Page 37 of The Guy Who Became My Grumpy Boss

The third hole—this one modeled fromThe Day After Tomorrow, where New York had been flooded and then frozen—had slick plastic on part of the fairway and several fake snow drifts.

Jessica had won the last hole, so she got to putt first. She prowled her way from the tee mat to the entrance of the library, where there were three doors you could go through.

I followed her up the sloped hill and discovered that if we got our balls into the middle door, they would pop out below and likely go into the cup.

Jessica yanked the flag out and grinned. “Just in case of a hole-in-one.”

“Someone’s confident,” I muttered.

I’d found myself muttering a lot this evening. I think it was keeping me from having a total meltdown, as did taking as many opportunities as I could to admire Jessica. Why did watching her have such a soothing effect?

She’d caught me looking at her a few times but didn’t seem phased by it. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. Was she uninterested enough to not even be flattered? Or was she hiding her feelings?

Hiding her feelings like I had been for the past year.

I dismissed that thought as we walked back to the beginning of the hole and Jessica teed off. Instead of simply staring, I forced my attention to her form. How did she stand, how did she pivot, and how much force did she use?

Mimicking people had always been one of the ways I’d taught myself to blend in. I’d chosen the wrong person to imitate more than once, which had backfired, so now I tried to observe a few examples before I settled on a behavior.

Right now, I had Jessica and the other patrons on the course.

The group of teenagers that I’d hit my ball into were laughing like idiots and stumbling around as if they were drunk, but I was pretty sure they were showing off for each other.

That wasn’t what I was hoping to behave like, so besidesnoticing that the game seemed to be a vehicle for hanging out, I dismissed them.

Another couple had almost finished their game, and what little I’d noticed about them had been that they seemed to be having a personal competition. They took every stroke and every hole as seriously as I had wanted to when we’d started, but to be honest, they didn’t look like they were having very much fun.

“Yes!” Jessica shouted.

I turned my attention back to her and found her pointing at her ball as it disappeared into the middle door of the New York Library replica.

I cursed myself for getting distracted, because I wasn’t sure I could reproduce her shot without having seen the whole thing.

“You’re up.” Jessica stepped aside.

She’d used the right hole on the tee mat, so I did the same. I tried to interpret the power of her swing by how far she’d pivoted back, then I lined up my shot and hit the ball.

I’d never seen a professional mini golf tournament—did they even have those?—but I felt like my shot would have been featured on the best of reel at the end of the day.

The ball rolled along the wall, avoiding both fake ice and snow drifts, until it hit an angled piece of cement that bounced it on the perfect trajectory to follow Jessica’s ball through the middle door.

“No way.” Jessica ran toward the lower tier of the hole, narrowly avoiding the slick spots, so she could watch my ball come out at the bottom.

I raced to join her, wondering if I would get the coveted hole-in-one.

Several clattering noises came from inside the little library, and just as I got to where I could see the exit, my ball rolled out and toward the cup.

Jessica let out a squeak of anticipation.

I scowled.

Instead of going into the hole, my ball hit hers, and hers went in, while mine stopped six inches short.

“Yes!” Jessica turned and smacked me on the arm. “Thanks, boss.”

While the irritation from her ball denying me a hole-in-one attempted to consume me, an opposite feeling surged up to push the first one out.

Jessica had casually touched me. Like we were friends. For a heartbeat, I stood shocked, but then warmth spread from the point of contact and filled me so full that every molecule of my body seemed to buzz.

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