“Right, I’ll have that annual reminder,” she says with a half smile.
“It’s just surreal being on the other side of it. I really can’t gripe with money coming in like that every year, but I also can’t just ignore how I’ve felt about gambling for basically my entire life.” She lets out a huff of air. “I’ll use the money for my brother’s emergency. But otherwise, I want to pretend like the money doesn’t exist.”
“Some things in life we’re allowed to do, or keep, just for ourselves,” I say, this time more seriously. I mean it.
I see the moment my comment lands as Hazel’s mouth twitches in surprise. Her eyes lift to meet mine. “Ahh!” She ducks and reaches for her shoulder.
“Wait!” I say, grabbing her hand. “That’s…”
Her eyes widen. “No.”
“Bird poop,” I say, pressing my lips together. “Hold on.”
I tip my sparkling water into a napkin.
“On me and not you?” she asks excitedly. “I knew it was a good thing you held on to the horseshoe.”
At the mention of it, I remember the weight of it in my coat pocket. “Birds pooping on you is supposed to be a good sign. You didn’t need a fortune teller to confirm your luck. Life’s doing it for you.”
“Oh, right,” Hazel mumbles. “What’s with me and birds lately?”
“Can I get it for you?”
“Please.” She leans forward, and I lift the droppings off her shoulder with a dry napkin, wiping the spot clean with the wet one. Every time we see each other, we’re touching in little ways. It feels natural, like it’s an inevitable part of our day.
“You’re all good,” I say, feeling the curve of her shoulder beneath her sweater.
“Thanks.” And as though she’s used to stuff like this constantly happening to her, she continues eating. At this point, we’ve made a good dent.
“There!” Hazel says, tapping something with her spork. “The wishbone.” She digs it out of the chicken and sets it on a napkin next to her. “It needs to dry before we break it.”
“You thought of everything.”
“I take my responsibilities seriously,” she says. “Especially because of all the good things happening for me. Another recruiter reached out.”
“Hazel, I want the very best things for you.”
“You hardly know me,” she whispers.
“But I want to,” I tell her. Because it’s true. I do. I want to know everything about Hazel. I want to know which countries she’d look forward to most on a yearlong cruise. I want to know why she got a tattoo of Mickey Mouse. I want to know what her grandparents’ house looks like and what season of the year she loves it most in so I can know what she loves.
Those all feel like more intimate questions somehow, so I start with a basic one.
“What made you want to become a data analyst?” I ask, remembering the role the recruiter mentioned in Hazel’s email. When we drift too far into the shade, I grab the oars and row us around the lake, guiding us toward the Bow Bridge.
Hazel looks out over the water. “Data is chaos I can control,” she says. “My dad was always analyzing stats and numbers for the games he watched. I didn’t see them as numbers, though. I saw them as stories. If you can hear past the noise of all the data that comes in, you can understand what it’s really saying. We use that chaos to interpret and forecast future trends.”
I don’t even try to hold back my grin.
“Why are you smiling like that?” she asks.
“You’re like a data fortune teller.”
Hazel challenges my statement by making a face.
“Maybe you going to a fortune teller makes a lot more sense,” I reason. “You had data, you wanted a forecast.”
Hazel laughs once through her nose, like she doesn’t believe me. “Yeah, well, sometimes the data doesn’t tell you that you’re about to get laid off.”
