2. Chloe
CHLOE
DO YOU WANT TO SEE MY STANLEY CUP?
JANUARY
My roommate Britt has now insisted for the third time tonight that the only reason we get to go to this hockey game is because she’s dating one of the players.
The truth is that I’ve wanted to go to a Dallas game since the day I moved here for school but I couldn’t justify the money on tickets and so I sit at home, yelling at a TV that can’t hear me.
So yes, I guess Britt is the only reason I get to go to this game, because Britt is dating a hockey player this month.
She claims they’re serious enough that he put us on a “list” and as I’m wondering exactly what that means we end up walking into a suite full of women who clearly all know each other and absolutely do not know us.
Britt beelines toward the wall of food before I’ve even gotten my coat off.
I just want to escape the suffocating perfume and the side-eyes, so I go find a chair by myself.
Which is fine because I’m not the one dating a hockey player or here to make friends.
I came to watch a hockey game from closer than my couch.
The puck drops and everything around me except the game fades. I’m muttering about how badly it’s already going for Dallas when a linesman blows a call so badly that I jump to my feet.
“Oh, come on. His skate was inside the line, that’s not offside. He’s standing right there, how can you miss that?”
The woman a few chairs over turns to look at me and laughs. I feel my cheeks heat as I realize I’m screaming at a team of professional athletes in a room full of their wives.
“Okay. Hello.” She’s a little bit older than me and she’s grinning. “Where have you been all season?”
I blink, caught off guard. “On my couch, mostly.”
“I’m Lorelei Barrett. My husband’s the one wearing the C and also screaming at the refs.
” She gets up and switches to the empty chair next to me.
“Tell me why that wasn’t offside, and then tell me everything else you think, because I’ve sat in this box for six years and I have been dying to talk to someone with an opinion. ”
By the first intermission we’ve rebuilt Dallas’s top line, agreed the coach leans too hard on his veterans, and torn a referee apart for his calls.
I like her more than I’ve liked a new person in a long time, and I don’t fully trust that, so I pull my attention back to the ice, where a Dallas defenseman has just decided the game is entirely about him.
He steps up at the blue line and skates the puck the length of the rink himself, weaving through the other team like the other four men on the ice aren’t even there, before burying it top corner.
Then he glides back to the bench looking like the most pleased person in the state of Texas.
It’s one of the most arrogant displays of raw talent I’ve ever seen.
“He left the entire weak side open to do that,” I say. “If they miss and it goes the other way, that’s a goal against, and he’ll be the reason.”
“That,” Lorelei says, sitting back and crossing her arms, “is Jack Anderson. He does something like that about four times a night. Twice it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever seen and twice it nearly kills them.
” We watch him say something to a teammate that makes the whole bench laugh.
“He’s going to be a problem for some poor girl someday. ”
“He seems like he’s already a problem.”
“Oh, he is. He just hasn’t met the right one to be a problem for.” She bumps my shoulder with hers. “Come find me next game. I mean it.”
The party is in our building, which is the only reason Britt chose this apartment. She heard a rumor before she signed that half the team lived here and threw parties constantly. Every single part of that rumor turned out to be true.
By the time we’ve dropped our coats downstairs and come back up, the fifteenth floor apartment is packed wall-to-wall.
There’s a game on a muted TV in the corner that nobody is watching except, apparently, me.
Britt is already firmly planted in her player’s lap.
I find a spot near the counter and settle in to do my job: make sure Britt gets home alive, and leave the very second that becomes possible.
I’m half-watching a different hockey player crash and burn spectacularly with a woman he’s been hitting on all night.
He’s been explaining his plus-minus to her for almost ten minutes and she keeps giggling, though I’m positive she has no idea what the plus means.
I know exactly what it means, and I’m mentally debating telling her that this particular player has an abysmal rating, when a massive shadow falls over the whole counter.
I look up, and it’s Anderson.
Up close, he’s somehow even bigger than he looked on the ice and he’s staring down at me with this slow, devastating grin, like I’m a present somebody left just for him. My stomach does an unnecessary flip.
“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.”
“You can think about it on your own couch.”
“This one’s closer.” He stops halfway across the room and props his chin in his hand like we’re two girls gossiping at a sleepover. “Hockey question: how big is the neutral zone?”
“Fifty feet. They keep decreasing it.”
His mouth falls open in exaggerated shock, then he laughs and continues his crawl to the couch.
“Wow, impressive, Backcheck Girl.”
I fold my arms over my chest and watch him slowly haul his massive frame up onto the cushions. “Was that supposed to be hard?”
He rolls onto his back, grinning at my ceiling like this is the best thing that has ever happened to him. “Most girls think so. Do you want to see my Stanley Cup?”
“You haven’t won a Stanley Cup.”
I swear his grin gets wider. “Do you want to see my dick instead?”
I’m speechless for half a second before my brain fully processes what he’s just casually offered. A rush of heat climbs up my neck. “Not really.”
“You hesitated, so you kind of do?”
“No, I don’t want to see it at all.”
“Suit yourself Backcheck Girl, most people—”
“My name is Chloe, and I’m positive I don’t want to see your Stanley Cup… or your dick.”
“’Kay.” His eyes are already fluttering shut. “…’night, Backcheck Girl.”
And then he snores. One arm is thrown over his head, the other dragging on the floor, and he’s still half-grinning like he’s absolutely delighted by my flat rejection.
I sigh and pull the blanket off the back of the chair, draping it over the top half of him. It only reaches his shins.
“Goodnight,” I say out loud into the quiet apartment.
I should walk away. I should go to sleep. But I stand there and stare at his face for a moment longer. Stripped of the cocky grin, he just looks exhausted and undeniably handsome, and my stomach does that flip again. I’ll never admit it to Britt, and I barely want to admit it to myself.
I turn on my heel, retreat to my bedroom, and lock the door firmly behind me.