The Understatement of the Year Read online

  Now she had my attention. “Never tapped that one?” As much as I wanted to avoid the subject of Hartley’s (very fine) ass, the lure of hearing just a little more about the inner workings of Bella’s mind was just too great. “Why not?”

  “Timing. Last year when he dumped his old girlfriend, he got together with Corey the next morning.” She shook her head, looking at once disbelieving and brokenhearted. “And I love Corey to death, so I can’t even wish for them to break up.”

  “That’s big of you.” I’d met Corey too, and she was the bomb.

  Bella grinned. “It is big of me. I’d never sleep with anyone who was attached. Pepé, for instance, has a girl back in Montreal. There are like fifty pictures of her in his room.”

  I wondered how she knew that, but I thought I’d just let that question slide.

  “So, any given season a lot of the team is out of rotation for me. That’s why Graham and I hooked up so often last year. He’s always single.”

  I kept the flinch off my face, but it wasn’t easy. The glimpses I’d gotten of his antics with women always gave me a surprise stab of…I don’t even know what. At Capri’s, girls hung on Graham with as much frequency as they did the other players. A couple of times I’d seen him make hasty, drunken exits in the company of whichever puck bunny had followed us to Capri’s from the rink.

  And I already knew that he and Bella were close. They were awfully touchy feely with one another. Then again, Bella touched everyone until they asked her to stop. So I hadn’t made any mental pictures of Bella and Graham naked together. For some reason, I didn’t like imagining it.

  If I were a better person, I’d be happy for him, I guess. But apparently, I was the sort to hold a grudge.

  Not your business, I reminded myself.

  It was time to think about something else. Like the saucer shot I’d sunk into the corner of the net last week, scoring Harkness’s first goal of the year in our preseason scrimmage against Brown. That would have to be my happy thought. It’s not like I would be getting naked with anyone anytime soon. Hockey took up half my time, and that was only going to get worse. School took up the other half.

  Besides myself, I couldn’t even name a gay man at Harkness.

  I had no real social life. When the team went to Capri’s for pizza and beer, I usually made an appearance. I’d have a slice or two and a pint, and talk hockey with the guys who made me feel welcome. I usually left early, quitting while I was ahead. It wasn’t exactly healthy, the way I still felt like I was apologizing for myself half the time. But there was no road map for being me. I was operating under the vague assumption that if I played really great hockey this season, things would just get easier. My teammates might accept me as a true friend, rather than That Gay Guy who can make tape-to-tape passes.

  Because everybody loves a winner, right?

  Beside me, Bella made more notes on her legal pad. From the folder in her lap, she extracted a glossy hockey program. “Have you seen this yet?” she asked. “They just came back from the printer.”

  “Nice,” I said, because I knew she’d worked hard on it.

  She flipped it open to the roster, where our smiling faces looked out at the camera, our uniforms still crisp and unbloodied. “You do take a nice picture, Rikker,” she sighed.

  I laughed. “And here I was just thinking how Photoshopped those are. We all look like we’ve just come from having our teeth whitened.”

  She pulled the page closer to her face. “What do you think of Orson’s sideburns? It’s a risky look, but I think he pulls it off.”

  “No comment.”

  “God, Rik!” she heaved a sigh. “That was a perfectly harmless question. I didn’t ask if you wanted to do him.”

  “Bella,” I warned, dropping my voice, “I’m really not joking about this. Even if I felt like admitting to you that facial hair doesn’t really do it for me, it’s not a conversation I can have. That’s exactly what the homophobes are worried about, you know? That I’m staring at them. And taking notes.”

  “Maybe they need to lighten up,” she whispered.

  “I don’t think I can make them do that,” I whispered back.

  She held my eyes for a long moment, and I saw understanding flicker through hers. But then her evil grin reappeared. “Seriously — you don’t like facial hair? I love it. Even when it chafes my inner thighs. Especially then.”

  With a groan, I closed my eyes, banging my head into the headrest. Thanks for that image, Bella. Of all the people on the bus to remind me how horny I was, who knew it would be a chick? Fuck my life.

  She giggled. “I just had the best idea.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it.”

  “Just for fun, I’m going to tell everyone on the team that you don’t like facial hair. By Christmas, they’ll all be as hairy as Wolf Man.”

  The laugh erupted from me before I could hold it in. “Or you could try the reverse, just for kicks. Tell them I’m hot for facial hair, and by tomorrow they’ll all be as clean-shaven as the Marine Corps.”

  We laughed until the tears were leaking down Bella’s face.

  “What’s so funny?” A head popped up from the seat in front of us to ask. But it belonged to Groucho, a senior defenseman with the shaggiest beard on the team. Bella howled again, and Groucho began to frown.

  “Time for chocolate,” I said, digging into my bag. Because everyone responds to chocolate. I should probably buy it in bulk.

  The bus rolled on. We were heading to an invitational in Boston. We’d play one game tonight and another one tomorrow.

  With the program still open in her lap, Bella scribbled on the legal pad, occasionally crossing something out and grumbling.

  “What are you doing, anyway?” I asked.

  “Hotel room assignments. It’s like planning the seating at a wedding.”

  That got my attention. “What are you going to do with me? You’ll be my roommate, right?”

  “I can’t,” she said, making a note on her page. “The athletic department woman has to be with me. We’re the only chicks.”

  Well, fuck. “How about Hartley?”

  “He asked me to put him with Frenchie, so he can keep an eye on him. Apparently the kid doesn’t like to leave his bong at home. And Hartley doesn’t want anyone to get arrested.”

  “Who then?”

  “I’m working on it.” Under her breath, she counted all the names on the page. As I watched, she crossed off a name and switched it with another one. “Okay, I think I’m going to put you in with Graham.”

  “Whoa,” I said, my heart dropping into my stomach. “You can’t do that.”

  She looked up, and her expression was full of genuine surprise. “Why not?”

  I swallowed, trying to keep the panic off my face. “That dude seriously does not like me. I’m not kidding. Big-D would probably be happier to see me than Graham.”

  Bella’s eyes narrowed. “You did not just compare Graham to Big-D.”

  I blinked back at her, having no idea what to say. It didn’t matter that I knew the difference between Big-D, who was just an all-around bigot and total asshole, and Graham, who hated me for a very special reason. We could not share a room.

  “Graham is just a big teddy bear,” Bella went on. “I wish everyone would just get off his case.” Two pink spots appeared on her cheekbones.

  If ever there was a moment for treading lightly, I had found it. Because I realized then that there were a couple of details that I’d missed. Though she claimed to be a free agent, Bella obviously carried some kind of a torch for Graham. The flush on her face suggested that he was her favorite teddy bear. (Though she’d probably be shocked to learn that I’d snuggled him first.) And also, she was concerned about him. Probably because he had been sucking wind at practice lately.

  What to do?

  “I’m not on Graham’s case, Bella,” I said softly. “But if you want him relaxed and ready to play, I’m telling you that you should give him a differe
nt roommate.”

  Bella stuck her nose back into her work. “I’ll take it under advisement. But rooms are tight. And you’re wrong about him.”

  Fuck. “Who knows why he doesn’t like me? Maybe he thought I was a shitty player in high school. I lived in Michigan before I moved to Vermont.”

  She looked up. “I noticed that in your bio. The Jesus Saves team, right?”

  “Yeah,” I chuckled. Cool T-shirt aside, the private Christian schools we’d attended were not the right place for me.

  “I asked Graham about that. He said he didn’t remember you. Was it a big place?”

  I could only nod at her, because I needed a moment to inwardly choke on that. He said he didn’t remember you. It gave me a fresh hit of pain to hear that out loud.

  She kept talking, oblivious. “It was a Christian School, huh? That must have been a lot of fun for the gay boy. I mean, if you already knew it then.”

  I laughed, but the sound was bitter to my own ears. “Oh, I knew it all right. And at that school, they preached it just like you read about.” Even before Graham, when I was still in denial, they basically condemned me to hell on a daily basis. I hated that place. “Vermont was so much better. Because everybody there is a little bit weird.”

  “So you were out in high school?” She clicked her pen and studied me with big green eyes.

  It was a fair question, but not easily answered. Straight people always assume that you’re either in the closet or all the way out. But that’s not really how it worked. You could be out for some people and hiding it from others. “My family knew, and my closest friends. But not the hockey team.”

  Bella chewed on the end of her pen. “Sports really is the final frontier, isn’t it? Now there’s same-sex marriage in seventeen states. But the NHL is a hundred percent straight.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Right?” she laughed.

  The bus rolled on, and we sat in silence for a minute. “Don’t put me with Graham,” I said quietly.

  She made an annoyed sound in her throat. “He’s not a jerk, okay? The world is papered over with jerks, but Graham is not one of them.”

  That might even be true. But it didn’t matter. If Bella put us in a hotel room, I could almost picture him leaping from the balcony. And it would be my fault, in a way. Because I still took the occasional opportunity to torture him with a knowing smile or a stare.

  “How about this?” I asked, hitting on the solution. “Just run it by him first.” That way I wouldn’t offend Bella by harping on it. He could tell her himself. “If he doesn’t like the idea, tell Hartley I’ll babysit Frenchie for him.” I’d never heard either of our French-speaking teammates slander me. And “faggot” was the same word in English and in French.

  “Fine.”

  I looked out the window then, watching the world go by. And I tried to think of hockey. Nothing but hockey.

  — Graham

  By some miracle, I finally played a decent game that night in Boston.

  It was the bright lights and the sound of the crowd that woke me the hell up. Though I’d been stinking at practice, the chance to mow down a real live opponent shook the cobwebs off of me. I felt lighter on my feet than I had in weeks. Whenever the other guys had the puck, I was energy in motion. Mine, I’d chant to myself, poke-checking the puck out of their grasp. And if the guy didn’t give it up, I forced the issue. My pads got a workout. By the time the game was over, I’d tossed every one of their offensive players onto the boards.

  It helped that the other team had looked shaky. There’s nothing like an early goal to light up the squad. Hartley sank one when the clock still read 15:55 in the first period.

  And it wasn’t just me who was fired up. Our foot speed was good. Passes went where they were intended to go. Our confidence lasted all three periods, for a 4-0 score on the game.

  Finally. It was nice to remember that I could play this game.

  Pitbull and Ke$sha were already singing their guts out by the time I made it into the locker room. Stripping off my sweaty pads, the exhaustion began to hit me. But it was the good kind. I stacked my gear as best as I could into a dodgy metal locker. The host school didn’t have the fancy digs that our stadium had. (Either that, or they’d saved it for themselves.)

  Behind me, Bella suddenly slammed the heel of her boot onto something skittering across the floor.

  “Gross,” Big-D said. “Tell me that wasn’t a roach.”

  “Save the white meat,” I joked. There was no use getting too ornery about the surroundings. It would only make us sound like the elitist snobs that everyone expected from the Ivy League.

  “This is the way I picture showers in prison,” somebody else said, heading around the corner into the cave-like facility.

  “And, just like in prison,” Big-D put in, “you can expect to be eye-fucked by those of us who like boys.”

  There it was. The daily queer smear from Big-D. And what did I do about it? Look away. Neutral face. Repeat. My whole life was a cowardly exercise in raising my deflector shields.

  “I’m sure you meant me,” Bella quipped, because deflection was not her style. “I like boys. A lot. And let me just throw it out there that I won’t be eye-fucking you while you shower.”

  “You don’t have to, darlin’. You’ve had the real deal.”

  I thought Bella had lost that round, but she lifted one shoulder and proceeded to flatten him. “It’s good that you remind me of that from time to time. Since it only lasted ten seconds, I tend to forget.”

  As she so often does, Bella cracked my deflector shields wide open, and I laughed out loud.

  Facing the corner, I took a shower that lasted about three and a half seconds.

  People like Big-D have it wrong. They think that the gay guy is going to be the one who’s slowly soaping up his dick, watching you shampoo. But that’s not how it works in a varsity locker room on planet Earth. The gay guy is the one who discreetly goes about his business, showering quickly and then getting the hell out of there. He puts his underwear on when his skin is still damp, even though it will stick up his ass crack for the rest of the night.

  He isn’t staring at you, and he’d rather eat broken glass than sport some wood in the locker room. That way, when his life explodes in his face because he forgot to raise the deflector shields one time out of a million, you won’t be able to accuse him of being creepy. You’ll look back on your years of showering together, and be unable to remember a single thing he said or did when you were naked.

  Because he is invisible. At least he tries to be. His computer’s browser history is deleted every time he steps away from the machine. His clothes are nondescript. His face is carefully blank.

  Honestly, it’s exhausting.

  As I jammed my feet into my socks, I would have bet cash money that Rikker was setting a similar land speed record across the room for how quickly a guy could get out of this claustrophobic hellhole. Though I couldn’t even settle up that bet with a glance in his direction. Because that would violate more than one of the codes I kept. Number one: never look around the locker room. And number two: never, ever look at Rikker.

  “Hey, Graham? I have a favor to ask you.” Bella stood beside me, her hair going frizzy from the shower steam. Ventilation hadn’t been invented when this place was built.

  “Yeah? Lay it on me.”

  “I’m going to give out the hotel room assignments now, and I want to put Rikker with you.”

  The only blessing was that my face was inside my locker when she said it. Because even with years of practice, no deflector shield was strong enough to withstand that kind of shock. I mean… holy shit. I needed to give her some kind of reply. But that’s pretty hard to do when your heart has just crawled up your throat and into your mouth.

  “You’re okay with that, right?” she prodded. “I never took you for the homophobic type.”

  “Right,” I mumbled. Because I was going out of my fucking mind just then. She said she
didn’t take me for the homophobic type. But that was dead wrong. I was the most homophobic person alive. Because “homophobic” means “afraid of homosexuals.”

  And I was pants-shitting terrified of myself.

  “Graham, look at me.”

  Sorry, honey. No can do. “Just a second,” I said. “Cover me.” This conversation had just reminded me of something important: the flask in my hockey bag. With the locker door blocking one side, and Bella the other, I yanked it out and screwed off the cap. With my head in the locker, I took a deep pull.

  Even as I swallowed, Bella yanked the flask out of my hand. “Graham!” she hissed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I hissed right back. “Now give me that.”

  “Not a chance.” Her fingers actually shook with fury as she tightened down the top. Then she dropped my flask into a pocket of her bag. “You skated really well tonight,” she said, her voice tight. “And I was relieved to see it. Because you are freaking me out lately.”

  I managed to meet her eyes then, but it wasn’t easy. Bella was pretty good at reading people. I felt her laser gaze searching my face for clues.

  She leaned in close, although nobody was going to hear us over the thump of the music and the slamming of locker doors. “Why are you drinking so much, Graham?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

  I just shrugged. Because that’s all I had to say on the subject.

  “Fine,” she said, her face hardening. “Be a jackass to me, if you must.” She pushed a hotel key envelope into my hand. “But don’t be a jackass to him.”

  God, how I hated hearing her say that. It killed me every time I saw Bella and Rikker talking together. Not only did I fear for my own privacy, I hated the feeling that I was losing my best friend. To him.

  “My flask,” I said, hating the sound of my own voice.

  “You can have it back tomorrow, after the game.” She marched off then.

  Hell.

  There was nothing to do then except to go off to find some dinner. And — if there really was a God in heaven, like they taught us at my homophobic hellhole of a high school — more alcohol.