The Understatement of the Year (The Ivy Years, #3)

by Sarina Bowen

Because you never really get over your first love, right?

All this time I’d been picturing that skinny, scared teenager who’d left me bleeding on the asphalt.

there was an alley. Four rednecks gave chase, while yelling, “Get the faggots!” I ran away, and Rikker spent the next week in a hospital. I didn’t visit him, and I never even called. Then he left the state. The end.

There was a window of drunkenness that I had to hit in order to get it up for a girl. I had to be drunk enough for the whole thing to seem like a good idea. And drunk enough to claim whiskey dick if it didn’t work out. But I couldn’t be too sloppy. Because I needed to concentrate to pull it off.

“‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.’”

“And take care in all the usual ways, boys. Say no to drugs, and drinking and driving. Yes to seat belts and condoms.”

Graham buried his face in my neck. “It’s always been you for me. Always.”

I was in love with Rikker, and had been forever. I didn’t tell him, though. I mean, this is me we’re talking about here. The usual coward. Rikker would have liked to hear it, I’m sure. And I would have liked to hear it back. But me being me, that wasn’t going to happen.

Graham was never going to budge from his closet. So my choice was to either leave him, or just get used to dining on the scraps he gave me.

“Because I love you, you stupid fuck. And I always have. It’s not always so convenient, loving you. But when you climb out of that thick blond head of yours for a few minutes, you’re a hell of a lot of fun. And you’re loyal, too, in that tortured way of yours.”

“Getting along together was never the problem with you and me,” he said. “We’re both easy. It’s just the rest of the world that’s hard.”

When it shut behind me, I heard her voice. “I just love that boy.” “He’s taken,” Graham replied.

Right then, a little light went on inside my thick head. I already knew that my refusal to come out had hurt Rikker. But until that moment, I don’t think I ever understood that it had hurt me, too. Because the cost of avoiding unfriendly eyes wasn’t nearly as great as the cost of forgoing even one of Rikker’s hugs.

“I just miss you. Maybe I should have just let you sleep, but I love you too damn much.”

“You think I should be polite?” My ex-boyfriend spat. “Fine. Thank you, Mrs. Rikker, for kicking your son out when he was sixteen. Because if you hadn’t, someone else would have had to take my virginity.”

my ex-boyfriend, who was currently wearing a pink t-shirt reading Power Bottoms for Jesus.

“You’re it,” I whispered. “A perfect ten on the Rikker scale.”