Page 30 of Teaching the Kot'oll Coach

“Oh...” He checks the books, seemingly finally catching on. “Right, of course. Now, let’s see where this should go...”

“Yeah, do that. Check the tags on the shelves and the spines.”

“No problem, I can do that for sure. This one goes here, and this one...”

I laugh at how confused he is. “You may need four pairs of eyes to work with those arms. You aren’t going to be faster than me at this rate.”

I roll my eyes. “We’ll see how that goes.” I put a divider at the center of the trolley. “Here, let’s see who will get it done the quickest.”

“Winner will get a prize.” He winks.

I shiver at the intense gaze. There’s a buzz between my legs. He can’t be thinking about that, right?

He picks up the books. “Here we go!”

“Hey! You can’t cheat!” I pick up the books on my side and start putting those on the shelf. “Look, you still lose if you can’t put the books on the right shelves.”

“I’m going to do perfectly. It can’t be that hard.”

I hurry to put the books up. He is always there to annoy me; I know it for sure.

He loves to drive me crazy and...

He holds one of my hands. “Here.”

“Hey! That’s cheating! You can’t slow me with that.”

He winks again. “I have backup plans!”

It’s cheating to have all the arms when I only have two, let alone his attempt to annoy me.

I roll my eyes but free my hand from him. “Cheater’s going to lose.” I head to the other side, where my books go. His books are seemingly elsewhere, so he can’t be following me around and still win.

I finish a stack and hurry back to the trolley for another stack. He isn’t there, probably off to another shelf.

Now... He cheated, but I’m fair. We didn’t say we must keep the trolley right there in the spot it started off, so...

I push the trolley all the way to my side of the shelves. Looking at the remaining books, I’m ahead. It won’t take long before I’d be ahead even more.

I put more books on the shelves. Telke makes it impossible to enjoy the process of admiring books, but he makes shelving somewhat exciting.

“Hey! Where’s the... Ah...”

Telke comes over with a naughty smirk. “Looks like someone cheated.”

“No, we didn’t say the trolley has to stay on that side of the shelves.”

“Oh, yeah?” He takes the handle of the trolley. “One would think that’ll help you, huh?”

“Hey!” I take the other side of the trolley. “Leave it here.”

“Why won’t I move it too? You’ve taken it with you for a bit now.”

“A bit isn’t long enough. You already have four arms. Come on.”

He chuckles and gives me the trolley, picking up a big stack of books with his top two hands. “Fine, fine. I’m waiting to claim my prize soon.”

“Wait! What’s that going to be?”

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