Page 13 of The Understatement of the Year

“Roger that,” I said, hopping into my jeans.

Bella stuffed her paperwork into a bright pink backpack. “Let’s go eat Coach’s barbecue.”

I hesitated, yanking my socks onto my feet. “I wasn’t going to go.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Bella said, handing me my shirt. “That’s not the message you want to send.”

“I don’t want to send any message at all,” I said from inside my polo. When I could see Bella and Hartley again, they were both staring down at me. “Seriously. I’m going to be everyone’s gossip nugget tonight. Why shouldn’t I sit this one out?”

Bella looped her arm in mine and yanked me off the bench. “You’re coming.”

Crap. “Should we bring anything?”

“Nope,” Hartley said.

“Just your pretty face,” Bella added.

“Not helping,” I said, while Hartley snickered.

Twenty minutes later, we were standing in Coach’s generous backyard. I’d thought it would just be the team, every one of them avoiding me. Luckily, the girlfriends had been invited to Coach’s shindig. With girls there, the conversation was lubricated with summer exploits and other gossip.

“Can you get this?” Bella handed me a bottle of wine, the cork halfway out. “I thought I had it.”

I set my much-needed beer down on the table to do her bidding. Tightening my grip on the corkscrew, I levered it out slowly, trying not to break the cork. That done, I wrapped my hand around my beer bottle again.

“Thanks! Coach’s wife asked me to bring her a glass of white wine. Do you think she meant the chardonnay, or the pinot blanc?”

“Sorry, Bella, but I’m not that kind of gay friend. I wouldn’t know a pinot blanc if it bit me in the ass.”

One of the goalies — a big dude named Orson — choked on his beer when I said it. For a second, I assumed that he couldn’t believe that I’d said the word “gay” out loud. But when he tapped his bottle to mine, I realized that he was only laughing at my joke.

Bella gave us both an eye roll. “So if I want help picking out shoes, I shouldn’t come to you?”

“You can try,” I said. “But my M.O. is just to choose whichever pair stinks the least.”

“Who says that’s not an improvement? Some of these guys can’t manage that.” Bella picked up a glass of white wine and headed for the house.

“You love us anyway,” Orson yelled after her.

She gave us the finger behind her back, and we both laughed this time. And now I knew then that Orson would put up with me. One down, two dozen to go.

—Graham

At Coach’s barbecue, I choked down a couple of pulled pork sandwiches, and wondered how soon I could leave. But Coach hadn’t made his beginning-of-the-year speech yet. And I’d played so badly this afternoon that I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself.

Pale ale number three wasn’t enough to sooth my nerves. Beer just couldn’t make big enough payments on my overdue buzz bill. Coach was a scotch man, so I wandered into the house to see what he might be pouring.

I found Coach in his study with a handful of guys watching hockey footage on a big screen. “Graham!” he called. “I’ve got video of last year’s Brown game. Watch this defensive play…”

But the video wasn’t what I was after. “Whatcha got there?” I asked one of the new kids — the one we were calling Frenchie. He squinted at me apologetically, probably trying to decide if the word for whiskey was the same in English as it was in French. Instead of attempting to solve the mystery, he handed me the glass, and I took a taste. “Nice.”

“I’ll pour you one,” Coach said, his eyes still on the screen. “Maybe it will put some hair on your chest, Graham. Today you could have used it.”

“My shit was not together,” I agreed with him under my breath.

He put a glass in my hand. “Figure it out, kid. We have a chance to do great things.” Then Coach left the room.

When he was gone, I drank the scotch in two gulps. Big-D picked up the decanter and topped up his glass, and then mine. “Figure it out, kid,” he said, mimicking Coach. “But after practice, be careful not to drop the soap in the showers.”