Page 3 of Blueline Baby

“You were in the box tonight,” he says, his voice carrying easily over the heavy bass. “Whose are you?”

I stiffen, gripping my plastic cup a little tighter. “Nobody’s. I’m here with a friend.”

“Did you see the goal?”

I want to wipe that cocky smile off his face. “Which one? Your team gave up three.”

That stops him for exactly half a second. Then he grins wider, which was absolutely not the reaction I expected.

“My goal. The one from the red line. You saw it.”

“I saw you abandon your point because you wanted to, and it happened to work.” I set my cup down on the counter. “You won that game in spite of yourself. Your forwards didn’t backcheck all night. You had three guys standing at the far blue line waiting for offense while your D got outnumbered in your own end. That’s not you being good. That’s the other team being worse.”

He stares at me like I’ve clearly ruined the entire experience he came over here to have, and I feel great about it.

“You know what backchecking is,” he says. He sounds like I’ve just confessed a deep, dark secret.

“Everyone knows what backchecking is.”

He leans a forearm on the counter, closing the distance between us. He looks delighted in a way that’s somehow worse than if he were offended. “Say more mean things about my game. I’m not kidding, this is the best conversation I’ve had in months.”

And that’s my cue. I can practically feel the magnetic pull of this ridiculously good-looking man who thinks being insulted by me is a fun new thing, and I refuse to be sucked in. I have a midterm on Monday, a carefully structured life, and zero interest in being anyone’s fun new thing.

So I collect what’s left of my dignity and walk away.

“Hey,” he calls after me, cheerfully, over the music. “Backcheck Girl. That’s you now.”

I ignore him and I let myself out. The door swings shut behind me, knocking the party down to a thud I can still feel through my shoes, and I take the first real breath I’ve managed all night.

I force myself to study for exactly an hour before finally giving up and tossing my notecards onto the floor next to my bed. I’m dozing in that weird half-state between awake and asleep, thinking about all the things I need to do tomorrow and feeling mildly guilty that I left Britt at the party—even though I know she’ll be home in another hour or two.

Then I hear a rhythmic thumping at the front door.

Despite years of consuming way too much true crime media, I find myself creeping toward the door as the handle shakes violently, like someone’s trying to force their way in. Then comes a muffled “Come on,” followed by a heavy thump from the other side.

Someone trying to break in would be stealthier, I reassure myself. I stand on my tiptoes to look through the peephole, but there’s nothing on the other side. The rattling must have been my imagination. Maybe just the door shaking because someone slammed another one down the hall. But my heart is hammering against my ribs. Against my better judgement, I throw the deadbolt and open the door anyway, just to make sure.

The second the latch gives, the door swings open much faster than it should, because there’s a full-grown man leaning against the other side of it. He comes down backward into my entryway, landing flat on his back. His head makes a dull thud as it connects with the wood floor.

He doesn’t get up. He just lies there, blinking slowly up at my ceiling.

“Ow,” he says, to no one in particular.

It’s the impossibly tall guy from the party. Jack. Even flat on his back, he takes up entirely too much space. I nudge his shoulder with my toe. “This isn’t your apartment.”

He tips his head back to look at me upside down and a slow, crooked grin spreads across his face. “I know you.”

“You don’t.”

“I do. You were upstairs.” He tries to point at me, but his arm veers off to the side, pointing at the ceiling instead. “You… you’re… you’re Backcheck Girl. You told me my forwards don’t backcheck.” His heavy hand drops back to the floor. “You were right. Don’t tell anybody.”

“You’re on the wrong floor,” I tell him, ignoring the nickname entirely, and poke him with my toe again. “This is two-oh-four and the stairs are⁠—”

But he’s already rolling onto his stomach. He gets both forearms under him, and begins with a tremendous, drunken effort to army-crawl past my legs and into my living room.

“What are you doing?”

“Couch.” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and I’m the strange one for asking. He drags himself another foot across my floor, talking the entire time. “I wanted to keep talking to you, Backcheck Girl, and then you were gone and now I can’t remember what I wanted to say.”