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People, Katie has decided, are predictable. Watch them for long enough, and their everyday motions start to read like clockwork. At 9 AM on Thursdays, she shows up for her shift behind the library’s tech desk. At 9:20, the girl with space buns and an artfully distressed jean jacket strides in, heading straight for one of the study pods. At 9:25, somebody blows through the doors in a last-minute effort to print materials for their 9:30 class. And at 10:50, ten minutes before Katie’s shift ends, Lance McClain shows up, laboring under the weight of a camera bag, backpack, and tripod.
Katie reaches for the scanner as Lance puffs his way toward her, depositing the tripod on the table with a heavy clunk. It takes him another minute to locate his student ID card: he checks the pocket of his cargo jacket first (not there—it never is) before wriggling his fingers into his jean pocket instead. When he hands the plastic over, it’s warm from being pressed against his thigh.
Katie spares it a passing glance as she pulls up the ‘Equipment Return’ form, filling in the requisite information.
“You’re good to go.” She gives him a thumbs-up, careful not to look him straight in the eye.
“Cool, thanks.” Flashing a bright grin, Lance backpedals toward the doors, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
Once he’s disappeared completely from view, Katie unzips the camera bag. She flicks the dial to on and goes straight to display mode. Sure enough, the schmuck hasn’t bothered wiping the memory card.
Smirking, Katie kicks her feet up on the table and leans back in her chair.
Let the entertainment begin.
o.O.o
Lance McClain does not know her name, and Katie is completely content with this. She applied for her gig at the tech desk specifically because it required minimal human interaction. Nobody expects her to make conversation; they just want to check out equipment and leave. Occasionally she has to troubleshoot a printer jam or direct tourists to the bathrooms; most of the time, though, she just does her homework and gets paid.
Still, when someone visits at least twice a week, it’s hard not to notice. The first time Lance left recording footage behind on the camera had sparked her interest, and from there it wasn’t too hard to find his YouTube channel, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Which was how she knew that he was a second-year bio major with a side-job at the Starbucks in the Garrison, the student union, and in his free time he liked to record himself attempting to do stunts with his skateboard, if not narrating a funny story about his day or answering the call of things like the Cinnamon Challenge.
Katie and Keith had gotten halfway through that video before Keith closed her laptop.
“I can’t watch you do this to yourself,” Keith said, shaking his head. “Katie, you’re too good for him.”
“I’m hate-watching!” Katie justified, attempting to wrestle her Chromebook from Keith’s grip.
“You know way too much about him to just be ‘hate-watching,’” said Keith, making air quotes with his left hand. “You have his student ID number memorized.”
Katie glared. She regretted letting that piece of information slip. Memorizing Lance’s ID hadn’t even been intentional—it’d only happened because of how many times she’d typed his information into the system during checkout.
“You go to office hours just so you can breathe the same air as your TA for an extra 120 minutes,” she retorted. “You don’t get to lecture me on sad. ”
Anyways. All of this is to say that despite what Keith thinks, she does not have a weird, borderline crush-fascination with Lance. And when she stumbles into Green Library’s 24-hr study room at 3 AM to work on a CS project, he’s the last person she’s expecting to see.
Lance is slouched in a swivel chair, earbuds plugged into the desktop in front of him. One dangles loosely around his neck, the other shoved in his ear. Upon hearing someone else enter, he lurches to attention. Katie pretends not to notice—she fully intends to sit on the other side of the room—but Lance doesn’t give her the chance.
“Hey! You’re tech-desk girl!”
It’s a dumb nickname. Definitely not something to get excited about, and Katie schools her features to reflect that. She’s above all… this. Unaffected. “I have a name.”
A quirk of the lips. Lance somehow manages to hook an ankle around the chair closest to him and spins it so the seat faces toward her, an offering. “Wanna tell it to me?”
It’s uncannily close to the Pick-up Line Challenge video he posted to his account a month ago. Katie tries not to think too hard about that.
“What’s in the thermos?” she asks instead, setting her backpack down and warily accepting the chair.
“Redbull and coffee.” Lance’s leg bounces under the table, fingers tapping a jittery rhythm on the keyboard. “Wanna try some?”
“No thanks. It sounds unholy.”
“Oh, it is. Definitely a personal low, but sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.” As he gulps his strange concoction, Lance’s face wrinkles, throat flexing as if he’s swallowed a frog. “God, this is like… sacrilege for me.” His voice lowers, confiding. “I’m a barista.”
“I know,” blurts Katie. Immediately after, she freezes, hoping that the comment will drop unnoticed.
No such luck. Lance raises an eyebrow, questioning. A strange light has entered his eyes; by admitting that she’s paid attention to him, Katie has suddenly become the sole focus of his attention.
How much to admit? Best to be blunt—rip it off like a bandaid. The best defense is offense, and all that.
“You never delete your videos off the camera before you return it,” she says.
Whatever explanation Lance had been anticipating, this one catches him off guard. His face contorts as he tries to process the information. “I—my videos? ”
It’s almost too easy, slipping into the impersonation. “Hey guys, it’s ya boi Lance, and today I’ll be—”
“Okay, okay.” Lance waves his hands, cutting her off. “Please do not continue.”
“I thought you’d be flattered hearing your own lines back at you.”
“Not like that, it’s weird! You make me sound like a tool.” He sighs. “Well, now I’m disappointed.”
Katie frowns. “Why?”
“I don’t know! I thought it’d be cool if you knew stuff about me because I was like, your secret Starbucks crush or something.” At this, he shoots her a hopeful look.
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“We sell other stuff. Also, you still haven’t told me your name.”
“It’s Katie,” she finally relents, breaking eye contact to pull her laptop out of her bag. When she looks over again, Lance is resting his chin on his hand, staring at her thoughtfully.
“What.”
“So does this mean you subscribe to my YouTube channel?”
“No.”
Lance pouts. “Why not?”
“I like the raw footage better. It’s funnier. Like the first take of the spicy noodle challenge, where you spewed milk out of your nose? Classic.” She cranes her neck to look over his shoulder. “What are you working on, anyways?”
“Nothing!” Lance pushes his body between her and the screen, the broad line of his back blocking her view.
“Doesn’t sound like nothing if you’re being like that.”
“Hey, haven’t you heard about this thing called privacy? 4th Amendment! Search and seizure! Gimme back the mou— ow!”
Years of wrestling with Matt has made Katie adept at underhanded maneuvers; with Lance still rubbing his side from where she pinched him, she takes control of the mouse and opens up the window he’d minimized earlier. Onscreen, several scenes are being recolored and spliced together; she recognizes the footage from earlier today.
“Do you always make your videos on the school computers?”
“I have my own laptop. It’s just shitty and will only run like, 2 programs at a time, and all that’s being directed towards a stats project right now.” Lance eyes her sideways. “Hey, what major are you? Or, wait—are you a freshman? Have you even declared yet—”
“I’m a sophomore. Computer science and math.”
“Ah, the double major.” Lance nods, then puffs out his chest. “Guess what I am.”
Common sense tells Katie that she should play dumb. Let him have the satisfaction of correcting her. But her overwhelming need to prove she knows things wins out.
“Pre-med bio.”
Lance blinks. “Wow, first guess.” His surprise turns sly. “You do have a crush on me.”
Katie rolls her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. All it takes is a quick LinkedIn search.”
“Yeah, but you only fully read through someone’s LinkedIn when you’re a) hiring or b) evaluating their bae potential. It’s okay—” he holds up a hand, cutting off her protest, “—I’m honored, truly.”
“You’re ridiculous.” This entire interaction has gone so far off the rails, she doesn’t know how to begin redirecting it. Lance, meanwhile, shifts focus easily, pulling a camera out of his backpack and popping the lens cap off with practiced ease. The next thing Katie knows, it’s pointed at her, Lance narrating: “You’ve heard of Sleepless in Seattle, but we’re here with Sleepless in the Study Room, guest-starring my new friend Katie!”
“What—who said we were friends?” says Katie, trying to duck out of the frame. Lance is an unerring videographer, though; he follows every motion. Backed into a corner, Katie swats at the lens before remembering that it’s from the tech desk and, therefore, her responsibility. She stays her hand.
“We’ve been talking for over half-an-hour,” Lance says, flashing his phone at her, where 3:30 AM makes itself known in thin white strokes. “I’d say that counts for something.”
His smile is bright and close. It’s probably the lack of sleep that’s making her loopy, but the feeling underneath her skin is not unlike a sugar rush.
“I guess,” she says.
o.O.o
She regrets everything the next morning. The minute she gets behind the tech desk, Katie thumps her head down and starts calculating. If she naps in ten minute increments, maybe she’ll recuperate some of her lost sleep and still manage to do her job.
The hours crawl by slowly. At 10:50, the characteristic whoosh of the automatic doors awakens her from her latest sleep cycle, and from somewhere above, an entirely too chipper voice says: “You look like you could use a pick-me-up.”
“This is your fault,” Katie groans, raising her chin to glower at Lance. “Because of you, I got distracted, and then I had to stay up even later to finish coding.”
“I know, I was there. You are a very aggressive programmer, by the way.”
“Just pass over your card so I can check this equipment back in,” she grumbles, wiggling her fingers in demand. Instead, though, Lance curls her fingers around a warm paper cup.
Katie stares at it blankly. “I told you I didn’t drink coffee.”
“It’s my special blend,” Lance insists. “You’ll like it, promise.”
“Yeah, well, it’s going to have to wait ten minutes,” sighs Katie, pushing it to the side and heaving the camera and tripod over the desk. “I’m not allowed to have drinks back here. On-duty policy.”
“Then I’ll keep it safe in the meantime,” says Lance, snatching it back. “I’ll just be over here.”
Katie watches him stake out a table. Blinks a few times, to confirm that he’s still there. This isn’t part of their usual routine. It feels strange but not entirely unwelcome.
When she flicks to the camera’s memory card, it’s clean. That’s weird, too—that they actually had a fully fledged conversation, and he took something she said to heart. In fact, the other night, she’s pretty sure she made him laugh. And there’d been a moment, where Lance had tipped his head back, eyes crinkling, and Katie had thought: shit, maybe Keith had been onto something after all.
When her shift ends, she heads over to the table that Lance has staked out. In characteristic Lance fashion, he’s already found a way to unfold himself over all the available space: backpack slung over the back of an empty chair, feet kicked up on the seat opposite him. Katie nudges them aside as she sits down, reaching over to grab her coffee, and Lance’s face brightens.
“By the way, your earbuds aren’t plugged in completely,” she says, sipping her drink. Lance, despite only knowing her from their interactions the night before, has somehow guessed at her sweet tooth, and the foamy latte goes down easily. “Nice music.”
Lance rips the buds from his ears, gaping down at his phone in horror. Onscreen, a disturbingly animated baby waves its arms, singing, Yes papa, as a banjo strums in the background. Katie marks that down as another piece of information on Lance: listens to educational children’s music in his free time.
“In my defense, it’s for a project.”
“Sure it is,” she says, slapping Lance’s hand away when he tries to grab the coffee back in retaliation, and it’s so natural to mess with him like this, to laugh and call him noodle arms and have everybody else glare at them for being disruptive.
I think it counts for something, Lance had said the other night.
Something, indeed.