“It’s half-empty.”
“Or half-full, depending on your perspective,” he said. God, this was painful. Maybe even worse than if he’d just given her the damn present. He suddenly felt like the whole party had been the worst idea he’d ever had, that he should’ve just stayed home and watched Netflix and gone to bed early.
And then she seemed to realize that her reaction might be rude, and that was even worse. Because he could see when the mask came down over her face, when she decided to smile and be polite the way Marcus had with the ten-song pocket gadget from Dolores.
“Thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ll just . . . drop this off at my car before we head back in.”
She didn’t bother unlocking her car, just set the bottle on top of her trunk like she knew it would be sitting right there waiting for her when she came back out. Dolores was always good about calling rideshares for anyone who needed one, and Lauren didn’t strike him as someone who’d even try to drive home after drinking, so she probably intended to leave the coolant there until she could collect her car the next day. Maybe it was less that she didn’t think it’d be taken and more like she didn’t care if it was.
When they came back through the front door, Asa was taken aback by the sudden cheers and applause, like they were walking into a surprise party. It took him only a few seconds to realize that someone had hung mistletoe over the door, and once again he and Lauren had gotten caught under it.
Chapter
Nineteen
It turned out that Lauren’s strategy at the beginning of the night of looking at herself in the mirror and repeating you are fun you will have fun wasn’t as effective as she’d thought it would be. She’d tried. Her time talking with Elliot and Kiki and other coworkers she normally didn’t interact with had been genuinely enjoyable, and after the first punch at least she’d felt loose and buzzy. She’d barely gotten a chance to talk with Asa, but she’d figured the night was young.
But Secret Santa had been a disaster, and she couldn’t even put her finger on why. She had a guilty pit in her stomach about not keeping Asa’s name, and then had been surprised he’d apparently drawn her name, too. It wasn’t like she’d expected anything big or super personal, but used coolant? After his speech about how wrapped gifts were more special, he’d only stuck a sloppy bow on it. That had to be a message.
And now they were under the mistletoe again, and Lauren had no idea what to do. Fun Lauren would definitely kiss him. Every version of Lauren wanted to kiss him. But apparently an entire personality change wasn’t possible just from the removal of glasses and a necklace, and the addition of some glittery eye shadow and some lethal punch. She wasn’t brave enough to make a move.
Asa reached up, the stretch lifting his shirt to reveal the tiniest sliver of bare skin at his stomach, and snatched the mistletoe off the top of the door. “This is a work party,” he said to the crowd. He shoved the mistletoe in his pocket, setting off the Fart Maker again. “Jesus,” he muttered under his breath, and somehow Lauren didn’t think he was reminding himself of the reason for the season.
The only thing that saved her from total mortification was Kiki, who immediately came up and dragged her away by the arm. “I told you to take my phone,” Kiki said, a slight slur on the last word, suggesting that she’d kept drinking while Lauren had been outside with Asa. “I just texted Marj that she could break my heart on Boxing Day, but she was not under any circumstances, to break up with me on Christmas.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lauren could see that Asa was no longer by the front door, although she couldn’t see where he’d gone. Daniel was standing near his mother—he didn’t seem inclined to spend time with anyone else at the party—and he waved her over when he saw her attention turn to him.
“But I don’t want to break up at all,” Kiki went on, “and now I’ve put the idea in her head! And I did it by paraphrasing the lyrics to a fucking Christmas song. As long as I have this phone in my hand I am a menace to society, I swear to god. Let’s grab another drink and dance and forget that cell phone technology exists.”
It sounded like a plan to Lauren, who decided to pretend she hadn’t seen Daniel’s gesture. She could be Fun Lauren without needing it to be about a guy at all.
The rest of the party passed in a blur. She danced with Kiki, Sonia, even Marcus. At one point, someone came behind her and put his hands on her waist, but she knew without turning it wasn’t Asa. He hadn’t come out to dance at all, and she tried to remember if he’d danced in past years. She could’ve sworn he had.