Page 126 of Holidating
At last, Katie hurried through the door, her gaze sweeping the crowd. He lifted a hand to wave to her, to let her know that he’d welcome having her as his seatmate. Even though she probably hated him.
Her gaze slid right on past.
Dash watched as Katie scanned the room, a ripple of uncertainty on her face. Then that ripple broke into a shy little smile, which she directed at a lanky boy two rows up. Wait — he was the basketball player. Her date from the other night.
The guy sat up straighter as she approached. Katie had that effect on people. They wanted to be just a little bit more of whatever they were when she was around. Dash had felt the same way. It’s just that he’d never figured out what to do about it. Katie scared the shit out of him most of the time. That’s how he always ended up slipping into the lowbrow humor of his frat buddies. He knew it wasn’t the right way to talk to her. It’s just that he’d never figured out what to say instead.
Looked like he’d never get thatchance, now.
She scooted into the row where the basketball player sat. Following exam day rules, she didn’t take the seat next to his, but left an empty one between them. Still looking a little awkward — maybe even sheepish — Katie lowered her bag onto the empty chair, then turned to face him.
The basketball player reached a long arm behind the empty chair to give her ponytail a playful tug. And Dash saw Katie’s smile melt into something warmer and less self-conscious than it had been a few seconds before.
“I wanted to ask you to lunch,” the guy said. “But my bossy sister is going to be waiting for me in her car after the exam. She’s my ride to New Hampshire.”
“We’ll go for lunch after the break,” Katie said. “Three weeks from now.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But that sounds like a long wait to me.”
Her face got soft then. And Dash didn’t recognize that expression. He wondered if she’d never shown it to him, or if maybe he hadn’t recognized it when he’d had the chance.
“I almost forgot,” her date said, reaching to the floor for what turned out to be a tiny little gift bag. “This is a good luck present. For the exam.”
Her eyes sparkled as she took the gift in two hands. Reaching inside, she removed two long, thin objects. “They’re… a lightsaber pen and pencil?”
“Those are really good luck.”
Katie giggled. “Because the force is with me?”
“Now you’re getting it. There’s one more thing in that bag.”
Katie reached inside one more time, removing a little green thing, which she balanced on her palm. “It’s Yoda.”
“He’s wise. And he also erases,” the basketball player said.
She laughed. “That’s… they’re perfect. Thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” was his reply. But obviously that wasn’t true. Because Katie arranged those funny things on the little wooden writing arm of the lecture hall seat, then smiled at them as if she’d been given a set of crown jewels.
Dash flipped his very ordinary pen up into the air again,puzzling over what he’d just seen. He knew that girls liked flowers, which he’d never really understood. Flowers were expensive and they looked really sad when they began to wilt. But a Star Wars pen?What the everloving fuck?
It was almost exam time, though. A graduate student had passed a stack of test booklets down the aisle. Dash took one and passed the rest of the stack onwards.
“Quick,” Katie said. She handed the basketball a bulging gift bag.
From inside, he pulled… that awful pink basketball he’d been playing with the other night. Then he put a hand over his mouth and laughed.
Katie beamed at him. “It made me think of you. Sorry. There’s something else in the bottom of the bag.”
He pulled out a large bar of gourmet chocolate. “Hey… salted caramel!”
“Because we didn’t make it to the ice cream shop.” After she said that, her ears began to turn pink.
“Right,” he chuckled. “I was really broken up about that.”
“I’ll bet,” she said, looking toward the proctor, who was passing out the actual test now.
“Thank you, Katie,” the basketball player said. He put his gifts on the floor and smoothed the test down onto the tiny desk in front of him. “And good luck.”
