The Understatement of the Year (Ivy Years #3)

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.

“Speaking of your friends,” my father broke in, “how is that young lady you were seeing?”

“Bella?” I smiled. Because it was easy to smile when thinking of her. “It’s just casual, Dad. But Bella’s great. I see a lot of her.” Because she’s the team manager, and on a personal mission to make me drink less. And good luck with that.

“There’s a girl who knows a lot about hockey,” Dad said.

“Damned straight.” It wasn’t until I picked up my third beer and drained it that I realized which words I’d used to agree with him. Jesus. Paging Dr. Freud.

My mother reached across the table to grab my hand. “Mike, why don’t you invite Johnny Rikker out for dinner with us on Saturday?”

“Naw,” I said. “He’ll be with his own people, probably. That’s nice, though, Mom.”

She frowned at me. “Aren’t the two of you still friends?”

Another carefully choreographed shrug. “He’s in a different house. Does anyone know where the men’s is?” I asked. “Excuse me a minute.”

I needed a time out. So I found the bathroom, where classical guitar music was playing over a sound system. And I took my time. On the return trip, I spotted our waiter at the table. He was executing that upscale restaurant maneuver of pushing in my empty chair and refolding my napkin. I held back an extra second to make sure he was clear of the place before I came back.

When I pulled out my chair, something fluttered to the floor. Reaching down, I closed my fingers around a slip of paper.

Later, when I’d freed myself of my family and retired to my room to drink alone, I inspected it. Alex, he’d printed on it. Followed by a phone number. I crumpled it into a tiny pill-sized thing, and threw it in the trash.

Rikker

I didn’t go home to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving, because I didn’t have a ride up to Vermont. If I were a smarter man, I’d make the effort to figure out who else at Harkness lived near Burlington. There was a bus route, but the bus company somehow turned the four-hour trip into an eight-hour tour of New England’s major highways.

Even though Gran was disappointed, it didn’t make sense to travel for sixteen hours round-trip when I had just two days off.

For Thanksgiving Day, Coach invited everyone who was stuck in town over to his home for supper. I made myself go, even though I wasn’t feeling it. Bella had taken the train to New York to see her parents. Without her as a buffer, dinner at Coach’s house sounded like a long few hours.

But it was fine. This time, the social lubricants were copious platters of food and a smorgasbord of football on the big screen in the den.

Coach’s wife was a smiling woman who seemed to enjoy watching a dozen giant college guys help themselves to seconds and thirds. “That’s what catering is for,” she said when I apologized for our collective appetite.

“You’re a smart lady,” I said, dropping another dollop of garlic mashed potatoes onto my plate.

“I’ve been a coach’s wife for thirty-five years,” she said, sipping her wine. “You learn a thing or two. Did you try the cranberry stuffing? I think it’s excellent.”

Coach’s wife was a solid eight on the Rikker Scale, I decided.

McHerrin Hall was as still as a tomb that weekend. I got a lot of studying done in all that silence. When Saturday night finally rolled around, I was ready to hit the ice. With my duffel over my shoulder, I was just opening the ice level door when I heard a shriek, and the sound of someone calling my name.

“Johnny Rikker! Stop right there, young man.” I turned around to see Graham’s mother trotting down the ramp to catch me.

“Hey, Mrs. G! It’s good to see you.” I let the rink door fall closed again, and she tackled me in a hug.

“You are enormous! Look at you!” She actually reached up to ruffle my hair. “You sat at my kitchen table eating Oreos maybe fifty pounds ago!”

“Are you telling me I’ve gotten fat?” I teased.

I glanced at Graham, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but here. This little reunion was making him deeply uncomfortable. So I moved away from the door, and he ghosted behind me, slipping into the rink without comment.

“Are you coming to Michigan for Christmas?” Mrs. G. asked.

“Probably not. My Grandmother’s getting older, and I like to spend time with her when I can.” That was all true. Although, it was also true that unless I started showing an interest in women, my parents were happy to keep up the pretense that I was just too busy on the East Coast to come home.

“She’s lucky to have you,” Graham’s mom said. “Very lucky.” There was a firmness to the statement that left me wondering how much of my story was common knowledge back in Michigan. One bonus of my exile was that I never had to listen to the gossip about myself.

Mrs. G. was still beaming at me, and it was easy to smile back. I’d always loved Graham’s mom. In fact, I was pretty sure that if it had been Graham instead of me who accidentally ended up coming out of the closet, that she would have taken it all in stride.

But I guess we’d never know.

“I’d better get in there,” I told her.

“Play safe,” she said, grabbing me for a hug. “And don’t be a stranger.”

Aw. She used to say exactly the same thing before our ninth grade games. Over her shoulder, I saw Bella coming down the ramp. And her keen eyes were taking in the scene of Graham’s mother hugging me. Uh oh. I stepped back and put my hand on the door. “Sure is good seeing you.” Then I opened it and slipped inside.

Before the door closed, I heard Bella say, “Hi, Mrs. Graham.”

“Bella, Sweetie!” was the last thing I heard before the door fell closed.

As I tossed my duffel onto the bench, I did a double-take. The whiteboard over my locker area had been changed. Instead of Rikker, it now read FAGGOT.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Leaving it there, I tossed my jacket onto the hook. Jerking the zipper to my duffel open, I had to remind myself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. It was just a slur from some coward. It was middle school stuff, really.

“Hey, Rikker!” Bella’s voice advanced on me from behind. “I didn’t know you knew…” Abruptly she broke off. “What the fuck?”

At her outburst, I felt Hartley’s attention swing in our direction. Which probably meant that everyone in the room would be staring in about two point five seconds.

Fanfuckingtastic.

“Oh, hell no,” Hartley said. He stepped right onto my end of our bench, his pads in my face. With his fingers, he scrubbed away the lettering. “What asshole wants to tell me this was his idea of a joke?” Hartley turned, looking around the room.

Nobody spoke up. Shocker.

“Just leave it alone,” I muttered, pulling my chest padding over my head.

“No,” Hartley argued, hopping down, red-faced. “We’re not saying that shit in here. This room is a jackass free zone.”

The thing was, nobody had actually said it out loud. That would take actual courage. And I’d learned a long time ago that you had to choose your goddamn battles. “It’s just a word,” I grunted. “The only time I really don’t want to hear it is from a bunch of guys chasing me with baseball bats.”

There came a loud crash from the corner. When I turned to look, Graham was busy gathering up the armful of gear that he’d dropped. And then he seemed to abandon it all and turn away, speed-walking through the doorway leading toward the toilets.

Breathe, I coached myself. In. Out. In. Out. There was still a lot of gearing up to be done. So I got busy with the pads and the socks. When I’d almost finished, Bella reappeared in front of me. “Coach wants to see you,” she said softly.

“Oh fuck no,” I groaned, wanting to kill her for making a federal case about this. I stepped around her and headed for the hallway.

Coach was sitting on the end of his own desk when I walked in. “Sit down a second,” he said.

I dropped my ass in a chair and waited.

“Sorry about that bullshit in the locker room,” he said.

I put up two hands. “Let’s not blow it out of proportion.”

He shrugged. “Chickenshit move, right? I only told Bella to let me know if it happened again.”

“Works for me.” I felt my shoulders relax.

“Unfortunately, there’s something else we need to talk about. There’s a reporter at the Connecticut Standard who’s sniffing around. She’s figured out that it’s pretty unusual to see a transfer approved to another Division One school. She wants the story.”

“Oh, Holy…” I stopped myself from cursing in front of Coach. But I would rather find “faggot” written on my forehead than talk to a reporter. “What happens if I just say no?”

Coach chewed on his lip before answering. “If you turn down the interview, let’s call it a twenty-five percent chance that the story just goes away. But if she’s any damned good, she’ll call Saint B’s and ask them what happened. She might find someone who feels like weaving the tale. And then you’re letting the other side tell it.”

I let that sink in. Rock? Let me introduce you to Hard Place.

“…And if we keep winning, and I think we will, ESPN will be asking the same questions pretty soon. It’s unfortunate, son. But the media lives for this shit.”

“So what are you telling me to do? I’ll do whatever you say.” And I would, too. “I mean, you didn’t sign up for any of this shit.”

He grinned. “Actually, I think I did. It’s the price of doing business with you, kid. You keep feeding Hartley those lamp-lighters, and they can cover you on Good Morning America if they want.”

I groaned. “No they can’t. I don’t want to be that guy. I just want to play hockey.”

“I know that,” he chuckled. “Not everybody wants to be an activist. But you don’t have to come off that way. You can just meet the nice lady and tell her the boring version. You lost your place on the team because a coach broke the new regulation. A couple of lawyers argued about it, and the ACAA agreed with your petition. End of story.”

The way he put it was nice and casual. Coming from Coach’s mouth, it didn’t sound like daytime television. Still… I’d rather not talk to any reporters. Ever.

“Think about it,” Coach said, standing up. “We can stall a couple of days, because it’s a holiday weekend, you know? Now I need you out there skating.”

“Will do.”

I went back to the locker room and hurried to suit up. Coach gathered everyone else to talk strategy. Alone in the locker room, I took another look at my whiteboard, which was now blank, except for smudges. I took a second to wipe it down. And then, with Hartley’s marker, I wrote “YOUR AD HERE” in the space.

There is nothing like a hockey game to clear your mind. You can’t skate that hard while stewing over your life. It just isn’t possible. When I’m on the ice, every particle of my consciousness is taken up by the essential activities of breathing, pushing hard and watching that little black rubber disc.

One thing did not escape my notice, though. Graham played a hard-ass defensive game. He was everywhere tonight, slamming the enemy into the boards when they had the puck, and tripping them when they tried to get away. Since coming to Harkness, I’d been surprised by just how aggressive he was during games. Tonight you could argue that he was a little too aggressive. By the end of the second quarter, he’d already drawn penalties for both hooking and slashing.

He skated angry. He skated as if he had something to prove.

Don’t we all.

Graham

We tied the game. Believe it or not, that was progress. Last year we’d lost to that team twice.

In the locker room, I sat down on the bench and peeled off my sweaty pads. My contribution was dubious tonight, because I couldn’t stay out of the sin bin. When the other team turned up the heat, I got a little crazy. I dug deep and I hit hard, and I wasn’t subtle about it. I drew three two-minute penalties, which was two more than Coach had liked.

“A bulldozer uses more finesse,” Coach barked at me the second time I forced the team to fend off a power play.

“I’m trying,” I said. But it wasn’t really accurate. The two days with my parents — and all their well-intentioned questions — had made me crazy. I’d spent the past forty-eight hours feeling raw and transparent. So I was already a little nuts before that slur on Rikker’s whiteboard freaked me out. And just when I thought I couldn’t take any more drama, he had to go and make that crack about guys with baseball bats.

I’m not proud of what happened next.

The room had just become too claustrophobic for me to take. I’d tried to zone out a little, to relax. But it was no good. That awful day was five years ago. More, actually. But whenever something jogged me back to that ugly moment, I could always feel the pounding feet and the shouting, right down to my guts. And there was no fighting it. So I’d walked into a bathroom stall and puked, covering the sound with a flush of the toilet.

Pussy of the Year, right here, people. Just engrave my name on the fricking trophy.

By the time we got out on the ice, I was angry enough at myself that it helped me get my mojo back. Tonight, a couple of guys on the opposing team would be icing their ribs, thanks to me. But this was hockey, not intramural Frisbee. They basically had it coming just for showing up.

Of course, now I felt pretty busted up, too.

I stowed my helmet and gloves. It was time to shower, but I was feeling too wrecked to do anything about it. I skated hard during the overtime period, but we couldn’t sink one. So our win song wasn’t blasting tonight. It was quiet enough to hear all the conversations going on around me.

“Whatcha up to tonight?” Bella asked Rikker and Hartley.

“Eh,” Rikker said. “I was trying to decide whether or not to dress up for the Drag Ball.”

There was an awkward silence, while everyone tried to decide if he was serious.

Only Bella laughed. “Very funny.”

“Right?” Rikker grinned. “My night is going to be a bag of Doritos and catching up on Sports Center. And I should probably order a set of wiper blades for my grandmother’s truck. She always buys the wrong size.”

Hartley slapped him on the shoulder. “Capri’s first?”

“I can probably fit it in.”

“Don’t spend too much primping, boys,” Bella prodded. “I’m starving. Graham, you coming to Capri’s?”

“Maybe,” I said, my voice hoarse from growling at the competition all night. I wasn’t feeling social, and was therefore on the fence about Capri’s. But at least it would give me an excuse to say goodbye to my parents. They were on a morning flight out tomorrow.

And I was starved, too. Because when you freak out and then puke up your dinner, that happens.

The ambiance of Capri’s was reassuring to my jangled nerves. There was something about the same old sticky floor and the familiar thirty-minute wait for a pie that soothed a guy. The beer flowed, and the music was loud enough so that nobody really noticed that I said barely a word to anyone.

A few slices of pizza evened me out enough that I could focus on getting my buzz on. Bella kept refilling my beer glass, because she was under the mistaken impression that I wouldn’t be able to get the job done on Capri’s piss-water. But whenever she got up to refill a pitcher or stroke one of my teammates’ asses, I took a nip from the flask in my pocket.

Since most of the student body was still away for Thanksgiving, the team had Capri’s to ourselves. That meant that I didn’t even have to decide whether or not I should try to hook up. The pickings were so slim that nobody would wonder why I didn’t bother. Just sitting there like a lump in that booth, breathing in my teammates’ chatter, was as close to peaceful as my life ever got these days.

Fast forward three hours or so, and I’d drunk the last of the Johnnie Walker in my pocket. Across the room, Bella was busy putting the moves on Frenchie, and so she wasn’t going to notice my stagger.

That was my cue to go home.

With a half a wave to Hartley, I angled my tired body out the back door. I stopped to pee on the nearest secret society, as usual. The cold air was just what I needed. But even so, my drunk-guy homing device was flickering a bit. Instead of heading home, I just stood there awhile, holding up the granite wall with my shoulders. The whiskey was hitting me hard, and I needed some time to collect myself.

Across the street, I saw Rikker emerge from Capri’s. He walked quickly up the sidewalk in front of me, as if in a terrible hurry. A second later, I saw why. A girl came flying out too, tapping quickly in her heels to catch up. She hauled herself toward him, calling out to him. I was too far away (or too drunk) to make out what they were saying. But I didn’t need to hear the conversation to understand. She was performing a pantomime entitled: Take Me Home Tonight. And Rikker was doing his best “no thank you.”

Pure comedy.

They drifted closer to me, Rikker removing her hands from his ass as politely as possible. I laughed aloud then. And Rikker turned toward the sound, startled. “You’re not his type,” I slurred. “Never will be.”

The girl’s eyes popped wide. She was drunk, too. But nowhere near as drunk as I was. And now she was offended, too.

Whoops.

“I mean, girls aren’t his type,” I clarified.

She looked at Rikker, and then back at me. And then at Rikker again. “So you weren’t kidding about that.”

Rikker just sighed, looking irritated at both of us.

“He can pass for straight, can’t he?” I laughed. “Some guys hide it well.” Like me, for example. Not that it was easy. Lately I spent all my waking hours just trying to keep the cracks in my deflector shields from splitting apart.

“I’m outie,” the girl said. She’d had enough of Rikker’s rejection, and enough of my drunk philosophizing. Crossing her arms, she spun on her heel and walked away.

“Go home, Graham,” Rikker said. He looked ready to do the same.

“You first.” All the laughing I’d done had made me dizzy. I needed another little rest before I could make it to Beaumont.

With a furrowed brow, Rikker turned toward the dorms. He walked a couple of paces and then stopped. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yap,” I said. Because my mouth couldn’t decide between “yeah” and “yup.” That happened sometimes, especially after I drank a shit-ton of whiskey and a pitcher of beer.

He pointed up the street. “Prove it.”

So I went. Or at least I tried. But my feet weren’t in the mood, really. I tripped on the curb. Rikker’s hand was at my elbow immediately, which kept me from pitching forward onto the asphalt. “Aw, crap,” I said as I swayed.

He smirked in that patient way that people look at a drunk. But even that was enough of a smile to stir me. Since my defenses were for shit right then, I couldn’t help but stare at his mouth. I’d tasted that mouth so many times, and it had always left me wanting more. Every. Fricking. Time. Just remembering it filled my head with ideas. Bad ones. The playful curve of his lips… I was leaning towards them even now.

“Whoa,” Rikker said, easing me by the arm down to sit on the curb.

Crap. I almost made an ass of myself. No — I was making an ass of myself right now. I’d almost made a bigger ass of myself a minute ago. “What are you doing?” I asked him next. Because he had his phone in his hands and was tapping on the screen.

“Calling Bella.”

“Not Bella,” I said immediately. “Anyone but Bella. She’ll want to talk about my addiction. Thing is, she’s got it wrong. It isn’t the whiskey that’s making me crazy.” God, I could not shut up. In fact, I kept right on babbling about my problems. I rambled about Thanksgiving. I don’t even know all the shit I said to him. The only saving grace was that Rikker seemed to tune me out.

“Yeah, Bella? Hey! I’m just outside, and I think Graham needs a little help. Yup. Pretty sloppy. He keeps mumbling about tight pants, or something.” He looked at me, frowning. “Sitting on the curb,” he said into the phone. “You can’t miss us.”

“Turned me in to the cops?” I asked when he’d hung up. “Nice of you.”

“You’d rather I leave you in the gutter?” he jammed his phone into his pocket.

“I left you in the gutter.” Damn, that just popped out. “Oops,” I said. “Forgot our deal. Sorry. S’posed to not talk about that. Shit stays buried, you know? Easier that way…”

“Shut it, Graham,” Rikker said, exasperated.

I looked up to see Bella and Hartley jogging towards us. “Thanks,” Hartley said, relieving Rikker, as if I were a package that he’d signed for.

Bella leaned down, her face in my face. “You smell like Jack,” she said.

“Schmart girl,” I slurred.

“Best of luck, and goodnight,” Rikker grunted.

Hartley knelt down in front of me. “I’m only saying this once,” he began, his handsome face serious. “Lay off the sauce. Or I’m going to have to tell Coach that you have a problem.”

I did have a problem, and he was walking away from me right now. And even though Bella decided that it was her turn to yell at me next, I tuned her out to watch Rikker’s muscular ass disappear up the street and into the night.