Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4 (15 page)

“Do you still talk to him?” Denny had said some other stuff that Rafi was clearly supposed to pay attention to, but his brain had clicked like a magnet onto one idea. Denny’s ex. Someone Denny had cared about enough to do all that research in order to be with him.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.”

“Sorry. You’re right.” He bit his tongue, knowing he didn’t have the right to ask any more questions. When Denny sighed and rolled his eyes and didn’t leave, Rafi braced his elbows on his knees and tried to keep his mouth shut long enough to act like a friend and not a jealous lover. Which he definitely wasn’t, for reasons he couldn’t fucking remember right now.

“It wasn’t because of anything bad.” Denny shrugged, pulling the corner of his mouth in. “Neither of us wanted a long-distance relationship.”

Rafi tried to say something nice. “Those are hard.”

Close enough.

Denny sighed and gestured at him to scooch over on the step, sitting down again. “He’s a great guy. Older, though. I’m planning to go back down to New Orleans and visit him. Next summer maybe.”

“Is he one of the guys you’ve been turning down?” Rafi braced himself for the answer.

“Yes.” Denny nodded, because Denny always told him the truth. “We still text and he’s been hinting he’d like to get back together. Give a long-distance thing a try. I haven’t been interested.”

So far
was what Rafi heard underneath Denny’s calm waters.

Rafi needed not to think about that. “But you’re still taking this stuff?”

“Yes. There’s some health risks, so I get tested for that stuff pretty regularly. I wouldn’t be able to do this if my dad didn’t have me on his awesome, everything-is-covered health insurance.” He shrugged. “I figured if I was going to do something stupid, sex-wise, college was probably when I was going to do it. Seemed like a good idea to have some extra protection.”

Rafi didn’t know what to think. He’d spent so long walking around with this image in his head of Denny as the kid who didn’t know anything, who was so unsure of his sexuality he had to ask Rafi to kiss him, because no other guy ever had.

But now here Denny was, sitting next to Rafi, so much more of a man than Rafi had ever imagined. Not only did he know more about this Truvada shit than Rafi did, but he was negotiating both a post-breakup friendship and his college years with far more savvy and skill than Rafi had in his own bag of tricks.

He didn’t know what to say. “Should we…go back inside?”

Denny raised an eyebrow. “Do you really want to be here?”

Not a moment for lying. “Not really.”

“Then you should go home. I’m going to stay for a while.” Denny’s face said Rafi better not ask him questions about what, or who, he was going to be doing for the rest of the night. Rafi told himself there was no way Denny would go from impulsively rage-blowing him to hooking up with some other guy, but he had to admit he didn’t really know what this Denny would do.

He walked home by himself and arrived at an empty suite, full of regret and with no one he could offload it to. He was even willing to get lectured by his sisters—although not about this, because no way was he sharing sex talk with them—and it was an hour earlier in Chicago, so he tried calling home, but got voicemail across the board there too.

Everyone had a life on Saturday night. Everyone who wasn’t busy shoving as many size twelves in their mouths at one time as possible.

Practice on Sunday morning was mildly painful, even though he’d only had those two beers. Denny greeted him as he always did and asked Rafi if he wanted to grab a late breakfast after practice ended, making it clear he wasn’t going to hold Rafi being a jerk against him.

“Thanks,” Rafi said. “But I’m gonna grab something on the fly. I’ve got a study group.” He didn’t, but the idea of sitting across a table from Denny for an hour, chatting as if everything were normal, and not picturing what Denny had looked like on his knees in front of Rafi, or asking Denny if he’d gone home with the bareback wannabe, or anyone else, from the night before, was…not going to happen.

That afternoon, he tried to study, but spent most of his time surfing the Internet on his laptop in the lounge, where he’d gone to get away from the stink of Austin’s latest project and the
Call of Duty
marathon he and Bob were having in their common room while some stage of the painting dried. A guy from their floor was halfway to napping on the couch across from Rafi, an ordinary-looking white dude with a sharp nose and a small mouth. Rafi was pretty sure he’d seen both men and women coming out of the guy’s room at all hours and had halfway decided he was either bi or dealing drugs. He was caught off guard when the guy sat up, stretched and asked him what he was studying so intensely.

“I was talking to someone about this Truvada drug, but I still have all these questions about it. I can’t figure out whether or not it’s really safe.” He’d made a list of questions he still had in preparation for the next chance he could come up with to ask Denny about them. The whole idea of this experimental-sounding treatment was bothering Rafi still.

“Who do you know who’s on PrEP?” the guy asked casually, uncapping his soda and draining it in seconds.

Talk about bone density loss. Those phosphates will suck the calcium out of your bones way faster than this drug.

Civilians, and the crap they put in their bodies.

He answered without thinking. “Denny.” And knew immediately that he should have kept his mouth shut. Denny had shared his story with Rafi when it had been just the two of them in a dark, deserted backyard. The fact that he was taking this drug had never come up in any other situation.

“You mean he’s a Truvada whore?” His floormate’s laugh was brutal. Rafi didn’t know what the guy meant by
Truvada whore
, but it didn’t take a genius to make a guess. A surge of anger fired through him. “Who’d have thunk it? I’m intrigued.”

“Don’t be,” he growled, surprising himself with the sudden, plunging depths of his possessiveness. Although it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise after last night. He wanted to end the conversation, end this guy, right now, with a ferocity that made him hide his balled-up fists in his lap. But first he had to know. “What does that even mean?”

“Truvada whore? You know, guys who are on the drug so they can P-and-P. There was a whole article about it in the
Banner
last week.” The campus paper was pretty cutting edge for journalism students.

Shit. That one he knew. Party-and-play. Slang for taking drugs and fucking your brains out. “He doesn’t do that.”

“Sure he doesn’t.” The guy smirked. “He doesn’t have a poz boyfriend, right? So what other reason is there to take it?”

And Rafi wanted to say it. Wanted to spit it in his stupid face—
I’m his boyfriend, asshole—
preferably with an intimidating surge to his feet, because what good was being the big, scary black guy if you couldn’t use it when someone was crapping on your boyfriend?

But it wasn’t true.

God, I’m such a fucking moron.

He’d made this big deal about not wanting anything with Denny. About it being wrong for all of the dumbest reasons in the world—that he needed to find his own way, that he didn’t want to tie himself down to the only person he really knew on campus just because he was lonely, that he was older and Denny was the young guy still figuring out what he wanted out of a boyfriend, out of life.

That last one was such a fucking joke it almost made him laugh out loud. Jesus. If anyone was the grown-up between the two of them, it was Denny.

But if he couldn’t claim to be Denny’s boyfriend, that didn’t mean he couldn’t scare the shit out of this dude.

“I’m telling you,” he said, voice rumbling low in his chest as he stood up and loomed over the guy on the couch. The backward arch to his brand-new frenemy’s spine was gratifying, as the guy tried not to go face-to-face with him. “He. Doesn’t. Do. That. And if I hear a rumor that he does, I’m gonna know you started it. And you know what I’m gonna do, right, playboy?”

Rafi didn’t even know what he meant himself. But the possibilities were scary enough to have the guy dropping his pop bottle, and then scuttling to the side to retrieve it from the floor.

“Hey, I didn’t say anything, man. I mean, I won’t.”

“Better not.” And with that stellar parting shot, he stomped out of the room, pissed as hell, mostly at himself.

Shit. Talk about a dumbass move.

Except he knew it was more than that. Knew, too, exactly what he had to do next.

“I think I did something stupid.” Denny didn’t look up from his textbook when Rafi found him in his room, door open, after texting to ask where he was studying. “I mean, I know it was stupid. And I owe you an apology.”

When Denny did lift his head, he looked startled. Rafi wondered what kind of expression was on his face. He’d damn near chewed his lip off on the way over here, nerves churning in his stomach.

“What’s up?” Denny closed his book and sat up straight on his bed.

He had Denny’s attention now. Shit. But Rafi lost his train of thought at the sight of Denny, shirtless and wearing only a pair of gray sweatpants, scratching at the dark gold hair on his stomach. Now that he’d seen Denny naked—really seen him, like, stared at his body until he’d memorized it—a partially clothed Denny just inspired his brain to fill in the blanks. Shit twice. He closed the door.

“I was researching Truvada.” He looked down at the floor, embarrassed to admit how hung up he was on the subject. Rafi didn’t know why it bothered him so much, but it did. It was as if he needed constant reassurance Denny wasn’t sick, wasn’t going to get sick, wasn’t doing anything, with anyone, that might lead to him getting sick.

Thank God Denny was generally a healthy guy. If he caught a cold or even started sneezing a lot, Rafi would probably end up hounding his ass until he went to the campus health center.

Rafi tried to explain, feeling defensive because he knew Denny was probably regretting ever having told him. “I’m just trying to get my head around it. And I was in the lounge—because Bob and Austin are having this
Call of Duty
marathon to the death—and this other guy from my floor asked me what I was reading. I just answered. I didn’t think. I…I said I knew someone on it.” This part was the worst. “You.”

Denny closed his eyes for a moment. “What guy?” Definitely the most important detail for Denny.

Rafi didn’t know his name, so he described the rat-faced look of him, and did a good enough job that Denny recognized the description.

Denny scrunched up his face. Not his favorite person apparently. “Ugh. Kind of an asshole. I was hoping it was someone who wouldn’t be a dick about it.”

“Um, yeah.” Rafi knew he’d fucked up. He hung his head, having a hard time meeting Denny’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, you didn’t say, but I know I should have kept that to myself.”

Denny sighed. “Yeah, talking about someone’s private medical information is generally not a good idea.”

“I know. I feel like shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything about it.”

Denny pressed the heels of his hands to his eye sockets. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I heard you the first three times,” Denny snapped and scrubbed at his eyes, then sighed. “I’m just trying to figure out how bad this is likely to get.”

Rafi was a bug. A worm. A cockroach. Something that ought to be squashed on sight. “Bad, do you think?”

Slumping against the wall, Denny shrugged. “A month or two of crappy gossip. Some shit from a couple guys who act like they’re your friend but mostly like bitching about each other. Nothing too awful.”

“Thank God.” Relief oozed from Rafi’s voice. Denny glared at him. “I mean, that sucks, but it doesn’t sound too terrible.”

“Unless it gets around to the team,” Denny said flatly.

Fuck.

That could be an actual problem. Rafi had already seen the casual homophobia of some of their teammates. Boomer still gave him shit on the regular, although he was smart enough to try and make it about Rafi’s 2ks. But since Rafi’s times had been dropping far enough to make him a real threat at taking one of the varsity boat seats sometime this year, and Boomer was clinging on to the bottom rungs of the varsity ladder with two fingers and a prayer, Boomer had been getting a little more direct with his insults lately.

Rafi was honestly surprised there hadn’t been more blowback from the team about his place on it. Between the gay and the black and the scholarship… Not everybody at Carlisle was rich. Some of the guys on the team could use scholarship money. And even at a bastion of East Coast liberal education, he was going to run into assholes, although less so here than at most other schools.

Still, there was only so much a team of mostly straight jocks was going to handle with grace. Maybe he was underestimating them, but he didn’t think the word
whore
was going to go over well, and that was before someone explained to them where the slang term came from…
Fuck
. He struggled to push down the anger.

“Okay.” Denny took a deep breath. “There’s nothing that can be done about it now. I’ll just…deal.”

“I told him to keep his fucking mouth shut,” Rafi muttered, pressing his lips tightly together. “I’ll fuck him up if he starts talking shit about you.”

“Don’t,” Denny snapped, voice tightening like a sudden freeze had crystallized it in his throat. “I don’t need you protecting me.”

“You do. But I’m not. I mean, it wasn’t like that.” Rafi cracked his knuckles and Denny flinched. “I’m the one who fucked up. I’ll fix it.”

He knew he was crossing lines again, acting like an outraged boyfriend. Rafi rubbed his forehead. Something had shifted in his bones, like a weight that left him off balance and limping. He opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t know what it was, so he stayed quiet. Denny was still arguing with him.

“I don’t need you running around campus like an outraged daddy.”

Rafi barked a laugh. A phrase from one of the orientation-week sessions floated through his brain. “So not my kink.”