Page 22 of Blueline Baby

“Okay,” I say. “I’m not trying to be a creep, but that was hot. Please do it again.”

She giggles, already tearing off another piece. “Bread should be mandatory at every meal. It should be the only thing on the food pyramid. Everything else is optional. Bread is the pyramid.”

“You’ve got really strong feelings about bread.”

“I’ve got strong feelings about a lot of things.” She points the crust at me. “What do you have strong feelings about?”

“You.”

“No. For real. Don’t try to be smooth, I’ll leave.” She sits back. “Actual hot take. Go.”

So I tell her the first true thing that comes up. “Airplanes.”

She blinks. “Your hot take is airplanes?”

“Airplane conversations are the only time people are honest. Nobody’s trying to be anything, you both just want out, so for however long you’re stuck on a metal tube you get a total stranger being completely real about everything and then you land and you never see them again.” I shrug. “Some of the best talks I’ve had were with people on planes. Think about it.”

“Huh,” she says finally.

“Huh good or huh bad.”

“Huh, you’re going to be more annoying than I planned for.”

After dinner I take her to the practice facility, and she figures it out the second I turn into the players’ lot. Instead of the suspicion I’m braced for she sits up and grabs my arm.

“Jack.” Her seatbelt’s already off. “You did not.”

I flip on the side lights and there it is, a full clean sheet of ice that’s only ours. She laces up a pair of skates that I’d set aside earlier in the week after attempting and failing to sneakily ask Britt her shoe size.

“Ready to lose?” she says, stepping on.

“I play in the NHL, Chloe.”

“And I’m from Canada. Basically even.”

She’s not lying about being able to skate. She pushes off low and fast and finishes with a hockey stop that sprays ice up the boards, then grins at me like she’s already won.

“Race me. Loser buys breakfast.”

“You want to race me?”

“I want to embarrass you.”

She loses. And it’s by a lot less than she should, which makes it worse, and she demands a rematch, and on the third one she skates up behind me and grabs a fistful of my jacket to slow me down.

“That’s cheating.”

“That’s a hockey play. You’d know if you watched the game.”

“I play in the⁠—”

“Blah blah, NHL. Again.”

“Okay, hotshot,” I say. “Now backward.”

She immediately stops grinning. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” I laugh. “Wait. You’re telling me Backcheck Girl can’t actually backcheck?”