I’d thought about this more than I cared to admit, and I’d still come up empty-handed. Bailey was smart, hot, and funny; she could have had her pick of almost anyone. I couldn’t reconcile why she’d give that douchebag the time of day, let alone date him for an extended length of time.

Was this what jealousy felt like? I didn’t like it. At all.

Bailey frowned, looking out over the cityscape. “Honestly, I don’t know. We started dating freshman year. I guess sometimes you get attached to people and let things go on longer than they should. I was young and naive, I guess.”

“Yeah, you’re really getting up there now. Twenty-one, yikes.” I sucked in a breath. “Talk about ancient.”

“Wait.” She furrowed her brow. “When’s your birthday?”

“January third.” As a kid, it sucked. Parties and presents were perpetually overshadowed by Christmas and New Year’s. But it was an awesome birthday as far as hockey was concerned, because I was always the oldest in our birth year division. Combined with being larger than average, I was often a giant among the other players.

“So, you’re older than me,” Bailey pointed out.

“Semantics,” I said, waving her off.

“You’re giving me gray hairs as we speak, so maybe you’re right.” She paused, crinkling her nose. “Besides, didn’t I tell you everything about Luke when I was wasted and sharing my life story?”

“Not really.”

She only touched on a few things that night. Namely, that Morrison was a cheating piece of shit who lacked game in the bedroom, and that he didn’t eat pussy, which was a fucking travesty. But I didn’t want to make her feel self-conscious, so I didn’t intend to get into that right now—or ever, unless it became directly relevant because we were hooking up.

I mean, I hoped it would become relevant down the line, but I couldn’t gauge whether that was a possibility just yet. Maybe I’d signed my own death warrant by friend-zoning myself.

“There is no story,” she said, zipping her olive green coat up to the very top and burrowing her face into the collar. “We were dating; now we’re not. The end.”

I let out a low whistle. “Okay, moving on.”

“Why do you get to interrogate me about my love life?” She turned to face me and tilted her head, hazel eyes pinning me with a probing look. “How come I can’t ask why you’re such a fuckboy?”

I raised my eyebrows, meeting her gaze with a level look. “I think you just did.”

Well, that didn’t bode well for down the line. Plus, fuckboy struck me as a little extreme. I did have some standards. They were just…broad. Let’s be real. I was young and single, and girls threw themselves at me, so why would I say no?