The Understatement of the Year (Ivy Years #3)

BREAKAWAY: taking possession of the puck when there are no defenders other than the goalie in the way of the net.

Graham

As the plane taxied up to the airport, I took off my seatbelt.

I’m sure that Rikker would have bet any amount of money against me actually getting on a plane to Burlington. He’d probably been stunned when I’d texted him my flight information last week. Even now, he was probably in that airport wondering if I’d really show.

We may have known each other for a long time, but Rikker doesn’t really know how my fucked-up little brain works. I’m always looking for the loophole — for any way that I can get past all the rules I’d made for myself. And Vermont is the perfect loophole. Except for Rikker, I didn’t know a soul there. I bought my ticket with my personal credit card, and had my dad drop me off at the airport’s curb, so he’d never see my boarding passes.

The man hates to pay for parking. You can take that to the bank.

So here I was, shuffling down the narrow aisle to visit a state I’d never seen, and nobody but Rikker had a clue.

When I deplaned, I noticed that the Burlington airport was, if possible, even smaller than the one I’d left that morning in Grand Rapids. After passing two or three gates, I left the secure area toward baggage claim. I spotted him right away. He was wearing a flannel shirt over faded jeans, and leaning casually against a poster for rental cars. Damn, my heart skipped a beat just seeing his face.

Engage deflector shields.

Before I reached Rikker, a big black dude stopped to talk to him. They shook hands as I approached. Rikker spotted me anyway, beckoning me over. “Hey! You made it.” I got the same handshake as the other guy. “This is Ross,” he said, indicating the bruiser standing beside him. The guy wore a “UVM Weightlifting” T-shirt and a duffel over one shoulder. He’d been on my connecting flight from Chicago, I think. “Ross,” Rikker continued, “this is my teammate, Mike.”

Mike. I hadn’t heard Rikker call me that in years. Maybe never.

“Nice to meet you,” the big dude said. He had a goofy smile for such a mountain of a man. “You haven’t seen Skippy?” he asked, looking around.

Rikker shook his head. “But he’s never on time, right? The apology texts won’t even start rolling in for another ten minutes.”

Ross laughed. “Good point.”

“Got another bag?” Rikker nodded toward the luggage carousel.

“Nope. I’m good to go,” I said.

Rikker eyed the door. “Can we drop you somewhere, Ross?” There was something a little stiff about the way he said it, as if Rikker hoped he’d turn down the offer.

“Naw, I’m sure he’ll…” The guy didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. Because a skinny, dark-haired streak ran up, leaping into Ross’s arms. The big man swayed for a second as his mouth was taken in a hard kiss, and his face grabbed in two long, skinny hands.

It took a great deal of effort not stare at the unlikely sight of two guys making out in the Burlington airport arrivals terminal.

“Jesus, get a room,” Rikker grumbled.

With an exaggerated groan of affection, the newcomer released Ross’s face. “Sorry, it’s been a long ten days.” The skinny guy turned with a smile and then tackled Rikker in a hug. “Damn! You’re looking good. Even better than in your press photography.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

The newcomer giggled. “We have you up on our refrigerator. The Free Press version.”

“The Free Press, too? Fuck. Is it cocktail hour yet?”

“Oh, Rikky. It’s always cocktail hour! In fact, tonight is guerrilla night at Slate. Are you coming?” He glanced at me, too. “And who’s your pretty friend?”

“This is my teammate, Mike. Mike, meet Skippy.”

I shook hands with Skippy, while Rikker chewed on his lip. “You know,” he said, “I’m not sure that guerrilla night is Mike’s scene. But we’ll make some plans and get back to you.”

“You should totally come! I’d talk you into it, but we have to scoot. I’m double parked.” Skinny Skippy grabbed the big guy’s hand and dragged him toward the door.

“Of course you are,” Rikker muttered.

“Text me!” Skippy called over his shoulder as they trotted off.

“He’s… colorful,” I said, following Rikker toward the exit.

“That he is,” Rikker said. “I’m parked just over there.” He pointed at an old red pickup truck just inside the garage.

I tossed my duffel onto the floor of the truck and climbed in. The engine started with a growl. “Nice ride,” I said.

“I love this old thing. My grandmother refuses to give it up, which is cool. Though I just hope she doesn’t fall out of it or anything.”

As he drove out of the airport, there was a silence between us, the kind that comes from having no clue how we were supposed to behave together. But five years of distance and a shit-ton of baggage will do that to a friendship.

A black Mini Cooper passed us, honking as it went. Rikker smiled and shook his head as they passed by.

“Who were those guys, anyway?” I asked.

“You just met my ex,” Rikker said.

Holy shit. I revisited the airport in my mind, trying to place Rikker with one of those guys. “The big dude?”

He gave me half a grin. “Try door number two.”

“Seriously?” That wasn’t an easy image to reconcile. Skippy was everything Rikker was not — a scrawny, effeminate twink, basically.

Rikker chuckled. “You should see your face.”

“He just didn’t strike me as your type.”

“Because he’s such a flamer, right? It’s okay, you can say it. He wouldn’t even be offended. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to offend Skippy. That’s part of his charm. He doesn’t give a fuck what other people think.” He drove in silence for a minute. “The first time I met him, I thought, ‘who is this nut bar?’ But he grew on me.”

“Were you together a long time?”

“Three years.”

“Jeez.” That made Skippy the other guy in Rikker’s snowboarding picture.

“Yep. Two years in high school. And then when I played on the devo team, we did the long distance thing for a year. And he waited for me. But then I committed to Saint B’s instead of Vermont, where he goes to school.”

“He was pissed?”

Rikker nodded. “But I thought I had the world by the ear, you know? Saint B’s was going to give me lots of playing time, and I was going to meet all kinds of new people. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be tied down. Then, during my first week in Massachusetts, Skippy called to tell me we were finished because he was in love.”

I was still having trouble picturing it. “That was fast,” I said, hoping it was the right thing to say.

“That’s Skippy. But he and Ross are still going strong, so I guess he was right.”

I did the math in my head. First he got dumped, and then he got tossed off the hockey team. “You had quite a year last year.”

“Yep.”

“What’s this place they want to go to tonight?”

Rikker grinned. “Burlington isn’t big enough to have a gay bar. So once a month they have a guerrilla night, where some bar becomes a gay bar for the evening. They put the word out on a Facebook page, and everybody knows where to go. It’s pretty clever. I’ve been to dozens of them.”

“Huh,” that sounded cool, except for one obvious problem. “What does everyone else in the bar think?”

“There are always a few people who get up and leave. There are plenty of bars in Burlington, though, so it’s not the end of the world. And bar owners like guerrilla night, because it’s always held on a weeknight. So they’re, like, full to the gills on a Wednesday.”

Up to this point, I had never had a discussion with anyone about gay bars. “Cool.”

“We don’t have to go, though. I’m good either way.”

“You don’t mind hanging out with your ex?”

Rikker shrugged. “I ducked him once already this week, which was kind of rude. And I’d rather see him at the bar than hang out at their apartment.”

“So let’s go,” I said.

He gave me a sideways glance, and then returned his eyes to the road. “Okay.” Clearly he wasn’t expecting me to get behind this idea. But again, he didn’t know about my loopholes. This might be the only chance I’d ever had to go into a gay bar, even a makeshift one.

Bring it on.

The ride to Rikker’s place was twenty minutes, and it was dark by the time we pulled up in front of an old farmhouse. He couldn’t know it, but I’d tried a thousand times to picture Rikker in Vermont. “It sure got country fast,” I said, looking around as I got out of the truck. You couldn’t even see the nearest neighbor.

“You drive fifteen minutes from any place in Vermont, and you get basically this,” he said, climbing the granite stoop. His hand was on the doorknob. “You ready?”

“For what?”

He grinned and opened the door. “Grans, we’re home!”

As I entered the house, I heard the tip-tap of heels on the wooden floors. “Hiiiiii!” A little woman came skittering into the room. She grabbed Rikker around the midsection and squeezed him. “Sorry,” she said, patting his chest afterward. “I have to get those in before you go away again tomorrow.” Then she turned to me, stood up on tiptoe and grabbed my face in both hands. “Hello! You’ve gotten so tall I can hardly reach you! And what a handsome man!” She rubbed my cheeks until she’d probably removed a layer of skin before finally letting me go.

“Good to see you again, Mrs. Rikker.” I’d only met her once before, some Christmas when she’d visited Rikker’s family in Michigan.

“Come in, come in! Dinner is ready. Sit down, because Gertie is going to pick me up for poker night in a few minutes.” She flew toward the back of the house, her heels tapping out a rhythm.

Rikker toed off his boots, smiling as effortlessly as a Labrador retriever. “Hope you’re hungry,” he said. “Seems like she’s on a tear.”

We walked past some ancient-looking furniture into an old kitchen, where the table was set for three. “Don’t forget to wash your hands,” Rikker’s grandmother said over her shoulder.

Rikker went over to the sink first, giving me a wink as he went. “We ran into Skippy at the airport,” he told his Gran as he scrubbed up. “He invited us out tonight.”

“I’m leaving you the truck,” she said, putting a casserole dish on the table. “So go if you wish. Did I tell you that Skippy and his new man turned up to snow-blow my walk when we got that early storm over Thanksgiving?”

“What a kiss-ass,” Rikker said.

She turned to slap him on the backside. “Language!” But she was grinning. This was obviously a shtick they had going. “They dug an old lady out of the snow. It’s almost enough to make me forgive him.”

Rikker grunted, tossing me a dishtowel. I washed my hands, feeling certain that I’d landed in a parallel universe, where a guy could talk about his ex-boyfriend with his Gran.

We all sat down at the table, which was set with glasses of milk for Rikker and I, the same way it would have been when we were twelve.

Not for nothing was I raised in the most conservative corner of the heartland. I sat back in my chair and waited for her to say grace. Rikker’s Gran folded her hands and spoke. “Dear Lord, thank you for these blessings we are about to receive, and for the safe delivery of our guest, who is kind enough to visit an old friend and an old lady. And please bless clueless Edna, whose granddaughter landed in jail again last night, the poor misguided girl.”

I raised my eyes to catch Rikker’s, and he bit back a smile.

“…And God bless our family and our dear friends. Especially Gertie, and may you help her to learn before she dies that cheating at poker is wrong. Amen.”

“Amen,” Rikker said, and then he grabbed the serving spoon and heaved a big scoop of the steaming dish onto his plate. It was a casserole made from noodles, chicken and mushrooms. Then he handed me the spoon.

“This smells great,” I said. And that was the God’s honest truth.

“Have as much as you wish,” she encouraged me. “I made a second one for poker night.” There was also a plate of vegetables and dip, and from this she took a piece of celery and nibbled at it. “I put sheets on the sewing room bed,” she said.

“I would have done it,” Rikker said, forking up some pasta.

“First you would have had to take all the quilting crap off of it,” she said. “I saved you the trouble.”

“Thanks for having me,” I said.

She patted my hand. “Anytime, dear. We like visitors.”

From outside came the sound of a car horn. Mrs. Rikker stood up. “Sorry to dash. Have fun tonight.” She grabbed a coat off the back of her chair and shrugged it on. “And take care in all the usual ways, boys. Say no to drugs, and drinking and driving. Yes to seat belts and condoms.”

“You too, Gran,” Rikker said.

From the sideboard she grabbed a casserole dish with two hot pads. “TTFN, boys.”

Then she was gone, leaving Rikker smiling into his milk glass, and me with my face burning from the condom remark. The door shut behind her, and Rikker continued eating as if that hadn’t just been the weirdest exchange ever. “TTFN?” I asked.

“Ta-ta for now,” Rikker explained. “She’s a piece of work, right?”

That was the understatement of the year. “I don’t see any resemblance between her and your father.”

Rikker chuckled. “Isn’t it great?” He helped himself to more of the food.

“I don’t get it, though. How did your dad get that stick up his ass, anyway?” And that was the nice way to put it. Rikker’s parents were aggressively evangelical.

“Well, my mom rules that roost,” he said. “Also, he works for the Christian college. So he’s drinking the Kool-Aid at work and at home.”

“Do you ever go back there?”

Rikker shook his head. “Nope. The P’s and I have a Hallmark relationship.”

“What do you mean?”

“We send each other cards. Theirs come from the devotional section of the store, of course. Sometimes they call me on my birthday.”

Wow. Even though I had a lot of trouble feeling comfortable around my family, I couldn’t imagine my parents cutting me off like that. “That’s harsh.”

“I kind of like it this way,” he said. “Gran has a few choice words for them. So it sucks to be the wedge between Gran and one of her sons. But she likes my company.” He got up to rinse his plate and put it in the dishwasher. “You need anything else?”

“Nope. This was great.” It was entirely trippy to be Rikker’s guest. A few minutes later, I’d dealt with my own dishes and followed him into a den at the back of the house. Unlike the living room I’d passed through when we arrived, this one was comfortable, with big chairs and a generous couch.

Rikker threw himself onto the couch and looked at his watch. “We don’t need to leave for a while. Skippy is late to everything. You want to play some RealStix?”

I grinned. “Hell yeah.”

He set up the game. “I’ll even let you be the Red Wings without a fight.”

“Let me guess — you’re a Bruins fan now. Convenient of you, becoming a New Englander for the last five years. But just because they won the cup once doesn’t mean they can do it again.”

“Smack talker,” Rikker said, tossing me a controller.

Even though it didn’t help my view of the screen, I dropped myself in one of the chairs. Sitting next to him on the couch was just a little too much like old times.

Deflector shields engaged.

He started up the game. And for a couple of hours, the years just fell away.

“You are a total asshole,” Rikker grumbled whenever I stole the puck.

“Right back at you, baby.” I skated for his goal, passed to my wing and shot.

He blocked it. Crap. Then he laughed like a hyena.

The period ended. “Rematch,” I said.

But he didn’t start the game up right away. “This is fun,” he said instead.

“Yeah, it is.” We were quiet for a second, but this time it was the good kind of silence. “I like your corner of Vermont, Rik. Your Gran is great, too.”

“She is,” he said, dropping his head back against the sofa. “I invited you here on a whim. But it’s good here, you know? Just in case you worried about what happened to me, or whatever.” His voice dropped, as if he thought that sounded vain. “I had it good here. You should know that.”

“I did worry,” I whispered.

“Now you don’t have to,” he said. Then he picked up his controller and restarted the game.

Rikker

An hour later, I somehow parallel-parked Gran’s truck into an inadequate space on the street in Burlington. “And they say I’m not a manly man,” I said, snapping the keys from the ignition.

Graham tipped his head back against the headrest and laughed.

I hesitated for a second before opening the door. “Are you sure you don’t mind this?”

Even though it was too dark to see their icy blue color, Graham’s eyes were still beautiful in the dim light. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

I jerked my thumb toward the entrance. “Because we’re outside the gayest place in Vermont right now. And you can’t even say that word out loud.”

But his gaze was steady. “Doesn’t mean I don’t wish I could say it.”

Well, dayum. That was a big revelation from Mr. Uptight. But if he actually wanted to see the inside of a gay bar, then this was the place. It would be thoroughly queer, but not too hardcore or creepy, unlike a couple of the clubs Skippy and I had blundered into in Montreal. “Let’s go, then,” I said.

There was a reason that Slate had always been our favorite guerrilla destination, and that reason was dancing. Not every bar in Burlington had the space. But when we cracked open the door of the crowded place, there were already bodies gyrating to a song by Fun.

“You know it’s queer night?” the bouncer asked from his stool just inside the door.

“We are well aware of that fact,” I said, offering him my driver’s license.

“Then off you go,” he said, stamping my hand with OVER 21.

I scanned the room as Graham got his hand stamped. From a high table off to the side, I found Skippy motioning to me. “Over there,” I said to Graham, but the music drowned me out. So I grabbed his hand to pull him through the crowd. And as his fingers closed over mine I almost laughed out loud. If you’d told me a month ago whether I’d be leading Graham by the hand through a gay dance party, I would have called you insane.

“You’re late,” Skippy shouted as we took seats.

“Bullshit. You got here five minutes ago.”

He made a defeated face, leaning in to talk to me. “How did you know?”

“In the first case, there aren’t any glasses on the table. And also because you’re oversexed, and Ross has been out of town for ten days.”

Skippy pouted. “He’s at the bar, buying the first round.”

“I’ll grab a couple of beers,” Graham shouted from the other side of the table. “What do you like?”

“Anything better than Capri’s piss-water.”

He grinned and disappeared into the crowd.

Skippy leaned over to speak into my ear. “Are you with him?”

I shook my head. “He’s not a member of the tribe.”

My ex tipped his head for a better look at the bar. “Interesting that you’d say that. Because I think your teammate Mike is as gay as a Judy Garland sing-along. You should see his face right now. He looks like a kid getting his first look at the presents under the Christmas tree.”

Skippy’s gaydar was rock solid. Always had been. “Go easy on him, okay? He’s kind of a wreck.”

“Good pick for you, then.”

Well, ouch. That stung because it was true. Hanging out with both Skippy and Graham in one night was some kind of weird self-torture. Even though I’d agreed to be Just Friends with Graham, I still felt a big tug every time I looked at him. Heartbreak was pretty much inevitable.

“You’re pissed at me for saying that,” Skippy said, his face propped into one hand. He had long, dark eyelashes. And his dressy black button-down shirt made those big brown eyes as dark as coal. There was something truly magnetic about Skippy, as if he could see right into your soul.

“Don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

“Dance with me instead?”

Now there was a dubious idea. “We’d lose our table.”

He rolled those luminous eyes. “Okay, Dad.”

Luckily, Ross and Graham showed up then with the drinks. Hooray for a little ethanol lubrication. I drank half of the Long Trail that Graham brought me in the first thirty seconds. He’d also bought what looked like two shots of Jack. “Shot?” he mouthed over the music. With a shake of my head, I mimed driving. So Graham drank them both.

“How was Christmas?” I asked Ross, shouting over the song.

“Not bad,” he said with a grin. “My relatives kept the fag slurs down to a couple dozen, so I can’t complain.”

“Ross is from Alabama,” I shouted by way of explanation to Graham.

“And not the nice part,” he added.

Graham put his second empty glass down on the table. As I watched his eyes sweep the room, I wondered what he saw. It was the typical mixed-up scene. There were a handful of exhibitionists in their over-the-top leather getups. (Whenever I saw a man in leather pants, it always made my own balls sweat in sympathy.) For every outrageously dressed queer there were three other guys in flannel shirts and baseball caps. But it was early yet. Those shirts would come off when it got hotter in here.

Daft Punk started singing Get Lucky, and Graham’s shoulders found the beat. Skippy poked me in the shoulder, and I leaned in to hear what he had to say.

“I’m sorry I was a dick.”

“You mean a minute ago?” I was primed to forget about it already.

I was granted one more Skippy eye-roll. “Yeah, a minute ago. Was I a dick some other time, too?”

“No,” I laughed. I drained my beer and put down the empty. “Let’s dance. All of us. That ought to shake up my friend.”

Skippy’s eyes sparkled with mischief. He tipped the last of his drink into his mouth, then stood up. “Come on,” he said, tugging Graham’s elbow. “We’re going to dance now.”

Graham’s eyes widened. “I may not be drunk enough for that.”

“It’s just dancing,” Skippy shouted, grabbing Graham’s hand. “It won’t make you queer!”

“Too late,” I said directly into Graham’s ear as Skippy tugged him into the crowd. Graham reached back, pinching my ass in retribution. Hard.

“Ow,” I complained.

He just grinned over his shoulder.

Before I started hanging around with Skippy, I wasn’t a fan of dancing. But not even reluctant dancers could resist him. All you had to do was look at Skippy, and you couldn’t help but move. The music just seemed to pulse up his body, past those skinny hips, up his straight spine and then through two fluid arms.

When he danced, Skippy closed his eyes, as if taking orders from some celestial plane. And when he was dancing, it was easier for everyone else to enjoy it, too. You could just watch him and imagine that you moved as well as he did. And somehow it became true. Because you were having fun, and that was the big secret to dancing, anyway.

Tonight Ross was wearing a T-shirt that read: Boys Will Do Boys. He moved around behind Skippy, curving one big arm around his chest. And somehow the two of them didn’t even look ridiculous. Because Skippy was just that good a dancer.

As one song morphed into the next, I heard a squeal in my ear, even louder than Lady Gaga. “Rikker!” I turned around to find Rachel and Daphne, friends of mine from high school.

I gave each of them a quick kiss on the cheek. “What’s up!” I shouted over the music. When Daphne jutted a thumb towards Graham, I said, “My friend from school.”

They both gave him appreciative looks. Good luck with that, girls. But the company of a couple of girls was just what Graham needed, apparently. When Daphne stepped in closer to him, he seemed to loosen up. He smiled, and began to move in a way that was less self-conscious. Daphne sidled up in front of him, and he put a hand on her waist.

Even though Graham was touching Daphne, his eyes worked the room. The place was heating up in every possible way. The guys around us on the dance floor were losing their shirts one at a time. While torsos writhed with the music, hands slid over skin and fabric. Denim to denim, hips pulsed and ground to the beat. We were a giant undulating mass of bodies, sweating through songs by Macklemore, and for the older crowd, Depeche Mode.

When the music slowed, Rachel put her arms around me so we could have a catch-up chat. “I saw the articles. What made you go public?” She was one of the friends I was out to in high school.

“No choice in the matter.”

She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Somehow I knew you’d say that. A few people at school mentioned it to me. Like Petey, for one.”

Petey was the co-captain of my high school team, now playing for UVM where Rachel went to school. “Yeah? What did he say?”

“He said he always had a hunch.”

I chewed on that for a second. “I guess that doesn’t make him a genius, right?” It was a pretty small school, and I hung out with Skippy all the time, even if we never touched anywhere near school. Then again, Skippy was popular with lots of straight people, too.

Rachel put her mouth next to my ear. “Maybe it’s something that people say, because it sounds better than ‘I’m totally clueless.’”

I kissed her cheek again. “Whichever.”

“You know, I don’t like seeing Skippy with another guy,” she said.

I took the high road, as usual. Although it was getting old. “I met Ross over the summer. He seems like a pretty good guy.”

Rachel smiled. “I’m sure you’re right, but I was trying to be loyal. Is your friend straight? Daphne is working it pretty hard.”

I took a peek over my shoulder, where the two of them were slow-dancing. “Not sure where he stands,” I said. And neither is he.

Eventually the music picked up again, and we all danced ourselves silly. It had been a while since I’d had a night out like this, and I’d forgotten what dancing was for. It was such a release. (Like sex, only not as messy, and with less heartbreak.) The music coursed through me, and I stopped thinking and let myself just feel.

When we needed a break, Graham bought a couple more beers. Standing side by side, we propped up a wall beside the dancers, alternately swallowing the beer and pressing the cool bottles to our faces.

When Graham tipped his chin up to drain the bottle, I had an involuntary flashback to the sight of those lips wrapped around a certain part of my anatomy.

Dayum. That image was burned on my brain, and chance of a repeat was slim. But at least I had the one memory.

We stashed our bottles on a ledge when the Communards version of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” started up. Like Gaga’s “Born this Way,” it had been adopted as a gay anthem. Skippy boogied over to me with a serious look in those smoky eyes. Back in the day, we’d danced to this song all the time.

He yanked me by the hand, and I went along with it. Dancing to this track meant raising your arms up every time the vocalist shouted “Awwwwwwww BABY!” With hands in the air, there were a lot of hip collisions, and frat-style beer gut bumps. It was sweaty and silly and glorious. Dancing wasn’t supposed to take itself too seriously. Skippy was in front of me, and Graham was behind me. I could feel him up against my ass. That was a new development. So I slipped a hand behind me and gave Graham’s fly a single caress. If he wanted a night at the gay bar, I’d make sure he got the whole experience.

What are friends for, right?

A moment later, his hand landed on my backside, tracing the seam of my pants. Oh, man. Payback was a bitch. So I took an experimental half step back, tucking my ass against his crotch. If he didn’t like it, all he had to do was move away from me.

He didn’t move away.

Faster than you could say “horny much?” his hand slid onto my hip. And then a Maroon Five song came on. I leaned back against Graham. And as Adam Levine’s voice crooned from the speakers, Graham and I were giving each other the Moves Like Jagger.

It was a sweaty, heated business. I ground my hips to the beat, and Graham’s body went right along with me, pulsing wherever the music took us. One song dissolved into another, and then another. Around us, glistening bodies torqued and jived. The longer we moved, the hotter I felt. It was getting late, but I didn’t want the night to end. I’d never danced with Graham in my life, and I probably never would again.

But eventually the DJ decided to take things down a few notches. The music slowed to a heartbeat pace, and Madonna began singing an old one, “Crazy for You.” All around us, couples curled into one another, arms finding purchase. Lips finding lips.

“We should split, right?” I panted into Graham’s ear.

He nodded immediately, as I knew he would. There was no way we could go full-frontal in a slow dance and still pretend that tonight was just some crazy when-in-Rome kind of situation.

I wanted to, though. I wanted to pull his chest to mine, and press my face into his neck. It’s just dancing, I could tell myself. But it would be a lie. No matter what label I put on it, and no matter how stupid it made me, I still wanted Graham.

Yep. Time to go home.

“I’m going to tell the other guys that we’re out of here. Meet you by the door?” He nodded again. So I threaded through the crowd, finding Skippy and Ross beside our old table, guzzling water. “We’re going to head out,” I said.

“Stowe tomorrow?” Skippy asked between gulps. Then he refilled the glass from a pitcher they’d acquired somehow.

“I dunno,” I said, wondering if there was time for snowboarding. Probably not. “I’ll have to see when Graham wants to get back.” I snagged Skippy’s water glass from his hand and brought it to my lips. But I’d only managed a sip when his fingers closed tightly around my wrist, his eyes going wide. I didn’t understand why he’d object to my getting some water. “You have a whole pitcher,” I argued.

But water was not Skippy’s problem. “What did you call him?”

Oh, fuck. I tried to shrug off the question, shaking his hand off me and draining the glass.

But Skippy wasn’t having it. “You cannot be serious. That’s your Michigan guy?” He took the empty glass from my hand and set it down. Then he took my face in both of his hands. “You cannot get involved with a guy who fucked you over when you had three broken ribs and internal bleeding.” His dark eyes glittered with righteous indignation.

For a second time, I pushed his hands off me. “Guess what? You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.” Fuck, that sounded bitter. And we both knew it.

He blinked at me for a beat. “Rikky, Jesus. Be careful.”

“Yes, Dad.” Even though I knew he really did care about me, I still didn’t want to hear it. We can’t all have a Skippy and Ross love story, with a cute apartment and a poodle curled up on the rug. Their Instagram selfies were so cheerful that I could hardly look.

From a few feet away, Ross was watching us, a wary look on his face. I was too pissed off to say a polite goodnight to either of them. I gave Ross a kind of salute, and Skippy a look of irritation. Then I made my way back through the dancing bodies toward the door. Graham pushed it open when he saw me coming.

Outside, the temperature had descended to negative freeze-your-nuts-off, but it felt good against my sweaty skin. As we approached the truck, I noticed that there were two gay couples bookending it — one making out against the car parked behind us, and the other lip-locked beside the car parked in front of us.

It was hook-up o’clock, because Guerrilla Night was drawing to a close.

We climbed into the truck. When my door slammed, one half of the couple in front of us raised his eyes to check if we were about to run him down. But his partner, a short little guy, grabbed his jacket and pulled him back into the kiss.

Graham sat in the passenger seat, just staring at them.

Rubbing my cold hands together, and still distracted by the argument I’d had with Skippy, it took me a minute to realize where Graham’s thoughts were probably headed. Kissing in public had been lethal to our friendship. And here we were, literally surrounded by men who weren’t afraid to let the kisses fly.

“Welcome to Vermont,” I said.

He said nothing. His eyes were still trained on the couple in front of us. I flipped on the truck’s headlights, which illuminated them. But I couldn’t tell if Graham was really watching, or if he was far away, inside a memory.

Either way, I knew what we had to do. “Come here,” I whispered.

He gave a slow shake of his head. “Bad idea.”

But it wasn’t a bad idea. It was a powerful one. Five years ago, two boys had kissed in a car. And a bunch of assholes turned that moment into a life-altering disaster. But right now, two grown men could kiss in a car. And then go home to play one more game of RealStix like it was no big deal.

I stretched one hand across the seat to take Graham’s. But he wouldn’t look at me, even when I gave his arm a tug. “Come here,” I said. “Or I’m coming over there.” The truck had a bench seat, so it would be easy to make good on that threat.

He looked at me then, a warning on his face.

“It’s just a kiss,” I whispered, rubbing his big hand in mine. “Do this for me.” I pulled him toward me again.

He came almost willingly.

Slowly, we eased closer, our eyes locked on one another, until I could feel his breath on my face. I closed the final inches between us, just ghosting my lips over his on the first pass. I saw his Adam’s apple bob nervously. So I was gentle when I cupped the back of his head, pulling him in. I pressed my lips to his, tasting musk and beer. Mmm… My kiss was slow. Appreciative.

After several beats of my heart, he relaxed into the kiss, melting for me. I licked into his mouth then. If I was only getting a kiss, I wanted to make it a good one. On the first wet slide of tongue against tongue, Graham made an achy little sound in the back of his throat.

Heaven.

Leaning in, I wrapped him in my arms. This wasn’t like the frantic, tequila-soaked mashup after the Saint B’s game. This time, I could feel us both holding tightly to our control. And even though my body wouldn’t have minded an escalation, we both knew that it wasn’t going to happen. This kiss was all about heartache. It was deep and sweet and sad. My chest fluttered with disbelief that I was holding him, and kissing him. Each moist slide of his lips against mine undid me a little more.

It was possibly the best kiss I’d ever had.

But eventually, the car in front of us roared to life, its taillights bathing the truck’s cab in bright red glow. With the moment broken, Graham eased back, and I let him go. As the other car pulled away and drove off, the sound of its motor faded. We were left alone with our own silence. Graham put his elbow on the window and looked away from me, already lost inside his own head. So I cranked the engine. As I let the engine heat up, I rubbed my own lips together. They were swollen and tender from Graham’s stubble.

I began the drive home. There was a nearly full moon tonight, which lit the snowy fields outside Burlington with an otherworldly, bluish glow.

“Some of that music was pretty dubious,” Graham said eventually.

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “If you want to be queer, you have to be okay with dance tunes.”

“One point for being straight, then,” he said.

I didn’t even reply, because that was such a sad way to think.

We pulled up to Gran’s brightly lit house. Graham looked up at the house, and then over at me. In the dark, he studied me. “Rik,” he whispered. “I had fun tonight.”

“Me too, G.”

He moved then, hitching across the seat to reach me. “One more,” he breathed. “For old time’s sake.” Then he turned my face toward his, capturing my mouth in a kiss.

Stupid or not, I just went with it. If you stripped away all the confusion and the old heartaches, I’d had an almost perfect day. And this right here was pretty much all I’d ever wanted from Graham. I wanted his friendship, and then I wanted him to reach for me at the end of the night. So for those few minutes, I had everything.

The kiss got heated. Graham’s hands wandered over my chest, and I wrapped my arms around his big shoulders. The size of him was a real turn-on. Hell. Everything about him was a real turn-on. The more we kissed, the harder I got.

I let my mouth wander down his gorgeous jaw. And I’d begun tasting the skin on the side of his neck when he let out a big, frustrated sigh. Reluctantly I sat back, checking his face.

“We’d better go in,” he said. “Your grandmother is going to wonder why we didn’t come inside.”

Slowly, I passed my palm over the whiskers on his cheek. “G, if she’s not asleep, she’ll just assume we were making out in the truck. And she won’t think less of you for it.”

But we both already knew that didn’t matter to Graham. Without another word, he opened the door and got out. The idea of someone suspecting us was a barrier that he simply could not get past.

When I jumped out of the truck, I had to adjust myself inside my too-tight jeans. My body really wanted to get Graham alone. The problem was, there was no place on Earth alone enough for Graham.

Graham

The next morning I woke up with a start, briefly confused about where I was. The sun shone through an unfamiliar window. I pulled my phone off Mrs. Rikker’s sewing table and saw that it was almost ten. That wasn’t terribly surprising, because I often slept late. More interestingly, after falling head first into the guest bed at around one in the morning, I hadn’t woken up even once. Weird. Usually I spent part of the night tracing the ceiling beams, going a few rounds with the demons in my head.

Sitting up, I shoveled my drowsy limbs into my clothes. Then I followed the voices into the kitchen.

“He lives,” Rikker said when I shuffled in. He was standing at the counter, grating cheese into a pile on a wooden cutting board.

I cleared my sleepy throat. “Sorry. I slept hard.”

On her way between the open refrigerator and the stove, his Grandmother patted me on the arm. “Nothing to be sorry for. You’re on vacation.” She set a dozen eggs on the counter and opened the carton. “Do you eat eggs, Graham?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Rikker reached over his head and fetched a mug, which he filled with coffee from a pot in front of him. This he handed back to me without comment. Then he picked up the cheese grater again.

I took a deep gulp of the coffee and began to feel almost human. “Can I do anything to help?”

“Just stand there lookin’ pretty,” Rikker drawled. Then he flashed me a wicked grin.

I pulled a face. But God, that smile was disarming. When he aimed it at me, I would probably do anything he asked.

Anything except the one thing that mattered. Anything except love him the way he deserved.

“If you boys are here for another two hours, I can send you back with meatballs in tomato sauce,” Grandma Rikker said. She was cracking eggs into a mixing bowl.

“I’m free then,” Rikker said. “What do you think, G? Do we need to leave before noon?”

Sometime yesterday he’d begun calling me “G” again, just like the old days. I liked it. “There’s no rush,” I told him. “I’ll need to grab a shower at some point, but that’s the only thing on my to-do list.”

Rikker lifted his chin toward the stairs. “You can go now. Breakfast will be another fifteen minutes.”

As I climbed the stairs, I could hear Rikker and his grandmother gossiping.

“Was that boyfriend of Daphne’s there? The one with the bar through his eyebrow, who says ‘fuck’ every other word?”

“Bruno?” Rikker chuckled. “Didn’t see him. So maybe he’s out of the picture.”

“Maybe she came to her senses. Daphne’s a smart girl. I always hoped she was just experimenting on him.”

“I hope so too.”

My time in Vermont came to an end before I was ready. A couple of hours later, Grandma Rikker drove us to the rental car place, and Rikker went inside to pick up his reservation. I leaned forward from the back seat of the truck to thank her for having me as a guest.

She swiveled around, squeezing my forearm. “Any time, dear. I wish you boys had more vacation days. I really do. These last few years with John have been such a gift to me.”

I smiled, because you couldn’t look at the love in her watery blue eyes and not smile. “I’m sure it isn’t always sunshine and roses,” I said, trying for a joke. “He probably leaves the toilet seat up.”

“I had two boys before him,” she said, patting my arm. “I don’t even notice anymore.”

I saw Rikker coming outside again with a set of keys in his hand. “I think we’re all set to go,” I said.

But when I went to open the door, she grabbed my hand. “You take care of yourself, Michael Graham,” she insisted.

“I will,” I said.

“And don’t forget to vent the plastic containers before you nuke those meatballs I made you boys. So they don’t explode.”

Chuckling, I got out. “Thanks for everything!”

She blew me a kiss after I slammed the door.

“I want to do that again some time,” I admitted when we were on the road. “Your grandma’s place is so relaxing.” Rikker was so quiet after I said it that I had to wonder if I’d overstepped. “I mean… I had fun. That’s all.”

“I did, too,” he said quickly. “But I think it’s fascinating that you say you were practically climbing the walls at home, yet Gran’s place is like an oasis. Because she’s the only person in the world who probably suspects you of being gay.” His eyes flicked over to give me a glance. “Because you’re visiting me. Not for any other reason. But that’s, like, backwards. No?”

When I opened my mouth to argue, absolutely nothing came out. Because Rikker was right. Most of the time I walked around in a panic trying to act like a straight guy. In Vermont, I spent my time twerking at a queer dance party and making out with my gay friend in his grandmother’s truck. Then I slept for nine hours straight and woke up feeling like a superhero. It didn’t make a lick of sense.

“What did your parents say about my news story?” he asked suddenly. “Did they see it?”

I gave a big sigh. During the days I’d been at home, I’d ducked out of several conversations about those damned articles. “They said people were talking about it at church. That’s where my mother heard about it.”

“But what did your mom say about me? Was she, like, shocked or anything?”

“She didn’t seem shocked,” I said slowly. This whole topic freaked me right out. “She asked me if you were okay, and if I thought that Coach handled it well. I told her I thought so. Both things.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.” The truth was that Mom tried to talk to me about it. But I ran out of the room every time it came up. And I sure as hell didn’t tell her about the Saint B’s game.

“What do you think your mom would say to me if I walked into your house right now?” he pressed.

“Um… hello John?” I didn’t like where this conversation was headed. Because it didn’t matter that my parents weren’t bigots like Rikker’s parents. I didn’t want to be their gay son.

“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 required 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.