Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 (13 page)

The sight of Denny with all his clothes on and a cheerful expression on his face convinced him he’d overreacted in the locker room. Sure, Denny had been at least teasing, and probably—for sure—issuing an invitation. But it was probably—almost surely—a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of moment. It was over. No big deal.

By the time they’d walked all the way back to campus, Rafi couldn’t tell if he wanted to run away from Denny or push him to the ground and crawl on top of him. The easy silence of the river had turned into an awkward quiet of furtive looks when they thought the other one wouldn’t notice, and then walking faster when they did.

At the midway point between their dorms, he paused and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Denny looked at him, waiting, leaning forward slightly, to see what Rafi had to say.

But everything was tangled in Rafi’s brain and he couldn’t get enough of it unknotted to say anything at all. He nodded and gave Denny a half-assed salute.

“Okay, then. Um, g’night.” Denny turned to walk away, but not before Rafi saw his face fall. Not horribly so, but as if he’d been disappointed.

“Wait.” The word ripped out of his mouth without thought, Rafi’s hand reaching to catch Denny’s as if it had Rafi’s permission to do such a fool thing.

His fingers tangled with Denny’s, the catch of ripped blisters and calluses rubbing against each other drawing his focus to every centimeter where their skin touched.

“Thanks. For everything.”

He took a quick step forward and pressed his mouth to Denny’s, who froze against him. Only for a moment though, before reaching up a hand to rest his fingertips against Rafi’s jaw. Rafi didn’t move after that, just stood there with their lips touching and tried not to breathe, until Denny opened his mouth under his and Rafi jerked away before he could fall any further.

“You’re welcome.” Denny licked at his lips, but fast, as if he didn’t even know he was doing it.

“I—” Rafi didn’t know what to say.
I want you. I’m nervous. I need you to be patient, please. I don’t know why I did that. Please.
His brain skipped from thought to thought like a flat stone bouncing across the river. “I gotta go.”

He turned away, and this time he didn’t look back.

Chapter Seven

Six weeks into the semester, Rafi had grown used to finding Austin’s weird art projects in the common room, the smell of paint or thinner or clay lingering in the air when he arrived home long after the sky had gone dark. Vinnie called Austin a schizophrenic rabbit who needed to settle on a medium, but Austin just shrugged and kept making messes with whatever materials floated through the art studios.

Rafi didn’t always like Austin’s art. Sometimes it was creepy. Other paintings looked almost childishly done, although that was probably on purpose, because Rafi had seen Austin sketch a pencil drawing of Vinnie that had looked like something da Vinci or Michelangelo would have done. But he did find the different pieces fascinating and took time to examine them, encouraging Austin to talk about them so Rafi could understand what they were supposed to be or mean.

So when he found Austin sitting on the floor, a black-and-white movie playing silently behind him on their TV, molding black wax stuff with his thumbs into what looked like large insect forms, he wasn’t exactly surprised. More like…curious.

Then he took a second look.

“Is that…Vinnie?” He hesitated to ask, but he could almost see it. The long, thin legs and arms. The sharply pressed pants, although their suitemate really only wore those when he had his Benly seminar. The former national security advisor to two different presidential administrations wasn’t an official professor, but offered one seminar each year that only accepted five students. Vinnie had earned one of the coveted spots this year, which contributed to his uptight attitude.

“Sort of. Shit. Is it that obvious?” Austin bit his lip, turning the wax statue in his hands to stare at it critically from another angle.

“Not really.”
Yes, totally
. But Austin looked nervous and Rafi didn’t want to make him feel bad. Not his problem if their roommate got pissed. He’d gotten used to a cranky Vinnie, who was mostly bark and no bite, although that bark stung when it was directed at them. The guy was razor sharp and could pick out in a heartbeat the things his roommates were gnawing over with worry. “At first I thought it was one of those stick bugs or something.”

Austin blew a curl off his forehead and grinned broadly. “It’s a praying mantis.”

“I thought you said it was Vinnie?”

“It’s both. I was making a kind of El Greco-esque Vinnie, but then he was shitty to me when he left for class, so I decided to turn him into a cockroach. But he’s really longer and skinnier than a cockroach, so I started thinking about other bugs, and this praying mantis looked really elegant in Vinnie’s suit, so I gave him a walking stick. I think I’m going to do the HRs as a pair of ladybugs in winter coats.”

Rafi laughed. He could picture that. Their head residents were a married couple with a chubby, dark-haired two-year-old, and both parents were rather round with oddly tiny heads. In long coats, they would indeed look like a couple of ladybugs. From past conversations, he knew what the wax sculptures were meant for now too, so he was able to ask, “Are you going to cast them?”

The Carlisle art department had a partnership with a foundry at a nearby graduate program, so they could offer bronze casting to advanced art majors. Austin had been focusing more on his sculpture recently. Rafi wondered how much of that was down to the scolding Vinnie had delivered about Austin’s lack of focus holding him back, or whether the concentration would have happened naturally. Rafi was batting .000 at figuring out his own major, so everyone else’s educational decision-making methods were of intense interest.

“Maybe. This isn’t a great candidate for bronze, though. Too many long, skinny pieces. It’s iffy. We’ll see. I’d be better off welding something, probably.” But Rafi could see Austin eyeing his piece critically, and knew the synapses in his brain were firing at the idea of rising to the challenge. “It’d take some pretty damn perfect venting to come out right. Maybe…”

Rafi crashed on the couch, turned up the volume on the TV and started flipping through the channels. He didn’t watch TV a lot and told his roommates that was because he had too much to do, between practices (which they also had) and schoolwork (ditto). Mostly it bothered him that Vinnie had supplied the electronics and Austin paid for their cable. He’d put forth some halfhearted arguments at the beginning, until Bob had pulled him to the side for a talk.

“Listen, do you really want to argue over every detail of which package to get or what company to use?” their regularly absent suitemate had asked.

“Not really.”

Bob had shrugged. “Those two can bicker about that shit forever. I say, let ’em. Besides, Austin’s dad pays for anything he wants instead of showing up for stuff.”

And even though it irked him some not to contribute, Rafi had taken Bob’s advice and let that one go. But it was a rare moment when he let himself turn on the TV and just chill out in front of something mindless.

He was enjoying a good zombie-chomping-on-intestines-moment when Austin spoke again, not looking up from his sculpture.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Okay.” He braced himself. Austin was a good guy, no question, but his moments of curiosity sometimes led to some weird places.

“You and Denny are friends, right?”

“Yeah.”
Something like that.

“Are you guys
just
friends, though? I mean, I for real thought we were gonna have a fifth roommate, you know? The way he talked about you last year, I thought you guys were, like, a thing.”

We are a thing.
But they weren’t. Not yet. Because Denny had taken a step back every time Rafi asked him to. Even though Rafi knew his feelings were hurt, Denny had listened. He’d given Rafi the space he’d needed.

Denny had been incredibly mature about the whole thing, the occasional dip into flirtatious naked time aside.

Rafi was thankful for it. He’d wanted to find his own way, and that’s what he was doing. His suitemates were mostly cool, although he was couldn’t understand why Vinnie and Austin insisted on pushing each other’s buttons all the time. His professors were mostly professional and helpful—except the TA from hell, and Rafi figured he was being punished there for never trying hard enough to speak Spanish to his sisters—and he had a job, even if it wasn’t enough.

“I think you’ll probably be seeing him around more,” he said to Austin, getting the words out in a rush before he could stop himself. Because who was he kidding? Even an idiot could see where this thing was headed, and Rafi was feeling less and less stupid every day.

“Good. I don’t want to be the only guy to get busted sucking dick in the boathouse, you know?” Austin winked at him, and Rafi choked on his own spit with sudden, hot embarrassment. Most of his favorite jerking-off fantasies these days ended exactly that way, with somebody sucking somebody else’s dick in the boathouse. He would start out remembering the dancing or watching Denny towel himself dry, and then find himself imagining what might have come next…

Without the getting busted part, though. That was the stuff of his nightmares.

He left Austin to his project and retreated to his bedroom to make a call.

“Hola. ¿Que tal?” Denny took French, but always paid attention when Rafi or anyone else spoke Spanish around him.

“Not bad. Hey, what are you doing tonight? I mean, do you want to do something?” He shouldn’t feel so nervous, stomach churning. It wasn’t like Denny would have decided he didn’t want to be friends anymore or…
Or whatever this is you’re doing right now. Asking him out on a date?

No. Definitely not. He wasn’t ready. This was just hanging out.

“Sure!” The excitement in Denny’s voice was flattering and Rafi’s stomach settled.

“What’s cool to do on a Friday night?” he asked, leaning back on his pillow, relief spilling over. “I’ve been busting my ass with class and practice. Haven’t done much of anything yet.”

“How much fun do you want to have?” Rafi told himself it was his imagination that made the words sound dirty.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his throat unexpectedly tight. “All of it.”

Denny’s laugh lightened the tension, thank God.

“I meant, do you want to be hurting tomorrow? Or we can be chill. There’s always keggers at the frat houses or, like, seven cool, weird foreign films on the weekends.”

“Maybe somewhere in between? We’ve got practice tomorrow.” They’d gone pretty easy this morning, but his legs still ached, and he wasn’t looking to get in trouble with Coach either.

“No. Shit.” Denny’s agreement was emphatic. “Okay, something in between. Some guys from the geology department are having a party at their apartment off campus. We could go over there, check it out.”

Rafi hesitated, his knee-jerk unhappiness at the idea of walking into any situation where he didn’t know what to expect hovering. It was still a weird brain space to find himself in.

Don’t be a pussy. It’s just a party.

“Sounds good.” He pitched his voice to be cheerful.
Fake it till you make it
, he heard in his head, Cash’s voice ringing loud and clear. “You coming to me or am I coming to you?”

“Why don’t you swing by my room around nine? We can walk over from there. We’ll be early, but I’m not up for waiting until after ten to head out.”

“Cool. See you.”

Ending the call, Rafi felt relieved, like he’d done the right thing. But over the course of the afternoon and early evening, tension ratcheted up inside him until the muscles in his back were so tight it felt like his shoulder blades were pulled together with bungee cords.

When Denny opened his door just before nine and Rafi saw the way Denny’s face lit up, he knew why he’d been so fucking tense all day.

Shit.

Denny was way too excited about this not to be reading something into it that Rafi hadn’t meant to put there.

He was almost positive he hadn’t meant to put it there.

“Hey! Perfect timing.” Denny grabbed him in a hug and pressed his mouth to Rafi’s, and maybe Rafi could pretend that it was just a friendly greeting, but then Denny’s hands drifted lower. He didn’t grab Rafi’s dick or anything, but those hands were on Rafi’s hips and pulling him close until their groins were pressed together, and that was a move. With a jerk, Rafi stepped back from the hug and pushed Denny away with straight arms. “You ready to go, or what?”

Denny gave him a puzzled look, but grabbed a hoodie from his closet and closed and locked his door. “Sure. We’re going a few blocks past the art museum.”

On the walk to the party, Rafi kept his contributions to the conversation curt and on the negative end. He wasn’t sure how he should have handled this, but he knew he’d fucked up. Maybe he should have laid it out explicitly?
Want to hang out, but not like a date, okay?
That sounded kind of douche, but not saying anything meant they were in this weird place now, and Rafi was too embarrassed to bring it up.

By the time they reached the apartment building where the party was being held, Denny was clearly confused and annoyed. He stopped Rafi on the sidewalk outside with a hand in the middle of Rafi’s chest.

“What’s going on?” Denny asked.

“What do you mean?” Deny, deny, deny.

Denny cocked his head and stared at him. Rafi struggled to hold his gaze steady. “I don’t know. I felt like we were in a different place after the other night. And now you’re totally shut down.”

“No, I’m not.” Yes, he was. When had he become such a liar? He tried for some truth. “You always want more, Denny. Every time I figure a little something out, you’re pushing me for more before I have a chance to breathe.”

Denny met that bit of truth with silence at first. Then he shook his head. “Listen, I’m hanging in here, but you’re not making this easy.”

“I know,” Rafi said, his voice low and quiet as a couple of girls passed them and entered the building.

“You’re not the only guy in the world, you know.” Denny exhaled sharply. “I’m not trying to be a dick about it, but I’m shooting other guys down—
good guys—
and I’m doing it because I’ve had this
thing
for you. For forever. But you have got to give me something to work with, Rafi. I mean it.”

Denny stared at him, waiting, but Rafi didn’t have anything else to say. He’d fucked up and he knew it. He’d gotten Denny’s hopes up and then crushed them, and now Denny was pissed. He had a right to be. But Rafi wasn’t ready to walk into this party and be Denny’s date. He just wasn’t.

When Rafi stayed silent, Denny threw his hands up in the air. “Ahh, fuck this. You want to be friends. Fine. We’re friends. That’s it. I need a beer. Are you coming in?”

He turned and swept into the building without looking back to see if Rafi followed.

Music pounded from the far corner of the room they entered. Denny introduced Rafi to two of the guys who lived there and then broke off with a cutting look at Rafi, diving into a scrum of people on the makeshift dance floor and leaving Rafi talking to strangers who handed him a cup of warm, flat beer without asking if he wanted it.

He managed to put down two of the beers while watching Denny dance over the course of the next hour, fending off most conversational efforts from other partygoers and doing his best to hold up the wall in his corner of the room. It was weird, being somewhere he wasn’t surrounded by teammates. Outside of class, he trained and worked out with rowers, lived with rowers, studied with rowers. He didn’t know if that was the source of his unease, or if it was being the only black guy at a party where he didn’t really know anyone. There were a couple of Asian guys there and one girl who looked like she might be Latina, but Rafi was aware of sticking out in the crowd, the same way he knew he towered over most of the partygoers when he headed deeper into the apartment to find a toilet. He tried not to scowl, knowing it made him look threatening. All he really wanted to do was go home, but he knew he’d already pissed off Denny, and figured cutting out early would only make things worse.

By the time he made it back to the front room, Denny had migrated to the far side of the dance floor. Rafi wasn’t able to make him out through the crowd very well, but then Denny was close to the near edge again, this time plastered against a skinny, dark-haired white boy.