When the silence ran on uncomfortably long, he cleared his throat. “I think it would help me. Um, a lot.”
Lawson didn’t make him wait any longer. “I’d be more than happy to speak to them with you. Or for you, even, because I’m not sure you should be there, actually. It might be better if I brought this up as if it were my idea entirely.”
To Rafi’s left, Denny nodded, slowly. Lost in thought. “That might be better.” He glanced at Rafi. “I wouldn’t want them to think you were complaining.”
Rafi blew out a breath. “Even if I am.”
“They didn’t think this through. Didn’t set you up to succeed,” Lawson put in, like a true coach. “We can do better.”
Fifteen minutes later, Denny and their coach had come up with an entire strategy on how to bring the matter up with the board. Rafi, meanwhile, sat chilling in a puddle of sweat, disbelief swamping him at how easy this had been.
Months of stress and anxiety gone, maybe. With a half-hour conversation sparked by his own honesty.
God, he was going to kill himself if it turned out to be this easy.
By the time he returned his attention to the conversation, Denny and Coach Lawson had moved on to other topics.
“If PT doesn’t get you back up to competition speed,” Lawson was saying to Denny, “I want you to seriously consider what I told you.”
“What’s that?” He’d obviously missed something.
“I want Denny to take a real look at getting into coaching. It’s competitive as hell, but I think he’d have a shot at getting on staff at one of the elite programs with his background. Work his way up and maybe even find a spot with the national team.”
“Jesus,” he breathed, staring at Denny, who wasn’t looking at him at all.
“It’s a long shot, and I’m not even sure I’d want it.”
“Why not?” Rafi demanded. He knew it in his gut, how great Denny would be at this. How hard he could push a top-tier team, improve their performance and bring them to new heights.
He’d done it for Rafi, who had started out not knowing an oar from a baseball bat. Imagine what he could do with real elite athletes.
“It’s a tough field, like Coach said. And you have to be ready to pick up and move wherever the job is.”
“So?” Rafi demanded, not seeing the problem.
Lawson raised an eyebrow at Denny as if to say the same. So?
Denny spread his hands in the air and said simply, “I wouldn’t ask Rafi to put aside his own plans to follow me across country. I’ll need to follow him this time.”
Lawson nodded her understanding, and the two of them chatted for another minute while Rafi tried to recover from nearly swallowing his tongue.
“Thanks, Coach. I started some research, looking at Chicago internships.” Now Denny looked at Rafi, biting his lip and then letting it go to sit up straight. “We’ll see what happens. I’ve got plenty of time.”
After they left Lawson’s office, Rafi followed Denny down the hall, chasing after his swift pace.
“What do you mean, you’re researching Chicago internships?” he demanded of Denny’s back.
Denny stopped and turned to face him. “I figured there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to want to go back there after graduation. So I’m checking on the urban planning scene. I mean, I haven’t declared my major even, yet, but I’m pretty sure that’s the direction I’m leaning.”
“But, wait.” A hundred and forty-seven different voices were chattering in his head. Exclamations and questions and the slow, deep whisper running underneath it all like a river. For me, for me, for me. “Why?”
Because there was only one question that had really ever mattered.
Denny stared at him, slashes of pink blooming on his high cheekbones. A chunk of blond hair was falling in his eyes but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Why?” His voice was level, steady, at first. But as he spoke, his volume increased until he was practically shouting. “Why? Because I am waiting for you, Rafi. I’m waiting for you to get your head out of your ass and figure out that we work.”
“You’re waiting for me?” He heard the words but had a hard time believing in them. Not after the way he’d treated Denny.
“I’ve been waiting for you since I was seventeen years old,” Denny said, and took Rafi’s breath away.
Rafi slumped against the fitness center wall, speechless, knowing he was supposed to say something, something important. Knowing he was fucking it up by not saying anything as random staff and students passed them by, turning their shoulders to squeeze past in the narrow hallway.
This was too important to be happening in a public walkway with sounds of grunts from the weight room and racquetball ricochets in the background. He looked for an exit and spotted one, heading for it and hoping Denny was following.
Outside, Rafi collapsed into a seat on a nearby park bench, the metal under his ass cold as ice. He sucked in crisp air through his nose, smelling the murky dampness from the swampy area that bordered the fitness center.
Denny approached and laid his hand on Rafi’s head, palm pressed against the close-clipped hair, the heat of his hand a benediction. Rafi let his head fall forward until it pressed against Denny’s stomach. Those muscles were tense, hard against his skull.
Fingertips stroked down the back of his head to flirt with his neck, gentle, soothing.
“I’ve known since the day we met that if you wanted me, I wanted you right back. And I got it. You had some kind of moral thing about not taking advantage of me. Which was a dumbass rule, but I got it. Then there was dealing with coming here, and Boomer’s bullshit trash-talking, and Lola’s accident, and the stress of it all that turned you into a total asshole this week.” Here Denny paused for a moment, then took a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. “And it didn’t help when I had my accident. I know you wanted to turn the tables there. Be the one who was helping me out for a change. But I just couldn’t deal with that. It was like…I had one thing I could do for you, you know? I could help make this whole crazy change in your life easier. Not because you couldn’t do it without me. But maybe because I needed you to count on me for something. I needed you not to be able to shut me out so easily.”
It was easy, somehow, to say the words this time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to shut you out.” He didn’t want to lie and make it all sunshine and roses though. Pretending he didn’t have resentments of his own wasn’t going to do them any favors. “Sometimes, though, it feels like you keep saying you understand what I’m saying, but you never actually hear me. I know there are steps. That things need to move forward in a…a relationship. But if you’re always moving faster than I am, it feels like I’m the one always being left behind.”
“I know I push too hard sometimes,” Denny admitted at last. “I think I want so much, it makes me feel unbalanced. Like you’ll never need me as much as I need you.”
“But I do. God, I so do. And I’m sorry too,” Rafi repeated fervently. Hell, he’d repeat it from now until graduation if it would fix things between them.
“Thank you. That helps. But, Rafi, that’s a whole lot of time we’ve wasted. Okay, not wasted, but…let go by while we made sure we knew what we wanted. And I know. I’ve always known.”
He tipped Rafi’s head back with inexorable fingers until their gazes met, and Rafi could see that Denny was done with fucking around. This was it. This was all him. Everything he had, laid out on the table like light on the river at dawn.
“You’re it for me. That’s all I need to know. And if we need to figure out a way to fight better, or do anything better, I’m in. All in. You understand?”
Rafi’s throat was too tight to speak. He blinked to keep his face dry and nodded.
“So you’re the one who’s gotta figure this out next, okay? Because I’m waiting again. And I don’t
know, maybe I really would wait for you forever. But mostly it feels like I’ve spent too much time on hold for you.” He dropped his hands from Rafi’s face and stepped away, blinking hard.
“I talked to my mami about you,” Rafi admitted. He’d finally managed to get his mom on Skype again, for the first time in ages. She’d made it clear he’d waited too long.
Denny’s look was sharp, but waiting. He didn’t say anything. They were both out of the closet, maybe more with some people than with others, but neither of them were hiding much at this point. So Rafi’s telling his mom about Denny was only full of potential, not a shocking revelation. “I told her that maybe we were too different to make it. That we didn’t see things the same way. Or fight about them the same way.”
“That’s a big one.” Denny nodded.
“I know.” Their fight had leveled him. Left him stomping defensively around campus, into and out of classes with half his attention on the argument raging inside his own head. He’d yelled and shouted and demanded Denny agree with him. And after days of yelling and shouting to himself, the idea had slowly begun to percolate up from somewhere deep and sticky inside him that maybe Denny wasn’t the one who needed to change.
Because even though he mostly wanted to defend the way he fought as being part of his family’s style, he knew that wasn’t quite true.
Yes, he and his sisters had grown up shouting and yelling and slamming doors at each other. Maybe it had something to do with not having his mom around once Rafi had arrived in the States. Maybe his sisters had been grown up enough to pay the bills and to raise him, but not quite grown up enough to think about whether or not it was cool to elevate the volume with the escalation of anger.
“She told me one of the reasons she left the DR was because she couldn’t live with our dad. She loved him. Just couldn’t live with him.” He looked out over the campus. Bare tree branches shivered in the winter wind, naked. “Turns out he wasn’t so great at fighting either.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t actually remember much about him, you know. I don’t think I yell when I fight because I saw my dad do it when I was little.”
Denny curled his warm hand around Rafi’s neck. It was his weak hand, but Rafi couldn’t tell the difference, which meant Denny was keeping up with his PT. “I don’t think anything’s that simple.”
“But I don’t ever want you to feel unsafe.” That was a big one. He didn’t ever want to cross that line. “And I’m sorry for acting in a way that made you need to step away.”
“I don’t, you know. Feel unsafe around you. I really don’t.” Denny wasn’t letting him off the hook though, either. Talking was a good start, however. Talking was the thing that could get them there. “But I could feel we were getting pretty close to that edge, and I didn’t like it.”
“I understand.” Words were pushing at his teeth.
But…
Wait…
It wasn’t…
Because there were a million ways he could argue about this with Denny. But the point he was trying to make here—the point he needed to make, if they were going to try to find a way forward—wasn’t about telling Denny how he was wrong. It was about listening to him now.
And yes, Rafi felt a little bit like he was a guest on some kind of daytime talk show with a self-diagnosing host. But Denny had already done the brave thing. Had already said the stuff that took balls, and if Rafi wanted a chance in hell at convincing him to stick around, he couldn’t chicken out now.
He kept his mouth shut. And listened.
“And I get what you’re saying about it’s not fair to tell you how to be angry.” Denny frowned and Rafi got nervous. Shit. Maybe this wasn’t working. “Funny. I just remembered a story my dad told once about someone he was fighting with at work. He said he was always going to win, because he could keep his cool in an argument, so the other guy always looked like the one who was out of control. Even when he was making good points, my dad won because he was the calm, cool, collected one who didn’t froth at the mouth. Not that you were doing that,” he added hastily.
For a moment, Rafi wondered if it would be easier to give up. Because he could see how much work they were both putting into choosing their words. Opting for kindness over snark, trying to anticipate in advance if they’d slipped and said something that might cause pain, and correcting themselves along the way.
The whole fucking thing was exhausting.
A lifetime of this? Hell, the rest of the school year sounded like it would be impossible to maintain. Even thinking about lifetime-type concepts when they weren’t even halfway through college was pretty fucking stupid to begin with, because who knew where they’d be or what they’d be doing years from now. The odds of them doing it together were pretty damn slim.
“I’m just saying.” Denny kept going. “It’s possible I maybe push that button on purpose when we argue. And I can try not to do that either.”
“That would be great,” Rafi said carefully. “Because when you shut down, it only makes me want to push at you harder.”
“I’ll work on it.”
“And—” Denny shot him a look, as if to say, You want more. But Rafi did. “—I would never tell you who to be friends with, but it would be great if you could make it extremely clear to your ex that you are definitely not looking for a nurse. Or a boyfriend. Because, you know, you already have one.”
Denny flushed. He bit his lip. “It’s possible I maybe rubbed that in on purpose when I was feeling shitty.”
“Maybe.” Rafi knew better than to do that same thing right now. “Listen, our fuck-ups aren’t equal. You messed up some, but I messed up way more. And I’m still playing catch up on some of this relationship stuff that you somehow managed to figure out long before I did.”
He must have let some of his jealousy slip into his voice, because Denny’s eyes narrowed at him. “You don’t get to be mad because I went off and found a boyfriend when you didn’t want me.”
“I always wanted you,” Rafi admitted, and felt Denny shiver against him. “And yeah, I’m jealous of every guy who ever touched you. But that’s on me. I was the one who pushed for that to happen back when we first met. I thought you had a crush on me. A boy’s crush.”
“I knew what I wanted,” Denny said firmly, and this time Rafi believed him. “I always did.”
“Well, I’m fucking slow compared to you,” Rafi said, smiling now. “But I got it figured out now. I want you. If you’re still up for it.”
Denny straddled him, kneeling on the bench and smashing himself against Rafi “I’m so up for it we’re about to get arrested for public indecency.”
Rafi laughed and wrapped his arms around Denny’s waist and hung on.
He was in it for the fucking happy ever after, man. Go big or go home, as Cash always said.
Happy ever after might be a little bumpier than anticipated, but that was no reason to give up on it. No reason at all.
Once again, the long run was harder than the short sprint. As much as Rafi believed Denny was happy with him, there was a chill in the air between them on the day before he was heading home for break.
“It’s like he’s waiting to see if I’m gonna fuck up,” he complained to Austin. He’d been roped into holding still, the upper part of a sculpture made, as far as he could tell, from shit Austin had found in the garbage. Austin was working with a soldering gun that smelled up the whole suite and was no doubt illegal as hell, but he only had three hours to finish his project, so Rafi had learned to keep his complaints to himself.
To stop the complaints from their neighbors, Austin had put a wet towel down along the gap at the bottom of the door to the hall. Rafi was willing to bet that was a strategy he’d used before, for other purposes.
“And are you?” Austin arched an eyebrow at him.
“Gonna fuck up?” Rafi felt like gro
wling. “No. I’m not.”
“Then this is the part where you suck it up, cupcake.”
“I just wish I could…I don’t know. Do something to fix it.”
“Yeah, we all know you’re a giant mommy who wants to make it all better.”
Rafi contemplated how difficult it would be to shove this sculpture up Austin’s ass.
“But this isn’t a thing you fix,” Austin informed him. “You know how you show him you’re not gonna fuck up?”
He couldn’t believe he was taking relationship advice from a guy who’d spent the entire year, as far as Rafi could tell, pining after someone who didn’t pay him any more attention than he would a pleasant house pet. “How?”
Austin looked up at his through the safety goggles that strapped down his curly mop and made his eyes look insectoid.
“Don’t fuck up.”
Easier said than done.
The four weeks of winter break had been awful. The entire crew team spent that time training in Florida, but Rafi had asked for, and been granted, permission to stay with his family to help out. He’d had to swear on a metaphorical stack of Bibles to keep up his workout regimen with Aya though, and between the constant, lonely workouts and missing Denny he was a ball of frustration. By the time Christmas and New Year’s were over and it was time for Rafi to head back to school, even Lola was happy to see him go. Back on campus, he powered into his second semester with a triumvirate of priorities: Study hard. Train harder. And above all, make Denny happy.
He’d fucked up too much already to risk doing it again.
Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 Page 31
