Page 224 of Coach
“You’re freaking me out, Sisi,” I said. “What?”
She stared down at her folded hands a moment, then shook herself and glanced up. “Do what makes you happy, Mateo. If chasing this emotionally unavailable brute floats your boat, go for it. Just keep your eyes open, all right? We’re the ones who will have to pick up the pieces if he shatters your sweet, basil-and-ricotta-filled heart.”
“Basil and ricotta—?”
Matty shot forward, eyes electric. “Maybe you just want to see the rest ofhis hardness.”
“His massive plank of wood,” Omar added.
“His mighty oak, if I remember correctly,” Sisi piled on.
I dropped my head onto the table with a thud and wished for an asteroid to strike Earth.
Chapter 22
Shane
“Am I supposed to reach out or keep waiting?”
Stevie sat at a workbench, scribbling notes into a ledger filled with numbers. Watching her click away at her calculator and make entries into that eternal stream of digits reminded me why she was so important to my business. Without her, I would spend half my life buried in spreadsheets and accounting programs rather than focusing on what brought in customers, the woodwork. Stevie was a great business partner.
But she was an even better friend—as much as I hated to admit it sometimes.
She finished whatever voodoo math thing she’d been working on and glanced up.
“What are you babbling about, and why don’t I hear the planer scraping against that piece of wood?”
“You’re so bossy today.” I grinned, shaking myplaner in her direction.
She tapped the eraser end of her pencil against her temple. “I’m working . . . and thinking. Thinking and working. You should try it.”
I blew out a heavy sigh. “Just answer me, and I will. It’s driving me crazy.”
She cocked her head, glared, then tossed her pencil down and crossed her arms.
“You like this guy, don’t you?”
Some odd feeling tugged at my face. It felt like my skin tightened but only around my mouth. It felt so strange.
“You’re grinning like a fucking idiot,” she said. “It makes you look weird. Stop it.”
Oh, right, that was what it felt like.
“I guess, maybe a little. It’s been three days since trivia night, and I . . . I can’t stop thinking about him. He’s nice and funny and . . . if you saw him smile—”
“Stop. Gross. I will not engage in speculation over my vagina getting all hot and juicy over a boy. My biology doesn’t work that way, and I prefer to keep my lesbionic functioning intact.”
I blinked, unsure how to even unbox that statement.
“If you like him, call him. Stop acting like a teenager passing notes in class. Be the big, brave man you say you are, and pick up the damnedphone.” She snatched up her pen and journal and stood. “Maybe afterward, you’ll be able to focus on that wood over there instead of some Italian’s olive branch.”
I had to remind myself that I was Stevie’s boss, not the other way around. Part of me wanted to snap at her for ordering me around, but I knew she was right. I was moping, or wallowing, or letting things fester.
More than any of that, I was being a chicken.
And I was not a damned chicken.
Not in standing up for myself or other people, and certainly not in making a simple phone call to tell a guy I enjoyed seeing him and hoped to do so again . . . hoped to see his thick, curly black hair and broad smile, those eyes that shifted from deep walnut to cherry with his mood.
