The Understatement of the Year

  “I bet she’d offer me cookies and milk.” He was smiling now, picturing it. “She was always good for a bag of Oreos.”

  “Sure,” I said quietly. “My mom is cool. But that doesn’t mean she’d want to walk in on us in the basement. Or explain to her friends at church…” I trailed off. Because the more I spoke, the more obvious it was that I’d thought through all of this. So many times.

  Rikker let a couple of miles go by before saying anything. “You know, my parents tried to convince me to go to one of those places where you pray the gay away.”

  “Really?”

  “I refused to go. But you know what’s funny?” he started chuckling to himself. “You know what they do at those weekend retreats? They cuddle.”

  “What? You mean, like, they put you with a girl?”

  “Negative. They sit everybody down on the floor in pairs, and make you cuddle a man. They have this batshit theory that gay comes from not getting the right fathering. So if a man holds you all weekend, you won’t crave that anymore.”

  “You are pulling my chain.”

  He shook his head. “While I do enjoy pulling your chain, this is the God’s honest truth. I met somebody who went to one of those things. He said what he really got out of it was the knowledge that he really liked cuddling men.”

  Grabbing the headrest behind me, I laughed. “Best scam ever.”

  “Right? That will be two thousand dollars, please.”

  “What do they do if someone gets a stiffy?”

  “He said you were just supposed to ignore it. But I pictured something like a fire brigade. ‘Boner alert in sector three! Get the hose!’”

  He made siren noises. And I laughed as hard as I used to when I was fifteen, and we were busy deconstructing the inanity of whichever superhero movie we’d just seen.

  And that was why I was sitting in a car with Rikker right now. I laughed more easily today than I ever could with my other friends. Rikker already knew I was a freaking mess, so I didn’t have to expend any effort pretending that I wasn’t. In spite of the fact that we had a whole lot of baggage, there was nobody on earth who knew me like he did. It was terrifying and liberating all at once.

  The miles were rolling by, though. And pretty soon we’d be back at school. Back to the grind of trying to do well and figure my own shit out at the same time. And I couldn’t help but wonder how Rikker did it. “How do you walk into that locker room every day knowing what they say about you?”

  Rikker didn’t move his eyes off the road. “I dunno. I just do it. Because walking in is better than not walking in, I guess.” We rode in silence for a while. “I know I’m not a good advertisement for the product.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t make being ‘out’ look like fun. On the other hand, I don’t worry anymore if people are going to find out, you know? I don’t ever do that crazy math I used to do. If I left my fuck buddy’s room by eleven, I figured people wouldn’t assume we were hooking up. But twelve-thirty seemed risky.” He laughed. “None of it makes a difference if the guy emails your picture to the coach.”

  “Is that picture still in circulation?”

  “Why, you need a copy?”

  I snorted. “Very funny. I’m just thinking that even the guys who are cool to you in the locker room probably don’t want to see that picture on any news websites.”

  Rikker groaned. “It must not be out there anymore. Because that would have already happened. It was a bad shot, thank God. The camera focused on his hip instead of me. So you can only see the back of my head, which is blurry. If I hadn’t had the team tattoo on my shoulder blade, Coach might not have even believed that it was me.” He reached back to touch his shoulder for a second. “The minute I got kicked off the team, I had that thing covered up. Now I’ve got this big…”

  “I saw it.” Rikker had a kick-ass black widow spider on one shoulder blade. And around her, a web spread across his back. “I like it,” I admitted. (But that was an understatement. The tat was sexy as hell.)

  “Me too. It was all the artist’s idea. The red hourglass on the spider’s back is the Saint B's ink showing through. I’m not trying to be deep or anything, but I like the fact that a spider swallowed that shit up.”

  “Just be careful not to ever get your picture taken again. You’d need a monstrosity to cover up that spider web.”

  Rikker laughed. “I know, right? Ow.”

  The rental car ate up the miles, and we passed from Vermont into Massachusetts. As we passed exit 27, Rikker held up his middle finger toward route 2, and the approach to Eastern Massachusetts.

  I didn’t have to ask which school lay in that direction. “I wish there was such a thing as trading at the college level. We could just trade Big-D to Saint B's.”

  “I could get behind that,” Rikker snorted.

  “How do you walk past him every day and not punch him in the teeth? The shit that comes out of his mouth…”

  Rikker sighed. “Yeah. See, even though I think he’s a moron and a giant, gaping asshole, I don’t think it’s curable. He’s squicked out by me, and that comes from somewhere deep inside. That’s why I don’t punch him. Because he can’t help being a dick like I can’t help being gay.”

  “You can’t use the word ‘deep’ with his name in the same sentence.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And I don’t buy it, anyway. Because if he’s squicked, that means that in order to be your friend, he has to be able to picture you having sex, and like that image. So now who’s the pervert?”

  He laughed. “That is a hell of a point, G. Did you ever think about saying that to his face?”

  Fuck, no. Because I am the biggest pussy that ever was.

  “Never mind,” Rikker sighed. He knew already that I was a coward. I’d been proving it to him all my life. “Maybe you’ll find this funny. Big-D got up in my face in the locker room once, asking me how many girls I fucked before I decided I was gay.”

  “Christ. What did you say?”

  Rikker got that slow grin on his face, the one that always made it hard for me to think straight. “I asked him how many dicks he sucked before he decided he was straight.”

  “Get out of town! And he didn’t take a swing at you?”

  “Too many witnesses,” Rikker shrugged. “The funny thing is that I am a little squicked out by the idea of having sex with a girl.”

  I laughed. “You ever try it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Aw, Rikker is a virgin,” I teased.

  He shook his head. “If you say so. Do you like it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. But then I qualified my answer. “When I’m drunk and very horny. It helps if she’s really into it.”

  “You get off?”

  “Usually. Unless I’m really wasted.” Too wasted to remember the finer points of whatever gay porn I’d watched earlier in the evening. I’d never shared this crap with anyone. But alone with Rikker in that car, I couldn’t stop spilling my guts.

  “What’s your plan?” he asked, his eyes still on the road.

  “What do you mean? For today?”

  He chuckled. “No, moron. For life. Girls? Guys? Girls and guys?”

  “I don’t plan.” And that was certainly the truth. “But I do hope. I hope I meet some girl who really does it for me, you know?” God knows I’d been auditioning them the last three years at Harkness. There was just one girl who had always been able to make me hot for her. And that was only because she was game to do some things with me that most girls didn’t like to do.

  And that meant that I’d had to stop sleeping with her. Because my enthusiasm for her extra-credit activities gave away more clues about me than I was comfortable revealing.

  My phone chimed with a text from Bella. Where R U?

  Think of the devil, and she appears.

  I didn’t answer Bella’s text. Because my story was going to be that I’d flown into Hartford today. Every truly enjoyable day was one that req
uired a lie to explain. How depressing.

  A minute later, I heard Rikker’s phone chime. “That will be Bella. I think she’s trying to figure out if anyone is going to be late.”

  “We’ll be on time,” he said, changing lanes. “Bella is a little hung up on you. You got that, right?”

  “Not true,” I said immediately. “She plays the field. Can’t imagine her getting hung up on anybody.”

  He gave a fake cough into his hand. “If you say so.”

  Bella was, however, worried about me, because I’d been such a wreck all year. Rikker wouldn’t see that. And I wasn’t going to explain how his reappearance in my life had turned me inside out. I was pretty much done with that topic.

  Traffic began to pick up as we headed toward the Connecticut border. We passed the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield. And the two of us made the mutual decision that even if time and money were in infinite supply, we still had precisely zero interest in visiting it.

  We drove through Hartford, its high-rise buildings whipping by. And then reality began to set in, at least on my side of the car. My twenty-four hour trip into Rikker’s life was coming to a close. The exits began to tick downward in number and I wondered how this ride would end. “So, where’s the rental car place in Harkness?” I asked.

  “At the train station.”

  That made plenty of sense. I pictured the two of us getting out of the car there, while half the hockey team wandered by on their way back to campus.

  “Quit squirming,” Rikker said darkly. “I’ll drop you off somewhere else.”

  At the sound of those words, the tight feeling I was so used to feeling inside my chest returned. “Thanks,” I made myself say.

  I am such an asshole.

  He didn’t say anything else for the last few miles. But he did pull up at a gas station just on the edge of town. Fishing a credit card out of his wallet, he looked over at me. “You can walk from here, or I’ll drop you wherever you want.”

  “Here’s good,” I muttered. “Let me give you some money for gas.”

  He waved me off. “You bought the drinks last night.”

  Last night. Already that seemed like a hundred years ago. From the back seat, I grabbed my duffel.

  Rikker leaned against the car, waiting for the tank to fill. He gave me a salute.

  I forced myself to pause there for a moment, even though my eyes wanted to flick into every passing car, looking for people who might be watching us. “I had a great time,” I said, meeting his gaze.

  Those brown eyes turned away. “I know you did.”

  The tightness in my chest squeezed like a fist. “I’ll see you at practice.” But we won’t speak.

  “See you,” he said as the gas nozzle clicked off. He gave it his full attention.

  There was nothing left to say. So I just turned and walked away, zipping my jacket against the cold.

  It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d left behind the food Grandma Rikker had sent back. She’d packed a plastic tub of her cooking for each of us, but I’d left mine on the back seat. It had smelled great, too. And now I wouldn’t get a chance to enjoy it.

  Like so many other things I craved.

  Celly: Short for “celebration.” Exuberance performed after scoring a goal.

  — Rikker

  Walking into practice was an uncomfortable experience. There was a TV van parked at the curb, for one thing. Also, my new BFF Bob from the press office was standing around in the locker room when I arrived, looking wildly out of place. “How are you holding up, Mr. Rikker?” he asked after introducing himself, while the whole team listened in.

  “Um, fine, sir.”

  “Excellent! Now, I’ve allowed some journalists to photograph your practice today. The rule is that they cannot ask questions or interfere, okay? So if anyone steps out of line, you give me a jingle.”

  A jingle. I managed to refrain from rolling my eyes. “Okay,” I said. Because what was my choice?

  He left, thank God. And I stood there, facing my locker, gearing up and trying to be invisible.

  At first, everyone just ignored me. Even Hartley, who was arguing with Bella about some NHL game they’d both watched last night. Last night, when I was dancing with Graham.

  That seemed like a hundred years ago already. Graham was standing about fifteen feet away from me right now, tying up his skates, silent as a stone. Pretending he’d never seen me before in his life.

  Just when I thought I’d be given the silent treatment by everyone, Smitty and Big-D began reading snippets of the news stories about me out loud, and laughing.

  “Hey, Rikker! Did you know there’s a story on ESPN’s website?”

  “I heard,” I said. (I’d read it, obviously.)

  “There’s two, actually,” Smitty said. “I like this one. ‘Will John Rikker Become the First Out Gay Man in the NHL?’”

  Well, shit. That was a new one. My blood pressure kicked up a notch. Would this never end?

  “…With gaudy stats during high school, and a spot on the U.S. Development Team,” Smitty continued, a smirk in his voice, “‘Rikker was destined for Division One hockey.’ Destined. How sweet.”

  I pulled on my chest pads and said nothing. But I was boiling inside.

  “‘…Fast feet and even faster hands…’” he read. “Hey, Rikker! ESPN thinks you’re ‘responsible defensively.’ I guess they didn’t watch the Saint B’s game.”

  “Guess not,” I muttered.

  “But they’re still not sure about your recruiting prospects. They’re calling you ‘fast, but undersized,’” Smitty read.

  There was a guffaw in the room over that.

  “Undersized?” I said over my shoulder. “Great. Now I’ll never get a date.”

  That brought out a few laughs, but an even louder chorus of groans. And one “gross,” from somewhere across the room.

  Whatever. I jammed my feet into my skates, and prayed that the cameramen in the stands would not be too obvious.

  My life? A giant suckfest.

  Two lonely days later, we had a game. This time, it was a road trip to — wait for it — The University of Vermont.

  I tried to give myself a pep talk about it. There was just no way the UVM team could possibly hate me as much as Saint B’s. In the first place, I knew some of them. And more importantly, they weren’t on the wrong end of the press coverage of my transfer.

  But when I climbed the three steps onto the team bus, I was nervous anyway. No one greeted me when I boarded. So I took the seat nobody wants — the one just behind the bus driver. Then I proceeded to bury myself in schoolwork for the entire trip up there. The new semester hadn’t even started yet, which made me the biggest dork on the bus. But it was so much easier to think about calculus than about the upcoming game.

  I was deep inside my head when we pulled up beside the Vermont rink. So it took me a little while to pack my books away, and follow my teammates off the bus. The rink’s beat-up metal door was familiar to me. I’d played a couple of games here in high school. We’d always loved those, because the rink was so much nicer than the high school’s.

  As I approached the door in my distracted trance, I was startled to hear my name. “Rikker!”

  I did a big double take. Daphne, Rachel, Skippy and Ross were standing there. And each of them had my jersey number painted on their faces.

  “Hey!” I said, truly stunned. “You guys look ridiculous.”

  Daphne punched me in the arm. “We know that. But you don’t have to point it out.”

  I laughed. “It’s good to see you,” I said, more touched by the gesture than I cared to admit. But… Damn. If I was targeted by assholes again tonight, I was going to have to commit ritual suicide after the game. My stomach gave a nervous twist.

  Chill, I coached myself. This was Vermont, after all. If I couldn’t have a good game here, then I might as well hang up my skates. Some of the guys on the Vermont team were friends of mine.

  At le
ast, they were when I was in the closet in high school.

  Shit.

  Daphne waved to someone behind me, but then her face fell. “Your friend didn’t stop,” she said.

  I looked up just in time to see Graham disappear through the doorway.

  “Let me guess,” Skippy said. “He’s never seen any of us before in his life. Especially you, Rik.”

  “Oh…” Daphne said, frowning. “That’s not cool.”

  “It is what it is,” I said.

  “Coward,” Skippy hissed.

  I held in my groan. Because even though Skippy was probably right, I really didn’t want to hear it from him.

  “Coming, Rikker?” Bella called. She was holding the door for me, and everyone else had gone in.

  “Come here a second, Bells,” I replied.

  “Oh, it’s her!” Skippy jumped up and down. “Ross, unzip Bella.”

  Ross was holding a duffel bag on his shoulder. And when he unzipped the end of it, I noticed that it wasn’t an ordinary bag. It was a mesh-walled dog carrier. From inside, he extracted a wiggling poodle.

  When Bella joined me, I said, “Bella, this is…”

  “Ooooooh!” she crooned, reaching for the dog. “Hello my lovely! Hello! Who’s a good girl?” Bella (the dog) began to vigorously lick Bella (the girl) on the face. Laughing, she passed the dog back to Ross. And then she introduced herself, before announcing that we had to go inside. “Coach is going to wonder what happened to us.”

  “Just a sec,” I said. Then I gathered my friends into a semi-awkward group hug. “Nice of you to show up for the game. Seriously.”

  “We wouldn’t miss it,” Skippy said, kissing my cheek. “Break a leg.”

  “That is not what you say to a hockey player,” I laughed, wiping a little orange face paint off my cheek.

  “I know that, I used to date one,” Skippy winked. “I was just being ironical.”

  I gave them a wave and followed Bella inside, praying to myself. Please don’t let this be the most embarrassing night of my life.