Page 65 of The Understatement of the Year

—Rikker

After the Vermont game, we kept right on winning. In the middle of January, the college newspaper put our stats on the front page in enormous type: 14 WINS, 3 LOSSES, 3 TIES. Coach was all fired up. And now, when the guys from the Harkness press office showed up with a reporter in tow, it wasn’t to talk about me. (I’d been relegated to a single sentence at the bottom of these articles, usually “…the same team that welcomed gay left wing John Rikker,” blah blah blah.)

“Tell us how it feels to be the winningest college team on the Eastern Seaboard,” a sports writer had asked Hartley last week.

“It feels like hard work,” Hartley told him.

And that was true. But it was the best job ever.

One pleasant side effect of all that success was that I didn’t have time to feel lonely. Between school and hockey, all my hours were spoken for. I fell into bed like a dead man every night.

Success also meant a lack of friction in the locker room. The fact that our win song played all the time helped to promote a “live and let live” vibe. The result was that the whole team inched up the Rikker scale, simply by default. They were too busy winning to snub me.

Only one teammate was actively avoiding my eyes these days. And that was Graham, of course. He wasn’t rude or anything. It’s just that he seemed to always find a reason to walk out of a room if I walked into it. I don’t know what I expected to happen after our strange little Vermont interlude. But if I’d thought we might be close again, it wasn’t happening.

I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t offended anymore. Because I knew that Graham wasn’t afraid of what I might do. These days, I was pretty sure that Graham was afraid of whatGrahammight do.

The second weekend in January, we had only one game scheduled. To celebrate our Friday night off, Bella and I blew off the dining hall in favor of a cheap Chinese restaurant off campus. Together, we ate General Tso’s chicken and greasy fried rice. When the fortune cookies arrived, hers and mine had identical fortunes inside.

“What a scam,” Bella sniffed. “If they match, it feels as if my fortune is cheapened.”

“It’s a pretty good fortune, though,” I pointed out. Our little paper slips had read:True love awaits.

“Eh. I feel more optimistic whenever the lucky number on the back is sixty-nine.”

I laughed, of course. With Bella, you just had to.

“How’syoursex life, Rikker?”

“I sort of remember sex. Though the details are fuzzy.” Fortune cookie or not, I was never going to have a boyfriend if I didn’t meet some available gay men. In theory, there were plenty of those at Harkness. But none of them spent twenty hours a week at the hockey rink.

Bella made a wry face. “There’s a harsh irony. The team pervert gets no play.”

“I know, right? I have to do the time, but I can’t do the crime.”

She pointed to my fortune. “Maybe you’ll meet some cute boy soon.”

“As it happens,mylucky number on here is sixty-nine,” I said, waving the cookie slip.

“What?” she jumped for it. “That’s not fair.”

Laughing, I held it out of her reach. I was only kidding, of course. The lucky number was 16. Which did nothing for me.

Bella’s phone chimed, and she read the text on it. “Hmf,” she said. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.”

“Why?”

“Graham is texting me. Hartley and his girlfriend are hanging out, playing RealStix in his room. He invited me over. But he’s also hoping I’ll pick up a couple of six packs on the way. What an ass.”

In spite of her protestations, after we left the restaurant, she cheerfully dragged me into the package store. (That’s what you call a liquor store in Connecticut, for some reason.)

“What shall we bring?” Bella asked.

“I dunno. Am I coming with you?”

“Sure you are. It’s Friday night. Do you have a better offer?”

“That would be no.”