Page 18 of Give Me a Shot

“Do you want me to take a look?”

She patted him on the arm.

“Don’t worry about it, I already have a man coming tomorrow,” she said.

“Want me to hang around, make sure he doesn’t try any funny stuff?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“Ha! That’ll be the day,” she said. “I think it’ll be all right.”

“If you get too warm, you know you can come over.”

“Thanks, Mo, but I’m fine. You go relax. I’m gonna watch my shows and go to bed.”

“Okay. If you need anything, bang on the wall.”

She saluted him.

“Will do.”

Chapter Six

Jess

Wednesday afternoon, the simultaneous video call ringtone coming from her phone and laptop jolted Jess upright from her knees and she slammed her elbow into the edge of the shower door. Confused, she quickly dropped the scrub brush, got her hands out of her gloves, and hurried to her dining table. Steinem dropped down from his perch on the bathroom counter where he’d been supervising her cleaning and followed.

“Hey,” she said when Alice appeared on the screen. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I think you sent me the wrong file yesterday, though. The doc is only like two pages long.”

Jess blinked. Alice had agreed to look over a paper Jess was going to submit for a conference at the end of the month. Her latest draft was much longer than two pages.

“Lemme check,” Jess said, opening her sent emails. Alice was right, the attachment name was incorrect.

“Yeah, sorry, brain fart,” Jess said. She found the correct file and sent it. “I didn’t mean for you to start on it right now. I know you have a lot on your plate.”

Alice waved Jess’s words away.

“I wanted to dive in. As crazy as it probably sounds, I’m starting to miss reading academic research.” Jess’s jaw dropped and Alice laughed. “I know, I know. When I had to, I couldn’t wait to stop. Now that I don’t have to…” She shrugged. Jess let herlaughter die down with her friend’s. Alice’s face suddenly shifted to concern. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“You keep rubbing your elbow.”

Jess stopped rubbing. She hadn’t realized that she was doing it.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I banged it right before I answered.”

“Oh,” Alice said. But she squinted her eyes a little and looked off to the side. “You know, you kept rubbing one of your shoulders the other day.”

“I did?” Jess asked.

“Yeah. I’d meant to say something about it but got sidetracked. Are you sure you’re doing okay?”

Jess had been dealing with some achiness in her joints for a while—pretty much since she’d moved to Detroit. She might have jumped back into archery a little too quickly. She had had to put it aside during her final semester, and then after Cassie…Her forearms started aching a little. She cleared her throat.

“Just archer aches and pains,” Jess said.

“Oh, okay. Since I have you, catch me up. Do you feel better about being on that committee at the Folk School?”

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