Page 26 of Night Shift

Twelve

Over the next two days, I read eight different contemporary romances with a pen in one hand so I can underline particularly good lines of dialogue and take notes in the margins.

“You know,” Nina says while we’re curled up on opposite ends of the couch, “this whole birthday party thing doesn’t have required reading. You can just get drunk and show up.”

“Like you did with your Spanish final?”

“I’m a native speaker, and the foreign language requirement at this school is bullshit.”

To be fair, I do feel a bit like I’m studying for an exam—except it’s somehow more stressful than any final I’ve taken, because it feels like I missed the lecture where I was supposed to learn how to have a crush without letting it consume me body and soul.

I want to have fun. I want to stop overthinking it. Plenty of people have flings in college. Surely, I’m not so much of an outlier that I can’t do the same. I’m determined to try. Even if all goes terribly—even if the magic I felt that night in the library is gone, even if I do something embarrassing, even if Vincent flat-out turns me down in front of my friends—failure will be a hell of a lot better than spending the rest of my life wishing I hadn’t been too proud and too scared to try.

I’d rather have one night with Vincent than nothing at all.

“I need to prepare,” I admit. “I want to know what to say.”

“Well, that’s easy.”

“Please don’t—”

“Ask him to take off his pants and—”

“Nina.”

I blame her for planting the seed of depravity in my head. Because in the late hours of Wednesday night, in what I can only describe as a moment of weakness, I look up highlights from the basketball team’s last season on YouTube. And fine. Maybe I pause the videos more than a few times to get a clear shot of Vincent, his face glimmering with sweat under the bright lights of the court. Maybe I smile to myself like a dork when he sinks a game-winning buzzer beater from beyond the three-point line. And maybe I’m four minutes deep in one of Vincent’s postgame interviews when I notice something in the column of recommendations below.

The video of Vincent getting ejected from last year’s big game.

It’s only three minutes long. With my heart in my throat, I click on it.

Jabari has the ball. He’s dribbling, dribbling, and passes—lightning quick—to another Clement player, who sinks a three. The camera briefly tracks the celebration. But then, in the corner of the screen, I catch the other team’s point guard ram Jabari with his shoulder. The guy’s face is twisted into a horrible snarl. His lips move, but I can’t make out what he says.

Jabari’s expression tells me all I need to know, though.

And then, a few feet away from them, Vincent Knight turns on his heel, takes two long strides toward our rival point guard, and delivers one swift right-handed uppercut before the guy even realizes it’s coming.

The trash-talker crumples immediately, clutching his already dripping nose.

Admittedly, I read a lot of romance novels with strong, violent, touch her and you die love interests. But that’s fiction. In my real life, I’ve never been attracted to aggressive men with short tempers; it’s impossible for me to reconcile the fantasy with the reality of a man who might turn that anger and strength against the people he claims to love. But Vincent doesn’t look out of control or unhinged or bloodthirsty. It’s deliberate. It’s quick. And if the shock on Jabari’s face is any indication, it isn’t something Vincent makes a habit of.

I’m on my fourth or fifth rewatch of the video when I realize I only have one hand on the phone. The other, which seems to have developed a mind of its own, is straying dangerously close to the waistband of my underwear.

“Oh my God,” I whisper-hiss, slipping my arm back out from under the covers and smacking myself in the cheek. “What is wrong with you?”

Even as I ask the question, the answer comes with striking clarity.

I’m always skeptical about nonfictional men. They are, as Nina puts it, garbage. And I know that’s a generalization, but it’s scary to be a straight woman when you never know if your new crush might actually be a closeted racist, a serial killer, or a cryptocurrency enthusiast. So, yeah. Seeing Vincent Knight deck a guy really does it for me—not because I have a thing for violence and aggression or the white knight trope, but because I know now that Vincent and I share some of the same values: we stand up for our friends.

He’s one of the good ones.

I think. It might be a bit of a jump to make the conclusion based on a three-minute YouTube clip, but maybe I’m blinded by the pretty brown eyes and the memory of his mouth on mine.

Someone needs to put me out of my suffering.

Tomorrow can’t come quickly enough.

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