Page 24 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
As they walked away, I caught Cheryl muttering, “I bet he has a spreadsheet for that too,” which made Adele snort-laugh.
Marc turned back to me, his jaw tight. “I don’t have a spreadsheet for being an ass.”
“That you’ll admit to,” I said, then immediately felt guilty. “Sorry. That was?—”
“Statistically accurate?” His mouth twitched. Was that … was he trying to make a joke?
I blinked. “Did you just?—”
A faint pink tinged his cheeks. He cleared his throat. “Can we focus now?” He pulled out a folded piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. It was already creased from being folded and unfolded.
For a second, the streetlight made the paper look shiny. “Did you laminate this?” I asked, squinting at it.
“No.” He sounded offended. “That would make it difficult to add comments to.”
“Right. Silly me.” I held myself back from rolling my eyes.
“I do have a digital copy, though. Color-coded by priority level. I can email it to you. Or print it. Or—” He paused. “Do you prefer digital or physical documentation?”
I stared at him. “Are you really asking me about documentation preferences right now?”
“Yes?”
My brain short-circuited between his communication efficiency and the earnest way he stared at me, waiting for an answer. “I … don’t … either? Both? I don’t care.”
He retrieved his phone from his pocket and typed something.
“Did you just make a note about my documentation preferences?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He glanced up, his brow creased in confusion. “Why not? It’s important to remember for next time.”
Next time.Like we were going to be meeting about this multiple times. Like this was the beginning of something and not a six-week forced collaboration that would probably end with one of us in tears and the other writing a very thorough incident report.
“Okay,” I said, because what else could I say? “What’s on your list?”
“I’ve organized the items by category.” He held up the paper, and I could see it was indeed organized with headings and subheadings. “On the digital version, I’ve notated safety critical items in red, yellow for important but flexible parameters, green for?—”
“I’m going to stop you right there before you pull out a pie chart.”
He pressed his lips together. “I don’t have a pie chart.”
“Yet,” I said, a chuckle slipping out.
He shook his head while humor glinted in his eyes, little wrinkles forming as he smiled. “Yet,” he agreed. “Would you prefer a Venn Diagram? We could start with animal care concerns and participant safety protocols.”
This was the side of Marc I typically didn’t see.
Why didn’t I know he had a sense of humor? Maybe it was because I tried to avoid him as much as humanly possible.
Marc averted his eyes. “The first session is too soon.”
He wasn’t wrong. At the end of the meeting, they suggested we start running the first one within the next three weeks.
“We need waivers. Clear animal handling guidelines. Limits on class size. Emergency protocols—” he said, ticking them off on his hand.
