Chapter 9
brEAKAWAY
Breakaway: taking possession of the puck when there are no defenders other than the goalie in the way of the net.
Graham
As the plane taxied up to the airport, I took off my seatbelt.
I’m sure that Rikker would have bet any amount of money against me actually getting on a plane to Burlington. He’d probably been stunned when I’d texted him my flight information last week. Even now, he was probably in that airport wondering if I’d really show.
We may have known each other for a long time, but Rikker doesn’t really know how my fucked-up little brain works.
I’m always looking for the loophole — for any way that I can get past all the rules I’d made for myself.
And Vermont is the perfect loophole. Except for Rikker, I didn’t know a soul there.
I bought my ticket with my personal credit card, and had my dad drop me off at the airport’s curb, so he’d never see my boarding passes.
The man hates to pay for parking. You can take that to the bank.
So here I was, shuffling down the narrow aisle to visit a state I’d never seen, and nobody but Rikker had a clue.
When I deplaned, I noticed that the Burlington airport was, if possible, even smaller than the one I’d left that morning in Grand Rapids.
After passing two or three gates, I left the secure area toward baggage claim.
I spotted him right away. He was wearing a flannel shirt over faded jeans, and leaning casually against a poster for rental cars.
Damn, my heart skipped a beat just seeing his face.
Engage deflector shields.
Before I reached Rikker, a big black dude stopped to talk to him.
They shook hands as I approached. Rikker spotted me anyway, beckoning me over.
“Hey! You made it.” I got the same handshake as the other guy.
“This is Ross,” he said, indicating the bruiser standing beside him.
The guy wore a “UVM Weightlifting” T-shirt and a duffel over one shoulder.
He’d been on my connecting flight from Chicago, I think.
“Ross,” Rikker continued, “this is my teammate, Mike.”
Mike. I hadn’t heard Rikker call me that in years. Maybe never.
“Nice to meet you,” the big dude said. He had a goofy smile for such a mountain of a man. “You haven’t seen Skippy?” he asked, looking around.
Rikker shook his head. “But he’s never on time, right? The apology texts won’t even start rolling in for another ten minutes.”
Ross laughed. “Good point.”
“Got another bag?” Rikker nodded toward the luggage carousel.
“Nope. I’m good to go,” I said.
Rikker eyed the door. “Can we drop you somewhere, Ross?” There was something a little stiff about the way he said it, as if Rikker hoped he’d turn down the offer.
“Naw, I’m sure he’ll…” The guy didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. Because a skinny, dark-haired streak ran up, leaping into Ross’s arms. The big man swayed for a second as his mouth was taken in a hard kiss, and his face grabbed in two long, skinny hands.
It took a great deal of effort not stare at the unlikely sight of two guys making out in the Burlington airport arrivals terminal.
“Jesus, get a room,” Rikker grumbled.
With an exaggerated groan of affection, the newcomer released Ross’s face. “Sorry, it’s been a long ten days.” The skinny guy turned with a smile and then tackled Rikker in a hug. “Damn! You’re looking good. Even better than in your press photography.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
The newcomer giggled. “We have you up on our refrigerator. The Free Press version.”
“The Free Press, too? Fuck. Is it cocktail hour yet?”
“Oh, Rikky. It’s always cocktail hour! In fact, tonight is guerrilla night at Slate. Are you coming?” He glanced at me, too. “And who’s your pretty friend?”
“This is my teammate, 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.”
I did the math in my head. First he got dumped, and then he got tossed off the hockey team. “You had quite a year last year.”
“Yep.”
“What’s this place they want to go to tonight?”
Rikker grinned. “Burlington isn’t big enough to have a gay bar. So once a month they have a guerrilla night, where some bar becomes a gay bar for the evening. They put the word out on a Facebook page, and everybody knows where to go. It’s pretty clever. I’ve been to dozens of them.”
“Huh,” that sounded cool, except for one obvious problem. “What does everyone else in the bar think?”
“There are always a few people who get up and leave. There are plenty of bars in Burlington, though, so it’s not the end of the world. And bar owners like guerrilla night, because it’s always held on a weeknight. So they’re, like, full to the gills on a Wednesday.”
Up to this point, I had never had a discussion with anyone about gay bars. “Cool.”
“We don’t have to go, though. I’m good either way.”
“You don’t mind hanging out with your ex?”
Rikker shrugged. “I ducked him once already this week, which was kind of rude. And I’d rather see him at the bar than hang out at their apartment.”
“So let’s go,” I said.
He gave me a sideways glance, and then returned his eyes to the road. “Okay.” Clearly he wasn’t expecting me to get behind this idea. But again, he didn’t know about my loopholes. This might be the only chance I’d ever had to go into a gay bar, even a makeshift one.
Bring it on.
The ride to Rikker’s place was twenty minutes, and it was dark by the time we pulled up in front of an old farmhouse.
He couldn’t know it, but I’d tried a thousand times to picture Rikker in Vermont.
“It sure got country fast,” I said, looking around as I got out of the truck.
You couldn’t even see the nearest neighbor.
“You drive fifteen minutes from any place in Vermont, and you get basically this,” he said, climbing the granite stoop. His hand was on the doorknob. “You ready?”
“For what?”
He grinned and opened the door. “Grans, we’re home!”
As I entered the house, I heard the tip-tap of heels on the wooden floors.
“Hiiiiii!” A little woman came skittering into the room.
She grabbed Rikker around the midsection and squeezed him.
“Sorry,” she said, patting his chest afterward.
“I have to get those in before you go away again tomorrow.” Then she turned to me, stood up on tiptoe and grabbed my face in both hands.
“Hello! You’ve gotten so tall I can hardly reach you!
And what a handsome man!” She rubbed my cheeks until she’d probably removed a layer of skin before finally letting me go.
“Good to see you again, Mrs. Rikker.” I’d only met her once before, some Christmas when she’d visited Rikker’s family in Michigan.
“Come in, come in! Dinner is ready. Sit down, because Gertie is going to pick me up for poker night in a few minutes.” She flew toward the back of the house, her heels tapping out a rhythm.
Rikker toed off his boots, smiling as effortlessly as a Labrador retriever. “Hope you’re hungry,” he said. “Seems like she’s on a tear.”