-randomly-generated big fat zero.”
She brought her hand up to her face in a circle that he supposed was meant to convey the big fat zero in question, but soon she was pressing her fingertips to the area around her eyes. “My glasses,” she said. “Where are my glasses?”
He circled her wrists with his hands, gently dragging her hands away from her face before she poked herself in the eye. “I think you left them at home,” he said. “You must be wearing contacts.”
“Well?” she demanded. “Am I?”
The parking lot was well lit, between the streetlights and the neon glow from neighboring businesses. Asa leaned in, studying the slim ring around Lauren’s dark irises. “Yes,” he said. “Definitely.”
“That’s right,” she said, nodding like he’d just passed a test. “Lauren Fox wears glasses. Lauren Fox would never even joke about leaving a job until she had another one all lined up.”
“Lauren Fox talks about herself in the third person?”
“She would never try the punch, or dance. If you’d told Lauren Fox a month ago she’d have a date with Daniel Alvarez, she would’ve snuck into the bathroom to dry-heave over the toilet.”
He wanted to say that an inclination to vomit seemed about right around Daniel, but he didn’t trust himself to get the words out in a way that didn’t sound petty or jealous or both.
“You said it yourself,” she continued. “If it’s not fun, don’t do it. That’s my new motto, too! Being that Lauren Fox was exhausting. This way is so much better. Look, I’m not even wearing my necklace anymore.”
She tapped her bare collarbone, goose bumps visible on her skin from the crisp bite of the air. He’d noticed she wasn’t wearing it, but he hadn’t put any particular significance behind the choice, any more than he’d thought she’d just been in a contacts mood instead of a glasses one.
“Time to let go of the past,” she said. “And stop worrying about the future.”
Something about Lauren’s words didn’t sit right with him, or maybe it was the desperate undertone to her voice. It came off less like she was running toward something and more like she was running away. If she truly felt empowered, he’d cheer her on, but none of it sounded like her. “There’s nothing wrong with wearing a necklace that means something to you,” he said. “Or taking your future seriously, for that matter. There’s nothing wrong with being Lauren Fox.”
“Well,” she said, rubbing her upper arms. “I’m having a perfectly good time at the party without her, just living in the here and now. And speaking of, the here and now is freezing, so . . .”
He looked down at the keys in his hand. He’d almost forgotten why they’d come out in the first place, and their conversation had only made it that much more clear that there was no way he could give Lauren the present he’d made. It had definitely not been designed with an eye to forget the past, or ignore the future.
Reluctantly, he opened the trunk, reaching toward the back . . .
Where, at the last minute, he grabbed a bottle of coolant, peeling off the stick-on bow from the wrapped present and sticking it on the side of the plastic bottle with such sleight of hand he hoped Lauren wouldn’t clock it.
“Here you go,” he said, handing it to her and closing the trunk behind him. “If your car ever overheats, you know. You’ll be covered.”
She stared down at the bottle as if he’d just handed her a jar with a human brain inside. “It’s . . . antifreeze.”
“Yeah.”