In the Middle of Somewhere (41 page)

“Fuck, baby,” he moans against my neck, and he slides out of me in a rush of heat, leaving me feeling empty in his wake.

I feel wrung out, my opening still spasming a little as Rex’s come slides out of me. I have the absent thought that I should find that disgusting, but actually it’s really hot to feel evidence of his pleasure still inside me.

Rex spins me around and pulls me to him, kissing my mouth. I put my arms around his neck and kiss him passionately, trying to communicate how good he made me feel.

Our kisses turn lazy and we get out of the shower shakily, our eyes meeting in the mirror as we pull our clothes back on. It’s only as we leave the bathroom that I realize we didn’t even wash our hair or anything. Not that I could possibly care about that now. I’m so warm and satisfied, as if Rex fucked the stress right out of me.

In fact, I’m in such a postorgasmic haze that I barely notice Rex asking if I want breakfast, just mindlessly trailing after him into the kitchen.

“I need to do laundry and go to the store,” I say, half to myself. “I haven’t done anything but grade all week and I have no clean clothes, nothing to eat at my house.”

“You can do it here, if you want,” Rex offers, pushing a mug of coffee I didn’t see him make toward me across the counter. I sink onto one of the stools to drink it and immediately change my mind as my tender ass meets the hard wood.

Rex must see my wince because he kisses me in a way that would be creepy and possessive if he were someone else but, because he’s Rex, is possessive and hot.

“Okay,” I say. “If you don’t mind. I’ll go to the store and drop my stuff off, then grab my laundry and bring it back?”

“Sounds good,” Rex says. He’s looking at me closely and his eyes are soft.

“What?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing.” He shakes his head and kisses me on the cheek. “You want some breakfast before you go?”

I shake my head and go change back into my gross, dirty clothes from yesterday.

“Okay,” I tell Rex. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

He smiles and kisses me, his hand falling to rest on Marilyn’s head, where he strokes her absently.

My phone rings as I close the door behind me, and I grab for it, assuming it’s Ginger, since no one else really calls me except Rex. But it isn’t Ginger; it’s Sam.

“Listen, Dan,” Sam says when I pick up. His voice sounds thick and weird. Nasal. “Pop’s gone.”

“What?” I ask stupidly.

“Pop’s dead,” Sam says, and it sounds like he might be crying. I’m not sure. I’ve never heard him cry.

“What do you mean?” I ask. I’ve read about this in books but never experienced it: the feeling of being unable to process a simple sentence even when you know what all the words mean. Vaguely, I wonder if this is what Rex feels like when he tries to read—grasping after meaning and finding only nonsense.

“Damn it, Dan, Pop’s dead,” Sam says, as if I’m being intentionally obtuse. “He had a heart attack and died.”

“When?” I hear myself ask, as if at the other end of a tunnel.

“Yesterday.”

Momentarily, fury pushes aside some of the fog in my head. Yesterday. I look at my watch. It’s almost noon.

“Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”

Sam’s talking, but I barely hear him. There’s a roaring in my ears so loud that I look around, wondering if someone’s riding a motorcycle down the street outside Rex’s house.

“Dan! Dan?”

“What,” I say.

“Did you fucking hear me?”

“No,” I say.

“I said you don’t have to come if you’re busy or something, but—”

“Are you fucking crazy? Of course I’m coming. I’m leaving now.”

I close my phone and slide it into my pocket, staring at the snow-heavy branches of the fir tree next to the driveway. Little lumps of snow drop off it onto the hood of my car as the wind sways its boughs. It’s beautiful. When it snows in Philly the trees are all bare.

I jump when I feel a hand on my arm.

“Hey,” Rex says, “I thought you were going to—baby, what’s wrong?”

“What?” I ask.

“You were just standing out here. What’s wrong?” Rex cups my face and I try to blink away the weird black spots at the edges of my vision.

“Um,” I say. “Um. My dad died. I have to go home now.”

“Oh no,” Rex breathes, and he looks so sad.

“I have to go home,” I say again, fumbling for my keys.

“Let me just grab my keys and I’ll drive you,” Rex says.

“No, I mean I need to go
home
. To Philly.”

But of course my damn car won’t turn over. I pop the hood and start automatically going through the list of things that are usually wrong with it. Honestly, there’s no way the thing is going to last the winter. It started okay for me yesterday, but now it’s just dead.

“Fuck,” I say, kicking at the tire.

“Baby,” Rex says, coming back outside with his keys. I shrug him off and slam the hood. Rex reaches out a hand to me. “Let me drive you,” he says.

“No, Rex, I need to go home, now.”

“I know,” he says. “You need to go to Philadelphia. But your car’s dead and you’re in no condition to drive anyway. A last-minute flight will be very expensive. I don’t have any jobs lined up this week. Let me drive you home. Let me help you take care of everything.”

Let me help you. Let me help you. This is it. This is the moment that everything we’ve talked about has been leading to. Either I trust Rex enough to let him help me or I don’t.

“I can’t ask you to—” I start to say.

“You didn’t ask. Daniel, look at me.”

Rex pulls my chin up. I can’t quite breathe.

“Baby,” he says again. “I’m so sorry. Please, let me help.”

I nod, and Rex is in action immediately. He puts me in his truck, starts the ignition to get some heat, and runs inside. He’s back five minutes later, carrying a duffel bag and thanking someone on the phone. He hangs up and gets in the car.

“Okay,” he says.

We pull up in front of my apartment and Rex leads me to the door. I look up at him, confused.

“You need to grab some clothes,” Rex says. Right. Of course.

Fortunately, I think I have some clean underwear and a pair of jeans that aren’t too dirty. I start to put things in a backpack robotically. Rex runs his hand over the wood of the kitchen table he built, which is currently home to stacks of library books.

“Daniel?”

Has he been calling my name?

“Huh?” I say.

“It’s freezing in here.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I can try and turn it up.”

“No, baby, we’re not staying. I just meant…. Never mind,” he says, and crosses to me. He brushes my hair out of my eyes. “Do you have a suit?” he asks gently.

I stare at him, unsure why I would need a suit. Rex clears his throat.

“For the, um, the funeral?”

Right. The funeral. What a strange word. Fyooneruhl. Not very many words with an f and then a long U-sound. Future. Fuchsia. Fumarole. Fugue.

“Daniel?”

I take my only suit out of the closet and roll it up into my backpack. I add my toothbrush and toothpaste to the bag.

“Do I have to do something with the pipes?” I ask Rex. “So they don’t freeze or something?”

“We can call your landlord and let him deal with it.”

“What about Marilyn?” I ask, suddenly remembering the dog.

“I called Will. He’s going to take care of her. Is there anything you need to see to at school?”

I shake my head. I submitted grades before I went to Rex’s the night before and I’d dropped the essays off in the main office.

“Okay,” Rex says, and as we walk back out into the Michigan snow, I have the strangest feeling that it’s the last time I’ll ever see my apartment. But of course that’s ridiculous.

I
T
TURNS
out that Rex is one of those people who know how to get places. He has an atlas in the truck, and I ask him if he wants me to look up directions, but he says he doesn’t need me to. For the first few hours, I keep expecting him to ask me to check something, but he never does. Rex doesn’t talk to me, for which I’m grateful. I have no words right now and to demand any of me would be cruel. I can’t even answer no when he asks if I’m hungry. I know I should offer to take a turn driving, but when I gesture vaguely at the steering wheel, Rex just shakes his head and squeezes my knee.

I’m not sure if I sleep or not, but it’s been dark for hours before I notice. Rex gets off the highway in Youngstown and the Springsteen song starts playing in my head. Good song. We pull into the parking lot of a motel.

“Are we stopping?” I croak.

Rex nods. I bite my tongue. I want to keep going, but Rex has been driving all day and he must be tired.

In the room, Rex tells me he’s going to go get some food and starts the shower for me. It feels like it’s been months since we showered together this morning. I get into the shower like he says. I have the strongest memory of the week my mother died. I didn’t quite understand at first, but when I realized she was never coming back I started to make a wish when the clock turned to 11:11. A kid at school had told me that if you wished on 11:11 it would definitely come true. I would stay up late so that I could make the wish twice a day, that whole week. I wished for my mom to come back and my dad to be gone instead.

Rex opens the door and the water has gone cold. Again, I haven’t even washed my hair.

“Come here, love,” Rex says.

“Sorry,” I mutter. “I think the hot water’s gone.”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

Rex has laid out Subway sandwiches on the small table by the window.

“I got you turkey,” he says, but I’m not hungry. I shake my head and lie down on the big bed.

“Daniel, you haven’t eaten anything all day. I know you’re not hungry, but you need to eat. Just a little.” I close my eyes. “Please,” Rex says, and when I open my eyes I see how tired he looks. How worried. About me, I guess.

I nod and haul myself up again. Rex is clearly starving because he finishes his sandwich in about two minutes. I take a bite and it tastes like glue. When I try to swallow, it’s like I’ve never eaten before. The sensation is so strange. Like a brick has lodged itself in my stomach. I take another bite and chew until it’s paste, hoping it’ll just slide down. I swallow it, but on the third bite my mouth refuses to open. I know I’ll throw up if I try.

“Sorry,” I say, and push the sandwich across the table to Rex.

“We can save it for later,” he says, but I shake my head quickly. Just the idea of eating it later, slick turkey clinging to moist bread, makes my stomach heave.

“You eat it,” I say. Rex hesitates, but he’s obviously still hungry and acquiesces. It’s gone in minutes.

I’m aware of Rex’s eyes on me and I dread the moment when he asks how I’m doing, when I have to find some words—pull them up from where they’re roiling in my stomach along with those two bites of sandwich.

But he doesn’t say anything, just cleans up the trash and lies down on one side of the bed, flicking the TV on and flipping channels until he gets to the Food Network. I wander into the bathroom and brush my teeth, hoping to get rid of the taste of the sandwich. I wish I hadn’t slept so much last night because all I want to do now is fall into bed and sleep forever.

Rex has one arm behind his head, his biceps bulging under his head. I crawl onto the bed and kiss the smooth muscle. He stretches his arm out, making a space for me to lie against him. On screen, a group of little kids are chopping, frying, slicing, and mixing like professionals. I relax a little bit, and Rex cradles me in his arm.

“Daniel,” he says, and I tense, expecting the inevitable questions. “I’ll do anything you need, okay? Anything.” His voice is low, intense, and I can tell he means it.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m okay. This is good.”

Rex must have tucked me under the covers because when I wake up screaming they’re tangled around me and at first I think they’re the bricks falling on me, crushing me. Then something really is crushing me. Rex gathers me in his arms, stroking my back and whispering nonsense, trying to soothe me back to sleep.

W
HEN
I
see the first signs for Philadelphia, I feel a rush of joy. And, even if it’s under terrible circumstances, my first glimpse of the skyline makes me smile. Rex squeezes my knee.

“Can you tell me where to go from here?”

“Yeah. Oh shit, I never called Ginger.” Oh well. She won’t mind if we just show up.

I give Rex directions to my dad’s place. It’s surreal to be driving down these streets with Rex. I have him park in the alley outside the shop to make sure no one smashes his windows, but when we get out of the truck, I can’t make my feet move. Rex comes around to the passenger side and hovers next to me. I’ve begun to get used to this, his constant presence, strong and warm and calm, lending support but asking nothing of me.

I look up at him, trying to drink in as much of him as I can before going inside. His hair has gotten long, I realize all of a sudden, and it waves around his face, intensifying the shadows under his cheekbones and highlighting his strong jaw. He’s fucking perfect and I have no idea how I got so lucky. All I want is to cling to the way he’s looking at me for a few seconds longer before the illusion that I’m someone worth spending time with is shattered.

“Look,” I say, running my hand along his side. “Whatever stupid shit my brothers say, don’t listen to them, okay? They’re assholes, I know. I just don’t… don’t want you to think that I’m like them.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he says gently.

“Probably.”

“Come here.”

Rex kisses me, so softly, so sweetly that it makes me want to cry. Because what has he done these last few days if not proved that he knows me?

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

We walk in through the shop entrance and the smell of oil and hot metal and rust is so familiar it makes my head spin. The shop’s not open, of course, but it’s a smell that never goes away. It’s what my dad and my brothers always smell like, no matter how often they shower.