Page 20 of The Holiday Exchange

11

TREVOR

Itoss Kayla’s jeans in the dryer and turn it on, taking a moment to lean against it and bury my face in my hands. She’s wearing my pants and I don’t understand what about that is so appealing but it doesn’t really matter. I have to be cool. I can’t let her see how attracted I am to her right now.

Work, Trevor, she’s here to work on the set. Focus, man.

With a bracing breath, I emerge from the laundry room and go meet her in the garage. She already has the door up and stands waiting beside our fireplace.

“I would offer to help you carry it out, but I think you can handle it based on last time.” She gathers up the box of paint supplies and walks out, leaving me to follow in her wake. I watch her for about two seconds, noting the way her blonde hair fans in the breeze before I get ahold of myself and heft the fireplace up and out.

“Okay, what are we doing now?”

“We’re going to paint red and yellow right here to look like flames.” I indicate the inside of the fireplace with a paintbrush. “And when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘you’ because I can build things but I am not an artist.”

“Flames, got it. What are you going to be doing?”

I hold up a finger and jog back into the garage to grab the two giant plywood candy canes I cut out this week. “I am going to attach bases to these guys so they can stand up on their own and then I’ll paint red and white stripes. I can handle stripes.”

“Oh, those are so cool! The kids will love how big they are.”

“Well, they aren’t done yet.” But I smile, glad she’s pleased.

We fall into a rhythm, her painting, me drilling and I can see we are making good time.

“I think we’ll be able to finish up today. When should I bring them to the school?”

“I was thinking about that. What are you doing Friday?”

“I work until six. After that I’m free.”

“Great! How about this – I’ll meet you at the school whenever you think you can get there after work and then you can come with me to the Christmas party that my roommate and I are throwing at our place. It’ll be a good chance for you to practice some of your new people skills. And there will be several single ladies there, so you might even meet Miss Right.” She wiggles her eyebrows.

“Oh, uh…” I swallow, trying to think of a reason why I can’t go. But I already said I was free so there’s no way out of this without being rude or a complete coward. “Sure, sounds fun.”

Kayla snorts. “You said that like I asked if you wanted a root canal.”

“No, really.” I try to muster up some enthusiasm. This is what I wanted, after all. For her to teach me how to talk to people. I have to put the things she’s teaching me into practice at some point. “I’ll come. It’s better than spending a Friday by myself, right?”

“Technically, you wouldn’t be by yourself – you have Luke and Leia now. How did you come up with those names, anyway? They’re cute.”

I blink at her. “They’re from Star Wars. You know, Luke Skywalker and his sister Leia?”

“Oh.” She shrugs. “I’ve never seen the Star Wars movies.”

I nearly drop the paintbrush I just pulled from the box. “Never? None of them?”

“I know, I know. I learned a long time ago not to tell just anyone that dark little secret. You’re not the first person to look at me like I’m a complete weirdo.”

I school my face back to a neutral expression and dip my brush into the red paint. “You’re not weird. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“I’m just not a big fan of sci-fi movies. Space and aliens do not interest me.”

“Science fiction is more than just outer space and aliens. Sure, that’s a lot of sci-fi stories, but it’s really any story based on future science and technology.Jurassic Parkis science fiction. So areMinority Report,The Matrix,Back to the Future,Inception– ”

“Okay, okay!” Kayla laughs. “I get it. Maybe I do like science fiction. I mean, who doesn’t likeJurassic Park? It’s a classic.”

“Totally. Still holds up today.”

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