In the Middle of Somewhere (53 page)

“Daniel,” he murmurs in my ear, making me shiver. “Say it again.”

“What?”

“That you’re really going to move in with me.”

I turn in his arms, marveling again, as always, at how big and solid he is, how warm.

“I’m really going to move in,” I say, grinning. “I just wish I wasn’t leaving tomorrow because I’ll have to wait until I get back to actually do it.”

Rex squeezes me, running his hand up and down my back. I breathe in his smell.

“I’m gonna miss you when I’m in Philly,” I say.

Rex lifts me easily, dropping me on the counter and barely missing the gingerbread. He steps between my knees and kisses me deeply.

“We have time,” he says. He’s looking at me so steadily. I can tell he doesn’t just mean time when I get back from Philly.

“Oh, I almost forgot. I have one more present for you,” I say. I jump down from the counter and grab it from the closet. Rex is back on the couch and I hand the gift to him, leaning over the back of the couch. He hefts it in his hand and gives me a strange look, then undoes the paper. Inside is my worn copy of
The Secret History
.

He looks at the book uncertainly, then opens it and looks at the text.

“I—Daniel,” he says regretfully. “No. It’s your favorite book; I don’t want to ruin it with my shit reading. The print’s so small and it’s long and—”

I shake my head, climbing onto the couch with him.

“I thought, if you want, I could read it to you.”

Rex looks sheepish.

“Yeah? I tried to order the audiobook after we met that night in the woods,” he says.

I can feel a tightening in my groin just thinking about that night. Rex’s powerful body pushing me against that tree. Then it resolves into a warm feeling in my stomach at the thought that Rex went to that much trouble when I thought he wasn’t even interested in me.

“I didn’t know what it was, but I thought any book you loved that much had to be worth reading. I only saw the author’s last name—only read it, I mean. I asked at the library, but they didn’t have it.”

I brush his hair back and smile at him.

“So, what do you think? I’ve never really read out loud to anyone before, so I don’t know if I’ll be any good at it, but….”

“You have such a sweet voice, baby,” Rex says, nuzzling my throat. “I think you’ll be good at it.” He kisses my ear. “Can we start now?” His voice is eager.

I nod, feeling almost drunk with contentment.

“One sec,” he says, and a minute later he’s back with a huge piece of gingerbread and some wine.

He sits back on the couch and I lean back against his chest, cradling the worn paperback. From this vantage point I can see the whole living room. The Christmas tree with our new ornaments gleaming among the green branches. The lights twinkling. The crackling fire and the snow falling softly outside, covering anything dirty or broken or sad with a thick blanket of clean, pure white.

It smells like wood smoke and cedar and Rex and gingerbread and, as I open my favorite book, adding the dusty smell of worn paper to the mix, I find I’m almost too choked up to read.

As if he senses how overwhelmed I feel, Rex tightens his arms around me.

“You okay?” he asks, his hand splaying across my chest. I nod, but can’t quite get the words out.

“It’s….” I look around us, then back at him. “It’s… perfect.”

“Too good to be true?” Rex asks, stroking my hair away from my face.

“No,” I tell him. “Just good.”

December

G
INGER
’
S
SHOP
window looks like some kind of insane Victorian-era Chanukah circus exploded in a burst of needles and lace. Blue and white velvet ribbon tacked up with tattoo needles spells out “Tattoo Bitch” in scrolling cursive. The Bud Light can angels hover in the corners of the window and old tattoo machines are stacked on top of each other to make a metal tree. Everything is dusted with blue and silver glitter. It actually looks kind of awesome.

“Yaaaay!” Ginger calls as I step into the shop. “It’s Chanukah!”

“Well, technically, Chanukah’s over, but—”

“Shut up. Chanukah is never over. The oil will burn for
eternity
!”

Good thing no one’s in the shop because Ginger is clearly in giddy mode. I can’t help but grin into her hair as she launches herself at me for a hug.

“Okay, you can tell me everything while we go get the food.”

I stow my bags behind the counter and Ginger leads me back to the door, her elbow linked in mine.

“Everything about what?”

“Everything about how you look stupid happy.”

She squeezes my elbow in the crook of her arm and grins at me.

“Huh. So do you,” I tell her. “I hope we don’t get hit by a bus to even it all out.”

“Pff. On South Street? As
if
the traffic ever moves fast enough for that to kill us. Golden Empress?”

“Of course.”

As we get our takeout, Ginger tells me about going to Christopher’s parents’ house for dinner and how she made a mostly good impression until she accidentally laughed in his dad’s face when he said he loved Neil Diamond because she thought he was kidding.

I tell Ginger what Virginia said about the Temple job and about Rex asking me to move in with him. What I don’t tell her much about is that Rex and I talked a lot about the future last night. About our options. About how he’d feel leaving Holiday. I don’t tell her that last night, when we went to bed, I put the key to Rex’s cabin—our cabin, now, I guess—on the bedside table so I could see it until I drifted off. Or that, when I fell asleep in Rex’s arms, his big hands all over me, I felt certain that he would be there in the morning. That I wouldn’t wake up to find that the world had disappeared.

While we eat, Ginger plays Christmas music DJ, putting on everything from Scottish boy choirs to Scott Weiland’s Christmas album. I practically choke to death on a mouthful of sweet and sour chicken when I crack up at a YouTube parody of a Time Life CD commercial featuring A Very Eddie Vedder Christmas in which some genius has manipulated Pearl Jam songs into the form of Christmas carols. Finally, she puts on
The Nightmare Before Christmas
, which is her favorite Chanukah movie because she says it’s obvious that Jack Skellington—a skinny outsider who tries to gain access to Christmas by studying it—is a metaphor for Jewish kids growing up and trying to figure out what the big deal about Christmas is.

“So, you got the text from Colin, but you haven’t heard from him since then?” Ginger asks as Jack discovers the portal to Christmas Town.

“No.” I didn’t really expect to, either. Mostly, I think the only reason he sent me that text was because he was afraid that if I didn’t hear from him I might tell Brian and Sam what I saw at dad’s funeral.

“What did the guy look like? The one at the cemetery?”

“I didn’t get much of a look at him. Big. Like, Rex big. Maybe bigger. Dark hair, dark eyes. I don’t know, man. He looked kinda hot, I guess. Mostly I just noticed he was, like, crazy still. He didn’t react to anything that happened. Didn’t step in and fight. Didn’t try to help Colin when we were fighting. Rex pulled me off him, but this guy just stood there. It was weird, actually. He didn’t even say anything, but….”

“But?”

“But not like he didn’t care. I mean, when I walked in he was…
holding
Colin. Like, cradling him. Gently. Colin was sobbing and this guy definitely cared. It was more like… maybe he knew what was going on? Like, knew what was at stake for Colin and didn’t want to intrude or something. Fuck, I don’t know.”

“They care about each other, then, right? I mean for Colin to have this guy at your dad’s funeral—”

“Yeah, I know. I guess so? Ugh, I still can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m going to try and find Colin tomorrow and see if I can talk to him.”

Ginger flops upside down on the couch, her hair trailing the carpet, staring at her little Chanukah tree. It’s wrapped in white twinkle lights and hung with hundreds of stars cut out of blue paint chips from the hardware store. Every shade of blue you can imagine, from the palest baby blue to the deepest navy. It’s beautiful.

“Do you think Colin’s a top or a bottom?” she muses.

“Dude, stop! He’s my brother.”

“Well, I’m just saying. Do you think he likes—”

“Jesus, Ginge, seriously. No. I refuse.”

“Is it wrong that I think Colin’s kind of hot now that I know he’s gay? And tortured.”

“You are seriously fucked-up.” I think about it for a second. “Okay, I would totally think that about someone who wasn’t my brother.”

“Okay, but just for one sec—you saw this guy. Can’t you guess if he—”

“Presents! You want your presents?”

Ginger pouts, but it’s well established that presents are a subject change that she’ll allow.

We have a firm rule that we can’t spend money on gifts and an equally firm one that all gifts can be regifted, recycled, or trashed without any concession to sentimentality. Ginger nearly always gives me a tattoo, so that rule mostly applies to my gifts, which I always used to find by picking through stuff that people left at the bar. They usually weren’t great, but one banner year some girl left a red leather jacket and I’ll never be able to top it. Even so, I’m pretty pleased about this year’s gifts, especially since I didn’t have the bar as a hunting ground. Luckily for me, Ginger loves the intersection of functionality and kitsch and, if I’ve learned anything since moving to Holiday, it’s that almost all Michigan souvenirs live in that intersection.

I hand Ginger the lumpy packages that I wrapped in extra handouts from my classes.

“Oh, thank
god
,” Ginger says, fanning herself as she accepts them. “I was getting seriously concerned that I wouldn’t know how to structure my conclusion!”

“Don’t worry. The other one’s on thesis statements, so you’ll have a well-balanced essay.”

“The tart cherries!” Ginger examines the jar of tart cherry preserves topped with a square of red and white plaid cloth. “This does
not
look free, you cheater.”

“Oh, it was free. The lady who owns one of the touristy shops near campus gave it to me.” Ginger narrows her eyes. I suppose it’s justified: one year I did try and convince her that I’d gotten a sheet cake for free. To be fair, the week before, one of my friends had gotten a whole cake from a Trader Joe’s dumpster. Still, since this one said “Happy Chanukah, you animal,” with a picture of Animal from the Muppets done in frosting, it was a hard sell.

“She just handed it to you for no reason?”

“Um, well, no. Her daughter was in one of my classes and I, um, accidentally used the shop’s sign as an example when I went off on a rant about unnecessary apostrophes….”

“Oh, jeez. What was her sign?”

“She seemed like a Capricorn.”

Ginger swats me.

“It’s called Nifty Things, and the big sign is fine, but then in the window there are two signs and one says Nifty Thing apostrophe
s
and the other says Nifty Things apostrophe. Anyway, I guess my student told her mom and her mom got the signs fixed. Then, one day when I was walking past the shop, she just popped out of the front door like she’d seen me coming and gave me those preserves.”

“Creepy.”

“
So
creepy. Dude, seriously, half the shit that happens in Holiday would seem like something out of a horror movie if there was scary music playing in the background. Or a David Lynch movie.”

“If it had happened in Philly, that lady would’ve come out of her shop with a baseball bat.”

“Right? Rex says I’m pathologically negative because I’m afraid if I admit that things are good, then I have to be scared they’ll go away, so I just make myself expect the worst. Even if it’s a quaint old couple with chainsaws at a Christmas tree farm.”

“Uuuummm, that sounds… accurate? Wait, a quaint old couple with a chainsaw like in that fucked-up movie?”

“Yes,
thank
you.”

Ginger sighs and slumps onto the floor.

“I like him.”

“Who?”

“Duh, Rex. I think he’s great for you.”

“Well, I liked Christopher too.”

“Obviously.”

I slide onto the floor next to her and push the other gift into her lap.

“This one, I totally cheated on. It wasn’t free and I won’t pretend it was, but it’s awesome and I have a job now, so deal with it.”

“Ooh, babycakes, I love it when you’re so forceful. Oh crap, that’s awesome!” she says, tearing the paper off the novelty ice cube trays. “Let’s make some right now.”

In the kitchen, Ginger fills the little Michigans with water.

“Wait, I know what we have to do.”

Ginger pulls coffee ice cream out of the freezer, the only food she can always be counted on to have in the house. She scoops some into a bowl and mushes it up until it’s soft, then she packs it into the second ice cube tray, smoothing it into perfect little Michigan ice creams.

“Hang on,” she says, rifling through her cabinets. “Ah ha!” She pulls a dusty box of toothpicks from the back of a cabinet and sticks one in the center of each ice cube. “Do you think I should put one in the upper peninsulas too?” she asks. “So they don’t detach when we pop them out?”

“Um,” I say, staring between Ginger and the ice cube trays. “Who the fuck
are
you right now?”

Ginger drops her gaze to the floor for a second and when she looks back up her expression is sheepish.

“Okay, so maybe I saw Christopher do something like this once.” She rolls her eyes. “Okay, and
maybe
he’s teaching me to cook a little bit.”