Below the Belt

by E M Lindsey

  “Let me show you how to wrap it first. There’s a trick that makes it easy and prevents micro-fractures in your fingers when you’re at the bag. Then you can practice a few times before the rest of the class gets here. You’ll like them, by the way, the rest of the class.”

  “Are they all disabled?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head. “Mostly stay-at-home moms.”

  “Oh. Well. I should fit right in, then,” he said a little wryly.

  She laughed as she rolled the wrap onto itself tight, then turned his hand over to start near his thumb. “Actually, I think you will. You’re adorable as hell so if you’re looking…”

  “Gay,” he blurted out of sheer panic and frustration at another person trying to play matchmaker. He knew it wasn’t her fault, but his mother had created an emotional twitch that fired off without warning. Clearing his throat and trying to calm himself, he fixed his eye on her hand to watch what she was doing. “Sorry. S-sorry uh…if that’s n-nuh-not welcome here. But I’m g-gay, and…yeah. My ex, uh—Ry is short for Ryan. He’s a m-man.”

  “Jesus. You’d think having a gay twin would make me a little less constant at assuming everyone’s hetero, but here I go.” She squeezed his wrist gently. “I am so sorry.”

  Noah shook his head, feeling relief that last only a moment until he realized what she had said. Her twin was gay. Adrian. Gay. Probably taken though, considering he was hotter than hell and a fucking boxer and apparently a teacher at the university too. “It’s no worries. I get it.”

  “I’m sure you do, but it was shitty of me. Adrian spent a lot of time dealing with the aftermath of don’t-ask don’t-tell bullshit and even though universities are more open with the LGBT community…” she trailed off.

  “Yeah, trust me I get it. I’ve dealt with my fair share of the b-bullshit.” He didn’t really want to mention his boss right then, so he simply held out his other hand and tried to pay attention to what she was doing. “What uh…what department is your brother in?”

  “Business school,” she told him.

  That was…unexpected. He definitely didn’t look like any of the faculty there, though he probably did clean up well. Too well. His mouth went a little dry and he glanced away, clearing his throat. “It’s no surprise we haven’t run into each other, then. There’s not a lot of Classics and Business crossover. Well, some gen-eds but you know.”

  Anna laughed. “I don’t know. I got my BS in nutrition and got certified and I’m a part-time middle school PE teacher because apparently I hate myself.”

  Noah couldn’t help his laugh. “Oh. Yeah…that’s.” He shook his head. “One of my best friends used to be a high school history teacher and I don’t think there’s enough salary in the world that would get her to go lower than college now.”

  Anna shrugged. “It’s not that bad. I mean, okay it is. They’re hormonal demons who could probably be classified as sociopaths for the three years they’re in that little prison, but they’re also really brilliant and most of them are trying, you know? I don’t hate it, and I only have to deal with them for an hour a day, and I can make them run laps when they’re being assholes.” She gave his hand a pat just as the door swung open and a small group of women walked in. “You go practice that for a while. Class starts in ten. Oh, and there’s water bottles by the cooler if you want to grab yourself one.”

  Noah nodded, carefully unwinding the wraps as Anna went to say hello to the rest of the class. He wrapped them up tight, then moved out of the room and took a seat on the bench near the water cooler to gather himself and practice a bit. He’d been distracted and with his depth perception issues, it wasn’t easy to remember exactly what she’d done.

  He got mostly through his right hand, but his left started shaking a little and it didn’t feel right. “Fuck,” he grunted to himself. “What the f-f-fuck am I even d-doing?”

  “You’ve got it between the wrong fingers, and it’s inside out,” came the husky voice Noah had both wanted and not wanted to hear. He glanced up and saw half of Adrian who was mostly on his blind side. “Let me help. You’re shaking.”

  “Happens sometimes, I c-can’t help it,” Noah said a little defensively. He gave a small start when all of Adrian appeared in his visual line, crouched down a little awkwardly because of the braces now hidden inside the legs of his sweats.

  “It just takes practice,” he said. His tone was still gruff, but his hand was tender. So tender it made Noah ache, made the loneliness in him blaze to life which was not what he needed right then. “You have to pinch here,” Adrian said, then pushed the fabric between two of his fingers. “Give it a twist, then hold it and wrap it.” He demonstrated, slower than Anna had done which Noah appreciated.

  “Thanks,” he murmured. “I uh…c-c-class…it…” For someone who spoke to a group of people for a living, he certainly sounded like a disaster right then. He wondered how badly Adrian was judging him, but when he dared a glance at the man’s face, Adrian looked mostly amused.

  “You should get in there. Anna is nice, but she’s also brutal and she doesn’t care how new you are, late people get punished.”

  Noah gulped, but couldn’t help a half grin as he pushed up to his feet. He grabbed for a water bottle but missed and flushed deeply when his hand closed around air just an inch shy of what he was aiming for. Even after three years, his missing eye was still a pain in the ass sometimes.

  Adrian didn’t comment, grabbing the bottle and pressing it into Noah’s hand. “See you around?”

  Noah nodded a little dumbly, then hurried into the room before Anna could make him work for his misdeed.

  ***

  “I saw that,” Wes said as Adrian collapsed on the leather couch in the back office.

  Pinching his eyes shut with thumb and forefinger, Adrian refused to look up. “What?”

  “Don’t what me, asshole,” Wes said. He hit Adrian in the face with a slightly damp towel, but Adrian refused to move his hand down. “I mean, I get it. He’s cute as hell and kind of adorable in that nerdy librarian way. You think he’s an undergrad?”

  “You mean is he some twenty-year-old fetus?” Adrian asked, finally looking over at Wes who was lounging back in his chair with his feet up on a footrest. “He looks pretty young, but I’m kind of a shit judge. He said he was in classics, so maybe a grad student? I don’t know why it matters.”

  “Because you want to get your dick all up in that,” Wes said with a wicked grin.

  Adrian flipped him off. “He’s a total stranger who wandered into your gym. Plus, you have a policy about dating customers.”

  Wes rolled his eyes. “That’s for my employees, and you’re definitely not one of them, no matter what you want to think about your time here. It’s an important policy to keep shit like Mike from happening again.”

  Adrian grimaced, trying not to think of the twenty minutes it had taken to calm the guy down and get him out. Connie had bailed the moment Wes and Adrian had come into the back room, and it was only the threat of calling the police that got Mike to see reason. The guy had the potential to be decent, but he had zero emotional control and it made Wes and Adrian uneasy. Connie had enough going on with her PTSD, the last thing she needed was some urchin trying to force her into a relationship she wasn’t ready for.

  Luckily, she had her boys at her back, but they couldn’t be there all the time and it made Adrian uncomfortable knowing how many hours she was out there on her own. Mike seemed to get the message today, at least, and Connie would probably come back later in the evening when she was ready to blow off steam.

  “Anna likes him,” Wes said when it was clear Adrian had no plans to take the conversation further.

  Adrian groaned. “And somehow you think that makes me want to ask him out more? Which I don’t want to ask him out at all. He’s not…he’s not my type.”

  “Bullshit,” Wes coughed. “And you’re allowed to go after your type, man. No one is watching you, you don’t have to make excuses
, and you have room in your life for a little dating. He was cute, and he’s a student which means you can probably go for cute-ass lunch dates on campus.”

  “God, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Adrian growled, mostly because the very idea of it made something warm flare to life in his belly and he didn’t want that. Not now. Not ever. He’d just gotten himself to a place he was stable enough to finish his degree and get to working on his own life. He was in the School of Business, and he was currently working with the University on a project proposal to make campuses more accessible for students with mobility issues.

  He had a lot of life plans, and an emotional upheaval could fuck him nine ways to Sunday—and not in a good way. He just didn’t have the capacity. Even if the guy had gorgeous eyes, and curls he wanted to dig his fingers into while he was shoving his dick…

  “I know that look,” Wes told him.

  “And I’m out,” Adrian said. He pushed himself to standing and reached for his crutches, leaving his cane behind. On low impact days he didn’t need a lot of assistance, but the nerves in his legs were fucked beyond repair, literally, and going a round with Anna in the ring always left him a little more reliant. He didn’t mind so much anymore. Six years ago, when he was just trying to get on his feet again, not making steady, upward progress toward marathon running used to infuriate him.

  But six years and a lot of therapy and a lot of body acceptance and he was over it. Mostly. Tonight, he was just too tired to care. He had about seventeen hours’ worth of project research to finish and finals were just around the corner. There was something wholly exhausting in a way he hadn’t anticipated, being a mid-thirties guy on a campus full of people, most of whom weren’t even old enough to drink yet. He tried to remember that life, and remember that experience was subjective and they had every right to complain about their parents, and their bad weekends, and their break-ups. He had to constantly remind himself that life wasn’t a competition, and that he truly did feel a measure of gratitude that most of them would never have the struggles he dealt with.

  But it was hard sometimes too. Listening to them bitching about dorms and annoying roommates who left towels on the floor, “and oh my god my dorm is like one point eight miles from my first class and there’s not even a coffee cart on the way there which means I have to make my own. Like…at home.”

  Sometimes it was too much.

  “I’ll see you later,” Adrian said. He ignored Wes’ futile protest and he made his way to Anna’s office for his things. He dug around his bag and grabbed his hearing aid. It didn’t do much, the IED had fucked his left side beyond repair and all it did was allow him to hear some measure of tones on that side. It helped in traffic though, and on campus, so he used it whenever he was out in public. Hooking it over his malformed ear, he turned it on and grimaced at the muffled tones which were more uncomfortable than anything.

  With a sigh, he hooked his bag over his shoulder, then slid his arms into his crutches and began the walk out. Baum Boxing was one of the only places Adrian felt like he wasn’t being gawked at as he moved through it. Even if his own issues weren’t as prominent as some others, the crutches always drew the eye, drew whispers, curiosity he just wasn’t ever in the mood to entertain. Outside the doors, he felt the weight of societal pressure to fit in a box that—even with a purple fucking heart and honorable discharge after eight years of service—he was supposed to fit in.

  He lingered near the entrance. He could see Anna’s class at the bags. She was standing with the guy—Noah, he’d said—and she had him by the wrist, presumably helping him with how to find the bag on his right side. Adrian was pretty sure the guy had a fake eye with the way he always turned slightly to look at things, and the way he’d missed the water bottle by a few inches. It was probably why Noah was here. Definitely not ex-military—he’d bet most of what he owned on that. But he’d suffered. He had something more than soft life inside him, and Adrian tried to ignore the draw of it.

  After a beat, Anna looked up and grinned, and Adrian hurried for the door lest Noah take notice.

  2.

  “Is it true?”

  Noah looked up from his brisk stride to see his colleague and best friend, Sabrina, making her way across the small patch of grass. She was moving quick enough, the curls of her afro bounced off her shoulder, and her eyes were narrowed and determined. He shifted his laptop bag over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows at her. “Is what true?”

  “That Ryan talked you into joining a boxing gym?” She gave him a scrutinizing once-over with her narrowed hazel eyes. “You don’t look like anyone beat the shit out of you.”

  He snorted a laugh, shaking his head as he continued toward the far end of campus where he could find a quiet place to get coffee in the old Student Union no one used anymore. “It was a beginner’s kickboxing class. There was no sparring. And yes, it’s true. And actually, the bag kind of did kick my ass a little bit. There was a lot of moving around and I had a hard time with my depth perception, but the teacher was really good.”

  Anna had lived up to her reputation. She’d taught him to anticipate the recoil of the bag so when it swung on his blind side, he could anticipate where it would land and make contact instead of getting hit. It had taken most of the class to keep from falling on his ass, but by the end he felt more confident.

  “And Ryan did that. Ryan,” Sabrina pressed. She grabbed his arm and stopped him from going further. “Are you two…”

  “Jesus, no,” he said hurriedly. “Trust me, that is never going to happen again.”

  She dropped her arm. “Look, you know I’d try not to judge you if you did, and I know I’ve been kind of harsh about your friendship with him after what he put you through, but you have to understand where I’m coming from here.”

  Noah didn’t have it in him to point out that Ryan had been the only one there for him right after the accident. Sabrina and her wife Esther had been in Europe on a student abroad program and there wasn’t much they could do for the four months it took until it was over. When they got back, Esther took a job with admin had attempted to take over Noah’s care, but by then Ryan had gotten Noah through the worst of it.

  He’d been fitted for his prosthetic eye by then, and his occupational and speech therapy had him close to where he’d been before the accident. He still stuttered from time to time, and the vertigo had never really gone away, but he had been back on his feet and was able to explain to them that he felt good about being able to get through it mostly on his own.

  Sabrina, who had comforted him through the break-up with Ryan, had been less than pleased Noah had let the guy back into his life so readily, but she accepted it. She still worried that Noah would get hurt again, but Noah’s feelings for Ryan had settled into something careful and friendly.

  “It’s actually a really good place. It uh…it caters to disabled vets, mostly,” he said, shrugging and shuffling his feet on the pavement. “The owner is one, and this boxer I met there who helped me with my hand-wraps.”

  Her eyes took on a light he did not want to see. “Oh really…”

  “Don’t,” he said with a groan, pressing his hand to his forehead.

  She sighed and patted his arm, letting him know she would let it go. For now. “Oh, before I forget, Charlie was looking for you earlier. Did he find you?”

  Noah felt his heart speed up a little, and not in the good way it had done when he was thinking about Adrian. The back of his neck prickled with anxiety at the mention of the assistant professor—the one vying to be the next department head in Classics. Charlie Barnes had been working at the University for ten years. He’d taught a couple of Noah’s grad school lectures and had taken a shine to him during those years. He’d even written a letter of recommendation for when Noah applied to work in the department and had not-so-subtly credited himself as the reason Noah was employed there. And, it was becoming more and more obvious, Charlie wanted something more than professional. More than friendship. It had sta
rted simple, invites to coffee, sitting together in meetings. But eventually Charlie had gained confidence and started asking Noah out. In the beginning, Noah had his relationship with Ryan as an excuse, then after that, the split and not being ready. After the accident, Charlie had eyed him warily, but when Noah had come back much like his former self, Charlie had also started to get a little familiar. Noah was running out of reasons to avoid the guy, and it made him nervous. There was just something about him that didn’t sit right.

  “He didn’t, and I really don’t have it in me to find another excuse why I can’t go out for drinks with him,” Noah said tiredly.

  Sabrina gave his arm a gentle pat. “That bad, huh?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it,” Noah admitted. He just did not have the energy.

  Sabrina gave him a grin. “So, that boxing class, one of the ways to blow off steam? With a cute guy, maybe?”

  “It was a good class,” Noah said, feeling weirdly defensive, “and I liked it, and I’ll probably use up all the passes Ryan got me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have three finals to start writing, and a stack of essays to mark, and I need some caffeine.”

  “Fine,” she said, dragging the word out, “but this isn’t over. I’ve seen that look before Noah, and it’s been a damn long time, too. You’re not getting off that easy.”

  He wanted to point out he hadn’t been getting off at all in recent days, but that would only start her up again and he didn’t have time. Hooking his bag up higher on his shoulder, he hurried along the pavement, dodging traffic as he crossed the street, then headed into the old building.

  He appreciated the university hadn’t shut the old student union down, instead throwing in a bagel shop, a little market, and a diner for anyone who wanted something more peaceful than the University Mall chaos. It was mostly staff who didn’t have offices to speak of, and the occasional student having a breakdown over the work load.