Page 16 of Blueline Baby

I read it multiple times. I’m actively annoyed by how many times I read it. I know exactly how to say no when something is just a pickup line, but this isn’t that. It’s a person genuinely asking, and my brain can’t supply a logical reason to decline.

I type no and delete it. I type I have a lot of studying and delete that too. It’s a Friday and I don’t study on Friday nights. Even if he doesn’t know it’s a lie, for some inexplicable reason, I don’t want to lie to him.

I put the phone face-down on the desk and stare at my notes for ten minutes, getting through absolutely none of my reading. Finally, I pick the phone back up, text back one word—sure—and immediately regret it.

Britt loses her mind. She’s been waiting since last semester for me to do something like this. She raids her closet, forcibly applies my eyeliner, and tells me eleven times that this is good for me. I let her do it, mostly because arguing with Britt about eyeliner is a battle I don’t have the energy to fight.

“It’s not even a thing,” I tell her while she zips up the back of the top she forced me into.

“It’s a little bit of a thing.”

“It’s in our same building. If it’s terrible, I’ll be back in my own bed in ninety seconds.”

His apartment is packed by the time we get up there. It's incredibly loud, filled wall-to-wall with the heavy bass of a terrible playlist and people I only half-recognize from watching Britt at the edge of previous parties.

And him. He finds me before I’ve completely made it through the front door.

He cuts straight through the entire room, shoving past people without apologizing, and the look on his face when he sees me is so genuinely happy that it disarms my defenses all over again.

“You came,” he says.

“You said that last time too.”

“I mean it more this time.” He’s holding a plastic cup. He reaches out, pulling me out of the crush of bodies and toward the kitchen. He gets me a drink and stands with his back to the entire party, physically blocking me from the chaos like the rest of the room isn’t happening. Like I’m the only thing in the apartment worth looking at.

For about twenty minutes, I completely forget every logical reason I wasn’t going to come.

He braces both hands on the counter on either side of me. Because it’s so loud, he has to dip his head and talk low into my ear just so I can hear him. He’s funny and charming, asking all the right questions and commenting on various people who walk past us. He asks about the sled dogs again. He actually remembers the breeds I told him about in the truck, getting one wrong on purpose just so I’ll correct him. He watches my mouth when I talk.

And somewhere in there, my brain misfires, and I think, clearly and stupidly: maybe I had him wrong.

Then the guys find him.

Somebody puts a shot in his hand. Then another. A chant goes up from the living room. He gives me one quick, apologetic look, and then the room swallows him whole.

I’ve never seen this version of him. On the ice, even when he’s reckless, he’s a professional athlete. It’s controlled chaos. This isn’t control. This is a guy taking his hands entirely off the steering wheel on purpose.

He does the shots, and then he does more. Somebody drags a keg into the center of the apartment. He’s up on it, completely upside down, two massive guys holding his ankles while the whole party counts. He goes and goes and goes until the room roars. He comes up with beer soaked down his shirt and his arms over his head like he just won a championship trophy.

He chugs a full beer without breaking eye contact with the crowd. He takes a shot off the blade of a hockey stick then climbs onto the arm of the couch to give a toast nobody can hear and nearly goes backward through the drywall. Everyone screams with laughter. He absolutely loves that they love it. He’s the entire gravity of the apartment.

A woman refilling her cup at the counter catches me watching him.

“He’s great, isn’t he?” she says over the music. “He’s great to everybody.”

She wanders off before I can answer, but the words settle heavy in my stomach. He's great to everybody. The attention he gave me wasn't special. It's just his default setting.

I should leave right then.

I don’t, because some idiot part of me is still standing exactly where I was twenty minutes ago, still holding onto the completely illogical hope that maybe I’m actually different.

Then he finds me again.

He comes weaving back through the crowd, beer-soaked and grinning. Before I can get a word out or even put a hand up to stop him, he’s got my face in both hands and he’s kissing me.

It’s nothing like I would have wanted it to be, if I was willing to admit I wanted it at all. Because I did, briefly, in that quiet moment in the kitchen.

But this is sloppy. It tastes overwhelmingly like the beer he’s been drinking. He’s smiling into the kiss, way too pleased with himself, and I’m so physically stunned by the suddenness of it that I can’t even move.