The Understatement of the Year (19 page)

“Were you together a long time?”

“Three years.”

“Jeez.” That made Skippy the other guy in Rikker’s snowboarding picture.

“Yep. Two years in high school. And then when I played on the devo team, we did the long distance thing for a year. And he waited for me. But then I committed to Saint B's instead of Vermont, where he goes to school.”

“He was pissed?”

Rikker nodded. “But I thought I had the world by the ear, you know? Saint B's was going to give me lots of playing time, and I was going to meet all kinds of new people. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be tied down. Then, during my first week in Massachusetts, Skippy called to tell me we were finished because he was in love.”

I was still having trouble picturing it. “That was fast,” I said, hoping it was the right thing to say.

“That’s Skippy. But he and Ross are still going strong, so I guess he was right.”

I did the math in my head. First he got dumped, and then he got tossed off the hockey team. “You had quite a year last year.”

“Yep.”

“What’s this place they want to go to tonight?”

Rikker grinned. “Burlington isn’t big enough to have a gay bar. So once a month they have a guerrilla night, where some bar becomes a gay bar for the evening. They put the word out on a Facebook page, and everybody knows where to go. It’s pretty clever. I’ve been to dozens of them.”

“Huh,” that sounded cool, except for one obvious problem. “What does everyone else in the bar think?”

“There are always a few people who get up and leave. There are plenty of bars in Burlington, though, so it’s not the end of the world. And bar owners like guerrilla night, because it’s always held on a weeknight. So they’re, like, full to the gills on a Wednesday.”

Up to this point, I had never had a discussion with anyone about gay bars. “Cool.”

“We don’t have to go, though. I’m good either way.”

“You don’t mind hanging out with your ex?”

Rikker shrugged. “I ducked him once already this week, which was kind of rude. And I’d rather see him at the bar than hang out at their apartment.”

“So let’s go,” I said.

He gave me a sideways glance, and then returned his eyes to the road. “Okay.” Clearly he wasn’t expecting me to get behind this idea. But again, he didn’t know about my loopholes. This might be the only chance I’d ever had to go into a gay bar, even a makeshift one.

Bring it on.

The ride to Rikker’s place was twenty minutes, and it was dark by the time we pulled up in front of an old farmhouse. He couldn’t know it, but I’d tried a thousand times to picture Rikker in Vermont. “It sure got country fast,” I said, looking around as I got out of the truck. You couldn’t even see the nearest neighbor.

“You drive fifteen minutes from any place in Vermont, and you get basically this,” he said, climbing the granite stoop. His hand was on the doorknob. “You ready?”

“For what?”

He grinned and opened the door. “Grans, we’re home!”

As I entered the house, I heard the tip-tap of heels on the wooden floors. “Hiiiiii!” A little woman came skittering into the room. She grabbed Rikker around the midsection and squeezed him. “Sorry,” she said, patting his chest afterward. “I have to get those in before you go away again tomorrow.” Then she turned to me, stood up on tiptoe and grabbed my face in both hands. “Hello! You’ve gotten so tall I can hardly reach you! And what a handsome man!” She rubbed my cheeks until she’d probably removed a layer of skin before finally letting me go.

“Good to see you again, Mrs. Rikker.” I’d only met her once before, some Christmas when she’d visited Rikker’s family in Michigan.

“Come in, come in! Dinner is ready. Sit down, because Gertie is going to pick me up for poker night in a few minutes.” She flew toward the back of the house, her heels tapping out a rhythm.

Rikker toed off his boots, smiling as effortlessly as a Labrador retriever. “Hope you’re hungry,” he said. “Seems like she’s on a tear.”

We walked past some ancient-looking furniture into an old kitchen, where the table was set for three. “Don’t forget to wash your hands,” Rikker’s grandmother said over her shoulder.

Rikker went over to the sink first, giving me a wink as he went. “We ran into Skippy at the airport,” he told his Gran as he scrubbed up. “He invited us out tonight.”

“I’m leaving you the truck,” she said, putting a casserole dish on the table. “So go if you wish. Did I tell you that Skippy and his new man turned up to snow-blow my walk when we got that early storm over Thanksgiving?”

“What a kiss-ass,” Rikker said.

She turned to slap him on the backside. “Language!” But she was grinning. This was obviously a shtick they had going. “They dug an old lady out of the snow. It’s
almost
enough to make me forgive him.”

Rikker grunted, tossing me a dishtowel. I washed my hands, feeling certain that I’d landed in a parallel universe, where a guy could talk about his ex-boyfriend with his Gran.

We all sat down at the table, which was set with glasses of milk for Rikker and I, the same way it would have been when we were twelve.

Not for nothing was I raised in the most conservative corner of the heartland. I sat back in my chair and waited for her to say grace. Rikker’s Gran folded her hands and spoke. “Dear Lord, thank you for these blessings we are about to receive, and for the safe delivery of our guest, who is kind enough to visit an old friend and an old lady. And please bless clueless Edna, whose granddaughter landed in jail again last night, the poor misguided girl.”

I raised my eyes to catch Rikker’s, and he bit back a smile.

“…And God bless our family and our dear friends. Especially Gertie, and may you help her to learn before she dies that cheating at poker is wrong. Amen.”

“Amen,” Rikker said, and then he grabbed the serving spoon and heaved a big scoop of the steaming dish onto his plate. It was a casserole made from noodles, chicken and mushrooms. Then he handed me the spoon.

“This smells great,” I said. And that was the God’s honest truth.

“Have as much as you wish,” she encouraged me. “I made a second one for poker night.” There was also a plate of vegetables and dip, and from this she took a piece of celery and nibbled at it. “I put sheets on the sewing room bed,” she said.

“I would have done it,” Rikker said, forking up some pasta.

“First you would have had to take all the quilting crap off of it,” she said. “I saved you the trouble.”

“Thanks for having me,” I said.

She patted my hand. “Anytime, dear. We like visitors.”

From outside came the sound of a car horn. Mrs. Rikker stood up. “Sorry to dash. Have fun tonight.” She grabbed a coat off the back of her chair and shrugged it on. “And take care in all the usual ways, boys. Say no to drugs, and drinking and driving. Yes to seat belts and condoms.”

“You too, Gran,” Rikker said.

From the sideboard she grabbed a casserole dish with two hot pads. “TTFN, boys.”

Then she was gone, leaving Rikker smiling into his milk glass, and me with my face burning from the condom remark. The door shut behind her, and Rikker continued eating as if that hadn’t just been the weirdest exchange ever. “TTFN?” I asked.

“Ta-ta for now,” Rikker explained. “She’s a piece of work, right?”

That was the understatement of the year. “I don’t see any resemblance between her and your father.”

Rikker chuckled. “Isn’t it great?” He helped himself to more of the food.

“I don’t get it, though. How did your dad get that stick up his ass, anyway?” And that was the nice way to put it. Rikker’s parents were aggressively evangelical.

“Well, my mom rules that roost,” he said. “Also, he works for the Christian college. So he’s drinking the Kool-Aid at work and at home.”

“Do you ever go back there?”

Rikker shook his head. “Nope. The P’s and I have a Hallmark relationship.”

“What do you mean?”

“We send each other cards. Theirs come from the devotional section of the store, of course. Sometimes they call me on my birthday.”

Wow. Even though I had a lot of trouble feeling comfortable around my family, I couldn’t imagine my parents cutting me off like that. “That’s harsh.”

“I kind of like it this way,” he said. “Gran has a few choice words for them. So it sucks to be the wedge between Gran and one of her sons. But she likes my company.” He got up to rinse his plate and put it in the dishwasher. “You need anything else?”

“Nope. This was great.” It was entirely trippy to be Rikker’s guest. A few minutes later, I’d dealt with my own dishes and followed him into a den at the back of the house. Unlike the living room I’d passed through when we arrived, this one was comfortable, with big chairs and a generous couch.

Rikker threw himself onto the couch and looked at his watch. “We don’t need to leave for a while. Skippy is late to everything. You want to play some RealStix?”

I grinned. “Hell yeah.”

He set up the game. “I’ll even let you be the Red Wings without a fight.”

“Let me guess — you’re a Bruins fan now. Convenient of you, becoming a New Englander for the last five years. But just because they won the cup once doesn’t mean they can do it again.”

“Smack talker,” Rikker said, tossing me a controller.

Even though it didn’t help my view of the screen, I dropped myself in one of the chairs. Sitting next to him on the couch was just a little too much like old times.

Deflector shields engaged.

He started up the game. And for a couple of hours, the years just fell away.

“You are a total asshole,” Rikker grumbled whenever I stole the puck.

“Right back at you, baby.” I skated for his goal, passed to my wing and shot.

He blocked it.
Crap
. Then he laughed like a hyena.

The period ended. “Rematch,” I said.

But he didn’t start the game up right away. “This is fun,” he said instead.

“Yeah, it is.” We were quiet for a second, but this time it was the good kind of silence. “I like your corner of Vermont, Rik. Your Gran is great, too.”

“She is,” he said, dropping his head back against the sofa. “I invited you here on a whim. But it’s good here, you know? Just in case you worried about what happened to me, or whatever.” His voice dropped, as if he thought that sounded vain. “I had it good here. You should know that.”

“I did worry,” I whispered.

“Now you don’t have to,” he said. Then he picked up his controller and restarted the game.

—
Rikker

An hour later, I somehow parallel-parked Gran’s truck into an inadequate space on the street in Burlington. “And they say I’m not a manly man,” I said, snapping the keys from the ignition.

Graham tipped his head back against the headrest and laughed.

I hesitated for a second before opening the door. “Are you sure you don’t mind this?”

Even though it was too dark to see their icy blue color, Graham’s eyes were still beautiful in the dim light. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

I jerked my thumb toward the entrance. “Because we’re outside the gayest place in Vermont right now. And you can’t even say that word out loud.”

But his gaze was steady. “Doesn’t mean I don’t
wish
I could say it.”

Well,
dayum
. That was a big revelation from Mr. Uptight. But if he actually wanted to see the inside of a gay bar, then this was the place. It would be thoroughly queer, but not too hardcore or creepy, unlike a couple of the clubs Skippy and I had blundered into in Montreal. “Let’s go, then,” I said.

There was a reason that Slate had always been our favorite guerrilla destination, and that reason was
dancing
. Not every bar in Burlington had the space. But when we cracked open the door of the crowded place, there were already bodies gyrating to a song by Fun.

“You know it’s queer night?” the bouncer asked from his stool just inside the door.

“We are well aware of that fact,” I said, offering him my driver’s license.

“Then off you go,” he said, stamping my hand with
OVER 21
.

I scanned the room as Graham got his hand stamped. From a high table off to the side, I found Skippy motioning to me. “Over there,” I said to Graham, but the music drowned me out. So I grabbed his hand to pull him through the crowd. And as his fingers closed over mine I almost laughed out loud. If you’d told me a month ago whether I’d be leading Graham by the hand through a gay dance party, I would have called you insane.

“You’re late,” Skippy shouted as we took seats.

“Bullshit. You got here five minutes ago.”

He made a defeated face, leaning in to talk to me. “How did you
know?
”

“In the first case, there aren’t any glasses on the table. And also because you’re oversexed, and Ross has been out of town for ten days.”