TOGETHER, we climbed a set of wide steps, passing a perfect row of rocking chairs on the porch. Until tonight, I’d never been inside of a sorority house. To me, they were mythical places, where the toilet seat was always down and the air smelled of flowers instead of feet. I opened the door, then stood aside for Katie.
And then we were inside, and the place did not disappoint. Like so many of the buildings at Harkness, Tri Psi had been built about a hundred years ago. The big front room had high, beamed ceilings. On one wall rose an oversized stone fireplace, where orange flames licked the air behind an iron metal grate.
All around the room, shiny-haired girls buzzed like bees. It was just the sort of estrogen-fueled chaos that reminded me a lot of my sisters.
Katie tagged one of the girls on the elbow as she flitted by. “Amy?”
She turned to look over her shoulder, smiling at us. “Hey! You look gorgeous. And have I met your date?”
I was introduced to Amy, who seemed to be in charge. She rattled off a bunch of instructions to Katie at warp speed — there were tables to set up and rolls of paper to find and toys to wrap. Katie nodded along at this barrage of details. But when Amy moved on, Katie turned to me with a smile. “First things first.” She sidled up to a table bearing a metal tub full of ice, with dozens of bottles of beer nested inside. This was obviously not a keg-and-red-plastic-cup affair.
“Thanks,” I said when she handed me a cold beer. “What’s next? You can put me to work.” Honestly, I was thrilled that this party had a mission other than small talk or — God forbid — dancing.
In high school, I was the scrawny nerd who never got invited to parties. Even though I’d grown into my long legs and stopped getting shoved into lockers years ago, I had never mastered small talk. And we won’t even talk about what kind of a dancer I was. Because that way lies the abyss.
College had been much more fun for me than high school. Except for my nonexistent love life, I was happy at Harkness. Although our basketball team kind of sucked, my teammates were happy to have me. And on a basketball court I always knew what to do. I knew to always be ready to catch the pass. To find an opening and go for it.
But at a party? It was like I’d never received the playbook that everyone else got at birth. A party with Katie Vickery was double trouble, because her hotness made me into more of a bumbler than usual. A job was just what I needed.
Katie shifted her weight from one long leg to the other. “Well… most of the guys will be in that room,” she tilted her head toward an arched doorway at the side. “They’re putting up the tree. But if you wanted to stay here with me, you could help with the wrapping.”
For a second I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to be underfoot. But there was something hesitant in in Katie’s expression. As if perhaps she could use a little backup. “I’d just as soon help you, if that’s okay,” I said.
I knew I’d made the right choice, because the most beautiful smile lit her face. “Awesome. Then will you help me set up a folding table? Last time, mine fell down on one end, like a wounded camel. And all the Halloween pumpkins went rolling off.”
Well, okay then.
There was a stack of collapsed folding tables leaning against one wall. I grabbed one and let Katie show me where to set it up, which took about sixty seconds. Then I drank my beer while she went running off for wrapping paper and tape. The beehive was in full swing around me. There were girls on the old wooden staircase, wrapping strands of Christmas lights around the banister, and girls toting boxes of Christmas cookies through the front door.
Katie returned with three enormous rolls of wrapping paper. “I’ll just grab the first stack of gifts,” she said.
“Are you sure I can’t help with that?” I asked.
She waved me off. “It’s mayhem back there. I’ll be right back.” True to her word, she soon reappeared with a stack of boxes. They were rainbow looms — those things that little kids used to make bracelets out of rubber bands.
Measuring the boxes, I began cutting pieces of Santa Claus paper to size. Functioning as an assembly line, Katie and I became a wrapping machine. I cut. She folded and taped. Working side by side made it easy for me to admire Katie. As she moved, her silky hair fell over her shoulder like a curtain. It made me want to sift my fingers through it, to see if it was as soft as it looked. And the way her dress skimmed her hips was making me a little bit crazy. In a perfect world, I would have loved to fit my hands around her waist.
Down, boy. I lowered my head and cut another rectangle of wrapping paper instead.
When every box was wrapped, Katie disappeared for a minute into a closet, returning with a towering stack of… basketballs! Some of them were ordinary basketballs, and pretty good quality. Others were meant for little kids, with cartoon pictures drawn all over them.
“Now we’re talking,” I said. “Those are some lucky kids if they’re getting these.”
“Glad you think so,” she said. “But they’re not going to be easy to wrap.”
I saw what she meant. The balls were in half-boxes, which meant that one side would cave in a bit when we taped it. “It will work,” I told her. “This is just karmic payback for all those years my mother had to figure out how to wrap basketballs for me in blue and white Hanukkah paper.”
Katie gave me a killer smile. Then she unrolled a long span of wrapping paper, this one in plain green. Then she grabbed a ball — there were bears on this one — and set its oddly shaped carton onto the paper.
“Hold up…” I gave her the hand signal for time-out. “We can’t wrap the kiddie balls in that plain paper, unless you’re putting name tags on each of these. The paper should signal what’s inside, right? A guy who chooses the green wrap can’t end up with Disney characters on his basketball. He’s going to get his ass kicked.”
Katie’s hands stilled. Then she and Amy, who was wrapping stacks of teddy bears nearby, both began to laugh. “Omigod, so true!” Katie said. She swapped the ball for a plain one. “The bigger question is, did I screw this up? Should I have not bought the decorated ones at all?”
I shook my head. “Those are good for little kids, because the bigger kids won’t steal them. No cool dude is going to bring a ball with pandas on it to his pickup game.”
“These are all good points,” Amy remarked. “And now I’m thinking that we should put age ranges on everything. We could write, ‘a sporty gift for up to age six.’ Would that work?” She raised her eyes to me.
“Well, sure.”
While Katie’s sorority sister ran off to find some paper to make the tags, Katie touched the cuff of my shirt. “You are really good at this. Thank you for helping.”
I shrugged. “I had lots of experience getting my ass kicked. I know all the scenarios.”
Giggling, she touched a warm hand to my back for a second as she reached for the tape. Every time she put one of those slim hands on me, I felt it everywhere. And she smelled incredible. Like strawberries. I don’t know what it was — a lotion? A fruity shampoo? Whatever it was, it was making me crazy.
“I really wasn’t sure what to buy for the boys,” she said, leaning over the next gift. “I hope these have a shot at making someone happy. There were trendier toys at the store, like action figures. But I went with sturdier things, and I hope it was the right call. These kids don’t get to make a list and choose.”
I cut the next piece of wrapping paper, thinking about that. “Even when you get to choose, gift-giving is never perfect, right? I asked for a lot of stuff as a kid only to find out it wasn’t as good as it looked on TV.”
“Ha! That is so true. My EZ Chef Oven never baked the cakes all the way through. I just hope that something here makes somebody’s day, you know?”
“It has to,” I told her. “There’s something a little magical about getting a wrapped gift, especially if it’s unexpected. The experience is bigger than the thing that’s inside.”
She didn’t answer for a second, and I didn’t quite know why. But then she spoke, and her voice was quiet. “You’re a smart guy, Andy B.,” she said, catching another piece of tape on her slender forefinger. “And we’ve been here an hour, and so far I haven’t had to use the secret code word.”
Her eyes flicked toward the arched doorway then. The sound of male voices had been coming from that room for a while now. She didn’t look happy about it.
“That offer still stands, though,” I whispered.
“And I do appreciate it,” she breathed.
Eventually, we got everything wrapped except for one basketball — a pink one, with ducks on it. This last ball had a torn box around it and a black ink mark on its surface. “What do we do about this one?” I asked. “Ditch the box? Tape it up?”
Katie regarded it with a frown. “This one they gave me at the store, because it’s damaged and because all our purchases were for charity. But I don’t think I want any kid to get a damaged gift. That’s just not right.”
“Without it, do you have enough toys?”
“We do.”
“Fair enough.” I tore the ball from its box and tossed the cardboard onto our recycling pile. Then I spun it on my fingertip. Holding a basketball — even a pink one with ducks — always made my head feel clearer.
The Christmas tree setup next door must have been almost finished, because the sound of male laughter grew louder, and guys began to wander in, beers in hand. Their new role seemed to be smirking and drinking. Katie kept her eyes glued to the gift-wrapped packages which she was busy tagging. But I noticed that her body drifted a few inches closer to me.
And I didn’t mind one bit. I was flattered, honestly. If my job tonight was to provide some kind of cover, I could do that.
Now, nice guys usually got friend-zoned. That wasn’t only true in movies. I was living proof. And there were days when that got depressing. But tonight I was just where I wanted to be. I didn’t mind being needed by this fabulous creature. Because, what a view! And these girls had good taste in beer.
Really, things could be worse.
With her laser focus, Katie leaned over another gift tag, that silky hair cascading off her shoulder and into her work, where I saw the ends begin to adhere to the tape in its dispenser. “Hang on,” I said, hooking the pale strands with my thumb. “You don’t want to tape yourself to that present.” Gently, I released her hair from the adhesive. And then there was nothing left to do but sweep the whole bunch of her hair back and over her shoulder, where I smoothed it down where it belonged.
Her eyes locked on mine. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“No problem,” I said, but my voice was thick. Because touching her had made my brain take a day trip to Atlantic City.
I gathered up a stack of wrapping paper scraps and went looking for the recycling bin.
