“Were you interrogating me?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
“Probably not.”
“Then yes, but for good reasons.” She grins, and despite her obvious agenda, I find myself smiling back.
“It was really nice meeting you, Golda. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of each other.”
As she walks away, I realize I genuinely liked her despite feeling like I just participated in the world’s least subtle intelligence gathering operation. There’s something refreshingly honest about her complete inability to be sneaky. Though I still have no idea what she was really after.
6
DEX
“She definitely isn’t asunaffected by you as she’s pretending to be.”
Elliot’s voice cuts through the noise of Brody’s kitchen where I’m nursing my second beer and wondering why I let myself get talked into another intervention session.
“What does that mean?” I ask, though my pulse kicks up despite myself.
“It means,” Elliot says, settling into her chair with the satisfaction of someone about to deliver crucial intelligence, “that I spent an hour talking to your hockey mom yesterday, and she is not nearly as immune to you as you think.”
“You talked to her?” I sit up straighter. “How? When?”
“Saturday practice. Casual conversation.” Elliot waves a hand dismissively. “And before you ask, she has no idea it was anything other than hockey parent small talk.”
Brody appears with takeout bags, dropping them on the counter. “Please tell me you didn’t terrify the poor woman.”
“I was charming,” Elliot protests. “Subtle. Professional-level reconnaissance.”
“Nothing about you is subtle,” I point out.
“True. But I’m very good at getting information.” She leans forward, eyes bright with the thrill of successful espionage. “Want to know what I learned?”
“Yes.”
“Her pulse jumped every time I mentioned your name. Every. Single. Time.” Elliot ticks off on her fingers. “She felt guilty about the charity game, worried her singing somehow caused your meltdown. And when I mentioned you’d been asking about her work, she got flustered.”
“That doesn’t mean?—”
“Plus,” Elliot continues, ignoring my interruption, “she’s not what I expected. She’s funny, sharp, completely unimpressed by the hockey world. No wonder you’re obsessed.”
“I’m not obsessed.”
Brody snorts, unpacking Chinese food. “Right. That’s why you’ve been moping around like a kicked puppy for two weeks.”
“I haven’t been moping.”
“You’ve been moping,” Elliot confirms. “Brody says you barely talk during practice, you’ve been avoiding team events, and yesterday you spent twenty minutes staring at the learn-to-skate schedule.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “I was just checking the roster.”
“For two weeks straight?”
“It’s complicated.”
“What’s complicated?” Elliot asks. “You like her. She’s clearly not indifferent to you. Ask her out.”
