Page 49 of The Understatement of the Year

The newcomer giggled. “We have you up on our refrigerator. TheFree Pressversion.”

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

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

“This is myteammate, Mike. Mike, meet Skippy.”

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

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

“Of course you are,” Rikker muttered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You just met my ex,” Rikker said.

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

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

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

Rikker chuckled. “You should see your face.”

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

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

“Were you together a long time?”

“Three years.”

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

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

“He was pissed?”

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

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

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