The Understatement of the Year (2 page)

It was the most progressive thing I’d ever seen. And I hoped like hell that they really meant it.

“I saw the video,” I told him. “Didn’t see your face in it, though.” In other words,
What do you think, pal?

“Don’t read anything into that,” he chuckled. “I was laid up all of last year, and not Coach’s favorite person.” His smile was rueful. “Welcome to Harkness, man. You can play this however you want. If you need me to say something to the team for you, let me know.” His brown eyes studied me.

So far, his reaction was as good as I could have ever expected. “I haven’t decided how to play it,” I said truthfully. I’d never been out to my teammates before. And I probably wouldn’t choose to be now, if I could help it.

Hartley swung the ice door open. “Let me know. But for now, we skate.”

I went out hard. Ridiculously hard. I skated as if demons were chasing me. And they were. Because this was the last stop on the hockey train for me. Transferring from one great college hockey team to another one was just not something that happened to people. I was all kinds of lucky to be here.

If this didn’t work out, I wouldn’t get another shot on goal. And I loved this game. As a twenty-one-year-old sophomore, I was eligible to play for three seasons on this team. If they’d have me.

After a warm-up, which I skated as if there would be a quiz later, Coach set up a passing drill. And I lost myself in it. I gave every particle of my attention to the pucks flying at me. This was what had kept me sane the past five years. Hockey required absolute focus on the puck and on the other bodies flying around. If you let your mind wander, even for a split second, it all went to shit; the other guy stole the puck, or you found yourself squashed like a bug into the plexi.

I was good at this — at surrendering my conscious mind to the game. Ninety minutes went by before I knew it. When coach blew that whistle for the last time, I was dripping sweat. When I yanked the helmet off my head, I could see steam rising up from inside it.

“Next time we’ll scrimmage, I promise,” Coach said as we filed past him, breathing heavy. “I’m not a total asshole.” Coach had a kind word for every guy as he stepped off the ice. “Good hustle,” he’d say. Or, “Bring that attitude back next time.”

I was the last one to step off, and he grabbed my forearm. “Well done, kid. You bring that foot speed with you every day, you won’t have to answer to nobody.”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

Coach chuckled. “I got a good feeling about this. You’re going to shake ‘em up a little bit, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ll want to stay close to your Captain, okay? Hartley is a good kid. The best there is.”

“Roger that,” I said, heading for the locker room.

The lockers, I’d noticed, weren’t lockers at all. The Harkness dressing room had attractive wooden cabinets instead. They looked a little like the cubbies I remembered from preschool. Only this was a preschool for warriors. Every guy had about three feet of space, and there was room for the skates, the pads, and a shelf above for the helmet. It was more Ritz Carlton than locker room.

Everything was open to the air, which was damned smart. It would keep the good old hockey stench to a minimum. If the renovation had been done right — and I was sure that it had — this place would also have a billion-horsepower ventilation system.

There was a bench at the bottom of each guy’s space, which meant that when you sat down to unlace your skates, you were facing out. That setup made the room feel spacious, but it wasn’t ideal for me. If I was going to convince my new team that I wasn’t scary like the devil, I couldn’t be staring at them while they stripped. So I turned the other way, lifting one foot onto the rubberized bench to unlace my skates.

“Towels are around the corner,” Hartley said as he pulled off his pads. “It’s your basic setup.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, hallo!” a female voice said into my ear. I looked up to see a very attractive curly-haired girl with a clipboard smiling at me. “I’m Bella. I’m the student manager this year. So if you need anything, you come and find me.” Then she actually put her hand up to the side of my sweaty face. “Anything at
all
,” she added. Then she flounced away.

Beside me, Hartley began chuckling. I risked a look at him, and he grinned big. “She’s not subtle,” he said. “Let her down easy, okay? You don’t want to be on the wrong side of Bella.” Then he laughed again.

Whatever
. I took my time setting up my locker area. I wrote RIKKER on the white board above my cubby, with the marker provided. Seriously, they’d thought of everything.

Hartley disappeared into the showers. When he returned, wearing only a towel, I left for my own rinse down. Stepping into the brand spanking new shower stall, I pulled the curtain closed. And I stayed in there a long time, letting the hot water beat down on me. By the time I came out, there were very few players left. Hartley was gone. And so was Graham. If I had to put money on it, I would have bet that he was the first one out of the room after practice.

Out on the ice, I’d been too wrapped up in the drills to look around much. But I did notice that each time I came face to face with another player on the lineup, that face was never Graham’s.

It’s not that I expected a warm welcome from him. Five years ago, he’d made it very clear that we were no longer friends. Or anything else. And it didn’t take a genius to see that Graham had decided that he was a straight guy now. Or at least deep in the closet.

So he was probably shitting bricks right now, wondering if I’d start any conversations with, “Guess what Graham tried out in high school?” But I would never do that. Last year at Saint B's, I’d been outed against my will, and it had been awful. Nobody deserved that. I’d never tell tales on Graham, because if I did, I’d just be sinking to their level.

He wouldn’t know that, though. And seeing me was probably a huge shock. I just hoped that Graham could pull himself together enough to at least shake my hand. Or it was going to be a really long year.

Someone had added a note to my white board. “Capri’s Pizza, 7 PM,” it read. It was signed, “H.”

Huh. That could be read either as an invitation or an order.

Stick with your captain
, Coach had said.

Okay, then. I would.

Changing on the fly
: the substitution of players between the ice and the bench while the clock is running.

—
Graham

We were sitting at Capri’s with the first pitchers of the season in front of us. Most of the team was crammed into four or five of the little old booths. And the first pizza order of the year had gone in about half an hour ago.

This was my favorite spot in the world, and with all my favorite people. I should have been relaxed.

I wasn’t. Not even a little.

My first glass of beer lasted about twenty seconds. Bella noticed, and promptly refilled it.

“You know, you’re a natural at this manager thing,” I said, looping my arm over her shoulders. “I can see that now.”

“Of course I am,” she said, lifting her own glass. “What do you have going on for the weekend?”

It was still that glorious early part of the semester, when nobody had any studying to do yet. “The usual. Tonight I really need to get wasted. And laid.”

“For you, it should really just be all one word. Because that’s how you roll.” She tipped her head toward mine, her eyes smiling. “You’re going to get… laisted. Because that sounds better than waid.”

“If you say so.” I pulled her closer to me, and tried to relax. But I felt as if a concrete block had been parked on my chest.

More beer to the rescue
. I tipped my glass back and drank deep.

“We need a new win song for this year,” Hartley was saying. “What do you got?”

“‘After Midnight,’” I said quickly, just to get a rise out of Bella.

“No fucking
way
,” she said immediately. “Clapton may be a living legend, but the man did not write win songs. I think we should use ‘What the Hell.’” Bella wiggled her hips to try to get a little more room on the bench. The booth was a tight fit. But that was okay. Because we were tight, Bella and I. It was fair to say that she was my best friend.

“That’s a good song,” Hartley said, because he was like that — always so fucking diplomatic. “But I’m thinking the win song should probably be by an artist who has a dick.”

Bella snorted. “You know how much I enjoy dicks, Captain. But ‘What the Hell’ is a great song. Even if it is by a girl.”

“‘Can’t Hold Us,’” somebody threw in.

“We’ve worn out Macklemore,” Bella argued. “But I’ll take it under advisement.”

“What, like you’re picking?” Hartley asked, refilling her beer.

“I have keys to the AV system in the locker room. I’m really just pretending to consider your suggestions here.”

Like I said before, the power was going to her head.

“How about ‘“Timber?’” Hartley nudged Bella. “Pitbull and Kesha. Something for everyone.”

“Not bad, Captain. Not bad.”

The loudspeaker cracked. “Forty-two! Forty-two, your pies are ready.”

“That’s us!” Bella cheered. She grabbed the ticket off the table and wiggled away from me. I gave her ass a pinch as she went. “Don’t just fondle me, chump,” she said, standing beside the table with a hand on her hip. “Do I look like I could carry two pies by myself?”

“You do, actually,” I said, sliding out to follow her. “But I’ll help. Save our seats,” I called over my shoulder. We wove through the crowd toward the ratty old counter in back. The Capri brothers, in their trademark sweat-stained white T-shirts, were slamming pizza trays down and collecting tickets.

Bella flashed her killer smile, and one of them found our order right away. “Ooh!” she said, grabbing one of the pies, her chin lifting toward the door. “Here comes the tasty new guy. Rikker.”

My stomach dropped right into my shoes. Because I thought I’d have at least tonight to get used to the idea that the worst moments of my life had come back to haunt me. But I wasn’t even going to get that. He was striding toward us, wearing a faded Vermont sweatshirt and shorts that showed off his muscular…

Mayday. Eject!

“You get the plates,” I told Bella, grabbing the pizza out of her hands. Because looking my problems in the eye was not the way I rolled.

What a fucking disaster. By which I meant
me
.

—
Rikker

Capri’s Pizza was a hole in the wall. But it was the good kind — with oak paneling everywhere, and old wooden tables that had been varnished a few thousand times. There were names carved into every visible surface, and the smell of slightly stale beer hung in the air.

Harkness College — even the dodgier parts — gave off the aura of having been around for centuries. Because it had. I loved that about the place. I’d only been here for a week, but I already appreciated its fortitude. I liked knowing that I was just one tiny cog in the wheels of its long history. It made all my troubles feel smaller.

Passing through the front room, I didn’t see any hockey players. As I made it toward the back, I realized that Capri’s was kind of a rabbit warren. There were two other rooms veering away from the service counter. But I could call off the search. Because Graham and the curly-haired manager chick had just lifted a couple of pizzas from the counter. Even though his face was in profile, I’d know it anywhere.

Once upon a time, I’d touched every inch of that face.

The girl raised her free hand in a wave, saying something over her shoulder to Graham. And I swear to God, his body locked up when he heard her. His eyes flicked in my direction for a split second. And then his back was to me. He relieved Bella of her pizza and made a beeline into another of the cave-like rooms.

My first thought was,
Fuck, I shouldn’t have come
.

But screw that. Because if I shouldn’t have come to Capri’s, then I shouldn’t have come to Harkness. I could just spend my life hiding under the bed. Lord knows there were people in the world that wished I would. I didn’t come here to stake a claim, or to make a point. I came here to play hockey and to live my goddamn life. So that’s what I should do. And Michael Graham could just fuck off if he didn’t like it.

As I finished this thought, Bella came closer, a big grin on her face. “You came! We’re in there…” she nodded toward the left. Then she grabbed some paper plates and napkins off a table. Leaning over the service counter, she called out. “Hey, Tony! A glass for my new friend please.” She reached up and patted my chest possessively.

Tony flipped us a plastic glass, which I caught it before it slid off the counter. “Have a good night,” he said. And then he actually
winked
at me as I turned to follow her.

Bella grabbed the front pocket of my Vermont sweatshirt and actually pulled me through the din of the most crowded room, toward a table where Graham sat in a booth, across from Hartley.

Ugh. I had no idea this would be so cozy. In fact, there was nowhere for me to sit. For a second there I felt like it was seventh grade all over again, and I didn’t know where to sit in class.