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“Cock ring,” Gunner said in a loud fake mutter, and everybody laughed. Dex flipped him off and carried the present back to his wall.
“No way, bro,” said Cooper. “Gotta open it so we can all see.” Their brothers audibly agreed.
So Dex opened the wrapping and lifted the lid from the box. It was a ring. A wide silver band, heavy enough to be legit silver, with a simple outline of a bull’s head etched in the center. He slipped it on his right middle finger; it fit just right.
Last year, he’d gotten a box of ‘ass filters’—little charcoal filters ostensibly for blocking farts.
“Damn!” Cooper said. “That’s like a real present. Actually nice. No fair! Who the fuck did that?”
Everybody looked around the room, but nobody fessed up, of course. Dex could think of only one person who would possibly use the Secret Santa to give him an actual gift. He looked for, and found, Kelsey, who had avoided him all day. But if it had been her, she wasn’t giving anything away, even accidentally.
Finally, Cooper said, “Pttttthh. Whatever. Next!” and the party rolled on.
~oOo~
After presents, when the people with little kids started to pack up, that was usually when Dex slipped out as well and fled to the quiet of his house and his pack. This year, though, he hung around, with the excuse that he was going to help the women clean up. He got a few looks for that, but he didn’t care.
He wanted to catch Kelsey on her own, if he could.
His chance came after about an hour or so of Mo finding things for him to do. He came up from the basement, after putting away the folding tables they used to extend the dining room table to accommodate half of Tulsa, and Kelsey was alone, emptying a load of clean dishes so she could fill it with the next load of dirty. For someone who professed to hate doing dishes, she seemed to do them at every function.
He looked around; there was low chatter in every direction, but there didn’t seem to be anyone coming and going. He had Maverick’s okay, more or less, at least enough to be fairly sure he wasn’t going to get punched in the cheek he’d pulled stitches out of just that morning.
So he went to stand on the other side of the counter. If she looked up, they’d be face to face. “Hey, Kelsey?”
She pretended to be fascinated by her chore and didn’t look up. “Hey Dex. You need something?”
“Yeah. For you to look at me.”
That stopped her. She stood in place, her hands full of cutlery, but didn’t look up. And then she did. “Okay. Looking at you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said at once.
She shrugged and continued with her task, leaning over to put knives and forks away. “Nothing to be sorry for.”
“Yeah, there is. And I am.” Frustrated by the counter between them, he went around it and stood next to the dishwasher.
“Hey, Kelse?” Willa called from the entry to the dining room. “You need any help in here?”
“I got it,” Dex said before Kelsey could answer.
Willa smiled and cocked her head at him. “Okey doke.” And then she was gone.
Dex reached out and grabbed Kelsey’s hand before she could fill it with more dishes. “Kelsey. I’m trying to say—I want—” his nerve failed. So he reached into his kutte pocket and retrieved the little square of white tissue paper he’d slid in there before he’d left the house. He held it out to her. “Merry Christmas.”
She stared at the sad little package, and Dex felt stupider with each breath he took as he waited for her to do something.
“You bought me a present?”
“Yeah. Nothing big. Just something I found at the pet store. Made me think of you.”
Finally, she lifted her eyes and really looked at him. It felt like a gift.
She came around to his side of the dishwasher before she took it from him. Then, when they were only six inches or so apart, she finally relieved him of his tiny burden—and a bigger, invisible one as well.
It wasn’t taped or anything, just rolled up in the tissue paper. She unrolled it until the little enamel pin lay on her open hand: about the size of a quarter, the head of a little corgi dog, with a white enamel banner that readI??Corgis. She had a corgi named Mr. Darcy. He’d found the pin on a sales-desk spinner on his latest trip to buy dog food.
“Oh, Dex,” she gasped, as if he’d set the Hope diamond in her palm.
