The Understatement of the Year (Ivy Years #3)

CHIPPY: irritated with the other team, potentially on the brink of fighting.

Graham

Note to self: do not ever get another fricking concussion.

They told me that most of the pain would probably go away after a week. After that, I’d experience intermittent pain whenever I overdid it. And by “it” they meant everything you use either your brain or your eyes to do.

But the pain wasn’t even the worst part. My clouded thinking was just freaky. Honestly, it felt like being drunk all the time. My reaction time was sluggish, and I couldn’t always process what people said to me. It frustrated the crap out of me.

And while I’m on a roll here, I’d add that the doctor warned me that I’d feel emotional. Sure, dude, I thought. Whatever. But an hour later, when I couldn’t find the words to explain the Roman History syllabus to my mother, I honestly wanted to smash something. And after I got done feeling enraged, I felt really guilty about getting mad. So guilty that I felt like crying. And I haven’t cried for half a decade.

Good times.

My mother had been endlessly patient with me all day. Spending an hour at the doctor’s office meant that I’d missed my two morning classes. But after lunch, I made it to the history class. Actually, we made it to history class. Mom was going to have to help me with everything for a while, including note taking.

After that, I napped like a toddler while my mother watched. Then Mom read me a couple of chapters of my psychology textbook. When I’d paged through the book to find where I’d left off, the words had seemed to swim on the page.

I could tell you that it didn’t freak me out, but I’d be lying.

For dinner, Mom and I went out for sushi. By the time eight o’clock came around, I was headachy and exhausted. My mother went back to her hotel, and I told her I was going to go to bed early.

Instead, I left a message for Rikker. Then I put on a Clapton playlist and lay down on my bed to wait for him. But even the desk lamp seemed too bright. So I got up to turn it off. When I lay back down in the dark, I listened to every footstep on the stair, hoping it would be him.

“Hey, G,” a voice whispered in the dark. A pair of slightly roughened hands skimmed my face. Then there were kisses dropped on my forehead. Two strong arms pulled me close. I wanted to hug him back, but I was too sleepy. The best I could do was to lean in close and breathe him in.

Rikker.

“I missed you today,” he purred. “And yesterday, too.” He stopped speaking for a moment, then. I think he was listening for a reaction from me. But a head-injured, half-asleep man is no good at returning affection.

“Actually,” he continued as if we were having a real conversation, “you’re all I can think about.”

Those words ought to have been comforting, but there was an edge in his voice that made me nervous.

“See, I know that you and I don’t talk to each other at practice,” he said. “And sometimes that whole setup gets to me. Okay, a lot of the time. But it was weird for me today. You weren’t there at all, and I didn’t like it. I kept thinking of things I wanted to remember to tell you.”

Rikker shifted further onto the bed, fitting me against him.

“So, let’s see,” he said. “Bridger McCaulley came back, but only for the post-season. He’s a little rusty, but I think it’s going to be okay. He has pretty good footspeed. Actually, I think his feet are faster than his hands. If you were awake you could tell me if you think I’m right.”

I pressed my achy head a little closer to his chest, to tell him I agreed. But I don’t think he caught my meaning.

“Big-D was an ass. But I guess I don’t need to tell you that. And apparently Pepé broke up with his Canadian girlfriend again, so Bella was all over that. Also, she packed all your gear into a hockey bag. I think it ended up in Coach’s office…”

Rikker trailed off. Maybe he was finishing the conversation inside his own head. But his hand made slow circles on my back, and it felt great.

“This concussion thing sucks,” he said finally. “And I’ve been all depressed about it. I don’t like it that you’re hurting, and I don’t like it that I’m not allowed to help you.”

You’re helping me right now, I wanted to say.

“I’ve been thinking things through,” he said. “See, just like I know you can’t help being gay, I also know that you can’t help being twisted up over it. I never blamed you for that, G. I get it.”

That was nice of him to say. But his sad tone made my heart stutter with fear.

“I just don’t know what to do with it, though,” he whispered. “I keep spinning my wheels, trying to come up with a solution.”

My eyes, which were still slammed shut, began to burn. I tried to concentrate on the warmth of his body in all the places it touched me — under my cheek, against my shoulder. I knew there would come a day when I didn’t have him anymore. Pretty soon he’d get sick of my bullshit and leave me.

Not yet, I begged him silently. My throat began to burn, too. I don’t want to be lonely again.

The silence beat loudly in my ears, echoing with all the words I could not make myself say.

“Maybe we’ll be okay, you know?” he whispered eventually. “Maybe things will get a little easier for us. You should visit me this summer in Vermont. If you made it a long visit, we could work for this apple orchard near Gran’s house. They do blueberries and peaches before the apples are ripe. The pay isn’t bad, and you get to be outside all day. We could go to guerrilla night again, or maybe clubbing in Montreal.”

The sudden change in topic was a little confusing to me, but I liked the sound of this.

“…But if you can only get away for a weekend, or something, I think we should go camping instead. That could be awesome. How does sex beside a campfire sound? Wait… the mosquitoes could be a problem. Maybe sex in a tent, then.” Rikker chuckled to himself.

“Anyway, that’s going to be my happy thought, until you’re better. If your mom is around all the time, I’m not going to get to see you. I know she wouldn’t mind me coming by, but I’d mind. I don’t think I can be in this room with you and have to watch what I say all the time. I don’t mind tricking a bunch of homophobic athletes, but I don’t want to lie to your mom, G. She’s always been good to me.”

The silence stretched for a moment, and I could almost hear him struggling with his thoughts.

“Ugh. Okay,” he continued. “Happy thoughts. Vermont. Drive-in movies. Dancing to bad music with you. As Gran would say, this too shall pass. Although I find myself saying that a lot lately.” He hugged me even tighter. “I’m going to go now, G. So sleep tight. Call me if you can tomorrow. Wait. I can’t believe I just reminded a sleeping person to call me. How ‘bout I call you? Yeah? It’s a plan.”

I found enough muscle control to grin against his shirt.

He set me back down on the pillow. Then I received a single kiss on the lips. It was soft and sweet, and I did my best to return it.

Then I felt him pull away. His footsteps retreated quietly across my room. A crack of painful hallway light infiltrated my dark cave, and then he was gone.

The next seven days went by very slowly. The Beaumont dean helped Mom rent a discounted hotel room at the college conference center. “I’m not going home until I know you don’t need help,” she said.

Unfortunately, I really did need help. And I hated that.

The all-over headaches began to ease up, becoming intermittent instead of constant. But I still got an odd pain across my brow line, as if someone had pulled a cord that cinched my face too tightly. It came on whenever I focused my eyes on a book for longer than ten minutes.

So Mom did most of the reading. We sat in my room — me on the bed, and her in the desk chair — and she read chapter after chapter to me of developmental psychology and Roman history. She also attended my classes, taking notes for me.

Until you’ve dragged your mom to three lectures a day, you haven’t lived.

By dinnertime, we were always exhausted and rather tired of each other. But we ate together anyway, sometimes putting in a little more reading time after dinner. And then she’d retreat to her hotel room, and I’d lie on my bed doing nothing. I couldn’t even surf the web, because staring at the screen made my head hurt. So I listened to playlist after playlist, tossing a tennis ball over my head and catching it again.

Meanwhile, my hockey team was busy trying to set new records for post-season victories. They beat Providence in the semis, advancing to the conference championship. Rikker had long practices every night. A few times he stopped by afterwards, but I was pretty much useless by nine o’clock. And usually grumpy. Which made him sort of grumpy too.

It sucked. All of it.

Coach called me to ask me if I wanted to ride the bus to Colgate with the team. “This is your game too, kid. I’d make room for you at the hotel.”

“Wow, Coach,” I said, feeling a little choked up. “That is such a nice offer.” I searched for a reason to say no, though. “I have a doctor’s appointment on Friday, and my mom is real eager to see what they say. And she’s been so much help to me that I’d feel bad about blowing it off.”

“Let me know how that goes, okay? Shoot me an email.”

“I’ll be watching the game on TV, Coach. Can’t wait.”

“Hang in there, kid.”

Could I have gone to that game? Probably. But I just wasn’t ready. It was partly that I still felt like shit all the time. The glare and noise of a jam-packed hockey stadium wouldn’t have been easy on me. But that wasn’t the whole problem. For the first time ever, I was reluctant to face my teammates. If I walked into the room, they’d look at me and remember that the last time they saw me I was screaming Rikker’s name.

A smarter man would talk this over with Rikker, and ask if there had been any further discussion about me. Rikker would probably remind me that paranoia is one of the many symptoms of concussion. He’d say that I was being ridiculous. That these were my friends. And by the way — who fucking cares what they think?

Well, I did, unfortunately. And I was always going to care. When I walked out of the room, I didn’t want them whispering about me. I didn’t want anyone to look at me and think sick.

Paranoia was a symptom of being Michael Graham.

The Thursday before Rikker’s big game, my mom decided to take the train to Manhattan to have lunch with my sister. “She can only take an hour and a half for lunch,” my mom said, rolling her eyes. “But she promised not to check her messages every two minutes during the meal.”

We’d just come back from statistics class, and I dumped my backpack on the dorm room floor. “You raised quite the brood, Mom. You’re keeping company with either your bitchy daughter or your grumpy, dopey son.”

“I love you both equally, all the time,” she winked at me.

“Even during statistics class?” We’d gotten ornery at each other a half hour ago, when she’d had trouble keeping up with the formulas the professor had written on the whiteboard.

Mom tucked her phone into her purse and prepared to leave. “Even then.” She looked at me, her face serious now. “I don’t mind all this, Mikey. I like that I have this extra chance to take care of you for a little while.” She took two steps and hugged me. “You’re still my baby, you know. If my baby needs me to draw the Z and T distributions on graph paper, I’ll do it.”

Oh, man. Watch the concussion patient get emotional. Again. I had to swallow hard a few times before I could choke out, “Thanks, Mom.”

She let go of me and went to the door. “I’ll bring you some dinner when I come back. Okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Then she was gone, and I was alone for the first time in a week.

I sat down on my bed and pulled out my phone. Rikker answered on the first ring. “Hola, Miguel,” he said. “How’s the head?”

“Not bad,” I said. “What are you doing right now?”

“Voy a la clase de Español.”

“Okay. What about after that?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Well, Mom went to the city to hang out with Lori,” I said, feeling excited for something for the first time in a week. “Come over. I’ll get us some lunch.”

“That’s cool. I could pick something up,” Rikker offered.

“No, I got it. What else am I going to do with the next hour? It’s really boring to be me.” I still couldn’t read, and if I looked at a screen for more than a couple of minutes, I got a headache. I wasn’t even supposed to exercise much. Having a concussion made me into a waste of space.

“Okay. I’ll be there. I don’t have practice today, either.”

“Really?”

“Really. Coach gave us the day off. He says he wants us rested for tomorrow night.”

“I can help with that. All I do is rest.”

“You’re hired. See you in an hour.”

I bought meatball subs for lunch, because I remembered that Rikker had always loved those back in Michigan. (In Connecticut, though, subs are called “grinders” for some reason.)

Rikker came through the door whistling at a quarter past twelve. We clobbered our lunch while Rikker caught me up on the hockey gossip. Coach had Trevi playing defense. And Pepé the French kid? We all knew that his surname name was Gerault, because it said so on his jersey. “The revelation this week? His real first name is actually Pepé.”

“No shit!” I laughed. “I thought it was just a joke.”

“I know, right?” Rikker wadded up his sandwich wrapper and tossed it into my trash bin.

“Two points,” I said automatically. Then I yawned.

“Do you need to sleep?” Rikker asked.

“Not necessarily,” I said, because I didn’t want him to go. Though I’d already complained to him how weird it was that I couldn’t make it through the afternoon without a nap.

“You look beat,” he said. “Lie down, G. I could use a nap too.”

I didn’t know if that was true. But if I didn’t close my eyes for a little while, I’d only get a headache. So I set the alarm on my phone for three o’clock, just in case. The train ride back from New York took an hour and forty-five minutes. My mom couldn’t possibly walk through the door before three or three-thirty.

Then I lay down on my bed, and Rikker kicked off his shoes. We’d never napped together. In fact, he’d never been to my room like this, in the middle of the day. This was all brand new territory.

Rikker stretched out beside me, and then opened his arms. I went willingly, resting my head on his shoulder, wrapping an arm around his waist. He kissed the top of my head. And then, as if one just wasn’t enough, he did it again. And that made me irrationally happy. I’d had one of the shittiest weeks of my life. But with Rikker pressed warm and solid against me, none of it mattered.

And here was another first — I’d never lain beside Rikker before without turning into an instant horn dog. But today I fell right to sleep.

Two hours later, I awoke in a panic to the sound of my room door opening. Startled, I sat up fast, spasming into damage-control mode. Even asleep, I was worried about being busted napping with Rikker.

But it was Rikker himself who came through the door. “Easy, tiger,” he said. “It’s just me.” He carried two paper coffee cups, one stacked on top of the other, balanced with his chin.

Taking a slow breath, I willed my heart rate back into the normal range. “Did you sleep?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“Sure did. Just not as long as you. I brought you a double cappuccino. Hope you like it.”

“Thanks.” I took the cup from him, cracked the little sipping window and tasted it. “Wow.” It was milky and fantastic. So I removed the lid entirely and took a big gulp. “I guess the Italians know a thing or two about coffee.”

Rikker eyed me over the top of his own cup. “You never order these?”

I shook my head, struck by two things. In the first place, it was depressing that my own boyfriend didn’t know how I drank my coffee. When you only see someone in the dark of night, these are the little details that go missing. We had the relationship of a pair of vampires.

Even worse, I’d made it to age twenty-one without ordering a cappuccino. Because at some point during my ignorant youth, I’d heard somebody say that it was a girly drink. And I’d crossed cappuccinos off the list without a second thought.

That’s how I’d always done it. There were a thousand little decisions I made in service to hiding something big. All my clothes were blue or gray or black. (Except my hockey jacket. And there could hardly be a manlier piece of clothing.) My backpack was a plain color. My bedspread was regulation navy blue. I lived by a weird, self-imposed aesthetic, focused on never appearing gay.

The result? Not only did Rikker not know my taste in coffee, I didn’t either.

Rikker made himself comfortable on my beanbag chair, and sipped his coffee. “How are you feeling?”

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Today I feel a little better. Finally.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said, kicking off his shoes. “What were you supposed to read next? I’ll take a shift, if you want.”

I swirled my excellent coffee, so that none of the foam would be left behind in the cup. “My mom would be pumped if you read a couple chapters of Roman history. She hates that book.”

“Pass it over,” he said.

With his feet propped up into my lap, he read to me for over an hour. Listening to the rough, warm sound of his voice, I felt happier than I’d been in a week. I’d needed this — a few casual hours with him. Just having Rikker in the room with me was like medicine.

Unfortunately for him, Mom was right — Rikker was reading from the least interesting book on earth.

Eventually he let it fall into his lap. “Fuck, G. Aren’t there any naughty bits in here?” He’d just read another stifling paragraph about Roman wall painting. “Can we skip to the part about the orgies?”

“I wish.”

“I’m pretty sure the Romans liked to get it on. What chapter is that?”

Pulling one of his feet into my hands, I gave the arch a squeeze.

He closed his eyes. “Do that again,” he demanded. Rikker was kind of a sensualist. He liked to be touched, even if it wasn’t sexual.

Maybe I’d be a sensualist too, if I weren’t so goddamn uptight.

I massaged both of his feet. And after a time, he picked the book up again and kept reading. I did a decent job of paying attention, closing my eyes to try to picture the ancient buildings that Rikker described.

I didn’t think anything of it when he removed his feet from my lap mid-paragraph. He kept reading, though, as my room door opened and my mother walked in.

“…in contrast to the three-dimensional Second Style. Yada yada yada,” he finished. “Hi, Mrs. G!”

“Johnny Rikker!” she said, walking over to kiss him on the cheek, before doing the same to me. She was holding a bag from the Chinese restaurant. “Have you eaten dinner?”

“Actually, I’m on my way to the dining hall,” he said, standing up to stuff his feet into his shoes. “My Spanish class has a language table once a week. And thanks to hockey, I’m usually a no-show.”

I hoped to God that Rikker was telling the truth about his dinner plans. Because I suspected that he ate alone a lot of the time. Apart from his peculiar relationship with me, and the rest of his somewhat-friendly teammates, he didn’t have a social life.

Rikker pulled on his jacket. He’d just spent five hours with me, and I still had to stop myself from begging him not to go.

“Thanks for taking a shift with the history book,” Mom called after him as he went the door. “The psych class has been fun, but that one is killing me.”

“Yeah? I’m going to borrow that book next time I can’t fall asleep.”

Laughing, Mom wished him a good night. After the door closed on Rikker, she opened the bag of Chinese food on the desk. “What a good friend he is to you,” she said, pulling out a white cardboard container.

That was the moment when I was supposed to say, “yeah,” and then change the subject, like I always did. But just then, my head gave a lurch of pain. Because it just felt so wrong. Every time I ducked the truth, it was like betraying Rikker all over again. Not to be dramatic, but I kept thinking about Peter’s denial of Jesus. Except I was worse than Peter. Instead of denying Rikker three times, I denied him every fricking day.

I put my hands to my temples.

“Michael?” my mother asked. “What’s wrong?”

I was too caught up in my own misery to answer her.

Worried, Mom abandoned the take-out order to come over to me. She sat beside me on the bed and cupped two hands under my chin. “What is it?”

I’d finally reached the point where I didn’t want to lie anymore. But I wasn’t capable of speaking the truth, either. So I was just stuck there, the words choking me.

“Sweetie, please. You’re scaring me.”

“He’s not…” My voice cracked.

She held me a little tighter. “He’s not what, Sweetie?”

I wasn’t making any sense, and I knew it. It’s just that I wasn’t sure I could do any better. Not with the hot, crackling ball of fear lodged in my throat. “He’s not…” I gasped the last part out, “just my friend.”

For a second, nothing happened. I waited for my world to cleave in two, like the San Andreas fault. I’d spent my entire life trying to choke it all back. But I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I’d had enough. But that didn’t mean I was ready to face the consequences.

My mother didn’t breathe for a long time. And when she finally did, it was in one great gust. “Michael,” she gasped. Her eyes began to fill with tears. “How long have you held that in?”

“So damn long,” I said immediately.

“Oh, Sweetie,” she said, pulling me to her. “My poor boy. So hard on yourself.”

And then I just couldn’t hang on anymore. I leaned into her shoulder, and a giant sob came heaving out of my chest.

“Shh,” she said, rocking me. “Shh.”

But I’d kept it bottled up for so long that I couldn’t stop. Another sob followed the first one, and then another after that. There was just no containing that flood. I cried until I couldn’t breathe, just like a kindergartner.

I think Mom cried too. And when I finally began to calm down, my head balanced in my own hands, my breath stuttering, she got up to find tissues for both of us. I felt her sit down beside me again. “You are all the son I’ve ever wanted,” she said in a shaking voice. “Please don’t think you could disappoint me with this.”

“Dad,” I choked out. It was just a single word, but it was a big one.

“He may not be as surprised as you think,” she said quietly.

I raised my eyes to her red ones. But I couldn’t even make myself ask why. I wasn’t any good at this.

“When John moved away, you barely came out of your room for months,” she said. “And that’s what heartbreak looks like. We were both worried about you. At the time, we wondered.”

Holy shit. I never saw that coming.

“Your father loves you,” she said. But then there was a pause. “I’m not saying that he won’t struggle. He’s going to have to adjust his… vision for your future.”

I could feel how much effort it took her to avoid using the word “expectations” in that sentence. And that’s just what I’d always feared — becoming second best in everyone’s eyes.

“…But your father loves you. So much, Sweetie. He will always be proud of you. Always.”

“I don’t want to tell him,” I said.

Mom studied me. “But how does not telling him feel?”

“Awful.”

She gave me a watery smile. “Rock, meet hard place.”

“We are already acquainted.”

At that, my mother actually laughed. “Oh, Mikey. Just breathe. It’s okay. Everything is okay.”

It wasn’t, actually. But telling her hadn’t killed me. At least I had that. I still didn’t want to be… that way. I didn’t want people to see me as a stereotype. Faggot. Queen. Fairy. I didn’t feel like any of those things, and I didn’t want to be called those names. I just wanted to be Michael Graham. It’s just that Michael Graham was attracted to men. And always had been.

By then, I’d had just about as much drama tonight as I could take. “Can we eat Chinese food now?” I was completely wrung out. Eating would be better than more talking.

Mom looked at the food on the desk as if she’d never seen it before. “I guess we can.” She fixed the plates, and I turned on the evening news. Though I’m pretty sure neither of us heard a single word of it. We were both lost inside our own heads.

Eventually we gave up on the food. When I came back into the room after throwing the cartons away, mom hit me with the question that I’d been avoiding for more than five years.

“What happened to Johnny back in Michigan?”

My eyes burned again just from thinking about it. “I can’t talk about that tonight.”

She looked so sad. “You blame yourself.”

“I have reasons.”

I watched her struggle with her desire to press me on it. “His parents weren’t good to him when it happened, were they?”

I shook my head.

She pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers. “Please tell me that you didn’t think we’d send you away like that? Like they did to him?”

“Aw, no Mom! His parents are assholes.”

She smiled at me, but she looked pained. “Sending you to that Christian school was a mistake, wasn’t it? I can only imagine what they preached about…” she swallowed.

Shit. Now Mom was sitting here, blaming herself for my troubles. And that made no sense at all. “This isn’t the school’s fault,” I told her. Though it didn’t help.

“We only sent you there because the public school was struggling.”

“I know, Mom. It’s okay.”

“If it was okay, you wouldn’t have waited years to say anything.”

“That’s on me,” I said. “All on me.” But it was finally dawning on me that keeping secrets hurt people. I already knew that it hurt Rikker. I saw it in his eyes every day. But it hadn’t occurred to me that my parents deserved to know the important things in my heart. They were honest with me, and I hadn’t given them the benefit of the doubt.

Looking at my mom’s face right then, I saw a lot of hurt. And here’s the crazy thing — I knew without a doubt that her sadness had nothing to do with the fact that Rikker was my boyfriend. And it had everything to do with my not telling her sooner. “I wish I’d said something before.” Not that I’d ever had the urge to. But I was beginning to understand why she deserved it.

“Me too,” she said, pulling me into another hug. “But I’m glad you told me now.”

My phone buzzed with a text, and after I untangled myself from Mom, I checked it. It was Rikker saying he’d left his Spanish book next to my bed, and asking if he could come over later. I told him yes, without giving any other details. Man, he wasn’t going to believe what I’d done tonight.

For a little while, Mom read me some more Roman history. But both of us were too exhausted to take it in.

“I might go to the hotel,” my mother said on a yawn. “Unless you don’t want to be alone.”

“I’m good,” I said. And I won’t be alone. This was going to get weirder before it got easier.

She closed the book, grabbing my face in two hands. “Mikey, are you sure you’re okay right now? Would you tell me if you weren’t?”

“Yeah, Mom. I’m tired, too. But I’m okay. Are you going to talk to Dad?”

She hesitated. “He’ll probably call. What am I allowed to say?”

I just shrugged. “I’m not going to call him myself right now. I’m too exhausted. You can say something or not. Whatever seems right.” I didn’t want her to have to do my work for me. But I couldn’t ask Mom to lie, either.

She squeezed my arm. “Try to get some rest.”

“I will.”

She hugged me one more time. Hard. And then she was gone.

Rikker

I’d texted Graham earlier asking if I could come by later. He had replied immediately. Was hoping U would.

Well, shit. That made me feel like a million bucks. Awesome. I’ll txt b4 I come up.

After I did some studying my room, I threw on my hockey jacket, patting my travel toothbrush to be sure it was still in the pocket. Graham wasn’t the sort of lover with whom you could take the liberty of leaving your toothbrush in his toiletry tray. He’d develop some wild theory about what the neighbor might think if he saw two blue toothbrushes together, or some shit. So I packed mine in and out with me, the way you handle refuse on the Appalachian Trail.

Walking over to Beaumont House, another student was exiting the iron gates just as I arrived. So I had no trouble getting in. I stopped there on the flagstone path, and pulled out my phone to text Graham.

“Mister Rikker,” came a voice in the dark.

I looked up to see Graham’s mom walking toward me. Well, crap. Graham wasn’t going to be happy about the fact that I’d run into her here. “Hi, Mrs. G,” I said as casually as possible. I shoved my phone into my pocket, like the guilty man that I was.

She marched up to me and threw her arms around my neck. Then she kissed me on the cheek. “I love you. Always have. Always will. No matter what.”

Then, as I stood there, speechless, she let go. Without another word, she walked away into the night. I still hadn’t moved a minute later when I heard the iron gate open and shut again as she left the Beaumont courtyard for the street outside.

Okay…

Collecting myself, I walked to Graham’s entryway, following another student inside. Taking the stairs two at a time, I opened Graham’s door without knocking. Inside, it was dark except for the desk lamp, lonely in its corner. Graham was lying on his back on the big bed, his arms out in submission, like Christ on the cross.

“Hola, Miguel.” Kicking off my shoes, I crawled onto the bed beside him, looking down at him from hands and knees. His eyes were red and swollen. “What happened here tonight? I just got hug-mugged by your mother in the courtyard.”

He reached up to catch the back of my head in one of his big hands. Guiding me down onto his chest, he said, “I guess you don’t need to text before you come up anymore.”

“I see,” I said, snuggling up to him. Although I didn’t, really. Did Graham actually tell his mother? That seemed categorically impossible.

“She’s taking notes for three courses for me. She read four hundred pages to me this week,” he said.

“Yeah?” I whispered, hoping that he’d keep talking. Graham’s arm looped around me, his fingers swishing through my hair. I leaned in, wanting this unbidden affection from him almost as badly as I wanted to find out what had happened.

“Just couldn’t lie anymore,” he whispered. “Not to her,” he amended quickly, as if I were dumb enough to think that he could ever really go public about us.

“That’s big,” I said. Because it really, really was.

He only grunted. But he pulled me closer, too. He buried his face in my hair and took a big breath. His fingers traveled the length of my back. Skimming. Caressing. Graham wasn’t always so affectionate, and I was a slut for it. I burrowed into him. Hug me. Rub me more, my body language said. And he did. Maybe he felt he’d earned the right to hold me, somehow. I knew how hard it must have been for him to be honest with his mom.

We lay there a long time, just cuddling. I never wanted it to end. “Rub my head?” he asked eventually.

“Which one?” I joked. But I pushed myself up on the pillow, pulling my big, golden boy onto my chest. And I massaged his scalp with my fingertips, applying gentle force to the skin and muscle under my hands.

“Mmm,” he said. “Cómo fue tu mesa de Español?” How was your Spanish table?

“Muy bien,” I told him. Then I asked the question I’d been dying to ask for the past hour. “Qué dice tu madre?” What did you mother say?

He groaned into my chest. “What did she say to you?”

I had to swallow hard before repeating it. Because the words were ones that my own mother would never, ever say to me. “She said that she loves me no matter what.”

“Lo mismo para mi,” he whispered. The same for me.

I traced a few more circles into his scalp. “I know you believe her. But I know that it’s still hard.”

“The rest of my family…” his words were muffled by my shirt. “Ugh. I don’t want to be talked about.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I don’t want them to look at me funny.”

“I know.”

He slid his fingers under the hem of my shirt, his rough hands finding the tender skin on my belly. “I’m a fucking coward.”

My own hands slid down his body then, fingertips breeching the waistline of his sweatpants. “Mmm… did someone say ‘fucking?’”

Chuckling, he hiked himself up, fitting his hips against mine. The weight of his body on top of me made me deliriously happy. “Pretty stupid of me to come out to my mom when I can’t even do the things I’m confessing to.”

I groaned, wriggling underneath his hard body. “Maybe the doctors are wrong about this. I’m sure we can do it without smacking your skull into anything.”

“It’s about exertion,” he said. “This, like, hundred-year-old doctor told me that orgasm would bring on a killer headache. He didn’t say anything about giving blowjobs, though.”

Just hearing the word made me hard. And when Graham’s hands began to work my fly open, I let loose a moan which told him exactly how much I liked the idea. He started by teasing me — leaning down to drop light kisses in all the best places. “I don’t think exertion is going to be a problem, here,” I panted. We hadn’t had sex in ten days. I was going to blow like a land mine if he ever got around to taking me deep.

Graham’s warm breath ghosted over me, and I held my breath.

And then his phone rang.

He tried to ignore it. He really did. He took me in hand as the ringing ceased, and I received a few happy strokes. But the damned phone rang again, and I could feel just how much it put him on edge, especially with everything that had gone down tonight.

Shit.

I put my hands on his shoulders. “I think you need to check that.”

With a sigh, Graham slid off of me, grabbing his phone off the desk. The blue light from the phone’s screen illuminated his wince. “My father.” Then he looked at me on the bed, with my throbbing dick hanging out, and he actually began to laugh.

Smiling back at him, I sat up, tucking everything back into my jeans. “You’re going to have to talk to him.”

The phone was silent again. “I know,” he said, laughing, sounding a little manic. “God, I don’t want to.”

“Just do it,” I told him. “Rip that bandage off.”

He sat down in the desk chair, looking at the phone as if it would lash out and attack him. “Shit.”

“Dial,” I ordered.

With a sigh, he tapped the screen.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” I told him. Then I went for the door.

“Hi,” poor Graham said into the phone as I turned the knob. “I’m okay, I guess.” His voice shook.

I left him alone then, taking my time in the deserted bathroom. When I’d run out of reasons to stand around in there, I opened Graham’s door again, prepared to leave if he was still on the phone. But he wasn’t. He was just sitting on the edge of the bed now, his head in his hands. And even though I was pretty sure that both Graham’s parents were as solid as they come, the defeated slump of his shoulders gave me a shiver of uncertainty.

Tiptoeing inside, I closed the door behind me. Then I went over to Graham, gingerly, the way one approaches a potentially rabid beast. He didn’t look up. And I realized that he was crying.

That gave me a moment’s hesitation. Because sometimes a man just needs to shed a few tears in private. But Graham leaned then, until his forehead made contact with my hip. I put a hand to the back of his neck, just holding him. “Is he shaken up?” I asked. Because even if Graham’s dad didn’t manage to say the right thing, it couldn’t possibly be permanent. There’s no way that Mr. Graham would adopt the Rikker Family School of Parenting.

“Not sure,” Graham sniffed. “But I am.”

Aw, Christ. I sat down beside him then and pulled him into my arms. “Did he say the right things?”

“All of ‘em. Not sure I deserve him. Them.”

“Huh,” I said. “Then maybe you deserve your sister? Because she’s kind of a bitch.”

He tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob. “My head is fucking killing me.”

“How bad?”

“A solid seven.”

“You want a couple of pills?”

“Yup.”

I got him the painkillers and a fresh glass of water. Then I removed his socks and sweats, and tucked him into bed. Stripping down to my boxers, I climbed in after him. Graham scooted backwards, fitting his back against my chest. I dropped my arm over his body, and a kiss on the back of his neck.

“I might not be worth the trouble,” he mumbled.

I stroked my hand across his belly, dragging my thumb through the fine hair of his happy trail. “I know you feel like shit right now,” I said. “But you’ve got nowhere to go but up.”

“Hope so.” He was quiet for a few minutes, and I thought he’d fallen asleep. “Rik?” he said, surprising me.

“Yeah?”

“Love you. Always have.”

I was so stunned that I couldn’t do anything for a moment except lie there and replay the sound of his words in my head. Then I laughed. “Fuck, G. You might even be worth the trouble.” I hugged him a little tighter. “You’re the second person to say that to me tonight, though. Your mom beat you to it.”

“You’ll have to let her down easy,” he said.

I grinned into my boyfriend’s neck, and then I held him while we both fell asleep.

Graham

Saturday night, Mom and I watched the hockey game on a big screen TV in the lobby of the college conference center where she was staying.

It was trippy, watching my team on television, knowing that I ought to be there with them. The helplessness was almost unbearable. I’d never been more nervous for a game in my entire life.

The first period was non-scoring, and I almost lost my mind. But Rikker shot one between the goalie’s legs early in the second period, and Mom and I laughed and cheered like a couple of lunatics. But then Colgate followed up with a goal of their own. And I was back to being a nervous wreck for the rest of the second period and part of the third.

Finally, a freshman D-man (A freshman! A defensive player!) scored with an assist from Hartley. And the other team never got its mojo back. By the time the buzzer rang, I was hoarse from yelling at the screen.

Mom flopped back against the sofa. “That was exhausting. When is the next game? I’m going to need to prepare myself.”

“In a week,” I said. “There are two ACAA Eastern Seaboard elimination games. If we’re still standing after that, it’s off to the Frozen Four.”

How crazy was that?

After saying goodnight to Mom, I headed back to Beaumont, dialing Rikker as I walked. Since he was in a loud, joyous locker room somewhere, my call went to voicemail. I left him a message, telling him how awesome it was that he’d scored that goal, and how badly I missed him.

The last block back to Beaumont was the loneliest of my life. And Rikker must not have gotten my message until late. Or else he wasn’t alone. Because he didn’t call back.

The next day had me feeling pretty stir-crazy. After spending way too many hours trying to get me ready for the history midterm, Mom and I were annoyed with each other. We’d just come back from a bite out at the sushi place. I’m sure she would have left me alone for the evening already, except she’d left her book in my room. “And that’s what I usually do after I read to you all day,” she said. “Read some more.”

“I’m sorry, Ma,” I said. It didn’t sound like fun for her either.

She just smiled. “I know we’ve had a couple of tough weeks, and that your head still aches. But a couple of years from now I’m going to look back on this time like a gift. When your kids grow up, they don’t need you anymore. I don’t mind a bit of drudgery for one more shot at helping you.”

At that, I felt myself tearing up again. Oh, the joys of concussion. Everything made me either mad or turned me into a total pussy.

I turned on my TV, sifting for a hockey game. Although I’d settle for basketball if necessary. Mom was gathering her things when somebody knocked.

“It’s open,” I said.

Rikker came in the door. “Hey G. Hi, Mrs. G.”

“Johnny! Congratulations!” My mom ran over to hug him.

I stayed put, of course. It’s not that I didn’t want a hug. But there wasn’t going to be any kind of PDA in front of my mom. Ever.

“You look tired, honey,” Mom said to Rikker.

He grinned. “Well, ouch. But you look fabulous.”

She ruffled his hair. “Tell your coach that he has to keep to the twenty hour rule, even during the post-season.”

“I will fire off that memo first thing,” he said, his dimple showing. “But before I do, I came to drag your son off to Capri’s for a couple of hours.”

“I don’t think so,” I said quickly.

Rikker crossed the room and took the remote out of my hand. He muted the TV and crossed his arms. “I know you feel like crap every night. But getting out of here might do you some good.”

“Maybe another time.”

He put my remote in his back pocket. “It will be quiet there tonight. Sunday night and all. Seems perfect to me.”

I lunged, but he anticipated me, weaving to the side well before I could get to him. And I wasn’t willing to tackle my boyfriend in front of my mother.

“You should go, Mikey,” she said gently. “Johnny is right.”

Great. Now the Mom-guilt was kicking in. “Naw. You go ahead, Rik.”

His face got serious, and he sat down on my desk chair. “Come on, G. I’ll make a deal with you. You go to Capri’s, and I’ll stay away tonight. God knows I see enough of that place.”

Way to make me feel like a total asshole. And I could feel my mother watching us, wondering why he would offer to do that. “That’s not cool, Rik.” I mumbled. “It’s your celebration.”

“And yours.”

I shook my head.

“Your friends are going to wonder why you’re ducking them. I mean, they’re playing for the Eastern cup next week. Show your face.”

Ugh. I couldn’t even look up at my mom. She just stood there, silent, listening to Rikker and I have this disagreement. Walking into Capri’s with Rikker at my side wasn’t something I wanted to do. But I couldn’t ask him to stay away from the we-just-clinched-the-conference party, either. I was a jackass. But I wasn’t that big of a jackass.

“We’ll both go,” I said finally.

Rikker’s smile lit up his whole face. “Get your jacket.”

I’m not proud of the way that I broke into the cold sweats as Rikker pushed the door open and stepped inside. Daft Punk was playing on the sound system, but the beat was drowned out by one of the Capri brothers’ voices calling “pie number thirty-seven!” over the intercom.

I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. But the room did not go absolutely silent when Rikker and I walked into that place together. Nobody turned to point and stare. The ground did not drop out from under my feet and swallow me up.

Rikker was on to me, of course. He knew me too well. So, after we passed the pizza counter, he paused in the doorway to our usual room to talk to Orson. Without a glance in my direction, he let me pass by, working my way toward the three or four tables the hockey team had commandeered.

“Hey!” Hartley crowed. “Does anybody recognize this guy? He looks vaguely familiar.”

“He needs a glass,” someone said.

There was an open seat at Bridger McCaulley’s table, and so I slid in next to his eight-year-old sister, Lucy. “Hi there,” I said to her.

“Hi Graham. I thought you were hurt.” Her freckled face tilted up toward mine, her eyes scanning me for injuries.

“My head was injured, and it’s not done healing,” I told her. “Still hurts.”

“Looks the same, though,” she said, setting down the crust of her pizza.

“Good to know,” I told her, and Bridger laughed.

Someone poured me a beer, and I relaxed a little bit. How many times had I sat here like this, listening to the evening’s latest smack talk? A hundred? Two hundred? I’d missed this. I sipped my beer, soaking up the sound of my teammates’ arguments and laughter.

Bridger and Lucy went home, but Bella took the empty seat instead. “Hi, Sweetie,” she said, teasing a straw wrapper around her finger. “You look a little better than the last time I saw you.”

I fiddled with my beer glass. “That’s because the last time you saw me was not so recently.”

She popped a hand under her chin. “Your mom is here.”

“So?”

Her green eyes rose to meet mine. But her voice dropped so low I could barely hear her. “It’s hard for me, okay?” It was just five words. But they said a lot.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. And it was the truth. I’d basically lost my best friend, and there was nothing to be done about it. I’d spent whole years of my life wishing that I could be attracted to Bella, or any other girl. But it just wasn’t there.

Still, I wanted to explain myself. “The reason we stopped…” I cleared my throat.

“…Fucking,” Bella prompted.

I sighed. “The reason we stopped, is because I was a mess.”

Her eyes grew shiny. “And you knew I was hung up on you?”

I gave my head such a hard shake that it actually hurt. “No. I didn’t know that at all. But I cared about you. You’re just about my favorite person at Harkness. And even though I kept hoping I could change, I didn’t want to keep dragging you through my little charade.”

Her eyes dropped to the tabletop. “I was pretty far gone already.”

I covered both her hands with mine, and squeezed. “Seriously, Bella. If I was into girls, you’d be the only one for me.”

“Don’t make me cry, you dick,” she said, wrestling a hand from mine to wipe her eyes. But she gave me a shaky smile then.

“Fine,” I told her. “But come over here and sit next to me. For old times’ sake.”

Wearing a grudging expression, Bella maneuvered around the table to sit next to me. And then the other side of the booth was taken up by Pepé and Frenchie, who told us a story about getting locked out of their hotel room at Colgate.

I didn’t say much all night. The music made my head hurt, and I nursed my beer like somebody’s grandmother. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I was happy just sitting there letting the game stats and the smack talk roll over me. Rikker was right that I’d been ducking this. I’d been afraid to look my teammates in the face, because I didn’t know what would look back at me.

But I did it, and nobody died. There were a few curious glances coming my way. But it was hard to say whether those were the result of speculation about my head injury or speculation about my sex life.

Rikker stayed away from me, which was easy enough to do when there were three-dozen people in the mix. I caught him glancing at me once, probably checking to make sure that I was doing all right. Busted, he actually winked and then turned back to the conversation he was having with Trevi.

I watched Rikker for a while then, forgetting to care whether anyone saw. The easy set of his muscular shoulders was something I always noticed about him. He moved like a man who was comfortable in his body. And that didn’t change whether he was walking naked across the bedroom toward me, or standing in a bar with his teammates. I was attracted to it, and I envied it. All at the same time.

Tonight it was almost possible to be all the parts of me at once. The part that loved Rikker, and the part that insisted on being the same old Michael Graham.

I started to get really drowsy around ten, so I said my goodbyes. Then I walked outside and texted Rikker. I’m out front. Wait 4 U or go home?

A minute later, he answered me by coming out the front door. We both said “hey,” at exactly the same time.

Rikker grinned. “The jinx machine is out of order. Please put in another quarter.” Turning toward College Street, we headed into the night. “Was it okay?” he asked.

“Absolutely.” Then, after verifying that we were alone, I grabbed his hand. Bringing it up to my lips, I kissed his knuckles before dropping his hand again. “Thank you,” I said, my voice rough.

“No sweat.” I couldn’t tell from his voice, but I’d probably stunned him with even that miserly show of affection.

When we approached the turnoff to Bank Street, and Rikker’s dorm, I went even further. “Come home with me?”

He followed, wordlessly. Before, I’d never said it out loud. And we’d never walked into Beaumont together.

I hoped he knew that I was trying.

We were both awfully quiet on the way back to my room. I opened the door, and he stepped inside. Once it was closed and locked behind us, I put my arms around him. For a long minute we just stood there, holding each other.

“You were brave tonight,” he whispered.

“Brave is driving a tank in Afghanistan,” I argued quietly. “Brave is stealing the puck from a Red Wings defenseman.”

He chuckled into my ear. “Kiss me, moron.”

Pushing him back against the door, I did what he asked. Lowering my mouth onto his willing one, I kept it soft, kissing him slowly. He was eager, opening up for me, inviting me in. Our tongues tangled together, and he made a needy noise in the back of his throat.

But I receded, gentling the kiss, slowing it down again. Whenever we had sex, I was always the desperate, greedy one. Tonight I wanted to give him something else. Something sweet. I let my hands wander his ass while we kissed. And pretty soon I had him growling into my mouth, his hips pressing into mine.

“Let’s have you in my bed,” I demanded.

“Now who’s bossy?” he panted. As he crossed the room, Rikker stripped off his jacket and his T-shirt.

I watched with greedy eyes. Ever since I could remember wanting anyone, I’d wanted him. I never had a choice in the matter. There was never a moment when I said, “okay, I’ve decided to choose Rikker over the entire female population.” In fact, I’d wasted a whole lot of time trying not to want him. But the desire I carried for him came from someplace deep. When his hands moved down to unzip his fly, I watched the muscles flex in his back. And I wanted to run my fingers over everything I saw.

My desire for him was there whether I wanted it or not. And if I could figure out how to just own up to it, maybe I could get some peace.

Naked, Rikker climbed onto my bed. He propped his head on an arm and waited for me to follow.

So I shook off my reverie and began shedding clothes. The jacket fell by the door. The t-shirt was next. He watched me with the same hungry expression that I probably wore. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve it, either.

I dropped my jeans and boxers in one go. Rikker licked his lips, then. And man did that light me up. It was all I could do to keep calm. Instead of throwing myself at him, I slid onto the bed, gave his shoulder a nudge and pushed Rik onto his back. He reached up to put his arms around me, but I took his wrists in my hands and pinned them to the bed. “Just hold still,” I whispered.

His hips twitched beneath me. “If you insist.”

“I do.” Dropping my head into his neck, I kissed the path his evening whiskers had made. The scrape of his stubble against my lips was a turn-on. There was really no way I could ever go back to sleeping with women, and pretending to like it. I had a pang of remorse for the girls I’d talked into my bed these past few years. They didn’t know that they had bit parts in the melodrama of my sexual confusion.

But my desire for Rikker was as clear as the day was long. His hard body beneath my hips was everything I wanted. Following the dark outline of his happy trail down his chest, I released his wrists. Kissing lower, I paused to lay my face on his flat belly. I just paused there, nuzzling him. With one hand, I traced the skin from his rib cage down past his hipbone. Mine, I thought. It wasn’t often that I allowed myself to think possessive thoughts about him. I didn’t deserve to. Tonight, at least, I had him all to myself.

“Mmm,” he said, running a hand over my hair. A couple of inches from my face, his cock stood at attention. I stuck out my tongue, just grazing the tip of it, and his stomach tightened beneath me as I heard him sucking in air.

I inched closer, just teasing him with glancing kisses. Each touch bought me another gasp or twitch of anticipation.

After making him suffer for a minute or two, I picked my head up, opened my mouth and sucked him down.

“Oh baby, yes,” he panted. He tried to arch off the bed, but I wasn’t having it. Just for fun, I pinned his hips down and worked him at my own speed. And my speed was slow. I took long, loving strokes, swirling my tongue around the head of him. “Ahhhh,” he moaned, and it turned into a chuckle. He rose up on his elbows for a better view.

Holding his eyes, I sucked him down again. “You’re killing me, and you like it,” he complained.

“Mmmmm hmmmm,” I hummed around him.

“Arrrgh,” he panted, dropping his head backward.

Releasing him, I let up on his hips. “So give it to me,” I ordered.

He didn’t wait for another invitation. Rikker jacked his hips up off the bed, pumping into my mouth. Happier than I’d been in weeks, I made my boyfriend lose his mind.

Afterward, there was a lot more kissing, and a lot of holding each other. I was feeling pleased with myself, and Rikker was pretty pleased with me. So I asked him a question that had been on my mind many times before. “Rik?”

“Yeah?” he said, sucking on my ear lobe.

“Would you ever let me top you?”

“Sure,” he said, kissing my neck.

The quick answer surprised me. I rose up to look at him. “Really?”

His brown eyes were soft and lazy. “All you have to do is ask, G. There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t give you if you asked.”

All that generosity made me feel like a heel. “Don’t know why you should,” I muttered, dropping back onto the pillow we were sharing.

But now it was his turn to pull back and take a look at me. “You’ve got to stop with that,” he said, his voice low and serious.

“With what?”

“You know what I mean. With always beating yourself up over the past. Something happened a long time ago that you regret. And you’re still dragging that around with you. Set that shit down, man.”

I sighed. It sounded nice the way he put it. But it wasn’t just one bad decision I’d made. I had a perfect record for torturing all the people who loved me. Including him. Especially him.

“I’m not kidding,” Rikker pressed. “You keep that up, and it won’t work out between us.”

My heart squeezed with fear. “Why not?” I didn’t like the plaintive sound of my voice. So vulnerable.

“Because you’ll wreck it. You have to be able to say what you need, just like I do. It doesn’t work any other way. I don’t want to always have to guess what you want from me.”

“That shit that happened five years ago…”

“Six,” Rikker corrected.

“Five, six, whatever. It doesn’t matter if I let it go, because that’s not the only problem.”

“What is, then?”

Damn. It. See, one of the benefits of never, ever having a girlfriend was that I never had to Talk About the Relationship. Guys in the locker room always got super pissy whenever the Big Conversations happened. And now I was having one of those too, and I didn’t even have a clue how to do it.

I cleared my throat. “Okay, you’re only going to leave me, eventually. Because I can’t be like you. I can’t be out. I can’t talk to a reporter, or tell Big-D to go fuck himself. So when you finally get sick of being with a guy who won’t even make eye contact in the locker room, I’m history anyway. I know this. So how in the hell do you expect me to stop feeling bad about that shit? It’s bad, and if I pretend it isn’t, that’s a lie.”

After a beat, Rikker put both hands over his eyes. “I don’t even know where to start with all that.”

“You don’t have to start anywhere. I didn’t want to talk about it in the first place. But all those things are true. And I don’t have a clue why you’re still here.”

His hands slid up to his forehead, revealing his eyes. “You don’t?”

I shook my head, which had just begun to throb.

With a look of utter exasperation, he sat up. “Because I love you, you stupid fuck. And I always have. It’s not always so convenient, loving you. But when you climb out of that thick blond head of yours for a few minutes, you’re a hell of a lot of fun. And you’re loyal, too, in that tortured way of yours.”

It was a crazy ass speech. And not even a little bit romantic. But even so, my eyes welled.

“Aw hell, G!” Rikker slid back down and put his head on my chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t say that right.”

“You said it fine.” I palmed my eyes, wiping the tears out and praying there wouldn’t be more.

“I know you don’t believe me. But I think that everything is going to get easier for you.”

“Are you giving me an It Gets Better speech?”

He kissed my chin. “Sort of. Yes, actually. Because I know how you don’t want to change the way people look at you. And that’s not crazy. But you’ve only got one year left in the locker room, right? One year left to be the D-squad enforcer, and to beat on your chest and mow down the enemy. And then you’re moving on to grad school or a job or whatever. College is great, but there isn’t any privacy. After this, it just gets easier.”

“What if it doesn’t?” I asked in a small voice.

“It has to, G. You told your parents. Every time you move a person into the truth column, breathing gets a little easier, right?”

“I guess.”

“Did you talk to Hartley tonight?” Rikker asked suddenly.

“Sure.”

“He knows.”

I stopped breathing. “How?”

Rik shrugged. “The hospital. He went back there into your room and tried to calm you down. But you just kept asking him where I was. And… I can’t explain it. I just saw the moment he figured it out. And then when your mom showed up she made a big deal about how we played hockey together in eighth grade.”

“Ugh.” I felt a little sick just picturing that.

Rikker picked up his head to look at me. “No, G. Not ugh. You need to stop thinking that way, for your own sanity. I mean, Hartley is good to me. And also to you. He knows, and just doesn’t care.”

“He is good to you. And he isn’t just phoning it in.” But I was just so conditioned to hold on to my secret, I couldn’t even conceive of a day when I didn’t care who knew.

“That’s right. He’s a guy who doesn’t care who you get naked with. He doesn’t give a damn what people think. That’s a real man right there. And a real friend. You don’t have to wonder how he’d treat you if he knew. Because you already have the answer.”

I closed my eyes, exhausted. “It’s just so hard for me to get there.”

“I know,” Rikker said. “The thing is, each new person who learns the truth lets you breathe a little easier. And then the one after that is a little easier. And so on.”

It almost sounded possible. You know. For someone who wasn’t me.

We stopped talking for a little while. Rikker eased himself back into the bed. He rolled toward me, and I rolled away, so that he was spooning me. And it felt ridiculously good.

“There’s one thing I wish you could do for me,” he said eventually.

“What’s that?”

“Say the word.”

“What word?”

Rikker sighed. “The big scary g-word.”

Oh. “Why do you want me to?”

“I’m gay, Graham. Or queer, if you like that word better. Whatever. I’m attracted to guys. You won’t say that out loud, will you? I’ll bet you didn’t even say the word to your mother when you told her. Did you?”

“No,” I told the pillow. He was right. I’d only said that Rikker was not just my friend.

“It’s like… you want to be able to tell people you’re straight, for some reason. Like gay isn’t good enough for you. Like it’s second class. Which makes me second class.”

I rolled over to face him. “There’s nothing second class about you. I think more highly of you than anyone I know.”

“Do you really? Then tell me the truth about you. I’m really fucking patient about the way you hide from the people who don’t matter so much. But at least you could be honest with the guy in your bed.”

“I’m gay,” I whispered.

Rikker grinned. “Fuck. Finally.”

“I don’t know why that makes you so happy.”

He tightened his arms around me. “Because someday, when you find that easier to say, it will make you happy, too. And I want that for you, G. I want you to be happy.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you were happy, too.”

“Big of you.”

I snuggled into his body. We’d had a little bit of a fight there, and it had left me feeling clingy. “You’ll really let me fuck you some time? I didn’t know you liked that.”

“Well…” he hesitated, studying my ceiling. “I’m not opposed to it as a concept. It’s just that I never enjoyed it as much as you seem to.”

I picked my head up to look at him. “What — you can’t come like that?”

“Not even close. But I’ll still do that for you. Fair’s fair.”

Wow. My heart was full. Even so, I had a question. “Who’ve you done that with?” We hadn’t really had this conversation before, and I was desperately curious.

“Only Skippy. He said I couldn’t call myself queer if I didn’t give bottoming a try. We never got the hang of it, though. So we went back to what worked best.”

“I like a challenge.”

He smiled at me. “Just don’t be mad if I don’t see fireworks, or whatever.”

“Okay,” I laughed. “But I hope you do. Because… damn. Seriously. If you haven’t had your prostate pounded, you haven’t lived.”

“Now there’s a slogan.”

“I’m going to make bumper stickers.” I made myself comfortable again. Or, I tried to. My head was still spinning with needy thoughts. “Rikker?” I whispered, in case he was sleeping.

“Yeah?”

“Are you still in love with Skippy?” After I asked the question, I regretted it. Did I really want to know?

“No,” he said slowly. “We had our thing, and that’s over now. But I’ll always love him. He was really important to me.”

“I understand,” I said quickly.

Rikker put his hand on my hip, his fingers stroking my skin absently. “See, Skippy had a vision for life as a gay man even when he was only seventeen. He was like… ‘Look at all the fun we’re going to have! We have to go snowboarding. We have to go dancing. We’re going to Montreal this weekend, even though we don’t speak the language.’” Rikker laughed to himself.

“Sounds pretty good,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound too bitter.

“It was just what I needed at the time,” he said. “But you know what? Skippy is awfully controlling. He means well, but he likes to get his own way. I’m pretty easy-going, so for a long time I was fine with it. Then, at some point, I wasn’t. But our roles were set, and I could never seem to renegotiate the balance of power in our relationship.”

“Interesting,” I said. Because it really was.

“Yeah. Stereotypes don’t always hold up, G. He was the bottom in bed. But he wanted to be in charge every other damn minute. He picked the restaurants, he made the plans. When I had an idea, there was always a reason why his was better.”

“That would get old.”

“It did, and that’s why I thought I should move on. Then when he dumped me, I was so pissed.” He chuckled again, and I felt his breath tickle my neck.

“You’ll tell me if I’m a pain, right?” I was twenty-one years old, and I’d never been in a relationship before. I didn’t know what I was doing. But tonight we’d had some tricky conversations, and I felt better for it. Not worse. Who knew?

He kissed me between the shoulder blades. “Getting along together was never the problem with you and me,” he said. “We’re both easy. It’s just the rest of the world that’s hard.”

Aint that the truth. I tugged his arm closer to my body, stretching his hand up to my mouth, where I kissed his palm.

He gave a happy sigh. “I used to dream about sleeping with you. In Michigan, I mean. Just like this.”

My throat got tight. “Me too.”

“Yeah? I don’t mean sex. Well, I dreamed about that, too. Plenty. But when I got in bed every night, I wished you were there. You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah,” I choked out. I was happy that the lights were out, so that he couldn’t see my eyes shining again.

“Goodnight, G.”

“Goodnight, Rik.”

Rikker

After all that heavy conversation, I forgot to set the alarm on my phone.

So I woke up the next morning in Graham’s bed. The sunlight streaming in through the windows was a bit of a surprise, as was the sight of Graham’s broad shoulders.

Also, someone was knocking on the door to Graham’s room.

“Sweetie, are you up?”

Shit! His mom was out there. I lifted my head to look down at Graham. He swallowed and stretched a little. Sleepily, Graham lifted his head off the pillow. “Need a few minutes,” he said. The fact that he wasn’t freaking out yet made me want to check his pulse.

There was a pause, and then his mother said, “I think I’ll pick up coffee and muffins.”

Graham sat up and looked at me, and I waited for the inevitable look of panic to cross his face. But it didn’t. Instead, there was just a rumpled, sweet expression that made me want to reach for his naked body. “Hey, Mom?” he called, his voice still thick from sleep. “Can you grab a cup for Rikker too?”

My heart stuttered in my chest.

“Sure. Fifteen minutes,” she said. “Twenty if the line is long.”

I said nothing, keeping still until she’d moved away from the door.

But Graham threw back the covers and got out of bed as if nothing had shifted. As if it was no big thing to basically admit that she’d caught him in bed with his boyfriend. I watched him walk, bare-assed, across the room to his towel. He tied it around his waist, unlocked the door and left the room.

It was tempting to let myself drowse, but I wouldn’t do that to Mrs. G. So I began looking around for my underwear.

A second later the door opened again. “There’s nobody in the bathroom,” Graham said. “If you want a shower…”

Holy crap. Maybe his head injury was more serious than I thought. “Um, okay?”

“You go first.” Graham undid the towel from his own waist and threw it to me.

Fifteen minutes later I was straightening up the bed when he came back into the room after his own shower. “Nice shirt,” he smirked.

I’d stolen a plain gray tee out of his drawer. “I like it,” I said, patting the shirt. “It smells like you.”

His expression softened for a whole two seconds, maybe three. It wasn’t often that I disarmed Graham, getting a peek at the tender soul hiding under that toughened shell. He made me work for it. But last night and this morning I’d been reaping the rewards.

I was tying my shoes when Graham’s mom knocked again.

“It’s open,” Graham said.

“That’s nice,” Mrs. G’s voice came through the door. “But my hands are full.”

“Sorry,” he laughed, going for the door.

“Always be polite to the bearer of coffee,” she said, stepping over the threshold. “Hi John,” she said to me. “I made yours with a splash of milk. I hope that’s okay.”

“That is awesome,” I said, trying not to feel awkward. I took the cup she offered me from the molded paper tray. “Thank you.”

“Any time.”

I took an appreciative gulp, and enjoyed the way the hot liquid felt going down. Like life itself pouring into me.

“When is practice today?” Graham asked.

“Not sure,” I said. “I’m afraid to look at my phone. Coach started getting a little nutty about the next game before we were even off the bus yesterday.”

“You’re up against Union,” Mrs. Graham said, shaking her head.

“Yeah. Could be the last road trip of the year.”

“That’s the spirit,” Graham said with a smirk.

“Hey, it’s early. I haven’t had enough coffee.” I set the cup down so I could scoop my Spanish book into my backpack. “Have a good one, G. And Mrs. G. Feel free to read the next chapter of Roman history without me.”

“Bye, John,” Graham’s mom said.

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said again. Then I slipped out the door, saving us all any additional awkwardness.

When it shut behind me, I heard her voice. “I just love that boy.”

“He’s taken,” Graham replied.