Page 66 of Mistlefoe
I snort because a second after sending that message, Sierra pops her head over our monitors and offers the mightiest frown. It wrinkles her forehead and lips in a way that is more adorable than terrifying. She looks like the cutest grown woman trying to pick a fight. Not to mention, the dark circles under her eyes throw the whole vibe off too.
I have to duck my face so I don’t laugh, but hopefully that makes me looks scared of her? Old time’s sake, indeed.
Mahoney, Conor - 3:50pm:
Sorry for keeping you awake last night
Fernandez, Sierra - 3:50pm:
Oh my gosh, Conor! You can’t say things like that, what if someone reads over our shoulder and takes it wrong?
It takes me a second to reason why. This time I hide my face from any prying eyes because I’m sure it’s burning.
Mahoney, Conor - 3:51pm:
Geez
Sorry, I didn’t realize
What I meant to say is SORRY FOR KEEPING YOU LATE WITH WORK RELATED TOPICS
Is that better?
Fernandez, Sierra - 3:51pm:
You know what?
Go get me coffee
Anything so you stop
Mahoney, Conor - 3:51pm:
That’s not what you were saying last night
Fernandez, Sierra - 3:51pm:
Conor!!!!!!
Chuckling, I lock my computer and stretch my arms, really selling the whole need for coffee even though I’m buzzing with electricity.
Last night was something else. One second, I’m trying to teach mini mites that the way to play hockey is forward—toward the net, and not clustering around each other—the next I’m making a fool of myself in front of the woman I’ve been most attracted to in my entire life—many thanks also to Gramps for that. And then the next, she and I start making out like teenagers until Gramps needed to close the place and kicked us out.
If it hadn’t been because we had to come to the office today, and because there’s literally only days left before the big Christmas event, Sierra and I might’ve gone on our official first date.
Alas, all we could do is spend the entire night texting back and forth. We’re both equally guilty of not wanting to sleep, trying to catch up in one night about everything we didn’t allow us to learn about each other in two years.
I now know that her favorite color is what she calls soft peach, but to me is cream. That’s why her beanie and gloves are that color. Christmas is her favorite season of the year, and it’s why she’s looking forward to spending this one with her Grammie so much. She particularly loves Christmas music, anywhere from the commercial stuff that plays in stores, to the carols sang by a choir at church. Her childhood dream was to play professional baseball but had to give that up when something called puberty hit her and revealed to the world that shewas a girl. Yes, she has a weakness for Hello Kitty, although she personally feels like Gudetama represents our whole generation—and I had to Google that on the side because I had no flipping clue what she was talking about. She also prefers coffee over chocolate, but the combination is superior, and since her family hails from a coffeeandcocoa country, she’s extremely sensitive to bad quality stuff. I already put an order for high end chocolate truffles with coffee bean centers to gift her for Christmas.
There were so many other details, jokes, movies, seemingly unimportant things that kept the conversation going until dawn. But I filed each one of them in my memory bank, because even if she mentioned them just to pass the time, they must be important enough to be at the forefront of her mind.
So I guess we did have our first date, it was just an unconventional one—especially because we skipped around and kissed well before it. And even though we didn’t talk about any of the important stuff, like where are we going from here, how serious this is, when do we make it public… I don’t care.
I’m not in a rush. Sierra will tell me exactly what she wants when she wants it, and not a second earlier. It’s her world and I’m just living in it, happy to spin circles around her if that’s what she wants. Like the lovesick fool that I am.
I push myself off my desk, casually casting a glance around the office to see what everyone’s doing and calculating the likelihood that they’ll see me bring Sierra coffee. Rachel’s not at her desk because, now that she’s moving to another team starting January, she’s been splitting her time with them to train in advance. Richard’s gone off to a meeting in another floor. Stephen’s in one of the soundproof booths on the opposite corner. Dave is still suspiciously sick at home.
The ones to watch out for are Kaylee and Lewis. The latter’s sitting at his desk beside mine, headphones on as he listens in on a meeting. Kaylee’s perusing aSPORTYmagazinedisplaying the ace pitcher of a rising baseball team on the cover. I’ve seen her spend hours reading the articles and dissecting every minutia allegedly for research—A.K.A. checking out the hot athletes featured on the issues—so I guess this is as safe as it’s going to get.
