Page 9 of Out for the Night

That meant Rafe would talk while Coop did all the work. “Fine.”

Coop grabbed the envelope from his desk. “Hey, do you have an extra stamp?”

Rafe peeled one from his book, and Coop plucked it off his finger. Rafe peered at the address. “Letter for Mom and Dad?”

Coop gazed at the envelope and felt the weight of it in his hand. “Yeah.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Coop felt the burn doing bicep curls while Rafe sat on the bench with a five-pound dumbbell in his lap.

“His name is Spencer. I love that name. We eat breakfast in the dining hall at the same time every day. He has this really sexy way of chewing his Cheerios. Like it shows off his jaw.” Rafe zoned out to picture his breakfast crush. Sweat trickled down Coop’s face.

“Rafe,” he said through clenched breaths. “Finish your damn story.”

“Right. So my plan is that when he goes up to refill his coffee, I’m going to slip an envelope with a bow tie and a note inside under his tray. The note will say ‘Find the guy in here also wearing a bow tie. He’s your new boyfriend.’ And I’ll be wearing a bow tie. And then the note will say, ‘To find out where he’s taking you on your first date, put on the bow tie.’”

Coop put down his weights. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his shirt.

“So what do you think?” Rafe asked.

“I think you need a new plan.”

“What’s wrong with this one?”

Coop walked over to the water fountain, and Rafe followed, still holding onto the five-pound weight. “Why can’t you just walk over and ask to sit with him? Or find him on Grindr?”

“Because that is not a grand romantic gesture.”

“You need to stop fixating on that.”

Ever since Rafe got dumped by this guy Mac in the fall, a guy Rafe claimed as his ex even though they only dated for a week, he’d gotten into his head that to find a boyfriend, he needed to commit to one of these over-the-top romantic gestures that only work in movies. Each time, Coop tried to steer him away from these ideas because they only led to massive embarrassment.

“They never work.”

“They will for the right guy, like my breakfast boy.”

“You said that about the guy you tried to serenade who turned out to be straight, or the guy you tried to win over with balloon animals that blew away in the breeze. You need to chill out, buddy.”

“Why?” Rafe held his dumbbell like a shake weight, which gave Coop second-hand embarrassment. “People like these grand romantic gestures. If you like somebody, you go all in.”

“Not right away.”And maybe not ever.If you put yourself so far out there, you’d never be able to find your way back. Coop returned to the weight room. He grabbed the forty-fives and lifted them over his head, wailing on his shoulders.

“You fall too hard,” Coop told him between reps. “You go from zero to his-and-his towels. You, my friend, are a goner in sixty seconds.”

“Since when is that a bad thing?” Rafe rested his chin on his dumbbell. “I can’t do the half-hearted thing like you.”

“Like me?” Coop launched his arms straight up into the air and watched his muscles bulge with pride. He still couldn’t believe the guy in the mirror was him sometimes.Hard work and determination.

“You’re all too-cool-for-school. You haven’t told me about any crushes.”

“Maybe because I’m not a thirteen-year-old girl.”

“Last fall, we got plunked into a new setting with four thousand new guys, half of whom are cute, and one-fifth of those half are gay or something adjacent.”

“One-fifth? That’s a tad optimistic.”

“None of those guys hold any interest for you? Or are you going back in the closet for yourclients?”