Chapter 17
seventeen
The scent of warm coffee and maybe cinnamon hung in the air as I opened my bedroom door. The living room was quiet, except for the low hum of music from someone’s phone.
I shuffled into the kitchen like a ghost freshly risen from the grave, hair a mess, wearing the same sweatshirt I’d thrown on sometime after waking up. I’d huddled in the bathroom again and then dragged myself out for the final time at around two a.m.
Josh stood by the counter in soft joggers and a henley with sleeves pushed to his elbows, pouring a glass of water with the kind of casual grace that made my half-dead body feel personally offended.
“Hey,” he said, looking up when he noticed me. “How are you feeling?”
“Oddly … fine.” My voice came out hoarse, a surprise even to me.
He walked over and held out the glass. “That’s a relief. I was ready to call an ambulance if you didn’t move by noon.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, taking the water. My fingers brushed his, and I tried not to think about it too hard. “Gina left already?”
“Headed out a few hours ago.”
I remembered, at one point last night, she had gently knocked on the bathroom door to check on me, though I wasn’t one for much conversation at the time. She mentioned something about having someone curse Jackson.
I hadn’t told her not to.
He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, watching me as I slowly sipped.
“Once you get changed,” he said casually, “and finish your water, I have a question for you.”
Unable to stall anymore, the glass empty, I looked at him. “Should I be concerned?”
“Only if you hate fun.” He tilted his head toward the stove clock. “If you’re up for it, that is.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Define up for it.”
“Ever heard of speed-wrapping holiday gifts?”
I blinked at him. “Speed … wrap?”
He gave a sheepish grin. “Okay, so that’s not technically the official name. But from what I hear, that’s what it turns into after the first ten minutes.”
“So, you’ve never done this before?”
“No, but it counts as one of my evening extracurriculars that I’m supposed to check off before the school year ends. I’m two behind.”
I gasped in mock betrayal and lightly swatted the back of his arm. “You’re using me to score teacher points?”
“Absolutely not.” His grin widened. “I’m using you to win the totally unofficial—and very serious—gift-wrapping face-off at the school’s holiday fundraiser.”
I stared at him, partially amused, even more skeptical.
“If you were still sick,” he added, “I might have sweetened the deal with rumors of a cookie exchange and hot chocolate bar.”
I rolled my eyes dramatically. “Now you’re just playing dirty.”
He shrugged. “I prefer the term strategic incentive deployment.”
I leaned against the fridge, pretending to consider it. “You just said it wasn’t a competition.”
“It’s not.” He paused. “Not really.”
“Josh.”
He grinned. “Fine. But between you and me, I still bet I can wrap more presents than you during our shift.”
I took another sip of water and narrowed my eyes at him. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“It is.”
“Then you’re on.”
I tugged off my scarf as we climbed the stone steps up to the school’s main entrance. The brick building was decked out with string lights and makeshift cardboard snowflakes taped to the windows.
Through the glass, I could already hear laughter echoing from the gym and smell something dangerously sugary in the air.
Josh swiped his school badge that had a picture of him that made him look like a mad scientist. Why in the world had his hair looked like that on picture day? I didn’t think I’d ever seen him use hair gel in his life.
Had it been a bet? A dare?
He held the door open for me. “Prepare yourself.”
“For?”
“Holiday madness. Kids hyped up on candy canes and divorced dads pretending they know how to use Scotch tape.”
“You really know how to paint a picture.”
The second we stepped inside, I was hit by warmth, bright lighting, and the unmistakable chaos of a school holiday fundraiser.
Long folding tables were piled with unwrapped donations.
Parents bustled about in red sweaters. And there, at the end of the room, was a whiteboard labeled Wrapping Wars with tally marks already in progress.
It was hard not to think that you weren’t a holiday extraordinaire from the moment you walked into the middle school, however. The entire gym had been transformed into a sort of wonderland that represented any winter holiday the kids celebrated.
Classic tunes circulated through the speakers. Armed with colorful rolls of wrapping paper, shiny ribbons, and an assortment of gift tags, staff cleared a space on foldable white tables. It transformed the gym into a wrapping headquarters.
I guessed that made us holiday elves. With Josh’s bright burgundy hat that was a size too large for his head with a giant white puff ball on top, the elf metaphor felt even more apt.
On one side of the gym, there were parents helping their kids wrap their cheap plastic trinkets they had purchased at the school’s Christmas market.
Josh and I, along with a half dozen others, were on toy donations that would be going to the local shelter brought in throughout the month before the holidays so that those who stayed there would have something to open the day of Christmas when everyone else was looking beneath a tree for what Santa might’ve brought them.
I dropped the next gift onto the center of a bright red sheet of wrapping paper.
I looked over the doll, complete with a hairbrush and a change of clothing including a pink dress and matching plastic purse, mentally calculating just how much paper I was going to need.
I sliced through the paper confidently in one crisp swipe.
I had never speed-wrapped presents before, and now I honestly thought it should be considered an Olympic sport. Or at least a holiday sport. Was there such a thing?
The DIY television channel or the local Home Haven magazine would eat this kind of thing up.
Maybe I could attempt to pitch Home Haven again as their website started to publish more. Get in before other writers got wind of just how much charity one of the smaller middle schools was doing in the city.
“Now you’re getting the hang of it,” Josh commented, slapping a bow perfectly straight on the top of his latest box, which looked like some kind of building block set. “Soon enough, you’ll be wrapping yours at a fast pace.”
“Ha-ha,” I said blandly, though he was already moving on to the next gift.
I quickly shifted my attention back to what I was doing. I started to twist the present around and find a rhythm that Josh had already seemed to perfect. The paper hugged the box gently before I taped the seams, though I still had an odd bump on one edge.
Was it from too much paper? Or had I just not tucked it correctly?
I glanced toward Josh to see if he noticed my struggle before I reached for a shiny gold bow to stick on top, hoping that it detracted from my awkward wrapping job.
I passed along a rectangular box wrapped in cartoon snowmen before being handed another gift to wrap. This one was smaller—jewelry-sized. I didn’t open it, but I let myself imagine a tiny ballerina spinning inside the box as I reached for the yellow polka-dot paper from the pile.
“People at the school actually donated all of these toys?” I asked.
Josh nodded, his hands moving with practiced ease as he sliced clean lines into a sheet of red foil paper.
“Yeah. They’ve got a solid community here and have been doing this for a few years now.
They have a sort of tree that parents or local businesses even, can take a tag off of.
Each tag shares different toys or gifts that families at the shelter need.
” He paused to crease a crisp fold. “I heard this haul is nearly double what they collected last year.”
I looked down at the growing mountain of wrapped gifts with a new sort of appreciation. “That’s kind of amazing. I didn’t realize people around here were so intense about Christmas.”
“The school district here takes its holiday spirit seriously.”
“You like it here?” I asked instead, my voice quiet but curious.
Josh cocked his head slightly, the corners of his mouth lifting, like he was trying to decide if I was being serious.
“Yeah,” he said after a second. “I like it here. The school’s good. Kids are good. It’s not forever, but … for now? I’m happy.” He gave a small shrug, as if that was the best explanation he could offer.
And maybe it was.
We kept folding and taping in companionable silence, the buzz of the fundraiser filling the space around us.
Kids squealed as they rushed to pick their wrapped presents from the Winter Wishes table.
A dad with a glitter beard tried—and failed—to stuff a basketball into a square gift box.
Laughter floated through the air, mingled with the soft sounds of Mariah Carey and the scent of sugar cookies warming in foil trays.
Wrapping was something I usually did while half watching a holiday movie on my own, but now it had somehow turned into something fun. Especially when I glanced over and saw Josh crouching beside a little girl in a fuzzy antler headband, asking her what her favorite part of the event was.
Her answer was, “Cookies and coloring,” and his laugh—warm, soft, real—made something in my stomach flip.
Something about seeing him here—so naturally himself, so good with people—made the ache of disappointment from my never-ending string of horrible dates feel more distant than it had been sneaking up on me again.
How couldn’t it? I mean, after a while whether it be two dates of six now, it was hard not to think that things weren’t working out because, well, me.
By the time our shift ended, we had a stack of shiny, haphazardly labeled gifts towering beside the main tree and only one minor paper-cut injury between us.
Josh looked a little too pleased with himself.
“What?”
“You don’t have to say anything. I know I won,” he said with that insufferably smug grin.
I rolled my eyes, though a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “You knew you were going to win.”
“Confidence is key,” he said, tossing a ribbon spool into the bin like it was a basketball.
“And here I was, thinking this was about giving back to your new school community.”
“Oh, it is.” He leaned in a little, voice dropping conspiratorially. “But it’s also about crushing your opponents with speed, precision, and superior tape control.”
I let out a laugh I hadn’t expected. “You’re unbelievable.”
“And yet,” he said with a wink, “you still agreed to team up with me.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Yeah, well … I was sick. My judgment was compromised.”
He grinned. “No take-backs.”
As we stood by the exit, coats in hand and breath fogging lightly in the crisp December air that seeped through the school’s old double doors, I could already feel my body beginning to drag.
My fingers were sore from folding and taping, and I had a glitter smear on my wrist from some rogue ribbon that had clearly fought back.
Josh glanced at the time on his phone and then at me. “You’re still going on that date tonight?”
I groaned. Out loud. “Unfortunately.”
He raised an eyebrow at my dramatics, bursting with one of his laughs. “You don’t sound very excited.”
“That’s because I’m not.” I hugged my coat to my chest without putting it on yet. “This was supposed to be a rest-and-recover day after being sick, not wrap four hundred presents, then go smile for two hours at another guy who talks about how he’s totally different from other guys.”
Josh smirked and held out a hand. “Here. Arms.”
“What?”
“Come on. If I’m sending you into the dating war zone, the least I can do is make sure you’re properly bundled.”
Despite the eye roll I gave him, I let him take my coat and slid my arms into it.
His hands were warm, his touch careful and grounding in a way that made my skin buzz beneath the fabric.
He tugged the coat gently up around my shoulders, and then, without hesitation, he reached forward and pulled the zipper up for me.
His fingers brushed against my neck lightly as he adjusted the collar, shouldn’t have made my heart flutter. But it did. Dammit.
“There,” he said softly, like it wasn’t a big deal. Like my pulse hadn’t just picked up.
I managed to speak around the growing weight in my chest. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Even if I still think you shouldn’t go.”
I looked up at him, our breath mingling in the small space between us. “What would I do instead? Stay in and watch a movie with you and eat leftover cookies?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Yes. You could also come with me. My friend invited me over to a small get-together. Just movies and stuff tonight. But they are probably better company than whatever weirdo you’ve got lined up.”
Yeah. That sounded infinitely better than whatever awkward two-drink minimum was waiting for me across town.
But I’d already committed. And I didn’t trust myself to know if staying in with Josh would be easier or harder.
“I promised Gina,” I said finally.
“Forget about my sister.”
“Don’t be rude.”
He huffed.
“And the guy seems normal. At least so far.”
There was an unreadable shift in his expression. “Well … if it goes bad, you know where to find me. I’ll save you a snickerdoodle.”
That earned him a small laugh from me. “Deal.”
As we stepped out into the icy air, I found myself walking slower than usual, dragging my boots through a thin dusting of snow on the sidewalk, as if the date wouldn’t happen if I just didn’t move fast enough.
Josh walked beside me quietly, close enough that our arms brushed once or twice.
It was nothing.