I randomly press a couple keys on the keyboard. “Just doing a reset, and then we’ll see.”
“What?” Nash nearly drops the glasses as he sets them down. “No. A reset? No. You can’t reset it, I need my slides!”
“I know. I’m doing my best. This will clear whatever you were working on so we can get it turned on again. We might have to revert to an auto-recovered version, but better than losing the whole thing, right?” In truth, when I look down, I’m holding the Function and L keys. I don’t think that does anything, but Nash is still so strung out. I shouldn’t laugh at him.
He glowers while he sips on his water. If I wasn’t feeling so sympathetic, that glower would have me halfway hard in my pants.
“We have to give it a minute. Why don’t you have a seat?”
“I don’t want to have a seat, Brady. I need to finish my slides!”
Okay, okay. I stand, taking the water and heading to his couch. Nash trails after me forlornly, but if we stay there while we wait for the battery to pick up enough of a charge to turn back on, one of us is liable to spill our water all over it, and then my clever diagnosis will mean jack shit.
“What are the slides for?” I say.
“For a queer arts conference this weekend.”
“Oh, where’s that happening?”
He drums his fingers distractedly on his glass. “Westin Harbour.”
I whistle softly. Stuff like that always makes me happy. You put a queer tag on anything and it becomes niche and marginalized, the sort of thing that happens in coffee shops and hipster community spaces. This nice hotel means Nash has hit the big time.
“What are you talking about?” I say.
His smile twists a little bitterly in the corners. “Mistakes made. Lessons learned. Things I wish I could do over again.”
“You?” I say. “Mr. Prepared. What do you wish you could do over?”
He shakes his head. “So many things. I wish—”
The computer beeps and whirs softly to life. Nash is off the couch like a shot. “Did you fix it?”
I wait, holding my breath, while he rounds the table. His ears are up around his shoulders as he hunches over the keyboard. The screen lights his cheekbones and the hard line of his jaw and makes his eyes flash. He makes a soft clicking noise with his tongue as he watches it boot up and has to retype his password three times because his fingers shake.
“Don’t lock yourself out,” I say, biting back a laugh.
“Up yours, Brady.” But there’s no heat in it.
The seconds as he scans the screen and clicks around are agonizing, but then he shouts and throws his fists over his head in victory. “It’s here! It’s all here!”
I stand, confident in the knowledge of another satisfied customer. “You’re welcome.”
His smile is blinding relief. “What did you do?”
“Oh, nothing. Just a little IT slight of hand and—”
“No, seriously.” He takes a few stumbling steps away from the table, like he’s afraid to let the laptop out of his sight while he talks to me. “Is it going to stay on? Should I get you to check it on Monday?”
I shrug, reaching for my jacket. “I think you’ll be okay. Keep it plugged in and you’ll be fine.”
“Plugged in? Why? Is something wrong with the battery?”
“No.” I don’t want to embarrass him. Between my phone call last week and then the hot yoga, we’ve done enough of that to each other lately.
“But then how—” He gets in front of me. What does he want me to do? Sit next to him for the rest of the night while he finishes putting his slides together?
“Because it wasn’t plugged in when I got here.”
