Page 57 of On His Team

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.