Page 14 of One Day

SONYA

“Hey, Sunny! How was your day?” Bekah asks when I step inside and head for the living room, where she’s curled up in the armchair in the corner, a book resting in her lap. All six feet and four inches of Dylan’s body takes up our caramel-colored sectional.

“This one didn’t tell you?” I ask, pointing to Dylan, who digs my cell phone out of his sweatpants pocket and holds it up for me to take.

“Aside from that,” she says, but her focus isn’t on me. It’s on Dylan, and the yellow case on my phone. “Dylan, how did you get that confused? That is yellow.”

“Your point? It was five in the morning, Beks, and the scheduling got fucked up again. I was half asleep and rushing,” he says, running his fingers through his thick, dark brown hair. His brown eyes find their way over to me when all Bekah does is hum in response. “How late were you?” he asks, sitting up on his elbows when I move into the kitchen to set my bag down.

“It wasn’t so bad. Just awkward,” I say while opening the dishwasher to pull out my water bottle, stepping toward the fridge to fill it up. “What are you doing over here? You do realize you have a house, right?” I ask and point directly behind me. “It’s right there.”

Unlike the rest of us, Dylan initially opted for off-campus housing. He lucked out and hit it off with Fitz and Campbell, two of his teammates whom he had already met playing in the World Juniors. A shocker to all of us, considering they were the competition, but it turned into a friendly ribbing. Usually at Dylan’s expense since Canada kicked his team’s ass.

“Yeah, but you love my company.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” I tease, stopping to dig his phone out of the bottom of my bag before joining him on the couch.

“You’re being mean today.”

“Yeah, well, you and your stupid phone made me late,” I say, resting his phone on his chest before pulling my feet up to tuck under his leg. “If you want to make it up to me, there is something you can do.”

He doesn’t hesitate to say, “Name it.”

“We got an exciting assignment brief for my coding class today, potentially leading to a huge opportunity if I get selected. The athletics department is going to develop an app for Millboro’s sports, and we get to pitch our designs,” I explain, excitement bubbling up in my chest all over again. “They are going to pick one of us to be part of the team building it.”

Something about technology has always excited me. Even when I was little and didn’t fully understand the lengths it could go to help people, it was like a string had been wrapped around me. When I had my first computer science class in middle school, my interest only grew until I eventually read every article on technological advancements and begged for extra hours in the computer lab at school. I wanted to soak up every ounce of knowledge humanly possible, and now that I’m here—in a program no one thought I’d make it into and succeed—I’m even more determined to prove them wrong.

“That must have been the email Fitz was talking about earlier,” Dylan says, finally grabbing his phone off his chest.

“Email?” I ask, leaning towards him. “What email? What did it say?”

“I don’t know, Sunny. You had my phone, remember?”

“Well, look!” I say, patting his leg excitedly.

He laughs at my eagerness and sits up. “Patience, woman.”

“Do not woman me.”

He holds up one hand in surrender and scrolls with the other, searching for the email in his inbox. “Tell us more about this app. What is it you’re doing?”

“They gave us a list of features they want included, but my class is designing the player profile for the hockey team,” I say, nudging his side. “That’s probably what the email is about now that I think of it. Your coach volunteered your services.”

Dylan rolls his eyes. “Of course, he did.”

“Kind of sucks you have to do it on the hockey team, though,” Bekah says, looking up from her book to shoot Dylan a teasing glance.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Dylan asks, finally finding the email and passing me his phone. “You know your best friend here said Fitz is her favorite player last night. What do you think about that, Beks?”

I shoot a look at Bekah, rolling my eyes. “Why are we friends with him again?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one that almost slept with him,” Bekah says, winking at me when my lips part in surprise. Despite how long it’s been since the failed hook-up, I fear I may never live it down.

“Really? You too?”

She shrugs. “Shouldn’t have said Fitz is your favorite.”

I shake my head at her absolute refusal to accept any hockey player aside from Dylan, and even that took some real convincing. “What does the email say?” Dylan questions.

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