The Understatement of the Year (Ivy Years #3)

CHANGING ON THE FLY: the substitution of players between the ice and the bench while the clock is running.

Graham

We were sitting at Capri’s with the first pitchers of the season in front of us. Most of the team was crammed into four or five of the little old booths. And the first pizza order of the year had gone in about half an hour ago.

This was my favorite spot in the world, and with all my favorite people. I should have been relaxed.

I wasn’t. Not even a little.

My first glass of beer lasted about twenty seconds. Bella noticed, and promptly refilled it.

“You know, you’re a natural at this manager thing,” I said, looping my arm over her shoulders. “I can see that now.”

“Of course I am,” she said, lifting her own glass. “What do you have going on for the weekend?”

It was still that glorious early part of the semester, when nobody had any studying to do yet. “The usual. Tonight I really need to get wasted. And laid.”

“For you, it should really just be all one word. Because that’s how you roll.” She tipped her head toward mine, her eyes smiling. “You’re going to get… laisted. Because that sounds better than waid.”

“If you say so.” I pulled her closer to me, and tried to relax. But I felt as if a concrete block had been parked on my chest.

More beer to the rescue. I tipped my glass back and drank deep.

“We need a new win song for this year,” Hartley was saying. “What do you got?”

“‘After Midnight,’” I said quickly, just to get a rise out of Bella.

“No fucking way,” she said immediately. “Clapton may be a living legend, but the man did not write win songs. I think we should use ‘What the Hell.’” Bella wiggled her hips to try to get a little more room on the bench. The booth was a tight fit. But that was okay. Because we were tight, Bella and I. It was fair to say that she was my best friend.

“That’s a good song,” Hartley said, because he was like that — always so fucking diplomatic. “But I’m thinking the win song should probably be by an artist who has a dick.”

Bella snorted. “You know how much I enjoy dicks, Captain. But ‘What the Hell’ is a great song. Even if it is by a girl.”

“‘Can’t Hold Us,’” somebody threw in.

“We’ve worn out Macklemore,” Bella argued. “But I’ll take it under advisement.”

“What, like you’re picking?” Hartley asked, refilling her beer.

“I have keys to the AV system in the locker room. I’m really just pretending to consider your suggestions here.”

Like I said before, the power was going to her head.

“How about ‘“Timber?’” Hartley nudged Bella. “Pitbull and Kesha. Something for everyone.”

“Not bad, Captain. Not bad.”

The loudspeaker cracked. “Forty-two! Forty-two, your pies are ready.”

“That’s us!” Bella cheered. She grabbed the ticket off the table and wiggled away from me. I gave her ass a pinch as she went. “Don’t just fondle me, chump,” she said, standing beside the table with a hand on her hip. “Do I look like I could carry two pies by myself?”

“You do, actually,” I said, sliding out to follow her. “But I’ll help. Save our seats,” I called over my shoulder. We wove through the crowd toward the ratty old counter in back. The Capri brothers, in their trademark sweat-stained white T-shirts, were slamming pizza trays down and collecting tickets.

Bella flashed her killer smile, and one of them found our order right away. “Ooh!” she said, grabbing one of the pies, her chin lifting toward the door. “Here comes the tasty new guy. Rikker.”

My stomach dropped right into my shoes. Because I thought I’d have at least tonight to get used to the idea that the worst moments of my life had come back to haunt me. But I wasn’t even going to get that. He was striding toward us, wearing a faded Vermont sweatshirt and shorts that showed off his muscular…

Mayday. Eject!

“You get the plates,” I told Bella, grabbing the pizza out of her hands. Because looking my problems in the eye was not the way I rolled.

What a fucking disaster. By which I meant me.

Rikker

Capri’s Pizza was a hole in the wall. But it was the good kind — with oak paneling everywhere, and old wooden tables that had been varnished a few thousand times. There were names carved into every visible surface, and the smell of slightly stale beer hung in the air.

Harkness College — even the dodgier parts — gave off the aura of having been around for centuries. Because it had. I loved that about the place. I’d only been here for a week, but I already appreciated its fortitude. I liked knowing that I was just one tiny cog in the wheels of its long history. It made all my troubles feel smaller.

Passing through the front room, I didn’t see any hockey players. As I made it toward the back, I realized that Capri’s was kind of a rabbit warren. There were two other rooms veering away from the service counter. But I could call off the search. Because Graham and the curly-haired manager chick had just lifted a couple of pizzas from the counter. Even though his face was in profile, I’d know it anywhere.

Once upon a time, I’d touched every inch of that face.

The girl raised her free hand in a wave, saying something over her shoulder to Graham. And I swear to God, his body locked up when he heard her. His eyes flicked in my direction for a split second. And then his back was to me. He relieved Bella of her pizza and made a beeline into another of the cave-like rooms.

My first thought was, Fuck, I shouldn’t have come.

But screw that. Because if I shouldn’t have come to Capri’s, then I shouldn’t have come to Harkness. I could just spend my life hiding under the bed. Lord knows there were people in the world that wished I would. I didn’t come here to stake a claim, or to make a point. I came here to play hockey and to live my goddamn life. So that’s what I should do. And Michael Graham could just fuck off if he didn’t like it.

As I finished this thought, Bella came closer, a big grin on her face. “You came! We’re in there…” she nodded toward the left. Then she grabbed some paper plates and napkins off a table. Leaning over the service counter, she called out. “Hey, Tony! A glass for my new friend please.” She reached up and patted my chest possessively.

Tony flipped us a plastic glass, which I caught it before it slid off the counter. “Have a good night,” he said. And then he actually winked at me as I turned to follow her.

Bella grabbed the front pocket of my Vermont sweatshirt and actually pulled me through the din of the most crowded room, toward a table where Graham sat in a booth, across from Hartley.

Ugh. I had no idea this would be so cozy. In fact, there was nowhere for me to sit. For a second there I felt like it was seventh grade all over again, and I didn’t know where to sit in class.

That’s how I met Graham — seventh grade Spanish. We were the two runts in the back row with terrible gringo accents and no friends. The teacher always made the class pair up to practice dialogue. Graham and I were partners.

Hola, Miguel.

Hola, Juan.

Te gusta jugar el futbol?

Sí, me gusta jugar el futbol.

The early days of middle school had been awkward. But this? So much worse.

“I’ll sit on Graham’s lap,” Bella suggested, grabbing a slice of pizza off the tray.

“Naw, let me find a chair,” I said, turning quickly into the crowd. And lo, by the grace of God, I found one in front of an ancient pay phone. Setting the chair at the end of their booth gave me some much-needed distance. Bella sat on the end, boxing Graham into the corner. Bella’s hand found its way onto my knee about two seconds after I sat down.

Someone filled my glass. “Have a slice?” Hartley offered.

“Thanks, I already ate,” I said quickly. But I sucked back some of the beer. It was pretty wimpy stuff, but I’ll bet the price was right.

“Tell us about your transfer,” Bella prompted while the others dug in. “You said you’d tell it over beers.”

Right. Too soon. “Well,” I hedged. The thing was, I’d told people I was gay many, many times. I was actually pretty good at it. But you don’t say it when you’re all trapped at a table. You have to drop the bomb when your victims are free to walk away from you. Because even the people who are going to turn right back around and be there for you often need a minute to digest the idea.

And the fact that Graham was sitting three feet away, staring at his slice of pizza as if it might reveal the secrets of the universe, made this a particularly bad time. I didn’t want to look vulnerable in front of him. I’d tried that before in my life, and it ended badly. Very badly.

“Thing is, I haven’t had enough beer yet to tell it.”

“There you go with the buildup again,” Bella said, nibbling on a slice.

“Yeah? Well my stories don’t usually disappoint.” That was a bit of pointless bravado. But it was probably true.

I happened to glance toward Graham then. And even in the low light of the pizza place, I saw him freeze. And I realized just how far a little smack talk about stories I might tell would freak him out. I hadn’t meant it like that. But the effect on him was instant and powerful. His jaw went hard and his fist clenched on the table.

Easy, boy. “Tell me about the practice schedule,” I said to change the topic.

Hartley obliged, explaining the afternoon routine, including weight room, dry land training and ice time.

In the corner, Graham drained his glass and then emptied the pitcher into it.

I pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my back pocket and put it on the table. “I’ll buy the next round.”

“I’ll go get it,” Bella said, sliding out of the booth.

“No,” Graham said quickly. “I will.” It was the first time I’d heard his voice in five years. Without a glance at either one of us, he slid that muscular body out of the booth, stepped around Bella and my chair, and headed for the counter.

He left my twenty on the table.

“So you’re a sophomore,” Bella said, her fingers sliding into my hair.

This was three beers later. I’d been occupying myself at a different table for a while, chatting with the goalies. But Bella had found me, and she was stepping up her game. I needed a strategy for discouraging her. And fast.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, shifting in my chair to buy myself a little more space. But that didn’t stop her. Because she just leaned in closer. “I should be a junior. But I took a post-grad year to play on the US development team.”

“Sweet,” one of the goalies said.

“Sweet,” Bella whispered, her fingers wandering down my ribcage.

It’s not like she was the first girl to ever hit on me. But I had to tread carefully, because I was going to see a lot of Bella this season. And she was a great girl. Smart, fun, and obviously a huge hockey fan. She had all the right stuff. She just didn’t have all the right stuff for me.

I took Bella’s hand and stood up. “Can you come with me for a minute? I could use your help with something.”

One of the goalies gave an amused snort as I led her away, toward the dark little alcove where the old pay phone was. She came with me, chin up, a happy look on her face. I got the feeling that Bella never did anything for the benefit of the way it looked to others. She gave off a vibe of being 100 percent genuine, all the time. I could think of a few people who could stand to take lessons from her. Like maybe Graham.

The second we stepped into the relative privacy of the little space, she put her hands on my waist. “What did you need?” she asked, a grin playing at her lips.

I caught her prowling fingers in mine. One at a time, I kissed her hands, which made her beam. “Listen, Bella. There’s something I need to tell you, and probably the team, too. Somehow. Because it’s going to get out.” Her face took on a more serious expression, but she didn’t look away. The calm look in her blue eyes gave me the courage to keep talking. “The truth is that I like dick just as much as you do. Maybe even more.”

Now, I’d had a certain amount of practice at delivering this news to people. It never got easy. Yet by this point, I’d seen every possible reaction to it. Bella looked momentarily confused, as people often do. But then I could almost see the synapses firing behind her eyes. Then her lips twitched. And finally, she tipped her head back and laughed. “Oh my God. You’re serious aren’t you?”

I was still holding her hands, and I gave them both a squeeze. “Would I lie about a thing like that?”

Bella took her hands back, but only to reach up to cup my face. “You are adorable. And honestly, I don’t know why this hasn’t happened sooner.”

“Sorry?”

“Rikker, hockey players are hot. The hottest. And it’s weird that other hockey players never noticed that before. Now I have to worry that you’re going to cut in on my action.”

I let out a bark of surprised laughter. “Somehow I think you’ll be okay.”

“Also, this is going to mess up a near perfect streak for me.”

“Whenever you streak, I’m sure it’s perfect,” I quipped.

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to throw me compliments. I’m a big girl.” She stood back, folding her arms. “Does this have anything to do with leaving Saint B’s?”

“Hell yes. When word about me got, um, out, Coach lost his shit and threw me off the team.”

Her eyes went wide. “Why? That’s against the ACAA rules.”

“Ding, ding! That’s how I got here. My uncle is a lawyer. He wanted to sue Saint B’s, but I asked him to tackle the transfer rules instead.”

She blinked up at me. “You’d rather play more hockey than stand in a courtroom.”

“Exactly.”

Bella gave my arm a little punch. “I knew I liked you. And Coach James knows this story?”

“Of course. When my uncle started calling other teams for me, he told them right off why I’d been kicked off Saint B’s. And today I dropped this little bomb on Hartley, too.”

“Okay, let me think…” she looked up at the ceiling. “Coach isn’t a judgmental guy. He likes to win, and he likes single malt scotch. In that order. So I can see him taking you on. And Hartley likes everybody, so that’s easy. How can I help?”

See? I knew this girl was awesome. “All I need is advice. I used to think that I could keep my private life private. But that blew up in my face last year. There’s probably somebody on the Harkness team that’s pals with someone at Saint B’s, right?”

Bella nodded. “So this will get out.”

“So to speak.”

“Right. And maybe you’d rather that the team heard it from you, and not the rumor mill.”

“It’s a good idea in principle. But I don’t have a strategy.”

She made another thoughtful face. “If you made a big announcement, that would imply that this is a big deal. And you don’t want it to be a big deal.”

I wasn’t sure I had a choice in the matter. But even after a few beers, Bella was proving herself to be very perceptive. “That’s exactly right.”

“Telling people one at a time would be more casual.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Except these aren’t people I’ve ever met.” Except for one. And he already knows.

She chewed her lip. “Yeah, in the movies, the athlete wins the big game, right? And then he cries at the press conference and reveals to the world that he’s gay.” She put a hand over her heart. “And the team is, like, ‘we love you just the way you are!’”

“I’m pretty sure that movie hasn’t been made yet.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m just pointing out that being the new guy makes this harder.”

“You think?”

She gave me another playful punch. But then her face became serious. “Maybe it’s something that ought to come from their manager.”

That was a generous offer, with one major flaw. When you’re the queer guy in the locker room, it’s a bad idea to ever show fear. “I can’t make it to look like I was too afraid to tell them myself.”

“It wouldn’t. Because the message they need to hear isn’t that Rikker likes dudes. The message they need to hear is that, by the way, Rikker was forced to leave the Saint B’s team because he is gay. But at Harkness, that’s no concern of ours.”

Well, damn. That did sound smart.

“…And, if anybody has a problem with that, feel free to talk to Coach. Or play a different sport.”

I put my hands on her shoulders. “Manager, you are a genius. And a total babe.”

“New Guy, I know that already,” she said. “Both things.” And then she moved closer to me, stood up on her tiptoes, and kissed me. And it wasn’t just a peck. She took her time, molding her lips to mine, drawing it out. She nibbled my bottom lip. And I kissed her back, at least up to a point. Because just standing there like a statue seemed like an asshole thing to do.

Finally, she stood back. “That,” she said, “was because I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Gotcha.”

“I will take care of this. After I run it by Coach.” She squeezed my arm and walked away, smiling as she went.

And that was my cue to go home to the little dorm room I’d been assigned, and call it a night. There’s only so much drama a guy can take in one day.

Graham

I drank my sixth, seventh, and eighth beers while Bella and Rikker were having their private little chat. My stories don’t disappoint, he’d said. God only knows what he was telling Bella. Was it the version of events where we used to be more than friends? Or was it the blow-by-blow of the day we stopped being friends?

At least if he told her that story, it would be a short story: there was an alley. Four rednecks gave chase, while yelling, “Get the faggots!” I ran away, and Rikker spent the next week in a hospital. I didn’t visit him, and I never even called. Then he left the state.

The end.

You know that cliché about time healing all wounds? Time had scabbed this one over pretty well. But Rikker showing up had ripped that sucker right off. And I felt sure that anyone looking at me right now would be able to see the bleeding.

Before tonight, I didn’t know that you could be both drunk and literally twitching with anxiety at the same time.

Bella and Rikker were in there a long time, hidden just from my view except for her elbow, for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually she rose up to hug him. Or maybe kiss him. (Because we’re talking about Bella, here.) Then she came back into view, a cheery smile on her face.

And Rikker went the other direction, leaving the bar.

And I drank yet another beer, feeling nothing but dread.

Bella didn’t come back to sit by me for quite a while after that. At least I think it took a while. The details began to get pretty fuzzy.

“Graham.”

I opened my eyes, and Bella was shaking me. “What?” Somehow I was still sitting in a booth at Capri’s.

“Wake up, Sweetie. Are you okay?”

“‘Course,” I tried to say, although my throat was thick.

Bella laughed. “How did you get so wasted on Capri’s pitchers? You’d have to drink a whole barrel of this swill.”

“You have to really want it,” I mumbled.

“Come on. Let’s get you home.” She led me out the back door and down College Street toward Beaumont House.

“Wait a second.” It came out “shecond.” We were passing one of the secret societies’ crypts. I ducked behind the elegantly-pruned shrubberies and unzipped. Secret societies were a bunch of elitists who probably wanted nothing to do with me. So whenever I needed to take a piss on the way home from the bar, I favored their walls with my business.

I heard a deep sigh from Bella where she waited on the sidewalk. “We lead a glamorous life, you know?”

“Yeah, baby.”

At a drunk’s pace, I followed Bella to my entryway door. “I can make it from here,” I slurred.

“Don’t argue. I haven’t seen your room yet, anyway.”

“S’good to have a single,” I said, trying to hold up my end of the conversation.

When we’d climbed the stairs to my room, I fumbled with the key for so long that Bella grabbed it out of my hand and unlocked the door herself. Inside, she gave a low whistle. “Nice. Where did you get a second bed?”

Instead of one regulation twin, I had two of them hitched up next to each other. “You know Donovan?”

“The tight end?” Bella kicked off her shoes.

“Yeah. He bought a waterbed, so I took his.”

She giggled. “Seriously? How did he fill it up?”

“Not my problem,” I said, yanking down the comforter on my giant bed. “I had to buy king-sized stuff, so I hope he doesn’t change his mind.” I dropped my jeans and fumbled my shirt over my head. That brought me down to just boxers. I climbed all the way into the bed, making room for Bella.

I closed my eyes, as if I didn’t really care whether she sat down next to me or not. But the truth was, I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to know where my mind would take me tonight if I was left to myself. Nowhere good.

After a few moments’ hesitation, I felt Bella sink down onto the bed. She flopped back onto my second pillow, her arms folded behind her head. “It was a strange evening,” she said.

Tell me about it.

“I’m going to like working for the hockey team. Even if people are going to give me shit for it.”

“What kind of shit?” I mumbled.

“The same kind I always get. They’ll say I might as well ride the bus. Because I’m already riding the players.”

I laughed, although being very drunk made that difficult. I rolled onto my side, which made my head swim. Bella was right there. So I pulled her closer to me and gave her what was probably a pretty sloppy kiss. She went with it, though, wrapping her arms around me. And when I dove into her soft mouth, she met me stroke for stroke. I hadn’t planned to do this tonight. But suddenly it seemed like a great way to keep my head on straight. Losing myself in Bella.

But then she pulled back. “You’re so drunk,” she whispered. There was accusation in her voice.

“I’m always drunk,” I argued. “Never stopped you before.”

Now her voice had an edge to it. “You stopped me before,” she hissed. “You said that we weren’t going to do this anymore.”

“I changed my mind.”

As drunk as I was, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. And Bella confirmed that by giving my chest a rough shove. “Don’t treat me like a slut, Graham.”

Shit. With great effort, I propped myself up on an elbow to squint down into her pissed-off face. “I would never call you that, Bells. I don’t think that way.” It wasn’t an eloquent apology, but it was true. Bella was the greatest. She never apologized for what she wanted. She just owned it.

The way I never could.

Pulling my sloppy thoughts together, I tried to do even better. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone there. I’m just a train wreck tonight.”

Having said my piece, I slid back down onto the pillow, rolling onto my back. Making a move on Bella had been very, very stupid. Not only was she mad at me now, but it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. There was a window of drunkenness that I had to hit in order to get it up for a girl. I had to be drunk enough for the whole thing to seem like a good idea. And drunk enough to claim whiskey dick if it didn’t work out. But I couldn’t be too sloppy. Because I needed to concentrate to pull it off.

And right now, my eyes were too heavy to stay open. But I curled one hand around Bella’s, and she let me.

I was just drifting off when Bella got up off the bed. There was some rustling of clothing. I heard her belt hit the floor. And then my dresser drawer opened and shut, probably as Bella helped herself to one of my T-shirts. A minute later she came back into the bed. She put her head on my chest, and one knee over mine. Her arm snaked around my waist as she curled into me. She’d always been a cuddler.

Tucking a hand over her smooth knee, I fell asleep.

Rikker

There were pros and cons to signing on at a new college the July before your sophomore year. In the plus column, I’d lucked into a single. But they didn’t have room for me in Turner House where I was assigned. So my room was in a little overflow dorm called McHerrin. There were two other rooms on my floor, both housing exchange students from China. McHerrin wasn’t exactly the party dorm. But I was okay with that.

After a stop in the shared bathroom to pee and brush my teeth, I let myself into my little habitat. Last year I’d made the effort to hang stuff on the walls, and make the place my own. But this year, I didn’t bother. I was jaded, I guess. Before, I’d thought that once you chose a college, you were there for four years. You could go ahead and hang the felt pennant over your bed.

I’d jumped the gun on that one.

So my little room looked like monastic living quarters. Or a prison cell. I got into bed and shut off the light, but sleep didn’t come for me right away. I was too amped up by everything that had happened today.

In the positive column, I knew I’d done well on the ice. And both Coach and Hartley had been good to me. Bella had been great. But that was only a start. There were still a thousand ways this could all go south.

And then there was Graham, who’d looked as cheerful as a mushroom cloud tonight. I knew things about him that he didn’t want others to know. After he got over the shock of seeing me, I hoped he would just call me and say that. If he did, I’d tell him not to worry. I’d never out anybody, because I knew how much that sucked.

Even someone who’d been as lousy a friend as Graham.

But if he wanted that assurance from me, he’d have to actually acknowledge that we knew each other. And when we’d been seated three feet apart at Capri’s, he hadn’t even been able to manage eye contact.

Hell, it was trippy. It had been Graham right there. But also not. It had felt a little like keeping company with a ghost.

I lay there in the dark, thinking about him. And it wasn’t the first time I’d done that. When I’d signed on to come to Harkness six weeks ago, the memories had begun to roll over me. Before the bad ending, there had been a whole lot of good. Call it nostalgia. Call it idiocy. But my subconscious preferred the memory of Graham’s embrace to the memory of his rejection.

Also, we were fifteen then. Everything I shared with Graham had been so vivid and new. No wonder that shit was still projected on the inside my skull in Technicolor.

Though I hadn’t been near there in five years, I could picture Graham’s house so clearly in my mind. We always did our fooling around there, because he had the basement lair, complete with a tattered old sofa and an XBox. During middle school, we were all about the XBox.

Ninth grade, we were all about the sofa.

Whenever I looked back on that time, it was hard to pinpoint the moment I realized how I felt about him. We were two dorky teenage guys, not exactly big on talking about our feelings. Even after we’d started fooling around, we never had a conversation about it. Not even, “Do you like girls?” “Not really!” “Me neither!” For all I knew, maybe Graham did like girls now. I wasn’t going to ask.

But five years ago, he liked me.

We were best friends first. Together we survived middle school. We played hockey on a club team, and we went to the same Christian school. In fact, Christianity was a big deal in the corner of Michigan where we grew up. Kids on the playground would ask each other, “Which church do you go to?” Because that’s how our parents looked at the world.

My parents were more religious than Graham’s, though. I knew this because at Graham’s house, nobody cared if we played video games on Sunday. And I’d heard Graham’s dad mock some of the things that our classmates’ parents thought. “If I take you to the Harry Potter movie, you won’t start worshiping the devil, right, guys? I didn’t think so.”

Nobody found it unusual that Graham and I were so close. Including me. During middle school, I never let myself think about him that way. But even then, I was always incredibly aware of him. When he walked into a room, I knew it without looking. By the time we turned fifteen, his voice was already deep and smoky. And the sound of it resonated inside me like no one else’s.

Girls never affected me like that. Some of them were nice, and fun to talk to. But they just weren’t Graham. I noticed that he never seemed to pay much attention to them either. We went to the middle school dances with a group of our friends, where we all danced to the fast songs. But Graham never pulled me aside to ask, “Do you think she likes me?”

Not once.

Meanwhile, we played video games in Graham’s basement like it was our job. And there was a different way that we looked at each other when we were alone. Graham has always blushed easily. In time I realized how easy it was to make him do that. All I had to do was hold his eyes a little longer than necessary, and pink spots would appear on his cheekbones.

I liked that. So I did it all the time.

The long looks — and sitting a little closer than necessary while we watched movies — that went on for two years. And then one Friday night during our first month of high school, we were tussling over the remote control. In order to win the fight, Graham put his knee across my thighs to hold me down. And then he stretched his long body toward my arm, where I was dangling the remote as far from him as I could. It was then that I realized Graham was on top of me. Finally. And without thinking, I put my free hand on his chest.

I’ll never forget the wild jerk that his body made under my hand. And then he was staring down at me, cheeks flushed, breath coming fast. I lifted my chin an inch, and that’s all it took. Graham dropped his mouth onto mine.

Our first kiss was hot and sloppy, and it lit my body up like a flare.

Yes. This. Yes. Yes. Yes. It was all shock and awe for maybe two minutes. And then Graham’s mom called down from the top of the basement stairs. “Hey, Guys? Do you want popcorn?”

Graham jerked back onto his own end of the sofa. “Uh, sure,” he called.

Then he got up and switched the TV over to video games. And we played Call of Duty until the popcorn was ready.

We didn’t speak about it after that. Not one word. But the following week, I thought of almost nothing else, and wore a perpetual boner every time I saw him. And the next time I went to Graham’s, my hands sweat through two rounds of whatever video game we were playing. Then Graham’s mom yelled down that she was going to the grocery store, and could Graham think of anything they needed?

“Nope,” he called up to her.

We heard the sound of shoes clicking a couple of times across the kitchen floor. Then the door to the garage, and finally the sound of her car’s engine backing out and driving away.

There was a beat of silence in the basement. “So…” we both said at exactly the same time.

“Jinx,” I said.

Graham gave a nervous laugh. “The jinx machine is out of order. Please put in another quarter.” He wore a lopsided smile, and his cheeks were flushed red.

“Dork.”

Two seconds after that, Graham had tackled me, pushing me down on the couch. He moaned on the first kiss, and I felt that sound everywhere.

There is nothing so explosive as two horny, fifteen-year-old boys finally getting a taste of something they both crave. As we made out, Graham rode me with his hips. The motion, and the feel of his hard body pressing down on me was better than any of the fantasies I’d cooked up every half hour since our first kiss.

It was probably only five minutes later when Graham closed his eyes and gasped twice. And just the look on his face took me there, too. I locked my arms around him and hauled him down for one more kiss — wet and dirty and more satisfying than I’d ever dreamed.

And by then, I’d dreamed plenty.

Forty minutes later, Graham’s mom came home to find us playing a round of Realstix hockey on the XBox. She would never have noticed that a couple of paper towels were newly buried in the bottom of the family garbage bin.

So it began.

Our make-out sessions were always fast and frantic, because privacy was scarce. There was never any nudity involved, because that would have been far too risky. But there were athletic pants, with their handy elastic waistbands. And I didn’t need more, not with the sublime feel of his long fingers sliding down my stomach and onto my groin. He was sometimes slow and teasing, and often fast and rough. I wanted all of it. All the time.

We were exceedingly careful. Looking back on it, I’m amazed at our discipline. Fifteen year-old boys aren’t known for their caution or diligence. That same year, I probably lost three pairs of gloves and locked myself out of my own house once a week. But Graham and I never touched each other if another person was inside his house, or scheduled to be there within the hour. And even then, we learned to make out and listen at the same time, often leaping apart at the smallest sound. We were never, ever caught.

Until one awful day in August, before the start of our sophomore year, just after I got my driver’s license. Freedom was our downfall.

We’d driven to a seedy part of town to find a comic book shop we’d heard of. But that was really just an excuse to be alone together. After I parked the car, Graham put his hand on my leg, just because he could. We were together, and we were out in the world in a car. Two huge freedoms in one afternoon. So after a cursory glance out the car windows, I leaned across the gearshift and kissed him.

Smiling, he grabbed my face in both hands and licked into my mouth. We were probably only there for ninety seconds. Maybe even less. But immediately after we stepped out of the car, everything went very, very wrong.

There was shouting, and the pounding of feet behind us. We both ran. I thought we were going to get away. But then I looked over my shoulder to count our pursuers.

That mistake changed my life.

I tripped. And then came the horror of pitching toward the asphalt, and the terror of those feet pounding closer. A second later, the first kick landed at my ribs. The second one nailed me in the cheekbone, and I heard my own scream.

Curling up into a protective ball was my last conscious act.

Much of the next few hours were lost to me. I woke up in a hospital room with my arm in a sling, stitches on my face and a snug bandage around my chest. My mother was crying, and my father was on the phone.

“Where’s Graham?” was the first thing I tried to say.

“Why?” my mother sobbed.

Telling her the truth turned out to be my second big mistake.

For the next five days, I would lay in that hospital bed wondering what had happened to him. Every time someone walked past my room, my eyes would flick to the doorway. Each time I expected to see Graham.

He never came.