6. CHAPTER SIX #2
“Sorry. I don’t like when people just do it without explaining first.”
“Okay.” I point at the cell instead. “You locked the wrong part of the formula.”
Her eyes move over it. “No.”
“Yeah.”
“Why would it still work on this row?”
“Because that row happens to be pulling from the cell you want. Drag it down.”
She does. The next three rows break.
Gianna stares at it, and I lean back.
She looks at me.
I don’t say anything.
Her face breaks into a smile. “Do not, Laurens.”
I put my hands up. “I’m not.”
“You look so fucking pleased,” she says, irritated.
“I’m just sitting here.”
“Pleased.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
She turns back to the computer. “Okay. What do I lock?”
I show her. She changes the formula herself, drags it through the column, and the whole thing works.
Her eyebrows lift. “Oh. That was stupid.” She looks at the screen. “It was one dollar sign.”
“Two.”
She gives me a flat look.
I grin. “Do you want my help or not?”
“I got it.”
She looks through the sheet again, clicking through several cells to make sure it holds. Then she leans back and studies me.
“You’re really smart,” she says.
I look at her. The compliment lands strangely. Not bad. Just weird because I thought she was mad.
“Really?” I ask.
She hears the question inside the question and immediately rolls her eyes. “Don’t be dumb.”
I laugh.
She says, “I’m just a little surprised.”
I look at her. “Thanks.”
“No, listen.” She shifts toward me, smiling now. “You walk around saying ‘yeah’ to everything and acting like you have four thoughts a day.”
“I have more than four thoughts a day,” I chuckle.
“You do?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Name five.”
I laugh. “You’re annoying.”
“That’s not a thought.”
“It is currently.”
She smiles into her screen. “If that’s what you’re thinking, I don’t want to hear anymore.”
I open my laptop again.
I’m still smiling too.
I don’t know why that particular compliment sticks when people have been calling me smart my whole life. Professors say it. Coaches have said it. My mom says it every time I fix something on her phone.
Maybe it was the surprise with a spreadsheet. Probably not flattering.
I go back to my reading.
We work for almost an hour.
Not together.
Mostly.
Gianna finishes the spreadsheet and moves on to something for her event class.
I make it through the Novak reading and start typing notes.
Every few minutes, one of us says something small.
She asks whether stakeholder alignment is a phrase real people use, or something professors invented to make emails longer.
I tell her real people use it, which makes her hate it more.
I ask why she has six different tabs open for the same project.
She tells me they are all different.
They are not.
At some point, she gets up to refill her water, comes back, and instead of sitting across from me, drops into the chair beside mine.
I look at her. “What?”
“That’s not your chair.”
She glances at the one across the table. “This one has a better outlet.”
There is no outlet on either side.
I look down.
Her charger is plugged into the wall behind us. She opens her laptop again.
Our elbows are closer now. Not touching, but close enough that I have to move mine when she reaches for her drink.
Neither of us says anything about it.
She starts typing again.
I do too.
A while later, I catch myself reading the first sentence of the same paragraph for the third time because Gianna is tapping her pen while she thinks.
I look back at my screen.
Read the sentence.
Understand none of it.
Try again.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“You sighed.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“Maybe I’m tired.”
She looks over at me. Her hair is still pulled up from the trip, but pieces have fallen out around her face. “You should be. You actually played.”
“You worked later than I did.”
“Yeah, but I had fun.”
“I noticed.”
Her expression changes. Not much. Just enough that her pen stops moving.
“You did?”
I nod. “You looked like you were having fun.”
“I was.” She looks down at her laptop, but she isn’t typing anymore. “The road stuff is better than home games.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. More moving parts, I guess.” She rolls the pen between her fingers. “You get somewhere and nothing is yours. Different room, different setup, different people, and you still have to make everything work.”
“That sounds stressful.”
“It was.”
“And you liked it.”
She smiles. “A lot.”
I nod. That makes sense somehow.
“Donovan said I did good.”
There’s something different in her voice when she says it.
Not looking for agreement. More like she’s still pleased about it.
“You did.”
Her eyes come up. “How would you know?”
“I saw you.”
“When?”
“Everywhere.”
She laughs softly. “That sounds creepy.”
“You were carrying half the building.”
“I was very important.”
“Clearly.”
She bumps her elbow against mine. “Shut up.”
I smile and keep typing.
The silence after that feels different for a few minutes. Not uncomfortable. Just noticeable.
Gianna breaks it first. “Your mom is funny.”
I look over. “Unfortunately.”
“She likes Stanley.”
“Everybody likes Stanley for the first twenty minutes.”
She laughs. “She made you so uncomfortable.”
“She did not.”
“I saw you turn red, Rowan.”
I look at her when she says my name. “I didn’t.”
She nods. “You absolutely did.” She laughs louder and leans back in the chair. “You were so embarrassed.”
“My mom enjoys it too much.”
Gianna smiles at that, then looks back toward the living room where Stanley is yelling at Blue about something.
“Your family still lives there?”
I nod. “My mom does.”
“Do you see her a lot?”
“Yeah.”
Gianna nods, rubbing her thumb along the edge of her laptop. “She seems cool.”
“She is.”
There’s an easy pause.
Then she asks, “Did you like growing up there?”
I think about it. “Yeah.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know. Details.”
I lean back. “It was cold.”
She laughs. “No shit.”
“Snowed a lot.”
“Rowan,” she says with no patience.
I smile.
She shakes her head, but she’s smiling too. “You’re impossible.”
“I liked it. Hockey was everywhere. My mom knew everybody. I could walk to my friend’s house. Normal stuff.”
“See? Details.”
“That was three sentences.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks.”
She goes back to typing.
I do the same.
She doesn’t ask if I want to move back. I’m glad she doesn’t. Not because I don’t want to answer. Mostly because I have no idea what I’d say.
By eight-thirty, the kitchen is darker than it was when we started. Nobody bothered turning on the overhead light, so most of what we have is the lamp over the stove and whatever spills in from the living room.
Gianna yawns and tries to hide it behind her hand.
“You should go home,” I say because she looks tired.
She looks offended. “Are you kicking me out?”
“No.”
“You pretty much just told me to leave.”
“You look tired.”
She looks at me. “You look tired.”
“I live here.”
“So?”
I lift my hands. “So I don’t have to drive.”
“Lucy drove.”
I look toward the stairs. “And where is she?”
“Probably in my brother’s room.”
She turns back to her laptop and types for another couple of minutes before saving whatever she’s working on. Then she stretches both arms over her head and makes a tired noise.
“I’m done.” She closes the laptop.
From the living room, Stanley yells, “That is bullshit!”
Blue answers immediately, “You ran into the wall.”
“I got pushed.”
Gianna’s head turns.
A smile starts.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
She gets up, grabs her drink, and walks toward the living room. I look back at my laptop. I still have half a page of notes to finish. I put my hands on the keyboard.
From the other room, Gianna says, “Stanley, give me the controller.”
“No.”
“Give it to me.”
“You don’t even know what we’re playing.”
“I know you’re losing.”
“You just got here!”
“I can tell by your face.”
Blue starts laughing.
I look at the sentence on my screen.
Then I close the laptop and follow her.
“Blue,” I say. “Give me yours.”
He tosses it over. “For fuck’s sake.”
Stanley groans.