The Understatement of the Year (13 page)

One thing did not escape my notice, though. Graham played a hard-ass defensive game. He was everywhere tonight, slamming the enemy into the boards when they had the puck, and tripping them when they tried to get away. Since coming to Harkness, I’d been surprised by just how aggressive he was during games. Tonight you could argue that he was a little too aggressive. By the end of the second quarter, he’d already drawn penalties for both hooking and slashing.

He skated
angry
. He skated as if he had something to prove.

Don’t we all.

—
Graham

We tied the game. Believe it or not, that was progress. Last year we’d lost to that team twice.

In the locker room, I sat down on the bench and peeled off my sweaty pads. My contribution was dubious tonight, because I couldn’t stay out of the sin bin. When the other team turned up the heat, I got a little crazy. I dug deep and I hit hard, and I wasn’t subtle about it. I drew three two-minute penalties, which was two more than Coach had liked.

“A bulldozer uses more finesse,” Coach barked at me the second time I forced the team to fend off a power play.

“I’m trying,” I said. But it wasn’t really accurate. The two days with my parents — and all their well-intentioned questions — had made me crazy. I’d spent the past forty-eight hours feeling raw and transparent. So I was already a little nuts before that slur on Rikker’s whiteboard freaked me out. And just when I thought I couldn’t take any more drama, he had to go and make that crack about guys with baseball bats.

I’m not proud of what happened next.

The room had just become too claustrophobic for me to take. I’d tried to zone out a little, to relax. But it was no good. That awful day was five
years
ago. More, actually. But whenever something jogged me back to that ugly moment, I could always feel the pounding feet and the shouting, right down to my guts. And there was no fighting it. So I’d walked into a bathroom stall and puked, covering the sound with a flush of the toilet.

Pussy of the Year, right here, people. Just engrave my name on the fricking trophy.

By the time we got out on the ice, I was angry enough at myself that it helped me get my mojo back. Tonight, a couple of guys on the opposing team would be icing their ribs, thanks to me. But this was hockey, not intramural Frisbee. They basically had it coming just for showing up.

Of course, now I felt pretty busted up, too.

I stowed my helmet and gloves. It was time to shower, but I was feeling too wrecked to do anything about it. I skated hard during the overtime period, but we couldn’t sink one. So our win song wasn’t blasting tonight. It was quiet enough to hear all the conversations going on around me.

“Whatcha up to tonight?” Bella asked Rikker and Hartley.

“Eh,” Rikker said. “I was trying to decide whether or not to dress up for the Drag Ball.”

There was an awkward silence, while everyone tried to decide if he was serious.

Only Bella laughed. “Very funny.”

“Right?” Rikker grinned. “My night is going to be a bag of Doritos and catching up on Sports Center. And I should probably order a set of wiper blades for my grandmother’s truck. She always buys the wrong size.”

Hartley slapped him on the shoulder. “Capri’s first?”

“I can probably fit it in.”

“Don’t spend too much primping, boys,” Bella prodded. “I’m starving. Graham, you coming to Capri’s?”

“Maybe,” I said, my voice hoarse from growling at the competition all night. I wasn’t feeling social, and was therefore on the fence about Capri’s. But at least it would give me an excuse to say goodbye to my parents. They were on a morning flight out tomorrow.

And I was starved, too. Because when you freak out and then puke up your dinner, that happens.

The ambiance of Capri’s was reassuring to my jangled nerves. There was something about the same old sticky floor and the familiar thirty-minute wait for a pie that soothed a guy. The beer flowed, and the music was loud enough so that nobody really noticed that I said barely a word to anyone.

A few slices of pizza evened me out enough that I could focus on getting my buzz on. Bella kept refilling my beer glass, because she was under the mistaken impression that I wouldn’t be able to get the job done on Capri’s piss-water. But whenever she got up to refill a pitcher or stroke one of my teammates’ asses, I took a nip from the flask in my pocket.

Since most of the student body was still away for Thanksgiving, the team had Capri’s to ourselves. That meant that I didn’t even have to decide whether or not I should try to hook up. The pickings were so slim that nobody would wonder why I didn’t bother. Just sitting there like a lump in that booth, breathing in my teammates’ chatter, was as close to peaceful as my life ever got these days.

Fast forward three hours or so, and I’d drunk the last of the Johnnie Walker in my pocket. Across the room, Bella was busy putting the moves on Frenchie, and so she wasn’t going to notice my stagger.

That was my cue to go home.

With a half a wave to Hartley, I angled my tired body out the back door. I stopped to pee on the nearest secret society, as usual. The cold air was just what I needed. But even so, my drunk-guy homing device was flickering a bit. Instead of heading home, I just stood there awhile, holding up the granite wall with my shoulders. The whiskey was hitting me hard, and I needed some time to collect myself.

Across the street, I saw Rikker emerge from Capri’s. He walked quickly up the sidewalk in front of me, as if in a terrible hurry. A second later, I saw why. A girl came flying out too, tapping quickly in her heels to catch up. She hauled herself toward him, calling out to him. I was too far away (or too drunk) to make out what they were saying. But I didn’t need to hear the conversation to understand. She was performing a pantomime entitled: Take Me Home Tonight. And Rikker was doing his best “no thank you.”

Pure comedy.

They drifted closer to me, Rikker removing her hands from his ass as politely as possible. I laughed aloud then. And Rikker turned toward the sound, startled. “You’re not his type,” I slurred. “Never will be.”

The girl’s eyes popped wide. She was drunk, too. But nowhere near as drunk as I was. And now she was offended, too.

Whoops.

“I mean, girls aren’t his type,” I clarified.

She looked at Rikker, and then back at me. And then at Rikker again. “So you weren’t kidding about that.”

Rikker just sighed, looking irritated at both of us.

“He can pass for straight, can’t he?” I laughed. “Some guys hide it well.” Like me, for example. Not that it was easy. Lately I spent all my waking hours just trying to keep the cracks in my deflector shields from splitting apart.

“I’m outie,” the girl said. She’d had enough of Rikker’s rejection, and enough of my drunk philosophizing. Crossing her arms, she spun on her heel and walked away.

“Go home, Graham,” Rikker said. He looked ready to do the same.

“You first.” All the laughing I’d done had made me dizzy. I needed another little rest before I could make it to Beaumont.

With a furrowed brow, Rikker turned toward the dorms. He walked a couple of paces and then stopped. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yap,” I said. Because my mouth couldn’t decide between “yeah” and “yup.” That happened sometimes, especially after I drank a shit-ton of whiskey and a pitcher of beer.

He pointed up the street. “Prove it.”

So I went. Or at least I tried. But my feet weren’t in the mood, really. I tripped on the curb. Rikker’s hand was at my elbow immediately, which kept me from pitching forward onto the asphalt. “Aw, crap,” I said as I swayed.

He smirked in that patient way that people look at a drunk. But even that was enough of a smile to stir me. Since my defenses were for shit right then, I couldn’t help but stare at his mouth. I’d tasted that mouth so many times, and it had always left me wanting more.
Every. Fricking. Time
. Just remembering it filled my head with ideas. Bad ones. The playful curve of his lips… I was leaning towards them even now.

“Whoa,” Rikker said, easing me by the arm down to sit on the curb.

Crap
. I almost made an ass of myself. No — I was making an ass of myself right now. I’d almost made a
bigger
ass of myself a minute ago. “What are you doing?” I asked him next. Because he had his phone in his hands and was tapping on the screen.

“Calling Bella.”

“Not Bella,” I said immediately. “Anyone but Bella. She’ll want to talk about my
addiction.
Thing is, she’s got it wrong. It isn’t the whiskey that’s making me crazy.” God, I could not shut up. In fact, I kept right on babbling about my problems. I rambled about Thanksgiving. I don’t even know all the shit I said to him. The only saving grace was that Rikker seemed to tune me out.

“Yeah, Bella? Hey! I’m just outside, and I think Graham needs a little help. Yup. Pretty sloppy. He keeps mumbling about tight pants, or something.” He looked at me, frowning. “Sitting on the curb,” he said into the phone. “You can’t miss us.”

“Turned me in to the cops?” I asked when he’d hung up. “Nice of you.”

“You’d rather I leave you in the gutter?” he jammed his phone into his pocket.

“I left you in the gutter.” Damn, that just popped out. “Oops,” I said. “Forgot our deal. Sorry. S’posed to not talk about that. Shit stays buried, you know? Easier that way…”

“
Shut it
, Graham,” Rikker said, exasperated.

I looked up to see Bella and Hartley jogging towards us. “Thanks,” Hartley said, relieving Rikker, as if I were a package that he’d signed for.

Bella leaned down, her face in my face. “You smell like Jack,” she said.

“Schmart girl,” I slurred.

“Best of luck, and goodnight,” Rikker grunted.

Hartley knelt down in front of me. “I’m only saying this once,” he began, his handsome face serious. “Lay off the sauce. Or I’m going to have to tell Coach that you have a problem.”

I
did
have a problem, and he was walking away from me right now. And even though Bella decided that it was her turn to yell at me next, I tuned her out to watch Rikker’s muscular ass disappear up the street and into the night.

—
December
—

Gongshow
: a rough, dirty game of maximum intensity.

—
Rikker

The interview itself was not that bad.

One morning, the week after Thanksgiving, I waited in Coach’s office with a young woman from the Harkness College press office. “You don’t have to answer any questions that make you uncomfortable,” she assured me. “Just look at me, and I’ll tell the reporter that you’re not going to answer.”

That sounded easy enough, I guess.

“I’ll go get her, if you’re ready.”

I was never going to be ready. But I nodded anyway.

A minute later, she returned with the reporter, a mild-looking mom type. “I’m Cyndi,” the reporter said, putting her digital recorder down on the table between us. “Thank you for meeting me, especially during exams. You must be busy.”

“Sure,” I said. “Actually, I have my first exam next week. In Spanish. So if we could do this in Spanish, that would really help.”

She grinned. “No can do. Not only do I not speak Spanish, I don’t really speak sports. I’ve never interviewed a hockey player before. Do you have any tips for me?” She was trying to put me at ease, I guess.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” I told her. “We don’t like to see the words ‘bloodthirsty’ or ‘violent brutes,’ though.”

She gave me a smile. “Tell me why you left Saint B's.”

Straight to the point. Great
. “Well, okay. On a Sunday night near the end of the regular season, that would have been last March, the head coach learned of my sexual orientation. He called me in Monday morning and told me to clear out my gear. He said, ‘I don’t want that in my locker room.’”

She flinched. “That must have hurt.”

She wanted to talk about my feelings, but I wasn’t going there. “Honestly, it’s about the most lukewarm hate speech ever written.”

She tapped a pencil on her knee. “It doesn’t matter what words he used, though, does it? Were you surprised to be kicked off the team?”

Yay.
Now I would get to tell the reporter how stupid I was. “Yeah, actually I was surprised. Saint B's is a Catholic college, so I guess that makes me an idiot. But there’s a pretty active gay student group.” Not that I’d ever gone to an event. “And also, the college has ‘sexual orientation’ in its non-discrimination clause. I thought that would count for something.”

“I saw that, too,” she said. “That’s fairly progressive for a school with religious roots.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know whether it was or wasn’t. But when Saint B's started courting me, and offering me scholarship money, Skippy made me look it up. “You
cannot
play for them if they can toss you out for being gay,” he had said, grumpy that I wanted to go to school in Massachusetts instead of Vermont, where he’d be.