Page 25 of The Understatement of the Year

“We, uh, covered that,” he said.

Standing at the sink, I brushed my teeth. Thanks to the mirror, I could see Bella reach up to cup Graham’s face in two hands. She rose up on her tiptoes and brought her mouth over his.

With my toe, I kicked the door shut behind me. But because the doors in cheap hotel rooms are made with all the sturdiness of a rice cracker, I heard Graham’s comment a long minute later, while I was pulling up my sleep pants. “That was nice and everything, Bella. But did I pass your Breathalyzer test?”

“Maybe that’s not why I kissed you,” she snapped.

“The hell it isn’t.”

Her voice got tight. “You’re right. I don’t like you at all.”

“Night, Bella.”

“Night, moron.”

I waited until I heard the hotel room door close before I came out again. Both beds were untouched, so I chose the nearest one without asking whether Graham had a preference. He and I did not need to haveanyconversations with the word “bed” in them. Pulling back the bedspread, I climbed in, rolling to put my back to him. It was body language that tried to say,Nope! No awkwardness here.

Graham spent a few minutes in the bathroom, too. “You want this shut off, right?” he asked. I turned to find him standing by the lamp, fully dressed, including his hockey jacket and shoes.

“Yeah,” I answered.

He clicked off the light. “I’m going for a walk,” he said, his voice low.

“Okay?” That was against curfew, but I wasn’t going to argue with him.

“I just need, you know, head space.”

Pushing up on one elbow, I asked, “Do you still sleep like shit?” Since I’d known him, he was a terrible sleeper. The only middle school insomniac I’d ever met.

“Yup.” Absently, he reached a hand up to probe the back of his head, where it had hit the wall before.

“Shit. I’m sorry about your head.”

He gave his chin a shake, as if warding off my apology. “All our previous shit is covered under the treaty, no?”

That made me smile, and for a second his expression softened. But then he shut it down, turning away from me. He flicked off the bathroom light. Then, without another word, he opened the door and left.

I lay there in the dark for a long time, wondering what to think. How odd to find myself, after five years, lying sleeplessly in another strange bed, wondering where Graham was.

Part of me would always be hurt. When I was beaten and scared, I’d waited for him to call me. I’d slept with my phone in my hand in that hospital bed. So that nobody would try to keep him from me when he finally called.

But he never did. Not once.

I wasn’t sixteen anymore, though. And the years had provided some much-needed distance from that awful time. What I hadn’t wanted to face at sixteen was the fact that my phone made outgoing calls, too. I was looped up on pain meds for a few days — not a few years. Even after they shipped me off to Vermont, I could have sat myself in one of the wicker chairs on my grandmother’s porch and called him.

I didn’t, though. Because I was scared to hear that he didn’t want me anymore.

Fuck, we weresixteen. We’d confided in nobody. And we were too afraid to ask for help. So I could either carry around this childhood grudge for the rest of my life, or try to set it down. Seems like a no brainer, right?

When I finally fell asleep, I was still alone in the room.

—Graham

The following weekend we had practices only — no games. It was our lull before the storm. Regular season games were about to kick in at full force. So Bella and Hartley and I sat a long time over Saturday brunch in the Beaumont dining hall, drinking coffee and shooting the shit. Hartley’s girlfriend Corey told us a funny story about holding tryouts for an empty goalie position on the women’s team. But I was feeling almost too lazy to listen. Outside of the old arched windows, the fall leaves made a yellow carpet in the courtyard. Sometimes this place was like a freaking postcard for Ye Olde College Experience.

Like a total sap, I loved everything about it.

Eventually I got my lazy butt up to go, and Bella stood up too. “I’ll walk you out,” she said. Together, we started down the granite steps and out into the autumn day. The air had that Harkness smell — a mixture of decaying leaves and coffee beans.