Page 16 of Spring Awakening

“No other questions?”

Mali frowns. “Questions that you’re going to give me one-word answers to?”

He swallows. “No.”

“Zach,” Mali says with a sigh, and he sits up straighter. “I asked Frankie to get you first because I thought you’d help me chill out. This job is already terrifying. Did you not see me two minutes ago, introducing myself in front of twenty guys I don’t know?”

He did see that, and he didn’t stop to think she might be nervous. Nothing about her seems like anything other than the confident woman he knows she should be.

“It’s not your fault I placed some expectation on you because we had a thirty-second conversation yesterday where you didn’t look like you were thinking about running me over with your car. It’s fine. You can go. I’ll let the companies know you aren’t interested. Okay?”

“I don’t want to hit you with my car.”

Mali rolls her eyes. “Sure. Can you send someone over when you go back, please? Not Toby.”

“Mali,” he says, leaning slightly forwards. He’s never said her name out loud before, and it settles somewhere in his chest. He watches the moment she stops clenching her jaw, like she’s finally stopped being frustrated with his existence. He wants her to look at him again. She can be angry at him if she likes, as long as she looks at him. There hasn’t been a time where she’s looked at him because she wants to. He seems to only be able to get her attention by being a prick.

“Mali,” he repeats. It sounds desperate, even to himself.

“Yes?” she replies, but she’s still not looking at him. She sighs, stops typing on her keyboard. He knows there’s nothing on her screen. She looks up at him, finally. “What’s up?”

“I don’t want to hit you with my car.”

“I know, Zach. I was joking.”

“Oh.”

“But not being able to talk to me beyond three words is basically the same thing.”

“Is it, though?” he asks. What he means to say is that he does want to talk to her. He thought about it this morning on his way to work. He’d figured out an entire conversation for them in his head. Hushed conversations in private corridors. Then she waved at him in a crowded room. As if she didn’t care if people knew they were friends, and everything about her became terrifying. She waved at him knowing what the papers say. She waved at him knowing he was rude before. She waved at him, and if she stopped, it would be his fault this time. So he turned away, and now he has nothing at all.

She shrugs. “You can’t be friends with everyone,” she mutters. “But, here.” He watches her scribble something onto a piece of paper, and he doesn’t care what it is, because he’s trying to think of a way to make them friends when he can’t even bea reasonable enough person when he’s talking directly to her. Again, she slides something over to him.

“What’s this?” he asks, instead of looking at the post-it. It’s purple. He wonders if that’sherfavourite colour.

“A house I saw this morning,” she says, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “I think it’s available pretty soon. Looks a lot like mine.”

“Oh,” he says, taking his phone out and typing in the address. “Cheers.”

“No problem.”

He doesn’t leave. He just scrolls on his phone opposite her. He wants her to ask him something else so he can figure out what she wants to know, but she doesn’t. She sits behind her computer, typing something. Probably telling all the sponsors he’s a difficult prick. Zach did see her move her mouse, so it’s possible a document is open right now.

“Your place isn’t on here anymore,” he says, his voice low. “Did you find someone?”

“Nah. I only had it up because my dad was getting on at me about it and I thought I was unemployed.”

“You own it?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she replies. She looks around, sheepish, like he’s about to ask her if he can move in again. “It’s a bit of a fixer-upper.”

Zach nods. He wonders how weird it would be to tell her he’s an electrician. She might ask him to work on her house. Then he’d get to see her outside the confines of work, and maybe he’d figure out how to say more than three words to her. Instead, he puts in a request to view the other house and then pretends to be on his phone, because he’s doesn’t know what else to say but he doesn’t want to leave.

“Why don’t you talk to anyone?” Mali asks. “It can’t just be because you don’t want to.”

Zach swallows. “Why not?”

Mali shrugs. “Isn’t that boring? Don’t you spend all conversations waiting for Lightman to say something about you?”

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