The familiar voice took his attention from the bright bell peppers in his hand. Chico raised his head and let out a startled breath when Rafael Winters was in front of him.
Despite his words, Rafael wasn’t looking at Chico. He had on a T-shirt and a pair of thin gray sweatpants that should have made him seem like a sloppy mess. Instead he looked comfortable and casual and healthy, like a man who had worked out on his Sunday morning and then headed down to the farmer’s market for honey and lettuce or whatever dancers ate.
Possibly Chico was confusing starving movie ballerinas with real dancers. Or possibly not. Either way he’d bet Rafael Winters didn’t consider ice cream a meal.
“Ran out on you?” Chico repeated, struggling to bring his eyes up from the glimpse of sweatpants dick he might get, and trying to recall what Rafael was talking about. He looked over at the kid working the stall, some farmer’s kid, probably, no longer as bored as she’d been a moment ago.
Chico tossed his head and took a gulp of his latte in an effort to wake up his dormant brain.
Rafael turned to face him while also shaking out the reusable canvas bag on his wrist. He smiled—kindly, Chico thought—until he glanced at the girl again. “He didn’t even tell me his name, Ruthie.”
He managed to sound heartbroken.
Chico’s jaw dropped. “I was looking at peppers,” he said, possibly the dumbest thing that had ever come out of his mouth. So he frowned and straightened up—something that only made him feel tinier. “You already knew my name. Don’t act like you weren’t just using me for my body.”
Ruthie went
ooh
like a child on the schoolyard watching a fight, but Rafael cracked a smile and laughed a second later. His gaze swept up and down Chico’s body from his sneakers to his jeans to his sleeveless T-shirt, and settled with warm approval on Chico’s face. “It’s true,” Rafael admitted, almost sadly, to Ruthie, although his eyes stayed on Chico. “Before he ran out like Cinderella, I used him as a dancing dummy, even though he kept trying to tell me he wasn’t there for the class.”
Chico opened his eyes wider, then glanced away.
“Anyway,” Rafael went on in the silence that followed, “I’ll take these.” He picked out a few tomatoes and one yellow onion while Chico fidgeted with his paper cup and pretended to care about peppers. “Have you met Chico, by the way?” he asked, while Ruthie got his change for him.
Chico raised his head again. Ruthie smiled politely at him, clearly not caring about meeting new people or anything outside of her own world. Teenagers had the best fake smiles. Chico was amused despite himself. No pressure with self-centered teens. He nodded at her and smiled back, pointing to the peppers he wanted. What the hell he was going to do with them, he had no idea. But he had them.
“That’s the most excited I’ve ever seen anyone get about peppers,” Rafael commented as he stuffed his onion in his bag. “Except for that chef on TV with the yellow hair and the goatee.”
“I…” Chico closed his eyes for a moment, then lifted his gaze. “It’s the first time I’ve thought about cooking in a while.” He pressed his lips into a thin line while he considered his next words. “Your class was fun. Please don’t be insulted that I didn’t stay.”
“I was. But now I’m not.” Rafael gave him that cinnamon-coffee smile, the one that warmed Chico from the inside out.
Chico nearly forgot his change and glared a bit when Ruthie left it on the tabletop. She smirked at him, clearly enjoying how obviously flustered he was in Rafael’s presence.
He focused back on Rafael. “So you knew I wasn’t supposed to be there the whole time?”
“Nah. Not until later, when I thought about it.” Rafael shook his head. “Every so often, we get really shy students at those classes, and I thought you were one of them.”
“That explains the extra encouragement,” Chico realized out loud. Rafael tilted his head, as though Chico wasn’t making sense. Chico explained himself, sounding as shy as Rafael thought he was. “You’re a good teacher. It’s no wonder the class was full. I didn’t want to be there at first, but I stayed anyway.”
“Thank you!” Rafael put a hand over his heart, then turned away from Ruthie’s stall. Chico took a step to follow him. “You should know my father is normally the one who teaches the intro classes, but he’s had a summer bug, so I’ve been filling in. The compliment is appreciated.”
Chico recalled Rafael was the teacher in a family of professional dancers. He might not get a lot of compliments.
“Then what do you teach?” He frowned to think that, if he had signed up for a ballroom class to meet people, he would have ended up being taught by some probably intimidating, well-known dancer.
“After the big recital? I’ll be handling the regular practices as well as the evening ballroom classes for the tourists. Basically everything but tap, hip-hop—don’t ask—the dreaded yoga, and the introductory lessons.” Rafael lowered his voice. “My mother brought in the yoga because people in town asked, and she adores the yoga instructor, but it’s not dance, and she refuses to admit she enjoys it. She acts like it’s a dirty word.” Rafael stopped, and Chico realized only then that they had been slowly walking past the stalls together. “I’m so sorry. You don’t know my name, do you? Small town. I forget sometimes everyone doesn’t already know everything about me.” He wiped his palm on his thigh and held out his hand. “I’m Rafael Winters.”
“Yes. I know.” Chico ducked his head but accepted his hand. The sun and this man had him so warm. It wasn’t fair. He was supposed to be taking it easy, not getting aroused and embarrassed on a sunbaked sidewalk in full view of anyone with eyes.
Rafael let out another small, pleased laugh. “Small towns can take some getting used to, can’t they? I hope it’s not too overwhelming. You haven’t been around much.”
Chico dropped his hand. He’d been hoping they wouldn’t have to mention his near-breakdown during his arrival in town, or whatever it was people thought they knew about him.
He sighed. “I don’t know what Davi’s said, but I’m doing fine.” His cousin wasn’t a blabbermouth, but Brandywine
was
only six streets. Rumor was bound to be a thing.
Rafael studied him, scratching at his chin. “Davi hasn’t said anything except in response to what I asked after you arrived in town.” He put his hand out reassuringly when Chico froze. “Davi and I talk a lot. We’re neighbors. And Davi likes to say small town queers have to stick together.” He offered Chico a little smile that made Chico take a breath and nod and then finally smile in return.
“Okay,” he agreed, willing to believe Davi hadn’t told everyone his business and aware that Rafael had no reason to pry anyway. He might be interested, in a way. As he’d pointed out, this was a small town, and his pool of potential gay friends, much less lovers, was equally small. At least during every season but summer.
“Maybe someday I’ll be ready for one of those classes,” Chico added. “Davi has been after me to get out of the house more, meet people. That’s why I was at your studio.” He rolled his shoulders at the memory because his body wanted him to do
something
. “He wants me to volunteer to help with your, uh, recital performance. Everyone here seems very involved in local events and everything. It’s nice.” Rafael’s gaze was steady and encouraging. Chico looked around at the stalls and coffee cart but couldn’t stop himself from saying more. “I don’t know what he thinks I can do to help, though. I’m… well… kind of a mess, all around. Oh God. You don’t need to know all that. Shit.”
He pulled in a deep breath and held his bag to his chest. “Anyway. If I’m here later on, maybe I’ll work up the nerve to take a class. For real this time, without crashing it. It felt—” He heard himself going breathless and ended that right there. “Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough.”
Rafael drew his eyebrows together. They were nice, fine eyebrows, elegant somehow, like everything about him and his family. He had the feeling Rafael might not worry about which fork to use at a dinner party or obsess over vinyl records for the “perfect” sound, but he’d bring wine and flowers to meet the parents and be unruffled at being handed a small child to babysit and would actually know what he was talking about if someone asked him about opera or musical theater, and if he didn’t, he would say so instead of getting defensive.
“Maybe someday,” Rafael echoed him, his tone polite but cooler than it had been a moment ago. He nodded toward one of the stalls selling apples and pears and some walnuts. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish my shopping.” His posture was so correct Chico lifted his chin, but that still left him several inches shorter.
“Oh. Oh right.” Chico nodded because they both had shopping to do, and they didn’t need to do it together. Of course they didn’t. He’d already followed Rafael around the tiny farmer’s market like a lost lamb. How embarrassing.
He made himself stay still as Rafael moved away. Rafael gave him one last smile, kind but distracted, and then Chico dropped his gaze to the ground.
The first rule of meeting people was not to dump your baggage on them, and here Chico had basically done it twice. Naturally, Rafael wanted nothing to do with him. Chico should be content with that. It proved what he’d been trying to tell Davi; he was not ready to be out in the world.
He listened to Rafael greeting the fruit seller, then grabbed his bag even tighter and turned to head back home.
IT WAS
Sunday and a day off. Chico lay in bed with his old laptop, playing episode after episode of a show about how things were made and then, after a while, switched it to episodes of
Project Runway
.
His mom called, but he let it go to voice mail since he had nothing to tell her. Friends from the city were doing fun Sunday things and letting everyone online know. He noted each update with vague curiosity until it was time for bed.
Then the next morning he got up and drove in to work.
He was back in bed that afternoon when Davi stormed in, using his key like a pushy landlord.
“I’m not going to ask why there are two peppers on your kitchen table along with two empty cartons of ice cream. Just get up already.”
“Davi.” Chico buried his face beneath a pillow. “I already went out to encounter other humans. It didn’t work. Leave me alone.”
“Oh yeah? Who did you encounter?” Davi went quiet at the idea, then grunted and seemed to forget it. “It didn’t work because you’ve forgotten how to talk to people. It takes practice, like anything else. Come on. Get up, loser. We’re going volunteering.”
Chico rolled over, although he kept his face under his pillow… which smelled a little. He needed to do laundry. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because they need the help.” Davi had to be deliberately misunderstanding him. “Get up. And take a shower. Yuck.”
“It doesn’t matter what I smell like, Davi,” Chico argued, but slid part of his body toward the side of the bed. He put his feet on the floor without his head leaving the pillow.
“Remember when you washed my hair for me after I got out of the hospital, so I could feel human again?” Davi was gruff. “It matters.”
Chico heaved a sigh and pulled the pillow away. “I’m not… I don’t think I should go into the dance studio again.”
“Are you about to tell me again that painting a stupid background canvas for a kids’ play is too difficult for you?” Davi threw away the ice cream cartons and put the peppers in Chico’s very bare fridge. “You can’t actually ask junior high and high school kids to do that stuff. They’re only focused on the dancing. And their parents are practically show parents. Half of them are there for their kids because the kids like the dancing. They don’t understand the fuss. The other half, from what I can tell, are the obsessed kind who chose this school for what it could offer their little angels. They’re the worst, and they get nothing done. Come on. My first year up here, I did it and I survived. Chico,” he drew out the name in a whine. “Don’t make me go alone. The yoga…. Don’t make me go alone.”
“That yoga teacher….” Chico arched an eyebrow and sat up. “She’s adorable, I hear.”
“Shut up and get dressed.” Davi could almost stand up straighter than Rafael when he wanted.
“Why are we really doing this?” Chico asked for the third time and gave his cousin a direct stare.
Davi made a face, as though the answer was obvious. “To get our lonely asses out of the house.”
That was honest, brutally so. But strangely, it didn’t hurt. Davi was right. Chico had never been a social butterfly, but he was used to people and family and conversation.
He could do this.
“Okay.” Chico stood up on wobbly legs to head to the shower, then paused and turned back. He could do this, but it was still scary as hell. “But don’t leave me alone, okay? I need help.”
“As long as you can admit it,” Davi teased, but softly. “Now come the fuck on.”
CHICO CAME
the fuck on. He put on jeans and a paisley purple button-up shirt that he loved unironically and that John had always disliked for that reason. He brushed his hair. He even put his rings back on.
Once outside, he hesitated and then walked as slowly as possible to the scene of the crime, if the crime were Chico’s attempts to interact with a nice man.
He needn’t have worried. The group of volunteers met in a back room away from any dancers, and they quickly decided Chico could help paint the background scenes without any contribution required from Chico himself. Davi almost said something about that but then let it go. Probably being considerate of Chico’s desire to stay comfortably out of sight.
It wasn’t so bad. The part of the studio Chico hadn’t seen before was a huge room of waxed and polished wood floors, mirrored walls, and a series of closets where costumes from past recitals were kept. The room had a few benches along one wall, a piano, and a few hooks by the doors, overflowing with sweatshirts.
The french doors he’d noticed before opened out from this room. He walked through them and out into the grass, where the other volunteers had set up tarps and the large rolls of canvas with the required scenery already drawn onto them. Basically, his job was like paint by numbers, and it was boring, but he got to sit down on the grass.