Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “See you tomorrow.” Ted headed out, leaving Rafi alone in the empty row with Denny waiting for him on the bench. He finished getting dressed in silence. Not until they were heading outside did Denny finally ask him the question that had been burning in his eyes ever since they’d been left alone together.

  “Does it really bother you that much? Being out? It never seemed to in Chicago.”

  Rafi sighed and tried to figure out how to explain it. “I came out in high school, you know? At a mostly Latino public high school that wasn’t any kind of safe place.”

  “I remember,” Denny said, smiling. Rafi had told him this story once before. “Pink.”

  “Hate it,” he said reflexively. Ever since he’d worn pink every day for months, because fuck anyone who couldn’t deal with him being gay, he’d been over that damn color. All it did was make him remember how hard he’d had to shove his right to exist in people’s faces, to avoid getting beat down.

  “But you look so pretty in it, I bet,” Denny teased. Rafi flipped him the bird, shaking his head.

  “Man, I spent most of high school dealing with this shit. And here? I just wanted to show up, go to class, bust my ass for the team and not have to go through this all over again. I mean, when do people grow the fuck up, you know?” He tried to keep his voice light, because he’d always been good at shrugging off the people who acted as if his very existence repulsed them. But he suddenly felt exhausted, more tired than he ever was from practice and sprints and rowing until his arms and legs shook. “Was it hard for you when you came here?”

  Denny shrugged, looked away. “It was…weird. A lot of people who hadn’t seen me during my gap year were pretty surprised. It’s a strange line to walk, you know? Like, Austin’s totally in your face about it. And Vinnie’s so cranky and reserved no one even brings it up to him. I’m somewhere in the middle.”

  “Did you get hassled?” How much shit am I going to have to take here?

  “Not too much,” Denny said, heading for the exit as Rafi closed his locker and grabbed his backpack. “There are always a couple of assholes, but most people are cool. The gossip is a pain in the ass, though. I mean, it’s news if any one of the guys starts dating a new girl, so I guess it’s not a surprise that they talk about it when one of us does. But the teasing isn’t the same, you know?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Same shit, different day.

  “It was better down in New Orleans,” Denny admitted, and Rafi tensed. He knew Denny had gone off to his internship with his own personal mission of getting laid and going balls to the wall, so to speak, with the gay thing. “Even though a lot of the people were religious, that wasn’t a big deal. And it was a fun town. Good people.” His grin was private, as if he were remembering something—someone—who made him smile.

  Rafi stamped on the ember of the thing that was not jealousy until it was out cold. “So the answer is, ‘Suck it up for now’?”

  “It gets better?” Denny’s quote of the national campaign every gay kid knew of these days.

  “Not yet it doesn’t.” Then he shook his head, because exhausted or not, the whole point was not to let the assholes get you down. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to, you know, act like we never… I mean…”

  “S’okay.” Denny slung an arm around Rafi’s shoulder as they walked up to the bike rack, and Rafi didn’t know whether to flinch from the public touching or to lean into the half embrace for the strength he knew he’d find there. “I got your back.”

  “I know you do,” Rafi said, and wondered how much of his life he was going to have to relive before he figured out whether or not Carlisle was worth it.

  Chapter Four

  On Saturday night, Rafi made Denny wait while he ducked behind the reception desk in the dorm lobby to check the schedule on the clipboard. They were swinging by his room after dinner on their way to an early evening workout. Denny stood in front of a bulletin board, checking out flyers for the Hula–Hoop club’s lessons on the green, a production of Antigone in the original Greek, and one for something called a Universal Objectification party, which was taking place next weekend.

  Rafi had already heard about that annual party tradition from Cash. Universal Objectification, where every partygoer had to be wearing a skirt to get in the door. Cash, being who he was, had always gone for the straight-up cheerleader look apparently, more than a little bit proud of how “my ass looks good in a short skirt, I’m telling you.”

  “Fuck.”

  Denny looked over at him. “Bad news?”

  He should learn to curse more quietly. All the work-study students had the same complaints. “I can’t get any hours here. Two four-hour shifts ain’t gonna cut it.”

  “I thought you said they had lots of hours available?” It still startled him sometimes, how closely Denny listened when he talked.

  Rafi frowned at the linoleum floor. He’d attended a work-study general information meeting during his first couple of days on campus. The news hadn’t been great. “Yeah, plenty. If you want to work in the kitchen.”

  Denny shrugged, awkwardness making his shoulders jerk. They avoided talking about money most of the time. Rafi knew that Denny’s parents put money into his bank account on a weekly basis, and if he ran low unexpectedly, all he had to do was call or email and they transferred more. Denny would flat-out admit he had it easy, and most of the time Rafi was happy for him. Envious, but happy.

  He’d listened to Cash talk more than once about why he’d cut himself off from his family’s money and moved to Chicago for two years, working for the nonprofit that employed him now in Boston. His coach had been living off paltry wages and a lot of beans and rice when Rafi had first met him, and he didn’t think he really understood even now what kind of family money Cash had walked away from. Denny had heard the same stories, and Rafi knew Denny didn’t take his good fortune for granted. But Cash’s cousin was twenty and in college, and if his parents didn’t mind giving him spending money, he was taking it. Denny knew how to work hard. Rafi didn’t doubt that. But he’d probably never thought about what it would be like live on money you earned yourself.

  And when it came to the difference between campus job options, Denny was never going to understand where the lines were drawn. Kitchen work was a whole different thing from sitting at the reception desk.

  “Would that be so bad? Working in the kitchen?” Denny asked, hesitantly. This was high water and fast currents for them.

  Rafi grimaced and nudged Denny toward the stairs with an elbow. They headed up. “Nah. I’ve done it before. But it pisses me off, being the Latino guy ladling out food for the white kids, scrubbing pots and scraping shit off plates. I like making people show their IDs at the desk better.”

  “I can see that,” Denny said. Rafi knew there were plenty of white kids who worked in the kitchens too, if only because there were mostly white kids at Carlisle, period, but it wasn’t the same thing as being in charge at the reception desk. “Even if the desk job mostly means time to do the New York Times crossword puzzle, as far as I can tell,” Denny continued, grinning.

  Denny had twice showed up at the end of Rafi’s shift at the desk, as if casually dropping by to say hi.

  “How many more hours do you want?” Denny asked.

  “As many as I can get.” Which was Rafi’s code for, Dude, I’m broke, but if I start talking about how I don’t have any money, you’re gonna try to pay for stuff, so let’s not.

  “Isn’t it harder to get your work done, for class, I mean, if you’re working all the time?”

  Rafi didn’t look right at him, because, well…that question was kinda dumb. “Uh, yeah.”

  “What do you need money for?”

  Seriously? That question caught him off guard, so the word actually came out of his mouth. “Seriously?”

  Denny’s cheeks pinked up, but he didn’t drop it. “Yeah.
I mean, you’re on the meal plan.”

  “Yeah, but I’m always having to buy stuff because I get hungry. Or sneak fruit and granola out of the dining room.” Rafi looked away when he admitted this. Carlisle still operated with hot and cold buffet tables, their meal cards recording the number of times a student visited one of the dining halls, as opposed to recording individual food items. This allowed for a fair amount of pilfering, and no one in charge of the dining halls got too worked up about it, as long as the theft was low-key.

  Snacks weren’t really the problem, though, simply the thing that popped most easily into his head. “And books. Shit. I didn’t know books could cost so much. They’re way worse here, and I thought they were fucking pricey in Chicago.”

  “Doesn’t your scholarship cover that? I thought it was supposed to pay for everything.”

  Gah. Here was where things got even more uncomfortable. Rafi knew Denny and Cash had pulled all kinds of family strings to bring him to the attention of the newly formed scholarship committee of the alumni crew group. The last thing he wanted was to sound ungrateful. But to be honest…

  “I get two hundred a semester for books,” he admitted.

  “Jesus. Who the hell planned that budget?” Denny shook his head as they headed upstairs. “The textbook for my astronomy lab alone was, like, a hundred bucks, used. Two hundred doesn’t come close.”

  On the third floor, he followed Rafi down the hall and into his suite, where Rafi headed into his room to grab a water bottle from his minifridge. He hated drinking water unless it was ice cold, and remembering to keep his fridge stocked with refilled water bottles was a daily ritual.

  Denny wasn’t dropping the money talk yet. “But still, that’s not too bad, right? You only need a couple hundred extra.”

  Shrugging, Rafi dug some workout clothes out of his dresser. Denny hovered in the doorway. “I guess. But there’s everything else too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like hanging out. Stuff.”

  “Stuff. This is college. There are million things to do that don’t cost money, you know?” Denny asked. Rafi figured it must be pretty easy for a guy with money to ignore all the times he spent the afternoon studying at a coffee shop and dropping ten bucks on coffee over a couple of hours. Or grabbed a sandwich from Tailgater’s Deli because he was too lazy to walk back to one of the dining halls. Or went to the movies, or went drinking at the hotel bar because they didn’t card anyone who ordered expensive bottles of wine, although asking for a beer would get you carded faster than you could blink. Rafi had heard about all of that shit, although he’d so far managed to duck out on invitations to join Denny at any of those things.

  Rafi shot him a look. You’re full of crap and you know it. Denny blushed. “I’m just saying. We can do stuff. Free stuff.”

  “Like what?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “Like…” Brow wrinkled as if he was thinking hard, Denny braced his hands on the top of the doorframe and leaned forward. His shirt rode up a little, and Rafi snuck glances at that strip of flat stomach with the barely visible blond treasure trail leading down past the waistband of Denny’s shorts. The silence stretched long enough that Rafi got paranoid Denny had noticed him staring. Whoops.

  This was no time to start eyeing the guy’s package like he wanted to unwrap it.

  “We could…play video games!” Denny sounded so excited to think of something, the words bursting out of him at top volume.

  “I guess.” But Rafi definitely wasn’t excited about the idea, which was kind of a bummer, because video games used to be a super chill way for the two of them to kill some time together.

  Nope. Sorry. The idea of spending hours shut up in Denny’s tiny room, the two of them sprawled out on his bed, because a wooden desk chair definitely didn’t cut it for a Call of Duty marathon—yeah, the idea alone made him restless.

  Like, really restless.

  “You know what I wanna do?” Rafi asked. “I want to go dancing.” God, dancing would be awesome. Talk about a more fun way to get a workout.

  “Well, right now, we gotta go train.” Denny dropped his arms from the doorframe. Rafi told himself that was a good thing as he watched that slice of pale gold stomach disappear. “You can plug your phone in and put on some good tunes. It’ll be almost like dancing.” The workout room at the boathouse had a kickass stereo system anyone could plug into, although if there were more than two rowers there, too many arguments about music broke out, so headphones were the general rule. But on a Saturday night, they might be the only ones there…

  “Yeah, right.” Rafi snorted. But he thumbed up his favorite bachata/merengue playlist before tucking his phone in his backpack. He kicked Denny to the common room while he changed, because there was too much testosterone in the air right now, and then they headed out.

  After an hour on the ergs, broken up with some sprints on the treadmills, Rafi was extra glad for the music. They were alone, so he got to play his tunes over the speaker system, which rocked. The music definitely elevated his mood, dragging it up from grimly focused concentration to something a little more playful. Rafi had even broken out some dance moves in between sprints, when that summer’s latest hit poured into the room.

  By the time they finished their workout, the sky was darkening and they’d opened up the doors to let the cooler night air into the stuffy room. Thank God, because Denny’s sweat was some kind of weird trigger to Rafi, the smell of it haunting him as they moved together from the ergs to the free weights and the exercise balls. Postworkout endorphins punched up Rafi’s mood though, and Denny could obviously feel the difference as they sprawled on the mats, half-assing their way through their stretches.

  “Remind me to hang out with you after workouts more often. You’re way mellow tonight.” Smiling lazily with his hair plastered to his forehead by sweat, Denny pushed a foot against Rafi’s leg.

  Rafi kicked him back, softly, ignoring the way his stomach tightened at something as innocent as the sole of Denny’s running shoe against his skin. Cracking jokes and giving each other shit, the whole night had been more like the way they’d been friends in Chicago than any time they’d spent together since Rafi had arrived on campus.

  They showered afterward, and Rafi was hyperaware of the two of them being the only people in the building. The only people. Naked. And wet.

  A couple of girls from the women’s team had come in during their session, but only for quick workouts that had ended before Rafi and Denny finished up their sprints. Rafi knew Denny wanted to push for a seat in one of the varsity boats as much as he did. They were committed to squeezing in extra workouts whenever they could for as long as it took to match the older rowers’ stroke speed and endurance.

  Rafi toweled off at his locker, keeping his back to Denny, because seriously? It felt like half his fucking mental energy was spent avoiding finding out exactly what Denny looked like naked. It was hard enough to keep himself from imagining it. He blocked the picture of a dripping-wet-from-the-shower Denny from his head and concentrated on getting out of there without being spotted sporting a hard-on. Easier said than done, but slamming his hand in the locker door because he wasn’t paying attention helped.

  “Fuck.” He popped the side of his hand into his mouth and muffled his curses.

  “You okay?”

  “Yup. All good. Let’s go.”

  They were almost out the door when they noticed the music still playing in the background.

  “Don’t forget your phone,” Denny reminded Rafi.

  “Oh shit. That would’ve sucked.”

  Halfway across the room to where the docking station was plugged in, he halted as the song changed and Romeo Santos came on.

  “Aww, yes.” Rafi punched a fist into the air and spun around in a tight circle, executing some quick steps. “This is a groove.”

  Denny smiled at him from w
here he stood by the door, bag slung over his shoulder, and Rafi’s stomach flipped.

  “Come on.” Rafi jogged over to his iPhone and cranked up the volume until the music was blasting. Making his way back to Denny, he waited until he was close enough to talk over the hit song. “Let’s dance.”

  “Here?” Denny backed up a step. “No way. I’ll trip on a barbell or a weight bench or something and kill myself.”

  “Outside then.” Rafi left the building, waving for Denny to follow. “We can still hear the music.”

  The concrete pad between the boathouse and the dock was always kept clear of anything that might trip an unwary rower with a boat balanced on his head. Clear and empty, it was a perfect dance floor. Rafi dropped his backpack and hit the open space like he was entering a nightclub. Denny stood in the doorway, gear bag on the ground, and watched.

  Rafi danced. He swiveled his feet and his hips, taking quick steps one in front of the other and then back, while Santos’s high-pitched voice sang in Spanish and the island music played behind them. Like the notes sang in his bones, he turned and turned again, until he’d made his way over to Denny, because dancing by himself was never as much fun as dancing with someone else.

  “Holy shit. I can’t do that.” Denny had straightened up, shaking his head, eyebrows pinched together.

  “Sure you can.” Rafi grabbed him by the hand. Denny’s fingers were strong, his palm hot with the leftover warmth of all that friction against the pull bar. “C’mon, I’ll show you. It’s fun.”

  “It’s not fun if you can’t do it,” Denny argued, leaning back against Rafi’s grip.

  “You can.” Rafi tugged him forward, knowing Denny really wanted to dance, but held back out of fear of looking foolish. You wouldn’t know anything about that now, would you? But Rafi remembered Chicago, lingering echoes of weeks Denny had spent following him around like a puppy, wanting to do what he did. Play how he played. Roam where he roamed. And even, once, dance how he danced. “Just watch me.”