Cool

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2“Dude, you look different!”

Dan and Casey started with a fist bump that wound up as a hug.

“Yeah?” Casey held Dan at arm’s length and studied his face. “Man, you do, too. I hope you made him pay for all that damage.”

Dan chuckled. “Actually, it was three guys. And wasn’t your hair blond?”

“Yeah. I stopped bleaching it when I gave up fighting.”

* * * *

After the big decision was made, Dan had quit his job at Kroger. He’d had an emotional farewell with Cheryl.

“If you don’t email me, I’ll come up there and make you sorry, kiddo.”

“I promise I’ll stay in touch, okay?”

He’d moved back in with his parents, though he managed to be out most of the time when they were home. His high school friends had all gone on to college or the military, so he had no one to hang out with. He spent a lot of time working out and taking long walks. The movies, too, enabled him to be out of the house. It wasn’t as if there was any hostility at the Cole household. But there was a distinct awkwardness whenever he was around either parent, especially his mother. She never actually said, “I told you so,” but she managed to convey the thought repeatedly. Or so it seemed to Dan.

He applied to and was accepted at Colby State University. Despite the fact that his folks were among the school’s most loyal and ardent alumni, he’d never visited the campus.

He was informed that, because of his age and life experience, he was exempt from the University’s requirement that all first-year students live in one of the dormitories. And included with that letter was a list of people who rented apartments or rooms to students. It was several pages long. There was a disclaimer at the bottom which said the University made no promises that these individuals actually had living accommodations available at any given time.

Although he was faced with the problem of finding a place to live, he thought he might have an ace in the hole. One of his first fights had been against a guy from Cleveland named Casey Shaw, who had given Dan his first loss. But afterward Casey had invited Dan to go for a beer with him. Dan went along, though he had to have a cola because he wasn’t old enough to have a beer. He’d grumbled that he was a professional MMA fighter but couldn’t buy a beer in Ohio.

But he liked Casey. They were the same height and weight. Whereas Dan had dirty blond hair and blue eyes, he remembered Casey having hair so light it was almost platinum and striking dark brown eyes. They’d gotten along so well they’d exchanged email addresses when their evening was over. And they’d kept in touch. Dan knew that Casey had given up fighting a while back and was now a student at Colby State.

So he emailed Casey.

That evening a year and a half earlier when Casey and Dan had been having their own after party, Casey had asked if Dan had a fighting nickname.

“You know, like Brandon ‘The Truth’ Vera or Mike ‘Quick’ Swick.”

“No, never thought of it.”

Casey had grinned and Dan’s pulse speeded up perceptibly. “How about Cool? Dan ‘Cool’ Cole?”

“‘Cool’ doesn’t sound very scary,” Dan had replied, and the conversation had turned to other things.

But Casey had always called him Cool in his emails. So Dan wasn’t surprised when his friend responded:

Cool, Cool! So you’re coming to Colby. Why don’t you get your ass up here so we can find you a place to live? Problem is, I’ve got summer classes. Could you come on a weekend? If you come Saturday you can crash with me and go back to Cincinnati the next day.

In fact, I’ve got an idea I wanna try out on ya.

Just about any weekend will do, but the sooner the better. Let me know, huh?

Casey

One of the things he and Casey had not talked about in the bar that evening was s****l orientation. He’d suspected Casey was gay, but he hadn’t known how to bring up the topic. And he didn’t want to alienate the guy if he was straight.

Whatever. Even though Casey had bested him in their match, he’d liked Casey, and their exchange of emails had been casual, friendly, comfortable. So he emailed back and said he’d drive to Colby that weekend.

Saturday morning came and he left for Colby. His mother wasn’t up yet when he breakfasted, but his father came downstairs and gave him a hug.

“Do you have your VISA card?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“What about your check book? You’ll probably need that to pay your rent deposit and first month’s rent.”

“Got it.”

“What about cash? Do you have enough for this weekend?”

“Yeah, Dad, I think so.”

They hugged.

“Dad…thanks.”

“Drive carefully, Danny. See you sometime Sunday, right?”

“Right.”

As he drove north on 75, Dan suspected he should be more excited. He was about to leave Cincinnati, making a new start. But he’d left his parents’ house in Loveland two years earlier, had supposedly made a new start when he began his MMA training. And look where that had gotten him.

This was a second chance, his father had suggested, and he should make the most of it. But he’d never been much interested in his classes. He’d been able to get B’s in most of them without doing a lot of studying. He’d dated, partly for cover, partly to figure out whether he was really gay or just going through an adolescent phase. He’d gone to ball games, dances, parties. Smoked a little weed, though he was serious enough about his conditioning not to do that often. And he hadn’t had a whiff of the stuff since he’d started at Tom’s academy.

So here he was. Again, according to his father, facing a world of possibilities. But he couldn’t imagine what they were. Except that he was sure he wasn’t going to hide who he was. Even if it meant alienating Casey, he was going to find out how to hook up with the gay community at Colby. He’d heard that Colby was the most open of the many state universities in Ohio so far as the LGBT crowd was concerned.

He found himself daydreaming about studly college guys, but the heavy traffic forced him to concentrate on his driving.

* * * *

They were having lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s.

Casey had chosen the salad bar. “Gotta be careful about too many greasy burgers and fries.”

Dan, feeling liberated from the regimen he’d followed while in training, felt a little guilty for ordering a burger and fries.

“So, the blond hair was just a thing while you were fighting?” he asked, to change the subject.

“Yeah. It was something one of the other guys I trained with suggested. I always thought the almost-white hair looked weird with my brown eyes.”

“At least you didn’t color it green or blue or purple.”

“Maybe you had to be a better fighter than I was to get away with that.”

“Seems to me like you were pretty good.”

“Nah, man. I was just lucky to get you when you were a newbie. I could see you had a lot of promise.”

“Right. Look how long my career lasted.”

“Well, maybe we both outgrew that shit.”

“If I’d had Randy Couture’s abilities, I might have stayed with it into my forties.”

Casey rested his forearms on the table, fork still in hand. “Do you really think you would have liked that life for another twenty years?”

Dan wondered if Frank would have kept on f*****g him all that time. Not if I was as good as Couture! He shook his head.

“Well, I’m here and all that’s behind me. Right now, I’ve gotta find a place to live.”

“That might not be a problem.”

“What do you mean, Case?”

Casey put down his fork, took a swallow of water, and leaned back on the banquette. “I’ve just rented a two-bedroom apartment. I’ve had it with dorm life! Do you know I had my fuckin’ laptop stolen out of my room earlier this summer? And the dorm’s noisy. I’ve got two years’ worth of credits from Tri-C, but I lived with my grandmother. It just never occurred to me a dorm would be such a zoo. Compared to the guys I trained with, the guys in the dorm are just animals.”

“That surprises you? Didn’t you ever watch The Ultimate Fighter on TV?”

“Sure I did. But…Well, I don’t know. I just thought college guys would be more considerate, more civilized.”

“So, you have an apartment. What’s it like?”

Casey grinned. “How’d you like to see it?”

Dan finished his cola. “Sounds good. Whenever you’re ready.”

* * * *

The apartment was on a shady street in an older residential section of Colby, about ten minutes from campus by car. The converted ground floor of a big old house, it had a lot of space. With two large bedrooms, a living room, a recently updated bathroom and eat-in kitchen, it looked great to Dan. The furniture was old but clean.

“This looks great, Casey. You’re lucky. But I don’t imagine I could afford a place like this. Does your landlord have any one-bedroom apartments?”

“Dude, I can’t afford this place either unless I find a roommate, someone to share the rent. That’s why I brought you here.”

“You’re asking me to be your roomie?”

“Well, there’d be some conditions.”

“Such as?”

“You’d pay half of the rent and utilities.”

“Okay.”

“I’m gonna be bussing tables four times a week, so you’d have the place to yourself those evenings. But the landlord said we’d be kicked out if we had wild parties. Some guy who’s on the faculty lives upstairs.”

Dan grinned. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I’m also kind of a neat freak. I couldn’t live with a slob.”

“I’m kind of that way, too.”

“If you’ve got a guy in your room, keep the door shut, and I won’t bother you. And I’ll expect the same consideration.”

“Okay…Wait a minute! A guy? You think I’m gay?”

“Come off it, man. Are you telling me you’re not?”

“How’d you know?”

“I dunno. I just knew. I knew that evening we went out after our fight.”

“You never said anything.”

“Sorry. I just assumed we’d recognized that about each other.”

Dan took a deep breath and blew it out. This was big. Ever since Casey had suggested they share the apartment, he’d been thinking he owed it to his new roomie to tell him the truth. How great it would be to have a guy who not only knew the ropes around Colby but who wouldn’t be hung up over his being gay!

“I, um, I think it would be great to share this with you. Are you sure you want to?”

Casey grinned, his dark eyes sparkling. “Well, I took you down once. I figure if you get out of line I can do it again. And let’s agree that if either of us is unhappy at the end of the fall term, you’ll move out.”

“Well, it is your place.”

Casey put a fraternal arm around Dan’s shoulder and said, “Let’s say it’s our place and see how that works out.”

“Cool!”

“You’re Cool and I’m Case.”

* * * *

They spent the rest of the afternoon on a walking tour of the campus. Casey showed Dan the classroom buildings, the bookstore, the Student Union, the sports complex, and the downtown area. He pointed out Adrian’s, the restaurant where he’d be working.

“Looks like an upscale kind of place.”

“It is. The wait staff wear tuxes in the evenings, though not for lunch. And I’ll have to wear black pants, a long-sleeve white shirt, black shoes and socks, and a black bow tie.”

“How’d you get the job?”

“The head chef is a friend of mine.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh. I’ll introduce you to Albert sometime. And you’ll probably meet Adrian, too. He’s the owner. They’re both family.”

“Family? Oh, you mean they’re gay?”

“Yep.”

“Are they a couple?”

“No, Albert is alone, poor guy. Word is he had a lover, a former police detective who’s now a prof at CSU, but they broke up. Dunno why. He’s been really good to me. And Adrian has a partner. They live in the most expensive condo building in town. Each guy has his own place, but they’re lovers.”