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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.