Page 107 of The Bet
“When?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“How sad is sad?”
She sighed. “Sad enough that I feel like I should stay a few more days.”
He made an empathetic noise at the back of his throat.
“But I can’t stay on another week,” she explained. “I have to get back into study mode. It’s an important semester.”
“You’re back on Thursday then?”
“On Thursday.” She wondered why he’d called her, and knew it wasn’t to ask her about the general state of her time back home. “Did I mess up something?”
“Mess up?”
“On a report or something?” That was why he’d called, wasn’t it?
“No. No. That’s not why I’m calling.”
“Oh.” It pleased her, to hear his voice again. And it was strange because there had been times during these past few weeks when she had often thought about him, and wondered what he was up to. There had been times when she had been tempted to call him, on the pretense of asking a work-related question, but she had stopped herself. That night at the bar, she had opened up to him in a way that was unlike her. Maybe it was that he seemed, nice, for a change, and had surprised her. He seemed to be listening, and she was just plain fed up of her mother dumping on her all the time. Maybe he’d just caught her at an unguarded time.
But she had thought about that evening more times than not.
So, this was nice, him calling her.
He coughed lightly. “I—uh—wondered how things were going for you,” he cleared his throat again, “being at home, and all. Just out of curiosity.”
“Just out of curiosity,” she repeated.
“And I—uh wanted to ask you something about how you did those charts. You know, the 3D bar charts.”
“The ones I did for Hennessy’s report?”
“Yeah, those.”
“They’re simple enough,” she said, “You just need to select the rows and—”
“It can wait,” he said. “It’s selecting those rows and columns that’s fiddly. But there’s no rush.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll show you when I get back.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Me, too.“How was your Christmas?” she asked.
“Not as bad as I expected.”
“You were expecting it to be bad?”
“You’ve met my mother, haven’t you?”
“Briefly.”
