Nerds Don't Date Athletes

Chapter 4

SLOANE

The thing about a hockey house party is that everyone knows whose party it is before they even walk through the door.

Crestwood's team throws one every year the Friday before midterms. It's tradition apparently. Chelsea has been talking about it since September like it's the social event of the decade.

I have been saying no since September.

"You're going," Chelsea says. She's standing in front of our mirror in a green dress that fits her like it was made specifically to make every person in the room feel inadequate. "End of discussion."

"It's Chase's team's party."

"It's the whole campus's party. Chase doesn't own it."

"Chelsea-"

"Sloane." She turns around. "He has been telling people all week that you were cold. That you were difficult. That being with you was exhausting." She holds my gaze. "Are you really going to sit in this room on a Friday night and let him have that?"

I look at my laptop. At the cold coffee on my desk. At the four walls I have barely left since Monday.

"No," I say.

"Good." She throws the black dress at me. "Put that on. And for the love of God wear the good underwear. Not the period underwear."

"Nobody is seeing my underwear tonight."

"You don't know that." She turns back to the mirror and uncaps her mascara. "Life is unpredictable."

---

The party is exactly what I expected and worse.

Crestwood's hockey house sits at the north end of campus and by the time we arrive it's already loud and hot and packed with bodies. The music is aggressive. The drinks are warm. The hallway smells like beer and bad decisions and someone's awful cologne.

Chelsea gets us drinks immediately.

"Stop looking like you're about to file a complaint," she says into my ear.

"I'm not."

"You're doing the face."

"I don't have a face-"

"The face where you're already calculating the earliest socially acceptable time to leave." She shoves a cup into my hand. "Drink. You look incredible tonight and he's going to see you and it's going to absolutely destroy him."

I take a long sip and look around the room.

And there he is.

Chase is near the stairs, drink in hand, laughing with his teammates. He's in the grey henley I bought him for his birthday last year and that specific detail twists something in my stomach in a way I wasn't prepared for.

He hasn't seen me yet.

For thirty seconds I have the advantage and I use it to just look. At the easy way he's standing. At the performance of it. At the person I spent two years showing up for - 5am practices, frozen arenas, his essays, his moods, his needs - standing there in my birthday present like none of it ever happened.

Then he turns his head.

Our eyes meet across the room.

The laugh drops off his face. Just for a second. Long enough for me to see what's underneath - anger, embarrassment, something ugly. Then he picks the easy back up and deliberately turns away from me.

Like I'm not worth the effort of a full reaction.

"Don't," Chelsea says beside me.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're doing the thing where you're about to go over there and say everything you've been saving up all week."

"I'm not going over there."

"Good." She steers me toward the living room. "Dance with me."

"I don't dance."

"You do tonight."

I let her pull me because the alternative is standing still watching Chase perform unbothered for his teammates, and I would rather do almost anything than give him that.

The living room is louder. More bodies. More heat. Chelsea finds the music immediately the way she always does - effortless, like she was made for rooms like this. I stand at the edge with my drink and watch and try to remember how to exist in a party without running a background analysis on everything wrong with being here.

And then I feel it.

The specific sensation of eyes on me.

Not the casual kind. Not the sweeping-the-room kind.

The deliberate kind.

I turn my head.

There's a guy across the room leaning against the far wall. Dark jacket. Arms crossed loosely. Cup in one hand. Tall - the kind of built that fills out a jacket without trying, broad through the shoulders, the kind of body that comes from years of being on the ice and it shows. He's looking directly at me with an expression I can't fully read from here.

But I know that jaw.

I know that jacket.

My stomach does something I decide immediately to ignore.

I push through the bodies, past Chelsea who grabs for my arm and misses, through the other side of the room and out into the slightly emptier hallway.

He's already moving toward me.

Of course he is.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I say.

Noah Sinclair looks completely, infuriatingly unbothered. "Reyes got invited. I came with him."

"You came to a Crestwood party."

"Free drinks." He shrugs. "Hard to say no."

"Chase is here."

"I know."

"He's going to see you."

"Probably." His eyes move over my face and then - slowly, deliberately, just once - down. Taking in the dress. The legs. All of it. He doesn't rush it and he doesn't pretend he isn't doing it. When his eyes come back up to mine, he holds my gaze for one long beat like he wants to make sure I felt that. "You look good," he says. Not surprised. Not performing it for the room. Just a flat, certain fact stated directly to my face from three feet away.

"Don't do that," I say.

"Do what?"

"That." I gesture vaguely at him. At the looking. At all of it.

The corner of his mouth pulls up. "I'm just being honest."

"Well stop."

"Okay." He doesn't stop looking at me like that though. Not even slightly.

I take a sip of my drink because I need something to do with my hands. "He's been talking about me," I say. "All week. Telling people I was cold. Difficult. That being with me was suffocating."

Something shifts in Noah's expression. The almost-amused thing drops out of it. "Suffocating."

"His word apparently."

"The man whose 5am practices you drove him to."

"The very same."

Noah is quiet for a moment. His jaw does something tight. "He's rewriting it so he doesn't have to be the one who cheated."

"I know that."

"Do you? Because you've got the look of someone who's been letting his version of it sit in their head all week."

I open my mouth. Close it.

Because he's not wrong and I hate that he's not wrong.

"It doesn't matter that I know what he's doing," I say. "It still lands."

"Yeah." He says it simply. No dismissal. No just ignore him. Just - yeah. Like he actually gets the difference. "It still lands. That's fair."

I look at him.

He looks back.

The hallway is narrow and warm and the music from the living room is thumping through the walls and Noah Sinclair is standing close enough that I can see the detail of his jaw, the line of his throat, the way his jacket sits across his shoulders and I am very aware suddenly that I am wearing a dress that Chelsea picked out specifically to be looked at and he looked and I felt it everywhere.

"You shouldn't be here," I say. My voice comes out quieter than I intend.

"Probably not." He doesn't move.

"If Chase sees you-"

"Then he sees me." His eyes are steady on mine. "I'm not hiding in a hallway because Chase Bennett has a fragile ego."

"This isn't your fight."

"Didn't say it was."

"Then why are you here, Noah."

He looks at me for a long moment. Long enough that I feel it in my chest. His eyes drop to my mouth for just a second - half a second - then come back up.

"Reyes wanted to come," he says.

And we both know that's not the whole answer.

I take a small step back. Practical. Necessary. Because the hallway is small and he is large and warm and looking at me like that and I have had exactly one drink and my ex-boyfriend is twenty feet away.

"I'm going to find Chelsea," I say.

"Good idea."

"Don't cause problems."

"Never do."

I give him a look. He almost smiles. I turn and walk back into the living room before that almost-smile finishes itself because I have a feeling if I see the full version of it up close I am going to make a decision I'm not ready to make yet.

I don't look back.

I absolutely want to look back.

---

Chelsea sees my face the second I reach her.

"Oh my God," she says. She grabs both my arms. "Is that not Noah?"

"Keep your voice down."

"Noah Sinclair is at this party?"

"Chelsea-"

"In that jacket?" She cranes her neck shamelessly over my shoulder. "Sloane. He is so hot. Like aggressively, unfairly, what the hell hot-"

"He plays for Ridgemont."

"I don't care if he plays for the moon he is-"

"Chelsea." I grab her chin and turn her face back toward me. "Focus."

She focuses. Barely. Her eyes are still trying to drift over my shoulder. "Did you talk to him?"

"Briefly."

"And?"

"And nothing. He's here with Reyes."

"Sure he is." She grins. "The man drove forty minutes to a rival campus party for Reyes."

"We don't know where he drove from-"

"Sloane." She gives me the look. The one that means she sees every single thing I'm trying to hide and finds it adorable in the most irritating way possible. "How did he look at you?"

I don't answer.

Her grin gets wider. "That good huh."

"Dance with me," I say. "Right now. Stop talking and dance with me."

She laughs and pulls me in.

I dance with her.

But the whole night - no matter where I am in that house, no matter how loud the music gets or how many people crowd the room - I am aware of exactly where Noah is standing.

And once, just once, I look up from the dancefloor.

He's across the room. Drink in hand. Watching me move.

Not subtle about it.

Not even trying to be.

His eyes are dark and steady and when they meet mine he doesn't look away and I don't look away and there are thirty people between us and it feels like there aren't any at all.

My whole body feels it.

Every single inch of it.

And then Chase steps into my line of sight, loud and oblivious, throwing his arm around a teammate.

I blink.

Look away.

Put my drink to my lips.

My hand is not steady.

Chelsea leans into my ear. "He was looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive," she says. "Just so you know."

"Shut up Chelsea."

She laughs.

But she's not wrong.

And that's the problem.

---

We're getting our jackets from the pile near the front door at the end of the night when I feel a hand close around my wrist.

Not Chelsea's hand.

I turn around.

Chase.

His eyes are hard and his jaw is set and the easy performance from earlier in the night is completely gone. He's had more to drink - I can tell from the slight looseness around his mouth, the way his grip is not quite steady.

"You brought him here," he says. Low. Meant only for me.

"I didn't bring anyone anywhere," I say.

"He plays for Ridgemont, Sloane-"

"Let go of my wrist Chase."

He doesn't let go. "What are you trying to prove? Showing up here in that dress with a Ridgemont player-"

"I came with Chelsea." I keep my voice flat. Steady. "I didn't know he was going to be here. And even if I did, you lost the right to have an opinion on who I'm around the second I found that earring." I look down at his hand on my wrist. "Let. Go."

Something crosses his face. He lets go.

I turn back to get my jacket.

And find Noah standing three feet away.

He's got his own jacket on, clearly on his way out. He looked at Chase's hand on my wrist, back up at Chase, and there is nothing readable in his expression. Nothing loud. Nothing performed. Just - stillness. The particular stillness of someone deciding whether something requires a response.

Chase sees him.

The air in the hallway goes sharp.

"You need something?" Chase says.

"Nope," Noah says simply.

"Then keep moving."

"Sure." Noah looks at me. Just briefly. Just a look that says - you good?

I give him the smallest nod.

He holds Chase's gaze for one more second. Then he turns and walks out the front door without another word.

No threats. No performance. Just that one second of eye contact with Chase that said everything that needed to be said without saying any of it.

Chase turns back to me. Opens his mouth.

"Goodnight Chase," I say.

I grab my jacket and walk out before he can say a word.

---

Outside the cold hits me immediately. Chelsea links her arm through mine and we walk down the path away from the house and she doesn't say anything for a full minute which is remarkable restraint for Chelsea.

Then - "Are you okay?"

"He grabbed my wrist."

She stops walking. "He what?"

"He let go. Noah was there." I keep walking. "It's fine."

"It is absolutely not-"

"Chelsea."

She falls back into step with me. I can feel her processing it - the anger, the worry, the fifty things she wants to say. To her credit she holds most of them.

"Noah saw?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"What did he do?"

I think about that look. The stillness. The one second of eye contact with Chase that shut the whole thing down without a single word.

"Nothing," I say. "Exactly the right amount of nothing."

Chelsea is quiet for a moment.

"Sloane," she says carefully.

"Don't."

"I'm just saying-"

"Chelsea. I know what you're going to say."

"He's from Ridgemont, I know. Chase is on your campus, I know. Terrible timing, I know." She squeezes my arm. "But that man looked at you tonight like you were the only person in that room. And then he stood in that hallway and made Chase back down without raising his voice." She pauses. "I'm just saying. That's not nothing."

I look straight ahead.

At the dark campus. At the path back to our building. At the perfectly ordinary Friday night that somehow ended up being nothing of the sort.

"I know," I say quietly.

And that's the problem.

I know.

My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket.

I already know it's him before I look.

Noah: You good?

Three words this time instead of two.

I stop walking.

Chelsea sees my face and doesn't say a single thing.

She just smiles.

Which is somehow worse.