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“Don’t stand there pretending you don’t know what you said to me that night at the Sigma Kappa Sigma athletic supporter party.”
I looked over at him in confusion. Then an old memory wiggled out of the ton of party nights I’d had on campus. I’d only run into this guy once at a kegger that I could recall. Seemed Baskoro wasn’t a party dude, or he simply avoided events where I was. Probably the latter.
“Wait, hold on. Are you talking about that stupid party where everyone had to wear jocks and nothing else?” He glared at me like I was the one in the wrong. “I talked to you for like five minutes that night, and then I left with my date.”
“Yeah, you and that girl had a good laugh at my expense. I heard what you said to her when you two were walking away. You told her that you couldn’t wait to get away from that Asian goalie bitch.”
My mouth literally fell open. Shock made me gape like Kyleen’s goldfish Boo-Boo when she had scooped him out of his bowl and carried him into the living room to watch a movie with her. Thank God I saw the droplets of water and found Boo-Boo before he had passed over to the great goldfish bowl in the sky.
“What?!” My voice rose to a comically high level. I cleared the horror from my throat and tried again. “What the…I would…why would I say something like that?!”
He sneered at me. All that stunning beauty of his disappearing as rage and hurt took over his features. “You’d say it because I’m gay. Calling me a bitch as if equating me with a feminine term is insulting. It’s not. I’m proud to be queer and a feminist!”
“What the hell, man. No, I would never say that.” I blinked at the man as I tried to dig up the memories of that night. A stupid party at a stupid frat house. This was what his whole problem with me was. Something he misheard. Jesus wept. I rubbed at my face with my palms as the recollections of that night flooded back. “Why would I run you down for being gay when I’m queer?”
His dark eyes flared. “No you’re not.”
“Uhm, yeah, I am. I think I should know who I like to stick my dick in to and it’s eighty percent guys.” Now it was his turn to make that dumb fish face. “You were there with some guy,” I said as the memories flowed back. “Tall, ginger, and I was there with some girl.” Some girl who later became Kyleen’s mother. She who shall remain nameless. I should never have spent so much time wheeling chicks when I wasn’t wholly into them, but they were always flitting around the men’s hockey team. They were always willing, and I was always horny. Still was, but I had a better grip on those urges now. I shook my finger at him as the elevator hung there motionless. “You were a freshman, new to the team, gangly ass legs and arms like a skinny little horse.”
“Fuck you,” Huda snarled.
“Yeah, I remember talking to you. I welcomed you to the team. We shook hands.”
“Then you walked off with your date while saying you needed to ditch that Asian bitch.”
“No. No, that was not at all what I said. How drunk were you?”
“I wasn’t drunk. I was sober. And I fucking heard you say it!” He was oozing pain now, clouds of hurt wafting off him, probably from years of racial crap being tossed his way. I knew that feeling well. It was rough being a person of color—and queer—in a sport dominated by straight White men.
“No, you did not. You heard me say that I needed to tell Fitch about this Asian goalie.” He folded his arms over his chest and hit me with the driest, flattest look ever to be looked. “No lie. I told my date that I wanted to text my cousin Fitch and tell him—”
“Your cousin Fitch? Seriously. Fuck you. Do I look that stupid?”
“Well, I mean with that dorky man bun, yeah.” He snarled. I found it kind of amusing and alarmingly cute. “No, listen, I have a cousin who’s big into cycling, which is about as White as hockey, if not more so, and I wanted to pass along your name to him. What?”
“Your cousin Fitch the cyclist?”
Okay, this man was working my last nerve. “Yes, Fitch Monroe.” He stared at me blankly. “Name means nothing to you?”
“Not a thing because you made it up to cover being a dickhead.”
“Asshole.” I dug out my phone. Baskoro rolled those expressive eyes over to my cell as I unlocked it and brought up Instagram. When Fitch’s info was on the screen, I held the phone in front of his button nose and waited. He read over the post, glanced at me, and then snapped the phone from my hand to scroll. I waited, smug as hell, while the man gave witness to my rightness. “Well?”
After a moment, he shoved the phone into my chest, exhaled, and glanced up at the ceiling. “Fine, you have a cousin named Fitch, who won a few races on his bike.”
“He won Paris-Roubaix and Giro D’Italia,” I proudly emphasized.
“Yeah, I saw. Whatever. Why would you need to tell your cousin about me?” He was dancing back now, his ire quickly dissolving into that embarrassing heat when you find out you’ve been wrong about someone and had no clue how to save face.
“Because we like to keep each other abreast of other people of color who are pushing through racial and homophobic barriers. And yes, Fitch is gay, and yes, he is Black.”
He rolled his eyes. Those lashes had to be fake or thick with mascara. No way did a man have such pretty lashes.
“No shit, I saw he was Black. Do you think I’m that blind?”
“If we’re judging by the two goals you let soar past you tonight, I’m thinking that maybe you should haul your scrawny backside to a nearby Vision Mart to pick up some spectacles, Grandpa.”
“You’re such a scrotum.” I caught the flicker of something that might have been amusement in his eyes. We stood there staring at each other. The lights inside the elevator muted as the power dimmed and then rose. “Given this recent evidence, I will say that I might possibly have misheard what was said about me the night of the Sigma Kappa Sigma party.”
