The Understatement of the Year Page 8

  On my way up the stairs in McHerrin, I passed the rooms where Hartley and Corey had lived last year. When I got to the third floor, one of the doors was ajar. I tapped on it with my knuckles.

  “Yeah!” he rasped. The familiar sound of his voice clocked me over the head like it always did, and I made myself take a deep breath before I pushed on the door. Please be fully dressed, I prayed as I entered.

  Rikker reclined on his bed, two different textbooks open in front of him. When he glanced up, I saw him do a double take. In fact, he sat up so fast that one of the books slapped shut.

  “Hey,” I said. “Bella asked me to drop this for you.”

  “Thanks,” he recovered, shoving the books aside and standing up.

  “Heads up.”

  I tossed him the bundle, and he caught it with a grin, turning it around in his hands. Then he ripped the plastic and tore it back, exposing the wool and leather. “Nice.”

  Extracting the jacket, he turned it around so that I could see the back, where RIKKER was spelled out.

  “Well, put it on already,” I said. “You know you want to.”

  He smiled again, because I was right. “What is it about these things, anyway? It’s just a jacket. But…”

  But it was everything. “I dunno,” I said. “Maybe it’s that you have to bust your ass six days a week for seven months a year to own one?”

  He slid one arm into the jacket. “That must be it.” He pulled it on, straightening the shoulders. He spun around once. “I’m in.”

  If it were any other guy in the world, I would have said “lookin’ good,” or something like that. And he did, of course. But I didn’t trust myself. “You’re in,” I agreed.

  Rikker took two steps across his tiny room to reach the little closet in the corner. From there he yanked another jacket, this one red with blue sleeves. “Funny. I thought I was in when they gave me this,” he said, showing me the Saint B's logo. “I don’t even know why I kept this thing. Probably out of spite.”

  “What happened there, anyway?” Ack. Even as I asked, I knew it was the wrong thing to do. I should have just gotten the hell out of there. But the question had been burning a hole in my brain, and it kind of slipped out.

  Rikker’s smile turned wry. “Now there’s a cautionary tale.” He shoved the Saint B's jacket back into the closet.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  With a shrug, he sat down on the edge of his bed. And when he raised those big brown eyes to mine, I couldn’t have looked away to save my life. “There was a photo of me, and I sure as hell didn’t know it had been taken.”

  “A photo,” I repeated, like an idiot.

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “You know, a photo. Anyway, during the spring term, my fuck buddy decided he wanted more than I was willing to give him. He got mad at me, and he emailed the picture to the coach. I got chucked off the team the next day.”

  It was a real struggle to keep my face impassive, given all that I’d just heard. The first thought that hit me was how ugly that betrayal was. My second thought was: but I hurt him worse.

  And lastly: Rikker had a fuck buddy. I tucked that away to think about later.

  “God,” I said finally. “How did you not know about the picture?”

  He shook his head, that lopsided smile on his face. “Well, when he took it, I had his balls in my mouth. Couldn’t exactly see what he was doing with his hands.”

  I laughed, but it came out sounding like a choking fit, as I struggled to fight off that image — of Rikker kneeling down in front of… Jesus Christ, I might get hard just thinking about it. “What a jackass,” I said, wondering how to change the subject.

  “You think? I heard Big-D telling somebody in the locker room the other day, ‘hey, never stick it in crazy!’ I wanted to say that it was true for men too. But I didn’t want to get my ass kicked.”

  Another bark-like laugh escaped me, and I could feel myself blushing. My face was probably as red as his Saint B's jacket by now. We both chuckled for a minute, but then it died back to silence.

  And now I was having trouble meeting his eyes. So mine roamed the room. “Hey, is that you on a snowboard?” There was a picture tacked up over his desk. It was the only thing on the wall, actually. It showed two figures suspended in the air, mid-jump. And even though they were covered in a whole lot of cold weather gear, the one nearest to the camera had Rikker’s lazy smile.

  “Yeah! It only took us about thirty tries to get that picture.” He smiled at the photo, as if remembering the day. “You ever tried snowboarding? It’s pretty great.”

  I shook my head. “Michigan is still flat, just in case you forgot. That’s why we skate, remember? Looks like fun. But I’m not sure I’d like that feeling of having my feet tied together.”

  “That takes some getting used to.”

  I found myself leaning back against the doorframe, continuing the conversation instead of cutting it short. That’s not what I came up here to do. But I’d missed this. How many hours had Rikker and I spent just shooting the shit during the three years of our friendship? A thousand? Probably more. After he’d left, there was nobody I’d ever been so close to.

  Christ, that was depressing.

  “…A snowboard is just another blade, with edges, right?” Rikker was saying. “So it shocked the hell out of me that I couldn’t even stand up on the thing. And my high school boyfriend was like, just do this.” Rikker made a hand motion of someone zig-zagging down a mountain.

  My brain snagged on high school boyfriend.

  “…I finally paid cash for a real lesson, because it was either that or we were going to kill each other. And two hours later, I could handle most of the groomers. The next weekend, I could do even more. It comes fast once you get the basic motion. And I didn’t want to be the only Vermonter who couldn’t snowboard.”

  “Vermonter, huh?”

  Rikker leaned back on his hands, looking more relaxed than he had before. “I fucking love Vermont, honestly. It made me actually like high school.”

  “Cool.”

  “It was cool. And if I were smarter, I would have played hockey for the University of Vermont, and avoided the shitsplosion at Saint B's.”

  But then you wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me right now, I thought immediately.

  Annnd that was my cue to leave. I checked my watch, like the tool that I am. “Shit, I’d better get going. See you at practice?”

  Rikker blinked, probably confused by my abrupt departure. “Sure,” he said after a beat. “See you over there.” He dragged one of his books back into his lap. “Thanks for the delivery.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. And then I practically left a vapor trail on my way out of his building.

  Talking to Rikker in his room had been the most vivid ten minutes of my week.

  Naturally, I vowed never to go back there.

  Odd Man Rush: creating a scoring opportunity by outnumbering the opposing defense in the zone.

  — Graham

  The only time I ever ate at The Slippery Elm — one of Harkness’s few fancy restaurants — was when my parents came to town. This time, when I arrived at the entrance to the sleek dining room, none of my family had arrived yet. But the last text I’d received had the ‘rents checking in to their hotel, so I knew it wouldn’t be long.

  The place smelled like turkey, stuffing, garlic, and herbs. My stomach growled in appreciation. When a smiling hostess came to rescue me¸ she asked if I had a reservation.

  “It should be under Graham. Four people.”

  “Follow me.”

  She led me to a nice table by the window, where I received a wine list and the kind of hand-written menu which informed more than it invited you to make selections. But on Thanksgiving, that was only fair. The chefs in the kitchen were busy putting snooty touches on plate after plate of turkey with self-consciously fancy side dishes.

  This year, we had hockey games scheduled during both the Thanksgiving and the
Christmas breaks. So while most students booked flights for leisurely stays at home, the team would return early to what felt like a ghost town.

  Not that I’m complaining. Hockey was a big deal at Harkness. That’s partly because hockey was a New England thing, and partly because Ivy League colleges can compete at a higher level in hockey than in a money sport like football.

  And somehow I’d bluffed and blundered my way into the center of it all.

  So my parents had flown in from Michigan to eat overpriced turkey with me on Thanksgiving, and then hang around to watch me play Saturday night. It was all pretty glam.

  A server glided over to my table. He did, really. He glided. Dressed in a crisp white shirt with a black vest, it was obvious that the restaurant was going for a traditional look. But instead of stodgy slacks, this guy had upped the ante with a pair of very tight black jeans. They hugged his ass in a way that I was trying not to notice. So I looked at his face instead. He was probably about my age, or a couple of years older, with shiny black hair and blue eyes. “Can I bring you a drink while you wait for the rest of your party?” His voice was huskier than I was expecting.

  “Um…” Damn it. For a second there, I got a little stuck on how attractive he was. Shit. I looked down at the wine list, as if I knew fuck-all about wine. Deflector shields engaged. “What do you have on tap?”

  He rattled off a string of choices, and I ordered the first beer on the list, just to get rid of him.

  “May I see your I.D., sir?”

  Great. A Coke would have been the way to go. Live and learn. I dug my wallet out of my back pocket, and handed it up to him, my gaze on the doorway. Now would be a great time for my parents to walk in. Or even my harpy of a sister.

  No such luck.

  He studied my driver’s license for a beat longer than really seemed necessary. Don’t look, I coached myself. Don’t look.

  I looked. And his eyes met mine immediately. “Nice picture,” he said, handing it back to me. He didn’t wink or anything cheesy like that. But there was an unmistakable flare of interest there.

  Stellar job, deflector shields.

  I took my ID back, shoved it into my pocket, and then took a big slug of the cold water he’d poured me, just for something to do. He went away, and mercifully it was a different server who delivered my beer. I looked out the window and wondered how long it took my parents to check into a hotel.

  And where was my sister? Lori was supposedly taking the Metro North up from New York, where she worked as a minion on Wall Street. I hadn’t seen her since the summer. Or anyone else for that matter, except my teammates and my textbooks.

  November had been brutally busy. We’d played six hockey games that month, winning five and tying one. It was a streak unheard of in Harkness history. While our team had been solid for the past two years, we’d never sat so firmly atop the Eastern standings before. If I didn’t think it would jinx me, I would have taken a screen shot of our record and hung it on the wall.

  Even better, I’d managed to pull my weight in every game. The truce that Rikker and I established probably had something to do with it. Since our chat in his room, we’d had a nod-and-continue-walking-by relationship, which suited me fine. He knew things about me that I wished he didn’t know. I could never quite forget that with a single drunken utterance (hey, you want to hear a funny story about Graham?) he could end my life as I knew it.

  But he didn’t do that. And, like he promised, he’d stopped reminding me that he could.

  For the last few weeks we’d been just two teammates on the ice. Rikker just did his job feeding shots to Hartley, and I did my job warding off the other team’s offense. For the most part, my life had slipped back into control.

  Until tonight.

  Earlier this week, I’d realized that my parents’ visit to Harkness would rain down a new shower of awkward into my life. And that’s why I sat there gulping my pint in the restaurant, wondering how I could get a second one without making eye contact with the sexy waiter. Hell, my parents’ arrival in town made me want to change my drink order from ale to Bourbon.

  “Mikey!”

  I looked up to see my sister hoofing it in a skirt and heels across the room towards me. And my parents were right behind her. I stood up to greet them, taking the onslaught of affection like a man. My sister squeezed me, my mother tousled my hair and kissed me. My father gave me the regulation one-armed man hug with a back slap.

  We all sat down, and the family chatter began. My sister complained about her job while my father asked me questions about our last game, and what Coach had in mind for Saturday. Mr. Tight Pants came back to take drink orders and drop off a basket of warm cornbread. I took a single surreptitious glance at his ass as he walked away. I usually wouldn’t risk it when my family was around. But the place was crowded. I could have been looking at anybody.

  “I got Red Wings tickets for over Christmas,” my dad said.

  “Yeah?” I dragged my attention back to the table. “That’s awesome.”

  “If we drive down on the twenty-sixth, and return the next day, you’ll have another three days before you have to fly back.”

  “Can’t wait,” I said. And it was true.

  “I would have gotten tickets to the Winter Classic, but…”

  “I know. My game schedule.”

  But Dad only beamed. “Too busy winning!” He grew up in Texas, where they don’t play much hockey. He had been a big football fan his whole life, until I started skating. Now he followed the Red Wings — and me, of course — with red-blooded enthusiasm.

  Three servers approached our table at once, so that our five salad plates could land on the table almost simultaneously. That’s how fancy a joint this place was. As a stylized pile of greens landed in front of me, I got a whiff of men’s cologne. I didn’t even have to look up to guess which waiter had just served me, leaning the smallest fraction of a degree closer than necessary.

  With my deflector shields firmly in place, I didn’t even blink. Peddle it elsewhere, buddy. Although, my empty beer glass was exchanged for a full one, even though I hadn’t asked for it. So I was grateful. But not grateful enough to spare him a thankful glance.

  Too risky.

  I forked up a bite of the fern-like salad. There were dried cranberries and some kind of candied nuts in there. It was great. As long as they didn’t run out of turkey in the next ten minutes.

  “This is so good!” my sister said. “It was a great idea to come here, Mom. Thank you.” Three years older than I was, Lori had always been the family kiss-up.

  “I’m just sorry you can’t stay the night,” my mother told her. “We would have gotten you a room.”

  “I have to work tomorrow,” she grimaced.

  “That is just ridiculous.”

  “Beth,” my father warned. “Those training programs are rigorous. Lori is busy mowing down the competition.”

  My father loved that phrase — mowing down the competition. Dad loved winning. There were a couple of tricky years there in middle school when I wasn’t doing so well in football. He tried to help, but I could just feel his frustration with me. The fact that he didn’t know much about hockey when I started playing was actually part of the appeal.

  That, and Rikker wanted to try out.

  See, that was just another thing that made me a solid contender for Jackass of the Year. I’d spent the first two months of the year wishing Rikker would just get the hell off my hockey team. But I never would have touched a stick in the first place if it weren’t for him. I’d been dining on a steady diet of anguish and irony all season.

  And now, salad greens.

  When the turkey finally arrived, I was too hungry to even notice who served it. So at least I had that going for me. And the food was good. Really good. My mother’s brainstorm about how to have a family Thanksgiving in spite of my game schedule had paid off. And I was just thinking optimistic thoughts about dessert when my father began to ask questions about Coach�
�s forward lineup. And then I felt the dread roll back in waves, the same tension I’d choked on during the first seven weeks of the year.

  Because my parents were going to recognize Rikker. And there was nothing to be done about it.

  I took a deep breath. “Hey, you know what’s funny?” I asked, trying for casual. I’d gone back and forth all morning, trying to decide whether to say something today, or just let them notice him at the game. But I was afraid there would be some kind of loud Mom reaction — an ear splitting scream of surprise when she saw him. I was afraid to hear to hear her squealing, for all the world to hear, “Mike, why didn’t you tell me that Rikker was on your team?”

  Anything but that.

  “What’s funny?” my mom prompted me.

  “You’ll never guess who turned up on the team this year. Remember Johnny Rikker?”

  First, her eyes went wide. Then her mouth dropped open. And, unless I was mistaken, her eyes got wet. “Jesus, really?”

  Okay. That was a more dramatic reaction than I’d hoped for. “Yeah.” I chased the last bit of pureed sweet potato around on my plate. But when I tried to eat it, my mouth was suddenly as dry as the Sahara.

  “Wow, honey. I’d always wondered what happened to him. He just…vanished to his grandmother’s. I worried about him.”

  My sister piped up. “You mean, because he got beat up and then kicked out for being gay?”

  “Now that was just a rumor,” my mother admonished her.

  But now I was quietly freaking out. Because I didn’t know my mother had ever heard a rumor like that.

  “His family all but FedExed him to the Grandmother,” my father said, folding and refolding his napkin.

  “So he’s okay?” my mother asked. “He’s doing well?”

  I gave the world’s most casual shrug. “He’s a second line winger. Seems okay to me.”

  “Well that’s…” my mother swallowed hard. “That’s just amazing. I always liked that boy. Such a sweetie, even though his mother was such a witch. And now you have your friend back.”

  I didn’t have a response that would pass Mom’s finely-honed Bullshit Radar, so I said nothing at all.