Page 113 of Holidating
“He isn’t worth it, okay? Go out with him if you want. Or not. But treat yourself right. Because he’s not going to look out for you.”
She gave me a little eye roll. “Everybody gets dumped, Katie. Even you.”
“But I didn’t. I broke up with him.”
“Sure you did,” she said immediately. Her words had dismissed me, but her eyes were interested.
“I did. And then he decided to teach me a little lesson.”
“How?” she whispered, unable to hide her curiosity.
“I was stupid. I fooled around with him one more time…” God, I didn’t want to say this next part out loud. But she deserved to know what she was getting herself into. “Without my knowledge, he let some people watch.”
Her eyebrows shot straight up, disappearing into her bangs. “Like, through a hole in the door?”
Kill me now. I really was the only naive idiot left on this campus, wasn’t I? Slowly, I nodded.
“That is so wrong,” she hissed.
“You think?”
She stuffed makeup products back into her clutch purse. “You know, fuck it. I’m just going to sneak out and go home. He’s been giving me a not-so-nice vibe all night. And that is just too much.” She jammed the bag under her arm. “Good night.”
Without another word, she stormed out of the bathroom.
Then it was just me alone with the little mirror. And I felt an instinctual pull to go over to it and check my makeup. Because you never know when your eyeliner has smeared…
No, I coached myself.Andy’s waiting. And he doesn’t care about your stupid makeup.
I pushed open the bathroom door and went to find him.
CHAPTER7
ANDY
When Katie departed for the bathroom, it left me standing there with Dash and his thick-necked pals. I’d had enough to drink. So instead of reaching for another beer, I began to noodle around with the outrageous pink basketball I’d been carrying around. I rolled it up the back of my hand and along my arm. Then I dribbled it a couple of times on the old wooden floor beneath me.
“Nice ball you’ve got there,” Dash muttered. “Is your team switchingteamsthis season?”
A gay joke from a frat guy?Shocker. “You know, it’s not nice to make fun of a guy’s balls,” I quipped. Nothing he could say right now could ruin my mood. I still wouldn’t have minded landing a punch right in the middle of his smirk. But I wasn’t going to do it. Because fighting Dash and his crew was a pretty bad idea, one which would surely mess up the plan I had to walk Katie home and ask her out.
Eyes on the prize, and all.
Ignoring Dash, I toyed with the ball, spinning it on my finger and dribbling through my legs. This always relaxed me. Whenever I was stressed out about something, I took the ball in my hands and began to calm down.
Still, I could feel him watching me. Maybe he thought I was showing off, but it wasn’t really like that. If I wanted to show off, I’d do these tricks twice as fast. I was just taking things nice and easy,letting the ball slide off my palms, feeling the satisfying bounce of rubber against wood and then skin.
“Pass,” Dash said.
Really, dude? You have to get competitive?Maybe he didn’t enjoy the fact that I was friendly with his ex-girlfriend. What a tool.
I passed him the ball. He palmed it, then bent his knees to execute a couple behind-the-back bounces. Then once under the knee. And then he bounced it back to me.
You want to show off? Fine. For the next fifteen seconds, I gave it to him: bang-bang under one leg, followed by a scissor cross, a few strokes of walking the dog, and then a quick bounce back to him.
He fumbled it, which made me irrationally happy. Then he did a little handiwork with a triangle dribble around his right leg (and I’d bet money he couldn’t do his left) before a fake and a snap back to me.
The fake and the snap were exactly what I thought he’d do. So I took that ball as if I’d been waiting for it all my life. Slowing it down, I dribbled around my body a few times, spinning it on a fingertip after that. “Stay ready,” I warned him.
