Chris appears. “All set.”
I break away from Sabin’s stare. “What’s the damage?” I ask.
“Nothing. You’re all set. We can pull the truck around to the back and they’ll load it in for us.”
It takes me a second to understand what he’s telling me. “You bought me a ginormous TV?”
“And we’re going to Hawaii?” Sabin starts jumping up and down and tossing movies at us.
Chris just stands there grinning.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Old and the New
Outside in the freezing cold, I try to pace myself on the last run I’ll be doing in Wisconsin this year. Tomorrow morning, December 21, I take a flight home. By the late afternoon, I’ll be back in the house that I grew up in. James comes in on the twenty-third, so I’ll have two days entirely alone. But I am determined not to feel alone.
I’m not sure where I’ll run at home, and it’s making me anxious. If I get lucky, we won’t have snow, and it’ll just be the cold temperatures that I have to deal with. I’m used to those from running here, and I actually like it now that I have the right running gear. My dependency on running is undeniable, and I know that my workouts are going to suffer over break. The next playlist starts, and I smile. It’s a new one from Chris, and it makes this run easy. More than easy: exhilarating.
After my run, I shower and pack. Estelle is gone—again—so I set her Christmas present on her bed so that I don’t forget to give it to her before I leave. I have no idea if I’ll see her tonight or even tomorrow morning. As far as I know, none of her siblings know anything about this boyfriend of hers. I certainly wish that I didn’t.
I had the unfortunate experience of seeing her with him yesterday, and if I’d finished my anthropology paper just a few minutes earlier, I would not have been in the dark corridor of the department building just before it closed for the afternoon, thick paper in hand, cursing my professor for not accepting digital copies. But I was. When I rounded the corner to my professor’s hall, I saw them through the windows of the door that led to the back stairwell. Even with all of the self-pleasuring time I’m afforded with Estelle out of the room, I can’t say that I’ve ever fantasized about watching my roommate have sex with someone.
Especially not a professor.
It does, at least, explain why she doesn’t talk about him. I’m guessing that Estelle’s God does not endorse fucking your professor. I recognized the man she was screwing because he’d filled in for my professor one day, and I’d been fascinated by the way he had thumped the desk and then immediately snapped his fingers every time he wanted to emphasize a certain point. I sincerely hope that Estelle does not have to tolerate that habit when they fuck. Like, does he have an orgasm and then do the old thump-and-snap to underscore the point? Luckily, I don’t stay long enough to find out and manage to deliver my paper and get the hell out of there without being noticed. Unfortunately, I am stuck with the visual of Estelle vigorously humping the guy.
Distracting myself, though, is easy enough now that it’s the day before my departure. I want James to come home to a fully decorated house, so I’ve been keeping a running list of things to do and buy. I’ve ordered him dozens of presents online and done my best to time their delivery for after I’m home and before James is. Wrapping his gifts alone will take hours because I want them to be perfect. Aunt Lisa was a complete disaster when it came to gift giving, and I will not miss forcing a smile after opening my annual gift card to The Olive Garden or something dull like a set of twin sheets.
When my suitcase is packed, I stop by Chris’s room to give him his present. I’m giving him something that’s actually wrapped in snowflake paper, even though I certainly felt the temptation to announce instead that I was gracing him with the honor of deflowering me for Christmas (Happy holidays!), but it didn’t seem like a good idea. We have a good thing going right now.
He opens his door wearing a Grinch T-shirt. “Bah humbug!”
“Ditto,” I say. “But I’m here to give you a little present anyway.”
“If it’s not high-end electronic equipment, I don’t want it.”
I hand him a gift bag. “Okay, then. It’s high-end electronic equipment.”
“Yippee!” He sits down on the bed and shakes the bag. “Ah, I’m pretty sure this is a special gizmo for shrinking down ginormous televisions that have taken over your room. Right?”
I glance over to where the Black Friday flat screen he bought for me occupies nearly his entire desk.
“I think that you secretly love having this in your room and that when Sabin and I are not here you watch giant-scale porn.”
“Obviously. But I’d still like to have desk space for the rare occasions when I’m not watching porn. And, hey!” he says with exaggerated annoyance. “Estelle came over last week and watched What You Need to Know about Roman Catholicism. That’s your fault.”
I grin. “Sorry about that. Now you know why I wanted the television in here. Besides, the only way I could at all comfortably accept that you paid for it is to make sure it’s half yours. Now open your present. I have to go double-check that I packed everything and go to bed. I have a six a.m. flight.”
He takes the wrapping off the square box and shakes it again, listening to it rattle. “I think it’s broken. You better return it,” he teases.
“It is not broken. Now open it!”
He reads the card. “So you’ll always have what you need.” I wiggle my toes inside my shoes, slightly nervous that this might be corny, but he empties the contents of the box into his hand and smiles at the silver disks. “Skipping stones.” He rubs one with his fingers and then pretends to throw it.
“That’s why there are twenty,” I say, laughing. “I assume you’ll throw a few in the lake. Or all of them. Maybe they’re for making wishes.”
“I’m not throwing these away on a ridiculous whim.” He looks up at me from his spot on the bed, and we’re quiet for a moment. “These are really awesome, Blythe. Thank you.”
“I wanted you to open them on Christmas, but I didn’t think it’d be nice to make you pack them. They’re kind of heavy.”
“Speaking of which,” he says as he reaches under his bed. “This you can’t open until Christmas. It’s packed well and not heavy, so it goes home with you. And no peeking.”
“God, Chris, you didn’t have to get me anything!” I gesture to the monstrosity on his desk.
“That was a Black Friday present. This is a Christmas present. It’s nothing crazy, and I don’t know why I picked this out, but … It’s random. It just made me think of you for some reason. You’ll probably hate it.”
“I’m not going to hate it.”
“No peeking until Christmas. Promise?”
“I promise.” The present is wrapped in deep blue paper with a dark green ribbon. The colors of the Atlantic Ocean, I think. I’m dying to know what it is, and I immediately try to calculate how many hours are left until Christmas, but I’m not that good at mental math. “What time is your flight tomorrow?” I ask.
“Noon.”
“You probably have to pack still and stuff, huh? I should get going and get some sleep.” I hate good-byes. And I’m out of practice because I’ve had virtually no one to say good-bye to for so long.
Things haven’t felt awkward with Chris in a while, but we’re not going to see each other for over three weeks, and … I don’t like that. In the scheme of things, it’s not that long, but time moves differently in our insulated college life. This break will feel interminable.