CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SONYA
“What’s got you in your head over there?” Walker asks, nudging my foot under the table. When I don’t acknowledge him, his hand moves across the table to squeeze mine. “Hey,” he says, tangling our fingers together. “Still with me, Sunny?”
“Sorry,” I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut before opening them to look at my laptop. When Walker asked if I wanted to meet him at Adam’s to do homework together, I had every intention of being present with him and with this project, but the longer I stare at it, the harder it is to focus. All I can think about is the frustrations Dylan and his teammates are dealing with, ones I’m sure go beyond the hockey team. “Did you say something?”
“What’s got you so in your head?”
“I’m just thinking about this project and how they’re missing the opportunity to ease their athletes' lives.” I lean forward on my free arm so I don’t have to pull my hand away from his. “I want to do what’s being asked of me, but the longer I stare at this sitemap, the less inspired I become. I just…I want to do something important. Something to help people, and this really doesn’t feel like that.”
“What’s stopping you from doing it?”
I grab the project brief from the table and shake it. “This?”
“Yeah, but have you asked if you can change directions?” he asks, taking the brief from my hand and flattening it on the table in front of him. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and I shouldn’t find it as hot as I do, but I find myself studying the movement. Embedding it in my brain. “It says you need to design a prototype for an athletic-focused app designed to assist in the management of game schedules, among other things. It doesn’t hurt to ask if you can change the focus from the attendees to the players.”
“She’ll never go for that, Cowboy.”
“How do you know?” he asks, lifting his head to look at me while sliding the sheet back over. “The worst thing that happens from asking is she says no.”
Chewing my bottom lip, I consider what Professor Andrews said about using the players to our advantage. This isn’t what she meant when she said it, but nonetheless, this is where I’ve ended up. Overthinking everything, and frankly, just over the proposed direction.
“Maybe you’re right.”
His lips pull up, a grin taking up his face. “Of course I am.”
“It’s less cute when you agree with me,” I tell him, but I can’t help but smile when his nose scrunches up.
Things between us have transitioned so smoothly from platonic to toeing the line of friends, and moments like these, where I can’t help but take him in for everything he is, should be worrying me. Friends don’t study friends like I study Walker, but I can’t help it.
It’s hard not to stare at him sometimes. I should shut down all the wild thoughts taking up my brain. Shoving them down will be better for both of us in the long run, but the sunlight bleeding in hits him at exactly the right angle, and all I can do is drink him in. The strong line of his jaw and the pull of his lips, drawing my gaze to the dip in his chin. The perfect, perfect dip in his chin and that thought alone pulls my stomach into knots.
I should be focusing on his clothes and the way I want to tear them off, not these spiral-inducing thoughts about how utterly flawless his smile is.
“Shit, I gotta get going.”
“You mean you don’t want to spend all your time in my presence?” I ask when he starts collecting his stuff, sliding it into his bag.
The hem of his shirt lifts when he stands up, raising his arms to slide them into his jacket, and my eyes fall to the line of muscles disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants. If we were anywhere else, I might have persuaded him to stay and let me follow them, but instead, I’m forced to shake the thought from my head and focus.
“Come on now. You know I want to spend all my time with you,” he says, and for a second, I don’t think he’s kidding as he slides the strap of his bag onto his shoulder. “I do, however, have a meeting with my advisor that I can’t miss.”
“Are you sure? What if I ask nicely?”
“Not even then, I’m afraid,” he says, leaning down to kiss the side of my head. He holds his lips there for a second longer than necessary. “Think about talking to your professor,” he says, running his finger over the project brief and stopping on the corner where Professor Andrews' office hours are listed. “Looks like her office hours are now.”
Pressing my lips together, I tilt my head back to look up at him. “You really just had to point that out, didn’t you? I like running from my problems, Cowboy.”
He hums. “Just think about it.”
“I will.”
“Good.” He leans down again, surprising me when he presses his lips to mine. It’s not like any of our others, it’s short and sweet. The type of kiss meant for couples parting ways, not friends strictly sleeping together. “I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah.” I nod my head when he walks towards the door, my eyes dropping to his ass and the way the denim hugs it.
“Stop checking out my ass, Sunny.”
My lips pull up when I lift my head to see his eyes on me. “Never.”
He shakes his head at me and steps outside, leaving me alone with my thoughts as they go back to the app. My gaze drops to her office hours again and then moves to the corner of my laptop screen where the time is displayed.
The worst that happens from asking is she says no.
I chew my bottom lip as I debate my options. I can either try and get this sorted out myself, hoping that by some grace, I get inspired for this project again, or I get to follow the lead buzzing beneath my skin. Either way, I have exactly forty minutes to get back to campus and to Professor Andrews’ office, to ask and hope she lets me.
“Door’s open!” Professor Andrews calls out a few short seconds after I knock. She looks up from her laptop when I step inside. “Sonya, what brings you by?”
“Is now an okay time? I wanted to talk about the project brief,” I ask, sliding my hand down to the doorknob.
When she nods her head to answer, I shut the door and sink down into one of the armchairs across from her desk, letting my bag slide down to my feet. “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to bring this up.”
Concern gets tangled together in her brows. “Did something happen?”
“No, no, but I am hoping that you’ll let me move forward with my idea. I know the whole point of this project is to create something for people to be able to explore the university teams, but I have a different direction in mind.”
“What direction would that be?”
Swallowing the nerves working their way up my throat, I sit a little taller and run my hands down my thighs. My fingers curl into the smallest part before my knee, squeezing tightly.
“I want to do an app focused on the athletes and helping organize their schedules. One of my best friends is on the team, and recently, there seem to be some hiccups in their current system. Troubled communication between the athletes and the coaching staff, an unorganized system for their meal plans with the team nutritionist,” I explain.
“I want to do something that would help organize that and make for a smoother line of communication between the athletes and their trainers. They already have so much on their plate between their team commitments and their academic responsibilities, stressing over if they’re where they’re supposed to be shouldn’t be something they need to worry about.”
She absorbs my words, and for a second, I think she likes the idea. Hope replaces the dread I felt coming here but drops out when she says, “You make a compelling case, Sonya, but unfortunately, that isn’t what the university is looking for.”
I nod my head. “Right,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I understand. I thought I would ask. It was a long shot, to begin with.”
A thick line of tension fills the air when she doesn’t say anything right away, and I feel like I want to curl in on myself. Putting myself out there has never been a problem, except when it comes to tech.
I want to be bold and prove myself more than anything, but my high school counselor basically told me I was fighting a losing battle. The tech industry isn’t kind to women, but it didn’t stop me. If anything, it puts a fire under my ass to prove him wrong because it frustrates me.
There shouldn’t be this line between genders, but there is, and I want nothing more than to be a force that breaks that line down. I want to make it easier for a younger generation of women, but every now and again, this doubt flutters in. It shouldn’t because this is just a bump in the road, and I know better than to think this is anything but a refusal because it goes beyond the project outline.
That is what it is, but my brain can’t seem to tell the difference.
“It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good idea, Sonya. It is, and I’m glad you came to me about it, but this opportunity is a huge one, and I think it would be a massive shame to let it slip through your fingers to do something else,” she explains, her fingers clasped together as she leans forward on her hands. “I think you are immensely intelligent. You have a fight in you that I don’t see a lot, and I want you to use that. I want you to prove yourself. Sometimes, we’re going to get put on projects we don’t like, but it doesn’t mean we don’t do them. I want you to do this project, and I want you to do it well. I genuinely believe you have a good shot at getting this spot. Don’t squander it now.”
Pressing my lips together in a thin line, I nod my head and try to smile. Her words are meant to be encouraging, and they are. Someone I have looked up to for years just told me they think I have the talent to get this huge opportunity, but it feels like I’ve been told to conform to a box I don’t fit into. I want to do something bigger for this project to show my ability to see a problem and solve it.
“Thank you, Professor Andrews. I’ll do that,” I say, grabbing my bag off the floor. “I appreciate you giving me some of your time.”
“Sonya,” she says when I stand, tilting her head to watch me. “Don’t let this put you down, okay? I know you’re going to come up with something incredible.”
I nod and head for the door, trying to stomp my disappointment down on my way, but all it does is set flames beneath my skin. I know I have something big at the tips of my fingers, and I’m not ready to just tuck it away. She never explicitly told me that I couldn’t do it, just that the opportunity would be out of my hands.
And that’s all the push I need.