“Conn.”
Her brows dipped into a frown. “Huh? Colin Smythe Conn?”
“Conn Smythe is the trophy, Colin’s better known brother…or something.” He winked at her. “But I appreciate the ego stroking.” He sighed. “Okay, we can cross it out, but note my reluctance.”
“Why? You ignored my reluctance when you put this damn list in front of me.”
“True story.”
“There is no Colin Smythe, is there?”
“I mean… there might be… but there’s no hockey trophy for him. It’s okay, even hockey players get confused about who the trophies are for. I’m sure if thereisa Colin Smythe he’s a lovely man and deserves to have a cup named in his honor.”
She giggled as another envelope came out of his back pocket.
“Seriously? How much shit do you have in your pockets? Be glad you’re not wearing women’s jeans, our pockets suck.”
He tapped the envelope against his palm, not meeting her eyes. “I, uh…” He swept his hand down the back of his neck and cleared his throat.
“What is it?”
“Tickets. For the Snow Pirates. I figured Mason might want to go to the game next weekend. I understand if you’re busy and you can’t. I didn’t mean to presume, but I wanted to…just in case, y’know?”
His babbling was as delightful as his blushing. “Thank you. Mason will shit his pants. He loves going to watch you guys. Granted, he usually goes with his dad, but I could be the cool mom for a change.”
She leaned to her left pointing the envelope of tickets at his pants. “What else you got back there? Is this where you pull a lamp from your ass pocket a la Mary Poppins?”
“Uh. I…”
“Elliott, I swear to all that’s holy if you have a lamp in the ass pocket of your jeans I’m writing to every women’s clothing company I can think of to demand they right the injustice. We can’t even cram Chapstick in ours.”
He laughed and his shoulders relaxed. “No, it’s just… It’s not a lamp, but I do have something else.” He reached into the paper bag the food came in and pulled out a small book—Easy Origami—and a pack of colored paper. “I ordered these for myself, too. I figured we could work on number sixteen.”
#16—Make an origami animal.
She rolled her eyes. “How’d you know I was going to say yes?”
“I didn’t. And you still haven’t said yes. I just figured you were never one to back down from a challenge and if I went ahead and did the list without you I’d be the winner and you’d hate it.”
“I…”
He pointed at her. “Don’t even lie about it, Ceecee. We both know you can be competitive as fuck.”
She laughed and held her hands up. “I used to be, now I leave that to my kids. But I’d definitely hate it if you did our list alone.”
He held out the origami book and colored paper. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a yes.”
Chapter 6
Elliott
It turned out that number sixteen was fucking hard, as proven by the papercuts dotted across Elliott’s fingers. All he wanted to do was make a delicate little paper swan, but that sucker just kept evading him. His chunky fingers and the tiny paper—he just kept fucking it up.
How hard was it to fold fucking paper?
Apparently very.
