He nudged his sister playfully on her ribs, “Haley’s math gold medal won’t be worth squat to our mom if it turns out we missed something there, right, sis?”  As he’d expected, Haley’s eyes flashed irritation, and she set her mouth to a firm line.  She hated looking inadequate in front of TJ, especially in an area that her sharp mind was known for. She fished for her tablet from the pile and Brad chuckled back at the glare his sister shot him.

Jason looked across at Bailey and Angie, who both nodded at him.  He knew the girls were planning to go on a double date with a couple of guys from the other private school in the upper west side, so he figured he’d have about an hour to work with them on their combined tasks for this project before they’d have to leave.  He motioned with his hands to Angie and Bailey that he was scooting over to their side of the table so that they could work together before they left.

He told TJ, ”we’ll continue polishing up the description of the arrangements of how the stipend-system we’re proposing can interface with the banking system in countries where those initial conflict areas that we want to test this program in are located.  We’ve been in touch with the local mobile phone companies there, and as we told you earlier, we think there’s a way to do all this through mobile technology safely.”

TJ nodded at Jason, and they made peace through an exchange of fist bumps. TJ responded to him and the others, “Okay, thanks everyone.  I’ll work on the overall package.  Make all this fit in a presentation that shouldn’t take more than 7-10 minutes to run through.  I’m afraid if we ramble, we’ll lose our audience.”

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A couple of hours later, as they were munching through the pizza that TJ had ordered, Bailey asked Angie, “So how did the two of you get into all this charity stuff, again?  I mean how did this all start?”

The work with Jason had taken longer than they’d expected and she’d called the two guys they were supposed to go on a double date with to ask whether they could do the blind-date the next night, instead.   Surprisingly, the guys had asked if they could join Angie and Bailey in the group meeting, once they could leave the party they were planning to take the girls to.