Page 25 of Overtime
She stiffens, as if shocked that those two words came out of her mouth.
I tilt my head. “Is that a veiled insult?”
“What? No!” She shakes her hands in the air. “It’s a compliment! You’re a goalkeeper. You catch super-fast pucks, that’s all.”
“Goalie.”
“What?”
“The position I play is called goalie.”
“Oh. Right. I knew that.” She clears her throat. “Anyway, keep typing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
That gets a spark of amusement from her, just the tiniest arch of her lips that possibly means she’s finally relaxing.
I try to focus on writing down the sequence of ideas, but I stumble again. My fingers know the lay of my keyboard to a T, but in the numerical section. I can keep my eyes locked on an Excel workbook without once glancing down to ensure my fingers are typing the correct numbers, but it’s not the same case with the letters. At this, I’m fully incompetent.
My previous good mood has gone up in smoke, and when I have to ask her to backtrack for the fourth time, I start fantasizing about flinging my laptop out the window.
“Let me see your notes,” Strawberry says at the end.
I grumble something incoherent and turn my computer around so she can read it. Bracing herself with her arms, she leans over the wide table and squints to read.
“You could just grab the laptop, you know? Or you could sit next to me.”
She grimaces, and for a second, I think she’s going to shut that suggestion down, but she straightens and starts packing away. “Actually, good idea. It looks like a beast I’d rather not have to lift. What if I drop it?”
“It would break the table,” I mumble as I watch her stuff her laptop, the same journal from yesterday, the pencil case, and a water bottle into a knit bag. As she walks around the table withher coat hanging from her arm, I wonder if she’ll sit close enough that I’ll catch the strawberry scent in her hair so I can tease her about it.
I hold my breath as she sits to my right and have to tell myself,don’tforget Step One, you bonehead.
“Okay, let me see.”
I push my laptop to her, glad she’s sitting at a good distance. The light from my laptop screen illuminates freckles on her cheeks and across her nose. She’s just a strawberry herself, huh?
“You’re missing a few things. May I?” She lets her fingers hover over my keyboard, as if it was a living, breathing thing she needed consent to touch.
I rub the top of my head. “Go ahead.”
At the speed of light, she types up a sentence here, another there. Her fingers move faster than any fingers have a right to.
“Are you sure you’re not a goalie?” I ask.
Strawberry tears her eyes away from the screen. “Huh?”
“Because your hands are really damn fast.”
That gets me a full-blown smile. “Wow, that’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.”
I could give her more, but they’d make her blush to the roots of her hair again. I need to take a page from her book and be professional here.
Instead, I say, “Any chance I could pay you to type up my essays for me?”
“Absolutely freaking not.” If anything, she beams even more. “Good try, though.”
“Bummer.”
