In the Middle of Somewhere (48 page)

“Daniel?” Will says, snapping my attention back to him. “Take care of him, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. Will shakes my hand and gets in his car. “Will,” I say, and gesture for him to roll down his window. “You’re not so bad either. Have a safe trip.” His smile is pure victory as he backs out of the driveway.

I sit down on the front step. I don’t quite understand how my life got so out of control. How did things turn so fucked-up just when I thought I was getting everything together? And why do I feel so… so fucking vulnerable?

No, not just vulnerable. I feel panicked.

It started with the phone call about my dad, sure. But, everything with Colin—I still can’t wrap my mind around it. It’s like I have to re-see my whole life—every interaction with him—through a new lens. He hasn’t called me back either, no surprise there. Then Virginia’s call….

The Temple job is everything I thought I wanted all throughout grad school. Secure, prestigious, teaching smart students, working with brilliant faculty, having the budget to bring speakers to campus, having access to great libraries and archives. It was perfect.

Last year.

And now? Now, just the idea of leaving Rex fills me with the strongest panic of all. And the look on his face when I said Temple was in Philly… he looked resigned. Like he knew it would happen. Just like Will said.

Fuck! Everything is spiraling out of control again, the way it used to when I was a fucked-up kid with no self-control who would act before thinking anything through. Only back then the sensation was thrilling, like a kite string unspooling into who knows where.

Now I just feel like I want to puke.

I go back inside to finish changing my laundry loads, but find that Rex has already done it.

“Did you?” I gesture toward the laundry when I find Rex in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he says. “Will gone?”

I nod.

“You didn’t have to,” I say.

“It’s okay,” Rex says. “You were helping him with his car. I can help you, right?”

I look around the kitchen. Rex has bread dough rising and something that smells heavenly is in the oven.

“Dinner will be ready in about an hour,” he says. “Why don’t you relax? Take a bath or something. I’m going to go to my workshop for a bit.”

My breath starts to come faster as I notice the salad dressing he’s made from scratch in the mustard jar on the counter. All I can hear is what Will just told me and Rex saying he can help me. It’s like there’s a screaming in my head that is Rex pulling the gate down, just like Will said. My heart is pounding so loud and so forcefully that I can feel it throbbing in my ears. I blink to try and wet my dry eyes, but they’re all prickly.

“Please don’t be all helpful!” I blurt out. “Don’t slam the fucking gate down and pull away!” I’m babbling. I can hear myself, but I can’t stop. I need, need, need to break through Rex’s unflappable calm.

“What?” Rex asks, puzzled, approaching me with arms out like you would a wild animal.

“Rex, Rex, please don’t!” I’m full-on panicking. My voice sounds incredibly loud even though I can feel that I’m almost whispering. I am begging Rex not to shut me out, not to give me help instead of himself, not to leave me, and he is staring at me like I’m out of my mind.

“Baby,” he says, “please. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, just calm down and talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Will said—” But I’m breathing too fast to explain. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to calm down, but all I see is that coffin, heaped with dirt, my white rose sliding over the edge of another grave, my brother clutching a bottle of pills, his fist connecting with my face. And all of it shrinks backward at only one thing: Rex. And I’m convinced I’m going to lose him.

“Daniel, Jesus,” Rex says.

He scoops me up and carries me into his bedroom. He puts me in bed and crawls in after me.

“Lie down and just breathe,” he says.

I try to breathe, but now the tears are coming too fast for me to hold them in. And this time, I know getting mad won’t do anything.

“Please don’t be helpful,” I gasp, kneeling on the bed.

“Tell me, baby. Tell me what Will said,” Rex insists, holding my face in his hands.

“He said when you think someone’s leaving you slam the gate down,” I manage to get out through my tears, “and then you’re nice, and polite, and helpful, but you’re—” I sob. “You’re not there.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Rex says. He pulls me into his lap. I am a fucking mess of tears and snot and shame.

“Please, I can’t lose you,” I tell him.

It all comes out in a rush of pain and fear and sadness, and I cling to Rex, sobbing into his chest.

“Please,” I’m saying to him over and over until I hardly know what I’m begging for anymore, only that it’s the most important word I’ve ever said.

Rex holds me, cradles me in his arms, and rocks us back and forth, stroking up and down my back and running his fingers through my hair. When I’m finally calm enough that I can breathe without hiccupping, Rex pulls away just enough to look at me.

“This is about Temple?” he asks. “You think that I expect you to leave, so now I’ll pull away like I did with Will?”

I nod frantically. Rex smooths back my hair and nods too.

“Look, we don’t have to talk about that right now, okay? We have time to figure everything out.”

His thumbs smooth my tears away and everything about him is so gentle, from his fingers on my face to the way his strong arms are holding me. And his expression is soft and open in a way I’ve never exactly seen it before.

“Daniel,” he says, stroking my face. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t you know? Don’t you know how crazy I am about you?”

My hands fist in his shirt and I stare into his eyes, blinking slowly. I guess I did know, but I never imagined he might say it.

He cradles my neck in his hand, thumb stroking my nape.

“I—I love you so much.”

He says it quietly, but it’s like a bomb going off.

I freeze. And yet, a warmth starts to bloom in my chest, melting the block of ice in my stomach. And apparently it melts it into tears, because I’m leaking again.

“You do?” I say, stupidly, which I
know
is not how this is supposed to go.

He shakes his head, like he can’t believe I don’t already know this.

“Yeah. Of course I do. How could I not?”

I throw my arms around his neck and cry into his hair. I have never cried like this in my life. Huge, surging gasps of tears that leave me feeling lighter instead of heavy, hopeful instead of desperate.

“I—I—” I start to say.

“Shh,” Rex says. “You don’t have to say it back. I know it’s hard for you and—”

What I was trying to say is that I know I’m messing this all up. But I don’t need to. Because Rex is holding me close and making the kind of promises that I could never have known how to believe before now.

He leans back, lying down slowly and taking me with him. He pulls the covers over us, enveloping us.

I feel like a washcloth that’s been wrung out, so drained I can hardly do anything except attempt to move every part of my body as close to Rex’s as possible.

“Oh god, I fucking love you,” I choke out into Rex’s neck, and I can feel his whole body electrify. “I do,” I mutter. Saying the words makes my world tilt to the side. Saying the words is the greatest jolt I’ve ever had. Rex’s arms come around me and pull me down so I’m lying on top of him and he holds me like he’s never going to let me go.

December

T
HE
NEXT
morning, I wake up in Rex’s arms feeling like days have passed. I feel floaty and spacey from crying, a sensation I’d forgotten since I last had it after my mom died. My eyes feel swollen, lashes stuck together with salt and gunk, and my head is muddled. I feel like a soft, cringing snail whose shell has been pried off. But instead of getting out of bed to shower it all away, I force myself to close my eyes and not freak out.

I name the sounds I can hear. Birds. Are the birds in the winter different? I wish I knew something about birds. The wind blowing through the pine trees just beyond the house. A sound that might be snow, but I can’t tell. The hum of the generator. Rex’s breathing. Then I move on to smells. My nose is a little stuffed up from crying and sleeping, but everything smells like Rex’s house. Homey.

Before I make it to breaking down the individual smells, though, Rex stirs next to me and I have to open my eyes to look at him. He’s so beautiful I still can’t believe that I could just reach over and touch him if I wanted to.

I don’t understand the way I feel. It’s no different than yesterday, but everything’s changed. I don’t know what kind of tether love is between us. The man lying next to me… all of his… stuff. Not belongings, but thoughts, feelings, history. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. Am I responsible for it and he for mine? Does love imply a promise of some kind? These are things I feel like I should know, but I just… don’t.

“Hey,” Rex says, and I feel like a bit of a creep for staring at him while he sleeps.

“Hey.” There’s so much I want to say to him, but I’m not sure how to start. “Um,” I say. “Do you think it’s snowing?”

“Yeah,” Rex says after listening for a moment. “I think we’re supposed to get a few inches today.” I stare absently at the window for a minute even though the shade is closed.

“Daniel.” Rex’s warm hand lands on my shoulder. I realize I’m still wearing my clothes from yesterday, though Rex must have stripped sometime in the night because he’s in his underwear. “Last night,” he continues. “I meant what I said.” He seems a little anxious, as if I’m going to claim not to remember anything, but he looks right at me.

“Me too,” I say, but I have to look away. I don’t know why I feel so embarrassed, but I do. I fiddle with the edge of the blanket, telling myself that if you love someone, you should probably be able to sustain eye contact with them, but I feel so shy.

“Can you look at me, please?” Rex says, tenderly but with the hint of an order.

I look at him, my heart racing.

“I love you,” he says, and somehow it doesn’t sound like a grenade of found language the way it always does when I hear other people lob it at each other casually.
Loveyou
, as they hang up the phone;
Loveyou
, when they’re running out the door.
Loveyou
, as they race to class, already texting someone else.

No, it sounds like something Rex has made up just now to try and tell me something real.

“I love you too,” I tell him, trying to make the words real also. “I really do,” I add, feeling like my delivery was lacking. I sounded terrified, tentative.

“I believe you,” Rex says, smiling at me. “Come here.” He scooches up to lean on his pillow and pulls me down on top of him. His kiss is sweet and slow and doesn’t demand anything in return.

“I just… I….” I mumble against his mouth.

“What?” Rex asks, stroking my cheekbones. His eyes are so warm, and I remember him telling me he’d do anything for me. I remember him telling me there is no right way to act in a relationship. I remember thinking that those things were easy for him to say, but I couldn’t comprehend them. But maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth all along.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I confess softly, running my fingers over his straight nose and down the dip of his upper lip. “I don’t know what… it means to… I mean, I
do
love you,” I insist, fingers scritching over his stubble. “But what if we don’t mean the same thing when we say that? We can’t mean the same thing, can we? No one ever really knows what anyone else means when they say those things, you know? So, maybe you say it and you mean this one thing that means you expect something and I say it and I don’t know you expect that so I don’t do it and then you think I don’t really mean it, only I do, but maybe it just means something different and—”

Rex puts two fingers over my mouth. I’m breathing shallowly, but he’s smiling, serene.

“Do you want to know one of the things I love about you?” he asks.

“I, uh, yes?”

“You’re so brave.”

“Huh?”

“All this stuff about meaning and never really understanding each other—that’s big words stuff.”

“Big words?”

“You know, philosophers and theories and all the smart stuff you read. Big words stuff. But you really believe it. Hell, you’re probably right. We might not mean the same thing when we say love. But you’re brave because you said it anyway.”

“I….” I don’t know what to say to that.

“But you started to say ‘I don’t know what it means to.’ What were you going to say?”

Oh Jesus, he really
did
learn from Ginger.

“Just what I said: like, I don’t know what you mean when you say love, and you don’t know what I mean, and—”

“That’s not what you were going to say.”

I drop my eyes to the blanket and shake my head, tracing the plaid with a trembling finger.

“Say it, baby.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I don’t know… what it means… to have someone love me. And I know how I feel about you, but… I don’t know how to act about it.”

Rex kisses my closed eyes.

“I know,” he says softly.

“Sorry,” I murmur. He deserves so much better.

“No,” he says. “We’ll just figure it out. Together. Can’t say I’m such an expert either.”

I open my eyes and look at him. I know he loved his mom. I know he must have loved Jamie. And Will? I’m not sure.

“No?” I say.

“No.”

He kisses me and I stare at him. Can it really be this easy? Can you really just love someone and go about your daily business? How do you hold it all inside?

“What are you thinking about so hard?” Rex asks.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the point of
I love you
is that it
is
a tether. A connection so you can find your way back to someone even when shit seems huge and unmanageable on your own. A promise to help just because you care about someone, a promise to help that doesn’t mean pulling away.