Page 21 of On His Team

He’s a junior. He’s been working here since his freshman year, which means he’s been here a year longer than me, and he pretends to know so much more than me. He can pull a holder, set a rivet, match somebody’s hollow off a number in a spreadsheet without asking.

When he finishes a pair, he runs his thumb down the edge without looking at it. He is also, objectively, extremely good-looking. Dark hair, forearms, played hockey before he got injured. I had a crush on him for about six weeks of my freshman year. Then I watched him eat yogurt, and nothing –– I mean nothing –– will ever clean my eyes of that. Some things can’t be undone. My crush is no more.

Cole pulls the steel, checks it, sets it in the rack, and picks up the next one without turning around.

“Faulkner’s are done,” he says. “Whitfield’s next.”

“Okay.”

“Somebody put Whitfield’s in the Beaumont slot.”

I respond, “Wasn’t me.”

“It was Evan.”

“It wasn’t Evan,” Evan says.

Evan’s on the floor at the end of the shelving with a scanner and two open boxes, doing the stick inventory, which is a job that takes four hours and makes everyone who does it insufferable for the rest of the day.

I go back to the washer, get the last of the jerseys in, and start the load, then I go get the towels off the drying rack, and Evan watches me do it from the floor.

“I was gonna do that.”

“Okay?” I say.

“I’m just saying.”

“And I’m just doing it.”

He goes back to the scanner and mutters something into the box.

Then, ninety seconds later, “Those don’t go on that shelf.”

“Donovan told me to put them there.”

“That’s not where we usually––”

“I told her to,” Donovan says, from somewhere behind the shelving, without any change in his voice at all.

I smile at Evan.

He does not smile back.

Every place you ever work has one person who irritates you by breathing incorrectly, and mine is a twenty-year-old boy named Evan with a barcode scanner.

Donovan comes back around with the clipboard and starts going down it. I get my phone out to type as he goes, because I learned early on that Donovan does not repeat himself and does not slow down.

“Jerseys through both washers tonight, dryers overnight, hang them tomorrow before two.”

“Okay.”

“Tape’s low. Clear and white. There’s a case of each in the back hallway. Break it down and get it stocked before Tuesday.”

“Yes.”

“Log anything broken from today. Reichel cracked a shaft. It’s on the bench. Do it properly with the number and the date, not a sticky note.” He looks at me. “Three times.”

“I won’t use a sticky note,” I promise, because it was three times, and he talked to me about it each time.