Page 37 of Blueline Baby

“I know, baby. Me too.” His breathing goes faster, losing its rhythm. “Okay. Don’t stop. Let me hear you. Come for me, come on⁠—”

I circle my fingers over and over, chasing it. I’m half panting, half chanting his name when I hear him groan into the phone, and the sound of him coming is what finally tips me over. The orgasm rips through me with my thighs locked up and shaking and my eyes squeezed shut.

I’m still gasping for breath when I hear him say, “Christ, I think it hit the ceiling.”

I giggle breathlessly into the phone.

“Okay,” I manage. “So that’s what we’d have.”

“Every night, baby.” I can hear the grin in his voice. “So you’ll move in with me?”

“Goodnight, Jack.” I laugh.

“That’s not a no. I’m officially logging it as a maybe.” There’s a rustle as he settles into the pillows, like he’s got nowhere in the world to be. “Don’t hang up yet. Jude won’t be back from dinner for an hour and I’m not ready to let you go.”

“You have a game tomorrow. You should be sleeping.”

“I’ll sleep in your bed Sunday. Tell me what you want to do most when finals are over.”

“Nothing,” I say, and mean it completely. “I want to put on my favorite movie and eat an entire container of raw cookie dough and not think about a single class until the fall semester starts.”

“What movie?”

I tell him, and he groans. “That’s a kissing movie.”

“The last thing we watched was your choice and it was race cars and explosions and men yelling over the explosions.”

“You fell asleep in the middle of it.”

“Because nothing happened, Jack. They drove and they yelled and then things blew up. It’s my turn.”

“Fine, I’ll watch the kissing movie.” He pauses. “I don’t understand why you like them, though. You know exactly how it ends before it starts.”

“That’s exactly the point. Nobody really gets hurt. The guy does one ridiculous, romantic thing and it works, every time, and everyone gets the ending they’re supposed to get.”

“Ridiculous and romantic like what.”

“I don’t know. He learns her coffee order. He shows up in the rain. He takes one dumb thing she said at the beginning and turns it into some enormous gesture by the end.”

“I could do that, if you’d let me.”

“You could not.” I laugh. “You would try something like making s’mores but I bet you would end up lighting something on fire.”

“Fine, I’ll be home in two days Backcheck Girl, and then I’ll show you how romantic I can be.”

“I can’t wait.”

I hang up and tuck the phone under my pillow in case he calls again.

19

JACK

OBVIOUSLY I’LL COME. YOU BUILT A FORT.

The last time I built a fort, much less a blanket fort, I was probably nine years old. The skills absolutely do not come back. I currently have every single sheet, towel, and blanket in the apartment draped across the living room. It’s not going well.

The first fort collapsed the second I stepped back to admire it. The second one took a dining chair down with it on the way. By the fourth attempt, I’m doing actual load-bearing engineering with a roll of clear hockey tape and one of my own sticks wedged between two chairs as a support beam. It’s either the most resourceful thing I’ve ever done with hockey equipment, or the most pathetic.