Page 99 of Holidating
“No time for tweaking. Bye, Delia! Thanks.”
“Bye, orangutan.” Then she clicked off. Delia loved getting the last word.
But never mind. I put onexactlywhat she’d told me to. I hung up the pants that hadn’t made the cut. Then, shoving my keys and my wallet into a pocket, I ran out the door and down the entryway stairs. Checking my phone, I saw that I had plenty of time. It was a two-minute walk to Katie’s dorm, and I had twice that.
My phone buzzed with a text from Delia.Good luck with the WASPs, string bean.
Holding up my phone and grinning like a dork, I took a selfie and sent it to her.
The clothes look great. But you’re hopeless,she replied.
That was probably true. And I’d never admit it to my sister, but she wasn’t totally off base with her remark about my confidence. Some guys just had a kind of swagger that worked for them. My neighbor Bridger? All he had to do was walk into a room, and the girls hurled themselves at him, like moths at a window screen on a summer night.
But what was swagger, really? It came from the belief that hot girls wanted to take you to bed. So, to acquire it, you’d need at least a little evidence that this was true.
Yeah. I didn’t have that. All I had was evidence that a hot girl needed a date for a party. But that was better than nothing, right? And I’d have a couple of hours in the company of the lovely Katie Vickery.
Life could really be worse.
Apparently Delia wasn’t done with me, though. When my phone buzzed again, she’d written:Ask her out again on your way home tonite.Don’t chicken out.
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But my sister was a smart girl.Okay. If things go well, I’ll do it, I replied.
If you do, I’ll buy you a sundae at Lou’s. If you chicken out, I win a sundae.
That seemed like a perfectly good incentive to do something that I already wanted to do.Deal,I replied.
CHAPTER 2
KATIE
After much deliberation with myself, I’d straightened my hair until it hung in golden sheets around my shoulders. It was a kick-ass look on me. Straightened hair said:I’m here to shine, and I will go that extra mile. So don’t you dare mess with me.
Actually, it probably only said:I am handy with the straightening iron. But whatevs. Either way, it gave me confidence, and confidence was in short supply this week.
Unstraightened hair, on the other hand, made a different statement. It said:I am an effortless beauty, and you’ll just have to take me as I am. But nothing felt effortless lately. And “effortless” was just a little too close to “careless” for my comfort. And tonight I couldnotappear careless. So I’d spent an hour on my hair, and now it was straight enough to be featured on somebody’s geometry exam.
I pushed the hair off my bare shoulders and assessed my outfit. “What do you think?” I asked my reflection in the mirror. “Is the neckline too much?”
My reflection didn’t answer. But my suitemate Katie did. “There’s no such thing as too much. You look hot in that dress.”
“Thanks, K2.”
“Any time,” she said, plopping down on my bed and making herself comfortable.
During the first week of school, a smokin’ hot lacrosse player had nicknamed us K1 and K2 because we were both named Katie. “Butwhy doessheget to be K1?” the other Katie had asked at the time, employing the flirtiest poutin the world.
“Sweetheart, K2 is an awesome nickname,” the LAX guy said. “Because K2 is a big mountain. And, well…” he broke off on a chuckle, his eyesrighton her ample cleavage.
The other Katie had grinned, then hitched up her bra. “I guess I can wear that name with pride.”
“You wear it well,” the guy had said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. About fifteen minutes later, they were lip-locked against a tree in the back yard of the frat house. And I, in my A-cup bra, was totally envious.
And that LAX player wasn’t the only one who thought of us as a pair. Our roommate Scarlet called us Blonde Katie (that’s me) and Ponytail Katie. Others simply referred to us as The Katies. Together, we’d hit the party scene hard these past three months. I’d begun the year with a kind of I-am-freshwoman-hear-me-roar attitude. I loved college, and it loved me back.
I’d thought so, anyway.
But seven nights ago I’d hit a sour note, and his name was Dash McGibb. Even though I was a generally upbeat person, my bad experience with Dash had left me feeling uncertain about everything — my choices, the company I kept.
