Chapter 6

 

 

October

 

I WAKE up wrapped in a cocoon of delicious warmth, with a bone-deep feeling of satisfaction and comfort, so I know I can’t be at home. I’m not sure what’s causing it until I open my eyes and see that I’m basically lying on top of Rex, holding on to him like I’m a squid and he’s the whale I’m trying to snuggle the life out of. My face is nuzzled into his neck, my arms are wrapped around him, and my leg is slung over his hip in a way that would be borderline obscene if we weren’t sleeping.

It’s the way I used to wake up wrapped around this stuffed lion that I slept with as a kid. Sam won it at a school carnival for some girl, but when he found the girl to give it to her, she was making out with a guy on the basketball team behind the water ice stand, so he called her a slut and threw the lion on the couch when he got home. That was right before my mom died and I slept with it for years.

One of Rex’s arms is holding me and the other’s stretched under his pillow, his biceps round and strong even in slumber. I allow myself a few moments to look at him—the pulse beating in the vulnerable hollow of his throat, the scar under his right eyebrow that’s only visible when his eyes are closed, the perfect teardrop indentation above his upper lip—before I convince myself that I need to extricate myself from the death grip I have on him before he wakes up and thinks I’m some kind of desperate limpet.

I start to inch off of him slowly, but he makes a small sound and pulls me closer. He’s not even really awake. I kiss the underside of his chin—the only place my mouth can reach now—and he makes a soft mew of what might be satisfaction or just sleep, and puts his other arm around me.

I feel the first tinglings of panic—the kind of claustrophobia that comes when you know you need to sit very still—and I pull away a little.

“Daniel?” Rex murmurs softly. “Y’okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, pushing myself off him and rolling away. “I’ll be right back.” I retreat to the bathroom and splash some water on my face. I wonder if I should get out of Rex’s hair before he wakes up, but that doesn’t feel quite right. Besides, I hated it when I woke up alone the morning after we met. And it’s cold in the bathroom. I walk back to Rex’s room and look at the man spread out before me on the bed. He looks so young when he’s asleep, his face slack, his body relaxed, all that powerful muscle rendered merely decorative.

I slide back into bed beside Rex’s warmth, thinking I’ll just sleep for a few more minutes. The next thing I know, I wake up to Rex’s warm hand on my waist, his thumb stroking my hip bone.

“This is new,” he says, “right?” He’s looking at “Let Sleeping Bears Lie” inked above my hip and I groan in embarrassment.

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t there when I clipped your pants,” he says.

I can’t believe he remembers a glimpse of my hip from eight months ago; I can’t believe he even noticed it the first place.

He presses warm lips to the words and licks my hip bone, then drags his teeth lightly over it. My breath catches. There’s something about Rex’s laser focus that makes me incredibly hot. It’s like the air between us is thinner than usual and I’m more aware of him.

He runs his hand over my stomach and ribs, just stroking, then slides up and kisses my neck and my jaw. My skin feels hot and tingly everywhere he touches. When he kisses the inside of my biceps, I shudder. It’s so weird. I barely know Rex, but he may be the only person who’s ever touched me in that spot. Definitely the only person who’s ever kissed me there.

“You’re so sensitive,” Rex growls.

“No,” I say. “I mean, I never was.” But my breathing’s gone all funny and my heart is pounding. I pull Rex down and kiss him as hard as I can. He kisses me back, but when I clutch at his back and try to pull him on top of me, he eases back to those gentle touches again. He strokes along the veins on the inside of my forearm and sucks gently at the skin under my ear; he traces my ribs and places soft kisses along my collarbone.

I feel strange. Shaky and out of control. No one’s ever touched me like this. Paid this much attention. Am I supposed to reciprocate? I’ve never touched anyone the way he’s touching me, either. Never traced patterns on someone’s skin or run my fingertips over the swell of muscle and the dip of bone. Never felt where hair changed from soft to rough or skin from thin to callused.

It’s like Rex is mapping my body, each stroke of his hand and touch of his lips learning me better.

There are unfamiliar sounds clawing their way out of my throat. Vulnerable sounds. What if he gets up and leaves? What if he doesn’t? And now, I realize, in the moments it’s taken me to ponder this, Rex has stopped touching me and started staring at me.

“Do you want me to stop?” Rex asks abruptly.

I stare up at him and it’s as if I’m watching this play out like reading a scene in a book. I just keep wondering what’s going to happen next. And by the time my brain can process that I have to make something happen next, Rex has swung his legs over the side of the bed and is giving me a sweet but hesitant smile.

“No worries,” he says. “I didn’t mean to be so touchy-feely. I’m just gonna shower.”

I hear the water turn on and pull the pillow over my head. What the fuck is wrong with me? Unlike my inability to answer Rex, I can think of about a hundred answers to that question. Like, I barely know this guy, so why am I so goddamned worried about what he thinks of me? Like, I should’ve left last night after we fucked and I don’t get why I didn’t. Like, I’ve never had a real relationship, so why would I start now? Especially when I finally have a job that’s going to make it possible to pay off all my debt and not live paycheck to paycheck, checking my bank balance every time I have to buy groceries. Especially when, in order to keep that job, I need to spend all my time proving to the people who hired me that they didn’t bet on a losing horse.

And the biggest thing wrong with me: why, even now, does my whole body feel pulled toward Rex when I was just touching him a minute ago?

Before I can let myself think about it, I walk to the bathroom and knock on the door.

“Yeah,” Rex says over the shower.

I open the door slowly and there he is, the sharp lines of shoulder and leg softened by steam and glass.

“Can I?” I ask, gesturing to the shower.

“Course,” he says. “You don’t have to ask.” But of course I have to ask. You don’t just get in the shower with someone.

The water’s a little hotter than I like and I can feel my skin turning pink almost immediately. Rex puts a hand on my hip and draws me toward him. I go to kiss him, but he stops me with a hand on my palm. He pulls us tight together, his body hot and slick from the water. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and runs a hand up and down my spine, making me squirm closer to him.

“Look,” he says. “It’s been a while since I’ve done all this. I know I can be a little…. I just like touching you, but I didn’t mean to overstep. Okay?”

He’s looking right into my eyes and he’s so big and solid that I find myself telling him the truth.

“I’ve never done this before.”

He pulls back like I scalded him.

“Wait, you mean last night was your first—”

“No! No, no. I mean this. The kiss and shower together and sleep over thing. I’ve never done that.”

He looks puzzled.

“You’ve never dated someone before?”

I sigh, relieved he’s supplied the word.

“Well. No. Well—I went out on a date once, but it didn’t go so well. So, I don’t know how it goes, really, or if I’m any good at it.” I look down and watch the water swirling down Rex’s drain. It’s easier to talk in here, like the sound of the water takes the edge of fear off my voice.

Rex regards me, frowning slightly.

“Well, here’s how it goes,” he says. “I’m going to take you to breakfast. Then we’re going to jump your car. Then I’m going to ask you out on a date. Are you free Thursday night?”

“I thought asking me out on a date was going to come after jumping my car?”

“Just getting my ducks in a row,” he says, and squeezes my shoulder. “What do you say, dinner on Thursday night?”

I nod and take a deep breath. I can do this, right? It’s just dinner.

 

 

“I CAN’T do this,” I tell Ginger.

It’s late and I should be in bed, but I’ve missed a dozen calls from her since Sunday, no doubt wanting to know how my night with Rex went, so I picked up when she called.

“Dandelion!” she says. “Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out. Can’t do what?”

“I’m supposed to meet Rex for dinner tomorrow,” I tell her. “And it’s definitely a date.”

“No, no, no,” she says, irritated. “You don’t get to skip right to the telling me your problems part. You have to start with something like, ‘Oh, Ginger, let me tell you all about my date instead of ignoring your calls for four days,’ or, ‘Ginger, let me tell you how good the lumberjack is in bed.’ Got it?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Excellent. So, how was your date on Saturday night?”

“It was good.”

“Seriously? That’s what I get from you?”

“Do you think I’m a pessimist?” I ask her, staring at the pile of papers I’m only halfway through grading.

“Yes,” she says. “Well, I think you’re a pessimist where you’re concerned. You tend to be pretty realistic about other people’s shit. Why? Did he tell you you’re a pessimist? Because you know how I feel about dudes who tell you who you are on a first date. Control freak abusers.”

“No, he didn’t say anything about it. I just—I keep doing this thing where I think a nice thought about Rex and then my brain thinks, like, ‘It’s never going to work.’”

“Well, sweetie, that voice in your head is the same one that said you could never go to college. It’s the same one that told you not to bother applying to grad school because they’d never want you. It’s the same one that told you all the other students thought you were stupid when you first started.”

“They did think I was stupid when I started.”

“Well, they were asshole snobs. And, anyway, you proved to them it wasn’t true. So you just have to prove it to this voice too.”

“I don’t know how to do this. What do I talk about? What if we actually hate each other?”

“Um, Daniel. You don’t hate each other. You had a date the other night and, even though you apparently refuse to tell me about it, it went well enough that you’re having another one tomorrow. And I know you didn’t ask him, so he must have liked you enough that he at least wants to see you again.”

“I could have been the one to ask him,” I grumble.

“Um, sure, pumpkin; whatever you say.” She pauses, then her voice changes. “Come oooooon, please tell me about the date?”

“He rescued me from a snowstorm and cooked me dinner and I spent the night, and then he took me out to breakfast. And he said he used to be really shy, but I totally didn’t get that from him until breakfast when we went to the diner and he was really tongue-tied ordering. It was kinda sweet.”

“It’s October.”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“How was there a snowstorm in October?”

“Right! Michigan, man. Fucking Michigan.”

“Oh. Right. So, wow, you spent the night? Were you drunk?”

“No. Bitch.”

“Hunh,” she says, like that explained something. “Okay, so how was it? The sex, I mean, obviously.”

“Dude, it was really good. He’s… I dunno, magnetic or something.”

She’s quiet for a while and my mind drifts to Rex’s big hands on me. The way he pulled me close to him in the shower after I told him I’d have dinner with him, his strong hips flexing into mine, our erections sliding together in the steamy heat. The way he grabbed my ass, grinding us together, his chest hair scraping my nipples. The way he bit down on my throat like I was a kitten trying to wander away, and pulled me up into him, hard. The way he kissed me, tongue everywhere, hands everywhere, our cocks straining together until we both grabbed them at the same time, jerking white heat on our stomachs and chests and leaning against each other as the water washed it all away.

“Earth to Daniel,” Ginger is nearly shouting into the phone.

“What!”

“Oh my god, you’re thinking about having sex with him right now.”

“Guilty,” I laugh.

“Fuck, that’s so hot,” she says.

“What?”

“Sweet cheeks, you’ve fucked the lead singers of bands on international tours and never said anything more than, ‘He looked taller onstage,’ or, ‘Yeah, nice guy.’ If you’re sitting there right now fantasizing about sex you had with the lumberjack to the point where you don’t hear me yelling your name, then I know it was hot. God, I’m so jealous. I want a lumberjack.”

“He’s not a lumberjack. And you should be.”

“Uuunnghhh,” she groans.

“Hey, any highlights from the shop lately?”

“Oh my god, yes. You remember that really tall, skinny guy who had me do the vertebrae tattoo down his spine?”

“Yeah, the one you kept calling Skeletor, thinking you were funny until Megan told you Skeletor is actually big and blue and muscular?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “Anyway, he came back in and he wants me to do his whole skeleton. Like, every bone, little by little.”

“That’s awesome,” I tell her. Ginger likes large-scale projects and she loves doing realistic black and gray. “Did you start?”

“Yeah, I did his left arm. It’s gonna be sick. Not sure when he’ll have the cash for more, but I’m totally into it.”

“Sweet. Hey, my brother hasn’t come back in, has he?”

“No,” she scoffs. “Definitely scared him away. Asshole. Have you talked to them recently?”

“It may shock you to know that none of them have sent so much as a text message since I left.”

“Sorry, babycakes.”

“No surprise,” I say. And it’s not, really. It’s not like I’ve been thinking about my dad and my brothers much or anything. I mean, most of my contact with them in the last few years has been cursory and everything before that was them messing with me, since they found out I was gay. No. Before they found out. Still, I hadn’t even realized I was hoping maybe now that we had some space between us, they’d…. What—miss me? Nah. But… wonder if I was okay? Maybe.

“Listen,” Ginger says, “it’s their fucking loss, you hear me? You just don’t worry about them. You just do your teaching and write your book and forget about them. Go on your date. Talk about whatever you want. Oh, and ask lots of questions. And don’t swear.”

“What?”

“Just, you know, don’t swear too much. It’s not polite on a date.”

“What are you, a fucking matchmaker?”

“Just, don’t say ‘fuck’ every five seconds, okay, asshole? It’s crude. And it shows you don’t have respect for your date.”

“Girl, you’re crazy.” But I like when she tells me shit like that. It feels like the kind of scolding that someone who cares about you gives.

“Where are you going for dinner?”

“Some Italian place near campus. I mean, this town only has, like, four restaurants.”

“Don’t wear a white shirt, in case you get sauce on it.”

“Dude, I don’t even own a white shirt.” Not since the one I bought for my interview got covered in Marilyn’s blood, anyway.

“Oh, right. Well, you know what I mean. When I went to La Dolce with that Andrew guy last year, I wore my white jacket—you know, the cloth biker-style one?—and I sprayed tomato sauce all over it. Looked like I’d been in a shoot-out. Not a good look. Just saying.”

“God, I forgot about Andrew. He was such a tool.”

“True that. Anyway: learn from my mistakes, young Jedi.”

“No white. Check.”

“Hey, D?”

“Hmm.”

“I can tell you like the lumberjack. Just… be yourself, huh? Like, your actual self. The way you are with me. Not the way you are with your brothers. Or with Richard.”

“And how am I with them?” It comes out snippier than I meant it.

“You’re just really… guarded. Quick to throw down. You know.”

“Whatever,” I mutter.

“I’m serious. It may not work out with him, sure. And that’s fine. Just… give him a chance.”

“Message received,” I tell her with a sigh.

“I adore you,” she says in the voice I can never resist.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go draw on someone.”

“Bye, babycakes.”

 

 

MY CONVERSATION with Ginger has been on my mind all day, so when I run home to change before meeting Rex, I call the auto shop. It’s about 5:00 p.m., so they’ll probably all be there. I’ll just say a quick hello, check in; no big deal.

“Pat’s,” a gruff voice says on the eighth ring.

“Luther?” I say. “It’s Daniel.”

“Oh, hey, kid. How’s tricks?”

“Pretty good,” I say. “Weird to be out of the city and all. How’s Maria and the kids?”

“Oh, good, good, you know.”

“Great. Hey, listen, are any of them around?”

“Yep, here’s Sam. Bye, kid.”

“Daniel?” Sam sounds a little surprised to hear from me, but not unfriendly. We don’t really have anything in common, but he always gave me the least shit. Most likely just because he’s the oldest and didn’t want to waste his time.

“How’s it going, bro?” I ask.

“Not bad,” he says, and starts talking about some new car he’s working on. It’s like I never left. My brothers all do this. They know I don’t care about cars but they don’t have anything else to say. So I let him talk while I pull on jeans and change my shirt.

“Liza good? She still working at the florist?”

“Yup. She’s fine. Bugging me about kids.”

“Do you want kids?”

“Eh, you know. We’ll see. Anyway, kid, gotta run. Here’s Pop.”

“Daniel?” My dad says it in the same voice as Sam, like he’s surprised to hear from me, even though it’s been over a month since I left. “How’s the car running?” I roll my eyes, forcing myself to remember what Ginger said: that this is my dad’s way of making sure I’m okay.

“Battery died when we had a snowstorm,” I say.

“In October?”

“Pretty far north here, Pop,” I say patiently.

“Hmm. Well, it could be—”

I cut him off, forestalling what would otherwise be a twenty-minute disquisition on what the other problems with the car might be.

“It’s okay, Dad. It was just the battery. I jumped it and it’s fine now.”

“All right, then.”

“How’s business?” This is the only thing I ever ask my dad about because it’s the only question he’ll ever really answer.

“Busy right now,” he says. “Folks trying to get everything shipshape before winter. And god bless the Streets Department for never paving a damned pothole until it’s screwed the alignment on half the cars in the city. It’ll slow down, though. Always does.”

He pauses and I can hear the familiar soundscape of the garage: the grind of hydraulics, the hiss of the power washer, the clank of metal dropped on concrete. As if in sympathy, the ghost smells of oil, lube, and hot metal tickle my sinuses.

“So,” my dad continues, “you need something?”

“What? No. Just wanted to check in. See how you guys are.”

“Oh,” my dad says. “Well, that’s fine. Uh, here’s your brother, then. Bye, son.”

“Brian?” I ask.

“No, it’s me. What’s going on?”

“Hey, Colin,” I say. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, fine. What did you need?”

“Damn, Colin, I don’t need anything. I just wanted to say hey. Christ.” And just like that, my temper’s fried. Something about Colin triggers it every time. Sam treats me like a dumb kid sometimes and Brian’s almost always an idiot, teasing me about everything from my sexuality to the way I talk. But Colin’s nasty. He’s not teasing when he gives me shit. I don’t remember him being like that when we were kids, but I guess I don’t remember a whole lot from then, anyway. I just know that he looks at me like I disgust him and he speaks to me as little as possible.

“Well, hey, then. I’m gonna get back to work.”

And shit, that pisses me off.

“Oh, yeah, got to go get some hearts and flowers tattooed to match your manly butterfly?” I say, unable to stop myself. Ooh, Ginger is going to kill me.

“Fuck you, you little bitch,” he says, his voice ice cold, and the line goes dead.

Damn.

I splash some water on my face and force myself not to think about what Colin said. I should’ve known better than to tease him and expect anything else. Colin teases; Colin does not get teased.

I finish getting ready and grab my jacket. After the snowstorm, which was apparently a fluke, the weather settled back into something more familiar for October. Good thing, too, since I’m at least a paycheck away from buying a coat.

As I’m walking to the restaurant, my phone buzzes with a text. It’s Colin. As the only other time I can remember him texting me was last Thanksgiving to tell me to get more beer, I know it’s not going to be good.

Keep yr fucking mouth shut. I shake my head. I’m just about to text Ginger to apologize in advance in case Colin gives her shit for telling me when another text from him comes through. I’m fucking serious, you little shit. Apparently Colin didn’t get Ginger’s memo about cursing. I don’t text back. Figure I’ll let him sweat a little. Asshole.

Rex already has a table when I get to the restaurant. He starts to stand up from the circular booth and I put my hand out to shake at the same time, resulting in an awkward collision where Rex grabs my shoulder to keep me from knocking into the table, and I kind of slither into the booth.

“Hey,” I say.

He smiles at me. That slow, warm smile that wrinkles his eyes and shows that twisted tooth.

“Hey.”

“Daniel?” Standing next to our booth is an unfamiliar man of about forty or forty-five. He’s on the short side, with pumped-up arms to compensate, a blond crew cut, and nearly invisible blond eyebrows over light blue eyes.

“Uh, yeah.”

He sticks out a beefy hand and I can see the grease ground deep into his nail beds.

“Hey, tiger, it was the spark plugs!” His voice is deafening, and his clap on the back almost slams me into the edge of the table.

“Um, Mark?” I guess.

“Can’t lie, bud, woulda never thought a gay teacher’d know about cars.” He chuckles, the kind of well-meaning, jovial chuckle that lets me know there’s no threat behind his words. “Oh, uh, hey, Rex,” he says, his grin fading. Rex looks stormy, his brows furrowed and his chin out. “Didn’t mean nothing. I’ll leave you gents to it, then.”

“What the….” I say, shaking my head.

“Spark plugs?” Rex asks, relaxing again.

“Oh, um, outside Sludge the other day, I helped Marjorie with her car. Her son tried to start it and it backfired. The car, I mean.”

The waiter comes over and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her around campus. Small goddamned town. Rex asks me to choose the wine and I try really hard not to have flashbacks to Richard telling me I ordered the wrong one. Apparently, I’m still distracted by that and the whole Colin thing because when Rex orders the special pasta I realize I didn’t hear her tell us the specials at all, and I just order the first thing my eye lands on—chicken marsala, which I don’t much care for.

Rex has just asked me how my day was when my goddamned phone buzzes again.

“Shit,” I say, “sorry.” I go to turn it to silent, but catch the text from Colin before I do. Not a fucking word, Daniel. Jesus Christ, Colin!

“What’s wrong?” Rex asks.

I shake my head. “Just my fucking brother,” I say. Then I remember Ginger’s admonition, realizing I’ve said, like, four words and half of them have been swear words. I guess I really do swear a lot.

I tell Rex about what happened with Colin and what Ginger told me. Then I find myself telling him about talking to him today.

“Colin’s just mean, man. He’s an asshole. ‘What do you need?’ Like I’m inconveniencing him by calling to say hi for the first time since I left. Not like he does anything other than fucking work anyway—oh shit, I’m not supposed to be swearing on a date.”

Rex looks amused. “Says who?”

“Ginger,” I mutter. Can’t believe I said that out loud.

Rex’s eyes go dark and he puts his hand on my thigh.

“So,” he says in that growl that raises the hairs on my arms, “you told Ginger you were going on a date with me, huh?”

“Um. Yeah.”

“Do you tell Ginger everything?”

“Um. No,” I say, completely lost in his eyes. He focuses on me like nothing I’ve ever experienced, like he’s reading every blink and breath.

He leans back, as if satisfied, and I fiddle with my phone. Colin might actually hate me. It’s a thought I’ve had before, but I always figured it was regular brotherly friction. The fact that it can still happen when we’re three states apart means he may actually, actually hate me.

“Fuck him,” I mutter, and I swear—not for the first time—that I won’t care what he thinks about me ever again. I won’t care the next time he calls me Danielle. I won’t care the next time he looks at me like I’m trash or laughs when I hurt myself. I won’t care the next time I see him around town and he pretends he doesn’t notice me. I just won’t care.

“Here you go, gentlemen,” the waiter says. “Artichoke ravioli and the chicken marsala.” She puts our plates down and pours the wine.

“That was the pasta special?” I say. “I didn’t even hear her say them or I totally would have gotten that too.”

“Do you want some?” Rex offers.

“Sure, want a bite of mine?” He nods.

“That’s really good,” Rex says.

I duck my head. “I actually don’t like marsala that much. I don’t know why I ordered it,” I say.

“I don’t like artichokes,” Rex says, and I burst out laughing. I guess we were both a little distracted.

“Wanna switch?” I say, and Rex has the plate out of my hand before he even nods. Damn, he can eat.

He’s wearing a plain black button-down and the dark color sets off the red in his brown hair. His table manners are perfect.

“Colin’s the one who first found out I was gay,” I find myself saying while Rex is distracted by the food.

“Did you tell him?”

“Oh fuck no,” I say. “I mean, uh, no. He walked in on me, um, sucking off this guy behind the auto shop.” It was one of the worst moments of my life. I was sixteen. Actually, it wasn’t long before I met Ginger. Buddy—the guy—picked up the occasional shift at the shop and was a friend of Colin’s from high school. I’d caught him looking at me a few times when I’d come through with a message for my dad or to borrow a car. I’m not even sure if he was gay, but apparently he could tell I was. He was kind of handsome, I suppose, in a blond football-player-gone-to-seed way, but I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to know if the pull I felt toward guys was real or if there was just something wrong with me and that’s why I didn’t care about girls at all.

There was someone at the auto shop that I’d had a stupid crush on for what felt like forever. His name was Truman and he was about as straight as they come. He was far too old for me, married, and would probably have detached my head from my shoulders if he so much as suspected any heat in the way I looked at him in his coveralls. He was a big, muscular black guy in his late-thirties who always wore a red bandana over his hair and had the cleanest fingernails I’d ever seen on a mechanic. He wore a signet ring on his right hand and a wedding ring on his left and he had a deep chuckle when he was amused and an incongruously high laugh when he was delighted—which I only ever heard in reaction to a victory by the Cleveland Browns (his hometown team) and his twin daughters.

Anyway, I’d taken Buddy out behind the shop expressly because I was concerned that Truman would be getting to work soon. He was the only one who came from the south and used the alley behind the shop. I never found out why Colin came through there that day.

Suddenly, Colin was there and he was screaming at Buddy, “Get the fuck off of my little brother, you fucking pervert.” I was afraid Colin was going to kill him. Smash his head into the cement wall. At the same moment, though, I registered that Colin coming to my defense, calling me his little brother, was the most intimate thing he’d done in years. I stood up and grabbed at Colin, yelling that it wasn’t Buddy’s fault. Buddy ran off down the alley and never came back to the shop. I’m not sure what ever happened to him. The second he was gone, Colin rounded on me. He looked like he was going to puke.

“You…. You….” Colin couldn’t even find words bad enough for what he wanted to say to me. I was terrified of him, but with Colin, you never let him know you were scared or he’d eat you alive.

“Um, so, I’m gay,” I said. I was going for levity, but my voice was scratchy and thin.

“Don’t you ever fucking say that!” Colin said, his voice low and intense, his nostrils flared. He came toward me like a bull, head lowered.

“It’s not a big deal—” I started to say, but that was all I got out before Colin hit me in the stomach. Then the mouth. I slid down the pocked concrete wall and retched on the ground, the vomit stinging my bloodied mouth. Colin turned and stalked back through the alley the way he’d come. So much for brotherly intimacy.

“He hit the guy so hard he knocked two of his teeth out,” I say to Rex. “And got in a couple hits on me. I told my dad and my other brothers I was gay later that night so they didn’t hear it from Colin. My dad’s not religious, but I think he was praying the ground would open up and swallow him so he didn’t have to say anything.”

Rex makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat and I look over to see that he’s squeezed his wine glass so hard the stem broke in his hand.

“Shit!” I say. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Rex says, shaking his head. “I apologize,” he says to the waiter when she comes over to clean up the spilled wine and take away his broken glass.

He turns to me. “Listen,” he says. “Can we get out of here?”

“I—sure,” I say. “Did you want—” But he’s already standing up and throwing money onto the table. I fumble for my wallet as I stand, but he’s put down more than enough, and I jog after him.

His back is to me when I get out of the restaurant, shrugging my jacket on. His hand is on the back of his neck.

“Hey,” I say. “Did you cut yourself?” He shakes his head. I step in front of him, trying to look at his face, but his chin is on his chest. I reach out and squeeze his arm. “Are you okay?” I ask again. He nods, but still doesn’t look up.

“C’mere,” I tell him, and I tug on his shirt and start walking toward my apartment.

When I unlock the door, I sit him down at the kitchen table, since the only other place to sit is on my unmade bed. Got to add new sheets to my ever-expanding list of things I need to live in Michigan and interact with other human beings.

I look at his hand and see that he really didn’t cut himself. I’ve never seen someone break a glass like that, except in cartoons.

I pull up a chair in front of his and sit, leaning close to him.

“Rex, what’s going on?” I say.

He finally looks at me and his eyes look more uncertain than I’ve ever seen them. His jaw is clenched. Whatever he sees in my face makes his expression soften. He puts his hands on my knees.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “You didn’t even get to finish your food.”

“I don’t care about that,” I tell him.

“No, really,” he says, “I apologize.” He falls into this stilted, overly formal way of speaking sometimes. When he’s nervous? Or uncomfortable. I’m not sure. “I hate that your brother did that. I can’t stand violence.”

I almost laugh. The idea that Rex, who’s six foot four, built like a bodybuilder, held me up against a tree as he fingerfucked me, and could probably take apart any guy I’ve ever seen hates violence seems, well, laughable. But then I remember how he fixed Marilyn’s leg the night we met. How he looked at my bruises and binder-clipped my pants. How he warned me about the weather and got upset with me because sometimes people die in the snow. How he made sure I was wearing my seat belt and cooked for me and stretched me so carefully in bed when I said it had been a while. How he held me in sleep, his arms heavy, but never crushed me. How he washed my hair in the shower and put a hand over my brow so shampoo didn’t get in my eyes. How, at the diner the next morning, he winced when I burned the roof of my mouth on my coffee and silently pushed my water toward me even though I barely noticed because I do it all the time.

Rex stands abruptly and opens my refrigerator. He shakes his head and I know he’s seeing my collection of takeout condiments and a stain from last week’s leftovers that leaked.

“You don’t have any food,” he says resignedly, and waves me off before I can make any excuses. He opens the freezer and takes out… something. He rummages through my cabinets and pulls out a can of beans and box of instant rice and starts fiddling with my stove.

“You have to light it,” I say. He picks up the fireplace matches that I’ve jammed into the oven door handle and gives me the same look Ginger gives me when she thinks I’ve said something particularly childish.

“Daniel,” he says, bending down to look at the stove. “You really need to talk to Carl—this stove doesn’t have a sensor on the pilot light.”

I walk over, but it just looks like any other old stove to me.

“Uh. Is that bad?”

“It’s not safe. If the pilot light goes out and the gas is still on… it’s not safe.”

“Okay,” I say, trying not to snap at him for patronizing me, since it’s obvious he’s freaked out about something else.

He puts a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m serious. Are you going to call Carl?”

“Um, I don’t really think he’ll get me a new stove, Rex. Besides, I hardly ever use it.”

His hand tightens on my shoulder like he wants to fight me on it, but he just turns back to the counter.

I don’t know where he found it, but he’s chopping a small onion and stirring it into the beans before I even see him find a knife that must have been here when I moved in. As happened before, after he’s been cooking for a bit, his shoulders relax and he starts to talk.

“I don’t want to get all heavy on you,” Rex says.

“Hey, come on. I started it by talking about my brother. Just tell me why it flipped you out so much. Here, I’ll put on some music,” I say when he doesn’t answer right away. I flip through my CD books for a few minutes trying to find the right thing. But what’s good background music for an unexpected confessional from the guy you just started dating and whom you barely know? I figure you can’t get more confessional than Tori Amos, and put on Little Earthquakes.

“You like Tori Amos?” Rex says, his back to me.

“Tori Amos is fucking amazing,” I say, ready to go to the mat for Tori.

“I know,” he says, “I guess I just thought you liked… I don’t know, harder rock stuff?” He says this like he wouldn’t know this “harder rock stuff” if he tripped over it. “Just, you’re all edgy and stuff.”

I’m about to prickle at this assessment when he sets a plate in front of me that looks like I’m in a Mexican restaurant. There’s fluffy yellow rice and beans with onion that smell like spices I know I’ve never bought, and a miniburrito, which must have been what he found in my freezer.

“What the hell?” I laugh. “Wow, thanks. Have some,” I say, but he waves it away.

He wanders around my apartment like he’s hoping to distract himself, but he’s shit out of luck because there isn’t much to look at except one bookshelf and a bunch of CDs.

“I didn’t have any friends,” Rex says, looking out my window toward the woods. “In school. We moved so often I never had time to make any. And anyway, I was so shy I couldn’t talk to anyone, even if I’d wanted to.”

He wanders over to my bed, and then to the stereo. He flips through the CD book I left out and then turns the stereo off, Tori cutting out mid-”Winter.”

“But people didn’t really mess with me either. I was just invisible.”

I can’t imagine it. Rex invisible. Even now, it’s like the whole room has arranged itself in relation to him.

“When I was fifteen, we moved back to Texas because one of my mom’s boyfriends had some business there. Shitty little town called Anderson. The school was smaller, though, and after about a year, I made this friend. Well, he made me, really. Kept talking to me all the time at school even though I didn’t say anything back. Real chatterbox.” Rex smiles. “Funny-looking kid. This wiry red hair and a big old grin. Kinda scrawny. Anyway, he’d show up at my house and just take me with him wherever he went. He’d talk and I’d listen. And then one day he kissed me. I was so surprised I about fell over. He socked me on the shoulder and said, ‘Just wondering,’ and smiled at me. When I picked my jaw up off the floor, I kissed him back.”

Rex wanders over to my bookshelf and he scans the titles. He goes right for The Secret History, running a finger over the mud-spattered spine. When he speaks again his voice is strained.

“We’d have sex in the woods, near this little park. No one really went there. One day these three guys found us. I didn’t hear them. They started… you know, whaling on us. And Jamie. He was a little guy.”

Rex walks back to the window and looks out, hands in his pockets. From the way he’s talking, it’s clear that Jamie wasn’t just some fuck in the woods. I want to ask about what he was to Rex, but I don’t want to interrupt. I can barely hear him when he starts talking again, his deep voice gone low and tight.

“One of the guys picked up a stick. Started hitting us with it. I kept trying to get up. To stop them from hurting Jamie. But I wasn’t strong enough.” When he says this, his muscles flex, arms tightening and shoulders bunching. “They ran away when some trucker wandered over to take a piss in the woods. He’s the one who radioed for an ambulance, they told me later.”

My stomach is in a knot. I stopped eating about two bites into Rex’s story, but I wish I hadn’t eaten those. I walk over to him, but his posture radiates “Stay away.” I sit down on my bed facing him.

“What happened?” I choke out.

“I was out for days,” he says, squinting at something out the window. “Busted eye socket and chin. Broken ribs. Took my appendix out.” He rests his forehead against the window. “Jamie never woke up. Head trauma.”

My swallow sounds loud in the quiet of the room.

“Fuck,” I breathe. I don’t know what else to say.

Rex taps the windowsill with the heel of his hand, and I can see him getting it together. “So, you can see why I don’t take real kindly to your brother.”

He sits down on the edge of the bed next to me and bumps my thigh lightly with his closed fist. “Listen,” he says, “I think maybe that’s not the kind of thing you talk about on a date. But I’m not real good with polite get-to-know-yous. So.”

I like this about Rex. He goes for things and explains them if he thinks they need to be explained, but he doesn’t seem to second-guess himself and he doesn’t seem to regret anything he says.

I turn my nose into his shoulder and breathe him in.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I know that’s not—”

“Thanks,” he says quickly, and I can tell he’s done talking about this.

I scoot backward and lie down on my bed, holding my arm out to him.

He hesitates, but then sinks down beside me, turning into my body and throwing his arm over my stomach. I hold him as close as I can.

“After that,” he says softly, leaning into my touch, “I knew I had to make it so I’d never be in that position again.”

His voice is muffled in my neck and I feel the words before I hear them.

“I had to be strong enough. For whatever happened.”

“Rex,” I say, “it wasn’t your fault.” It sounds like a useless cliché before it’s even out of my mouth.

He slides his hand under my shirt to stroke my back.

“Hey, Daniel?”

“Hmm?”

“Could I, maybe, stay here tonight?” He tenses, waiting for my answer. I’m embarrassed because my sheets are dirty, my bed’s a saggy piece of shit, and I don’t even have coffee to offer him in the morning. But his weight feels right.

“Yeah, please stay,” I say.

I mentally run through all my clothes to see if I can offer him anything to sleep in and come up with nothing that would possibly fit him. I wonder if it’s ungrateful to leave the food he made me congealing on the table. I should definitely brush my teeth.

Rex just strips and climbs under my covers. I jump up to make sure the door’s locked and turn off the lights, and I duck into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I set my phone alarm and toss it onto the windowsill. Then I drop my clothes on the floor at the foot of the bed and crawl in next to Rex, shivering. His skin is giving off enough heat that I can feel it without even touching him. I press a small kiss to his shoulder and lie on my back beside him, barely touching. I’m not sure if he wants me to hold him or to be left alone. After a while, he grabs my hand and squeezes it, like we’re a part of a string of paper dolls joined at the wrist.

We stay that way for a minute, and then he reaches over to my other hand and pulls me toward him. It’s kind of awkward the way he hauls me onto him and I’m not sure what he wants. Then I realize that he’s positioned me the way I woke up on Sunday morning, half on top of him with my leg thrown over his hip and my cheek on his chest. He’s asleep before I can decide if I like it or not.