In the Middle of Somewhere (50 page)

“Are you
always
here?” I ask Leo as I approach the counter. He looks up from a book that he tries to hide under the counter before I can see it. “Whatcha reading?” I say casually.

“Oh, noooothing,” he sighs. He looks tormented.

“Leeeooo,” I whine back at him, “what are you reeeeading?”

Miserably, he holds up a thick book printed on the kind of newsprint that can only mean…. Yup, it’s
Conquering the College Application in Ten Easy Steps
.

“That’s great, man,” I say. “I know you said you wanted to get out of here, but I didn’t know you wanted to go to college.”

“You don’t think I should go?”

“Uh, that’s really not what I just said, is it?”

“No.” Leo slumps on the counter.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s wrong?” I ask, pretty sure the answer is spelled W-I-L-L.

“Nothing,” Leo sighs, clearly delighted I’ve asked.

“Oh. Okay, then,” I say. “Do you have—”

“Ugh!” Leo exclaims, looking up at me. “Will’s gone.” He’s pouting and he looks genuinely miserable.

“I know, man, I’m really sorry. I know you liked him. God knows why,” I add under my breath.

“Thanks,” Leo sighs. “Oh my god, shit! Shit! I’m so sorry. I’m complaining about—and—I’m so, so sorry about your dad.”

Leo looks horrified, his eyes huge, the lovesick sulk immediately replaced by sympathy.

I nod. “Thanks. Listen,” I say, not wanting to talk about it, “have any Republica?”

“Um, I dunno, I never heard of them,” Leo says. “Go ahead and look, though.”

I do and they don’t. I look at a few other things, keeping track of Leo out of the corner of my eye. He’s back to reading his book, cheek in hand, but he’s sighing pitifully again.

“Leo,” I say, and he drags puppy dog eyes up to meet mine. “You want some help with those applications? Or with your essay or something?”

“Really? Oh, man, that’d be so great. I don’t even know where I want to apply, or what I need to do.”

“Okay. Are you working on Saturday?” He shakes his head. “Why don’t you come over to Rex’s around noon? Or, wait, my apartment?” I probably shouldn’t just be inviting people over to Rex’s, should I? “Shit, no,” I say, picturing the state of my apartment and the approximately 200 library books that seem to have taken up permanent residence on the table Rex built. “Rex’s house. Okay?”

“Uh, okay. Just text me if you change your mind,” he says, looking at me like I’m nuts. “Again.”

I give him the finger and a wave and head to Rex’s.

“O
H
,
FUCK
me, it
is
the roast chicken,” I mutter, the smell hitting me as soon as I walk in the door.

“Well, you’re easy,” Rex says, coming out of the kitchen. He pats me on the ass as I sling my bag onto the floor and pulls me in for a kiss when I stand up.

“Mmm, smells so good,” I say, kissing his neck. “The chicken smells good too,” I say against his ear.

As we eat, I tell him about Leo.

“He’s really broken up over Will leaving. Do you think it’s just a crush, or did something actually happen between them?”

“Will wouldn’t mess with a kid,” Rex says.

“You sound pretty sure, but Leo’s not exactly a kid. And he did proposition me the first time we met.”

“He would be to Will, though. Will goes for… um, the opposite.”

“What, like… daddies?” I make a face, thinking of Will in that way.

“No,” Rex says, blushing, since I guess my comment kind of implicated him. Whoops. “Just, older, bigger guys.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” I mutter, running my hand over Rex’s beefy chest.

He smiles at me, the happy, private smile that I’ve been getting used to. It makes me feel warm through and through.

“Um, so, I invited Leo over on Saturday to help him out with his college applications.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“But, um, I invited him… here. Is that okay?”

Rex smiles again.

“Yeah. It’s great.” He eats a few more bites. “Listen, about that.” My head shoots up, sure he’s about to say that actually I shouldn’t have invited Leo over. “I know you and Ginger have plans for Chanukah, but will you be here for Christmas?”

“Oh, um, I guess so. I hadn’t thought about it. Why?”

Rex slings an arm over the back of my chair.

“I thought maybe we could have Christmas together. You know, like, decorate and make dinner and….” He looks down. “You think it’s lame.”

“No! No, I don’t. I just… honestly, the closest to Christmas decorations I’ve come in the last twenty-five years is shitty seasonal ale. No, that’s not true. Brian did stack all the beer cans into a pyramid that looked like a Christmas tree one year.”

Rex strokes my cheek.

“What would you like for Christmas dinner?”

I immediately look at the remains of the chicken on the counter and Rex laughs.

“You really like roast chicken, huh? Okay, we can do that. I think I might have some decorations in my workshop somewhere.”

He starts to clean up, but I wave at him to sit down and gather the plates. Doing the dishes is the least I can do since Rex always cooks.

“Actually, Ginger made these awesome ornaments out of beer cans a few years ago. She used Bud Light cans because they’re blue—you know, for Chanukah. She cut them into these little angels. They were pretty awesome. She had a tree in the shop that she put them on. She gets very pissed off that Chanukah doesn’t have a tree so she just does one anyway. Don’t even try and call it a Chanukah bush, though, or you’ll get an earful about fucking Adam Sandler.”

Rex raises an eyebrow.

“Adam fucking Sandler, I mean. She hates him.”

“My mom used to collect ornaments,” Rex says, staring out the window behind me where snow has started to fall again. “They were all these Marilyn Monroes. Lots of different poses. The one where her dress blows up from
The Seven Year Itch
, one from
Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend
, some of just her face.”

He looks back at me and smiles self-consciously.

“What happened to the ornaments?” I ask him, but he just shakes his head.

“I don’t know.”

“H
OLY
SHIT
,”
I say, as I look through the pile of Leo’s transcripts and SAT scores that is scattered over Rex’s kitchen table. “I mean, I know test scores aren’t everything, but, shit, Leo, these scores are amazing.” I frown at his transcripts. “I don’t understand. You aced calculus your freshman year; why did you take geometry and algebra after that? You should have been taking college-level math.”

“My parents wouldn’t pay for it,” he said. “And the school district wouldn’t pay to bus me to Traverse City for Advanced Placement classes, so. Besides, you don’t know what I looked like as a sophomore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t have gone to college classes; I looked about ten.”

“Aw, a little
Doogie Howser
!”

“Seriously, Daniel, update your references.”

“Okay, well, I see why you graduated early. You took every class your podunk little high school offered.”

“Dude, I think ‘podunk’ is, like, totally ethnically offensive.”

Rex walks in from his workshop before I can google “podunk” to see if Leo’s right. He smells of fresh wood shavings and sweat and it’s only the fact that there’s a teenager in the room that keeps me from jumping his bones.

“Hey, Leo,” Rex says.

“Hel
lo
, Rex,” Leo says, his flirtation-o-meter apparently tuned back to Rex’s frequency now that Will’s out of town.

“Um,” Rex says, “I’m gonna make lunch; you guys want something?”

“Oh, thank god,” Leo says. “Yes, please. I’m starving, but I didn’t want to say anything in case Daniel offered to cook.”

“Hey!”

“No offense,” Leo tosses over his shoulder at me, then he’s back to watching Rex’s muscles flex as he pulls food out of the fridge. I understand the impulse.

“You know, Leo,” I say, shuffling through the stack of applications he’s printed off, “I can’t help but notice that most of these schools are near New York City.” Rex gives me a look over Leo’s head that says
Be nice
.

“Ermghm,” Leo says, blushing.

“And I can’t help but remember that Will lives in New York City.” Leo’s hands twist into a complicated formation behind his back. Rex is shaking his head at me, amused. “I just meant that if you go to New York to look at schools, maybe Will could show you around,” I say innocently.

Leo shakes his head and drops back into his chair.

“Will doesn’t give a shit about me,” he says with more bitterness than I’d realized he was capable of, and I feel instantly bad for teasing him.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Rex says, but I can tell he won’t outright lie to the kid so he can’t say anything more than that.

“Oh yeah, then why did he leave town right after he kissed me?” Leo blurts out, looking furious and hurt. “Oops,” he says, clapping a hand to his mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“Will kissed you?” Rex asks, sounding curious but confused.

“Will kissed you?” I say. “Jesus, rob the cradle much?”

I’m joking—mostly—but Leo’s lip starts to tremble and his chin starts to wobble. I look desperately at Rex.

“Shit, Leo, I’m sorry,” I say. “I was just kidding.”

“No, you’re right,” he says. “Will just thinks I’m a kid. He doesn’t care that I—” Leo breaks off, shaking his head as tears course down his cheeks.

Rex comes around the counter and pulls a chair up next to Leo’s, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Leo, Will went back to New York because he couldn’t take any more time off from work. He was here to help his sister out for a bit, but he was always going back.”

“But, um,” I say, wanting to do my part in making Leo feel better, “if you do end up going to school in New York, then maybe….” I trail off when I notice Rex shaking his head at me very subtly.

Rex rubs Leo’s back and then gives him a hearty, definitive pat.

“Will’s a good guy,” he tells Leo, “but you don’t want to get involved with him.”

“You did,” Leo says, managing to sound jealous, scornful, and flirtatious all at the same time. Ah, youth.

“Different,” Rex says, and he goes back to making lunch.

“Look, man,” I tell Leo, “it’s Will’s loss, okay?”

The smell of bacon fills the kitchen and Leo perks up.

“Bacon?” he says, and Rex just smiles.

W
HEN
R
EX
wakes me up on Sunday morning, six inches of snow have fallen and more is predicted for later this afternoon. It’s early—only six or so—and I bury my face in his neck with an indistinct sound of protest.

At Rex’s urging, I’ve started working at his house when I don’t need to use the library. He cleared off a large table he kept in his workshop and set it up for me in the living room, replacing the small one he only used occasionally. Writing felt effortless last night, and I know better than to waste a flow like that, so I didn’t stumble in to bed until about 3:00 a.m. Rex was warm and sleepy and immediately pulled me into his heat. But I definitely do not appreciate having to wake up three hours later.

“’S too early,” I complain into his neck. “Go back to sleep.”

Rex rubs my back softly and I relax against him.

“Wake up, baby,” he says. “I’ll make breakfast. Go get in the shower and you’ll feel better.”

“Ungh, why?” I’m whining. It’s probably not attractive and I make an effort to stop.

“’Cause we gotta go soon.”

“Where?” Rex’s hand is back, running up my spine and into the hair at the nape of my neck.

“Surprise,” he says. Then he kisses my cheek and slaps me on the ass. “Up,” he says.

“Tyrant,” I growl, but I roll out of bed and head toward the bathroom. It turns out that a slap on the ass is a very effective alarm.

After I shower and we eat breakfast, we get on the road. The only concession he makes to my questions is to tell me to wear his extra pair of snow boots, which are way too big on me.

“So help me god, Rex, if you woke me up at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning to take me on some kind of winter hiking trip, I will end you,” I say as we walk to the truck and I trip over my too-big boots almost immediately.

Rex just chuckles and kisses me as he grabs me by the shoulder. He puts me in the truck and reaches over me to buckle my seat belt. When he’s level with my face, he kisses me breathless. He nods, as if satisfied I won’t complain any more, and then gets in the driver’s side, putting one hand on my thigh.

We drive for over an hour but I fall asleep almost immediately despite the coffee I downed right before we left. When I open my eyes, the truck’s parked in a snow-cloaked field. In front of us and out my window, the snow is undisturbed. It looks like we’re in the middle of nowhere. The sun is shining and it’s nearly blinding, like the truck is our boat on an ocean of snow. It’s beautiful.

“Come on,” Rex says. I tug on my hat so it covers my ears and wrap one of Rex’s scarves—plaid flannel, of course—around my neck, already shivering. We walk around the truck and it looks like we’re in the woods, but the trees look too regular, too perfectly aligned.

“Where the hell are we?” I ask. No one is around and the quiet is overwhelming. Rex takes my hand and we trudge through the snow, Rex’s powerful legs cutting through it easily and me walking in the trail he makes. After a few minutes, a little hut comes into view and I can see a tractor—or something like that—parked outside. On the hut is a row of cheery green wreaths twined with red ribbon.

“Holy shit, are those Christmas trees?” I ask. All around us, rows of trees stretch as far as I can see.

Rex nods. As if on cue, a cheery-looking couple steps out of the hut, door bells tinkling their exit.

“Hello, gentlemen,” the man says. He’s got to be eighty years old, but his eyes are sharp and he’s smiling.

“Here for a tree, I presume?” the woman chimes in. She’s got pink cheeks and her white hair is in a bun. I actually have to hold my hand in front of my mouth to keep from laughing. This is the most ridiculously stereotypically Christmas couple I’ve ever seen. All the guy needs is a beard and a team of reindeer pawing at the roof. Rex, of course, is the picture of manners.