Page 26 of Overtime
“It’s all yours now.” Her nose wrinkles as she picks up my laptop to hand it over. “Geez, is this made of lead?”
“I don’t like small things.”
“Makes sense. You’re so big.”
I watch as color rises up her throat in real time. My bad mood level plummets until I’m firmly in the rarely used good mood category.
“I didn’t mean to make it sound weird. It’s just my awkward turtle talent, that’s all.” She focuses on unpacking her stuff again.
I bite my lip. There are nineteen minutes left in the session. All I need to do is focus on the coursework, no matter how viscerally I hate it, and not on making my tutor blush again, even though it’s so easy. And amusing.
Wait a damn moment. Have I been flirting with my tutor?
I put my elbow on the table and rest my forehead on my hand for a moment. If I could roundhouse kick myself, I would.
“It’s not that bad,” she says all of a sudden. “Just type the first sentence and call it a day if you want. That one’s usually the hardest.”
I grunt. If only that were the struggle.
Okay. Let’s focus. I can pretend this essay is a Bulldog forward, and it’s not going to defeat me. Strawberry has basically given me a map to write this miserable thing. And it will be over sooner if I start it.
How do I start it?
Shit, why can’t I just say the CEO of this case study’s company was a tool who made every bad decision possible? Should I ask for help already? Am I going to look even more incompetent than the CEO if I do?
But my tutor’s busy. Her cell phone sits on the table between us, the calculator app open. In her journal, she has a table with categories and numbers she’s adding up and subtracting. She pauses to count something in her mind with her fingers, frowns, and then strikes through the total at the bottom of the table.
“Need help with math?”
She jerks her head up. “Oh, no. It’s okay. The math isn’t the problem.”
“You sure? You look like you’re in pain.”
“It’s not as painful as when you’re thinking about what to write.”
“Touché.”
Strawberry leans back against her chair with a sigh. “No offense, but math sucks. Especially when it’s about money.”
“Full offense taken.”
“In accounting classes, do they teach you how to pull money out of thin air? Asking for a me.”
I snort.
“So that’s a no, then? Shame.”
I type a couple of words. Delete them. I have bone-deep regret over having let Luz and Olivia get in my head with the whole robot thing. I should’ve never taken this class. So I grab the distraction being presented on a silver platter.
“What do you need to multiply money for?”
“So I can move,” she mutters, jotting another line at the bottom of her list.Sell old clothes, it says. Then she writes100?
“Is this because of Lori Schmitt?”
“How did you—Oh, right. You met her last night.”
“Very charming girl,” I add, my voice flat.
