Chapter 16

 

 

December

 

THE 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.

There’s a little warm flame above my stomach but below my throat. It’s been there for a while, I think, but I didn’t notice. Everything with my dad and Philly and Colin and the Temple job got in the way, so I forgot about it. But last night, it roared back to life. Okay, so maybe I don’t know how to do this. But I can learn. I didn’t know how to be a student once, either, but I learned. I didn’t know how to teach, but I learned. I dug in and watched other people and I learned. Not just how to do it, but how to do it well. And I can learn this too.

I smile at Rex.

“I was just a little scared,” I admit. “But I’m okay, I think.”

He cocks his head a little, but he seems to get that I’m just working shit out.

“See?” he says. “Brave.”

I push him back into the pillows and kiss him. There’s a type of joy bubbling under my skin that I’ve never felt before. It’s light and hopeful and a little cautious, but it’s there.

We kiss for what feels like hours, mouths meeting and parting exquisitely, tongues tangling together passionately, then turning sweet. We just kiss and, after a while, every touch of Rex’s mouth is like a touch to my whole body. I feel electrified, so shaky with warm pleasure that I can’t imagine what I would do if Rex stopped kissing me.

He manages to get my clothes and his underwear off while barely breaking the kiss. My hands move over his face, his neck, and down to his broad shoulders and strong arms. I’m on top of him, but I feel weightless, like his touch is the only thing anchoring me to the bed, the room, the earth.

I’m dizzy and my mouth feels swollen when Rex finally pulls away. His eyes are sleepy with pleasure and his mouth is puffy. When he backs off, I can feel how raw my mouth and chin are from his stubble. Not distracted by his kisses anymore, I can also feel that we’re both rock hard, our erections caught between us.

I wrap my arms around Rex’s shoulders and kiss his throat and I can feel his cock jerk against my stomach. I push Rex’s thighs open on the bed and grind my hips into his. He groans, brokenly, and his arms come around me.

Flipping us like my hold on him was nothing, he pushes me into the bed, breathing hard. He shakes his head, as if to clear it, and leans down, hovering over me, and kisses me once more, just a press of swollen mouths.

“I love you, Daniel,” he says. “I love you and I want you so bad.”

His words send a wash of heat through my chest and a pulse of arousal through my groin. My hips strain upward to meet his, but he slides down the bed and rolls my hips up off the blanket, slinging my legs over his shoulders in one effortless motion.

“Fuck, I want you,” he says, and then his mouth is on me. He licks my straining hardness from base to tip and I can feel his moan against my skin. When his mouth closes around me it’s like I’m suspended in a bubble of pleasure so exquisite I can’t move for fear it will pop. He holds me in his mouth and swallows around the tip of my erection and I cry out, writhing on the bed.

Rex rolls my hips farther back, exposing my ass to his mouth, and he licks into me.

“Oh fuck,” I cry, the sensation so sudden that at first I try to get away.

But Rex’s grip on my hips, his big hands spreading me open, are undeniable.

He relaxes my clenching opening with his soft tongue, and it’s a sensation I’ll never get used to. How can something so soft feel this powerfully good? I’m totally helpless under his touch, my breath coming in gasps as he opens me and slides his tongue inside.

“Oh god. Rex,” I moan. I fumble in the drawer for the lube and pass it down to him, but he ignores it. He just keeps licking and sucking at my sensitive opening until my cock is leaking a constant stream of precome and I’m breathing so fast I’m dizzy.

When he finally draws back with one final, slow lick over my hole, I whimper and let out a breath, my hands fisting in the blanket because I don’t even have the strength to lift them to Rex’s hair.

“Unngh,” I say, which means No one has ever made me feel like you do. Rex kisses up my stomach, licking the precome that’s pooled there, and then he bites gently at my nipples. He kisses my throat and my jaw under my ear and I mean to return the favor, but my body is so lost in confused pleasure that I actually can’t move.

“What are you doing to me?” I manage to whisper, and when Rex kisses my mouth softly, I can taste myself on his lips, dusky and warm.

“Just loving you,” he says softly. He kisses the corners of my mouth and my eyebrows and then his slick fingers are at my opening.

He slides two fingers inside me and my eyes roll back at the jolt of pleasure his fingers send through my ass. Rex groans low in his throat and watches my face. He strokes me from the inside, curling his fingers over my prostate lightly so the pleasure flushes through me but doesn’t overwhelm. He leaves his fingers there, moving gently inside me, just exploring with no urgency. As if he has all the time in the world. This building pleasure has ratcheted up so slowly that when it catches up to me I feel torn apart by sensation. Rex’s fingers inside me, his muscular bulk hovering over me, the heaviness of his thick cock against my hip, and his mouth a breath away from mine.

His attention is so complete that I feel like, for just a moment, I’m seeing myself through his eyes, my body shaking with pleasure laid out before him, my lips trembling for his next kiss, my eyes wide and desperate. I’m pinned by his gaze, his body, his fingers inside me, and the love I can feel in his every touch.

Rex slides a third finger inside me, still just resting there, filling me up, stretching me with nothing but slow, gentle strokes, like seaweed inside me, undulating with an errant wave.

My eyes fill with tears. I’m not sad, just overwhelmed, full to the brim with his body and his attention and his love.

“You feel so good,” I say softly as he kisses away my tears. He slides even closer to me, the fingers inside me reaching deeper. His voice is a low, resonant growl.

“From the first moment I saw you, this is all I’ve been able to think about,” he says, eyes never leaving my face. “Being inside you in every way possible.”

I cry out at his words, my eyes squeezing shut as he pulses his finger against my prostate and my whole channel throbs with pleasure.

“Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod,” I’m muttering, barely aware I’m making a sound at all. “Please!”

“You want me inside of you, baby?” Rex growls, voice hot and possessive and just for me.

“Yes!” I’m shaking, my ass quivering and clenching around Rex’s thick fingers.

He teases my rim with his thumb and my opening spasms.

“Are you sure?” he asks, teasing edging into his voice. “I could bring you off this way, put my hand inside you and just stay here, like this.” He kisses me gently, almost a tease of lips. My whole body clenches at his words and my eyes go wide.

“You like that idea,” he says. “Being so full of me you can’t move. Just lie there and feel my fingers moving inside you.”

“Oh god.” I can’t even think. But I want Rex’s pleasure too. Want to see him come, smell it, feel it inside me. I shake my head a little.

“Later,” he says, and I nod frantically. “Right now I need to be inside you.” I can feel his erection, huge against my hip.

I hear the click of the lube, but I’m floating, my eyes on Rex’s. When he eases his fingers out of me, I cry out at the loss, and Rex kisses me, his mouth consuming mine as he pushes inside me.

I gasp into Rex’s mouth and he groans, burying his face in my neck. I can feel him trembling against me, and his hardness spreads me open so completely that my legs fall apart and I throw my head back.

“Oh, baby,” Rex says. He takes my ass in his hands and eases my hips back farther, then he readjusts his angle and thrusts the last bit into me. He feels deeper than he’s ever been, like he’s touching something inside of me that has never been touched before.

Eyes on mine, he pulls out and thrusts back in again, slowly, and the skin and muscle he so sensitized earlier tingles with delight. I’m caught, already on the edge, as if any movement of Rex’s might send me spiraling over. Rex is moving so slowly that I almost can’t tell when he’s pushing into me and when he’s sliding out. With my hips held off the bed, I’m totally at his mercy, my cock pulsing against my stomach with pleasure.

“Please,” I gasp into Rex’s mouth.

He pulls out and slams back inside me, nailing my prostate and causing my whole body to clench up in pleasure. He fucks me deep and hard, pulling my shoulders down to amplify his thrusts. I know I’m whimpering and babbling and I don’t care because he feels so good. He’s watching my every reaction and on his next thrust, he holds himself inside of me and pulls my hips down, penetrating me even deeper. I can feel the thickness of him pulsing inside my channel and pressing into my prostate, and as he holds me locked to him, he starts to move his hips, pushing impossibly deeper with tiny thrusts.

I can’t move away from this deeper penetration and I can’t control it. My mouth falls open and Rex licks my lips. He pulls my shoulders up, lifting me even closer into him, so my weight pushes him even deeper inside me.

“I can’t—” I say. “I need—” Rex kisses me hard and thrusts up into me. My insides are liquid, but his erection feels huge, so deep inside me I feel like we’re one. Rex cups my face in his hands as he kisses me and I wrap my arms around his neck.

“I love you,” Rex murmurs, “I love you.” He kisses me and lays me back down on the bed. I can’t think anymore. The whole world has narrowed to Rex. I try to say that I love him, but it comes out garbled, a mash of I and love and you that makes Rex smile.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he says, and he pulls out of me slowly, my muscles clenching and spasming around the emptiness he’s left behind. I feel bereft and I cry out, hating the sudden loss of him. He slides four fingers inside me, the fullness huge, but different, and presses on my prostate.

“Oh fuck, Rex, oh god!”

He fingers me, rubbing at my gland until I think I’m going to explode. Then he slams his cock back inside me and I erupt without him even touching my cock, spewing come between us, starbursts exploding through my ass and tingling up my spine as I clench around him. It’s a pleasure that isn’t just orgasm but the culmination of every touch he’s bestowed on me since we started kissing, like my whole body is answering Rex’s. I can tell he’s watching me and when I can open my eyes, finally, he’s breathing heavily.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, his voice raw.

“Now you,” I say, my whole body sensitized. “I want to feel you come inside me.”

Rex groans and rolls his eyes like I’m killing him. He kisses my throat and then starts thrusting inside me again, the sensation so amplified after my orgasm that I know I won’t be able to take it for long. I scrape my fingertips down Rex’s spine, the muscles bunching as he pushes inside me. He’s groaning, hips pistoning, and then he freezes, muscles taut.

“Oh, Danny,” he says, and then he releases deep inside me, with pulse after pulse of branding heat. His hips keep moving, like he can’t control himself, sending little tingling aftershocks through my rectum. Finally, he collapses on top of me, lips soft and breath warm against my shoulder.

As he slides out of me, groaning, he slips his fingers back in to feel his release work its way out of me. He can never help himself. As he goes to move his hand, I catch his wrist, holding his fingers inside me.

“I like it,” I say. “I don’t feel so empty.” Rex’s face tells me how much he likes that. He kisses me deeply and is asleep within seconds. I lie awake a few more minutes, thinking that maybe I can do this whole love thing after all. That seemed like a pretty good start.

 

 

THE WEEK since Rex and I got back from Philly has been relaxing and feels intimate in a way that still catches me up short when I notice it in the moment.

It’s been years since I had this much time off with no school, no job, and nothing expected of me, so, of course, now I’m starting to feel guilty for not taking this time to work on my book. This morning, I dragged myself out of Rex’s bed early and borrowed Rex’s truck to slog to the library through the snow. I’ve fiddled with my car, but despite trying every trick I know, it’s like the car died with my father and refuses to be resurrected. I should just sell it for parts and buy another, but I can’t afford even that right now.

My dad’s death feels like a bruise, tender when I bump it unwittingly but otherwise dormant. I’m not sure if that’s how I should feel or not, but I’m trying to take a page out of Rex’s book and decide that I’m supposed to feel however I feel.

It’s Colin I’m worried about. Colin I can’t stop worrying about. He never returned my call, but I’m not really surprised. I mean, he’s been gay all this time and never called me before. It’s not like I think he’s psyched to bond over it or anything.

I work in the library until I realize Rex has left a message to ask if I want pasta or chicken for dinner and it hits me in a rush that, for the first time, I have things structuring my time other than the time the library closes or the amount of juice left in my laptop battery. It’s still a little strange to remember that if I worked all night, Rex would miss me. It’s even stranger to realize that I would miss him. I’ve only stayed at my apartment one night since we got back to Michigan, and it felt… depressing. Lonely. I don’t want to look around for another place, though, because what if I get the Temple job? It’s a long shot, I know, but Virginia seemed to think I have a real chance.

I haven’t been letting myself think about that, though, because thinking about it means thinking about leaving Rex, and thinking about leaving Rex makes me feel like I’m going to puke. I know he said we’d have time to talk about it, but I haven’t brought it up.

I text back Chicken as my stomach growls, in the vague hopes that maybe he means the roasted chicken that he’s made before.

I make a quick stop at Mr. Zoo’s because I’ve had Republica stuck in my head all day and am hoping I can pick up a used copy.

“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.

 

 

“OH, 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.”

 

 

“HOLY 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.

“Hello, 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.

 

 

WHEN REX 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.

“Hello,” he says, his voice soft like it always is when he’s speaking to strangers. “We’d like to cut down a tree, please.”

“Of course, of course,” the man says. I zone out as he and Rex discuss type of tree—who knew there were different kinds of pine trees?—height of ceiling, spread of branches, etc. The woman looks at me kindly and I try to smile in a way that doesn’t reveal my actual thoughts, which are, at this moment, running toward gore-splattered horror movie posters of the American Gothic aesthetic featuring a background of beautiful trees and this pleasant little hut.

“All right?” Rex is saying—to me, it would seem.

“Huh? What? Yeah, great,” I stammer, looking around.

Rex is holding a saw. I do not like Rex holding a saw. Wait, cut down a tree? As in, cut down a tree? Rex waves at the couple and takes my arm—fortunately for me, not with the hand holding the saw.

“Um, Rex,” I say, as we set off down one of the rows of trees. “Are you about to use that saw to… to fell a tree?”

“Is that what you say?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I reply, “because where I come from saws are something out of horror movies and trees live in parks so if you cut them down you go to prison.”

Rex laughs. He sounds truly delighted. I look up at him and his face is radiant. He’s striding through the cold air and shin-high snow like he’s never been happier to be anywhere in his life.

“When we find the one we want, we cut it down. Then Wallace will come with the tractor and take it to the car for us.”

“Wallace?”

Rex shakes his head.

“Where do you go sometimes?” he asks. “Back at the hut, what were you thinking about?”

“I was thinking that those two looked like Mr. and Mrs. Claus on a diet and that it was, like, the Platonic ideal of Christmassy coupledom and so of course it was too good to be true, so they would probably turn out to be creepy serial murderers who cut our heads off with saws”—I gesture to the one in his hand—“and turned us into mulch for next year’s trees.”

Rex is staring at me.

“Oh, and then I started thinking about American Gothic. You know, the painting of the couple with the pitchfork?” He nods. “Only, they weren’t actually a couple; they were the painter’s dentist and his daughter, but the point is that there’s this horror movie called American Gothic, and the cover of it is like the painting only the couple are these murderers who trap people in the house and kill them. And on the poster you can see people, like, clawing at the windows and stuff, trying to get out, and the pitchfork is all bloody and the woman is holding a knife dripping with blood.” I laugh.

“That’s what you were thinking about while I was talking to Wallace about Christmas trees?”

Rex looks serious.

“I mean, I don’t really think that they’re serial killers, Rex.”

“I get it now, I think,” he says.

“Come on, I was just kidding.”

He nods. He drops the saw and where it falls there is a perfect impression of a saw in the snow.

“You look at things that you think are nice or happy or cheerful and you think they’re too good to be true. You think they’re too good to be real, so they must actually be bad.”

“I….” Well, actually, yeah, that is exactly what I think, but he said it like it’s a bad thing.

“You’re suspicious,” Rex says, like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Suspicious that something you might like or want is a trap. That if you trust it, it’ll all go wrong. No?”

“Well, I mean—”

I drop my head and stare at the saw-shaped hole in the snow. Rex tilts my head up. I don’t know what to say, but it seems somehow crucial that I say the right thing. Rex looks like he’s in actual, physical pain.

“I… I used to,” I say. His face softens. He takes the ends of my scarf that have come untied and tuck them back in. I look back down at the snow.

“I… do you… you don’t like that, I guess?” I ask, unable to meet his eyes. Rex bends his knees to look me in the eyes.

“I don’t like that you’ve had to think that way,” he says. “But I get it.”

“I thought that about you,” I admit. “For a while.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“I just—you were too good to be true. So handsome and strong and kind. Understanding. And I felt like, if you were true, then why the hell would you want me? You know? And so I guess it was just easier to think that you didn’t.”

“What I think you still don’t get, Daniel,” Rex says, “is that, for me, you were too good to be true.”

I snort and Rex grabs me by the shoulders, his expression fierce.

“When I first met you, all I knew is that you were this real educated, real smart professor and I’m the guy who never graduated high school. Who can barely read.” His face flushes. “You’re gorgeous and sexy and ambitious. You’re from the city, used to hanging out with famous bands every night, and you showed up in this little town in the middle of nowhere where I barely leave my house.”

“Rex, I—”

“But my point, Daniel,” he says, his face close to mine, “is that all those things are true. We are good for each other. But not too good to be true. Complementary. That’s the word, right?”

I nod.

“The other night, you said that we mean different things when we say I love you. That you don’t know what it means to have someone love you. This is what it means. It means doing things together and learning what each other needs. I give you what you need. You give me what I need. And they’re not the same. And that’s fine. It’s not too good to be true. It’s just good.”

I’m nodding spasmodically as Rex talks. My hands fist automatically, which looks ridiculous with the gloves I’m wearing.

“But I have to tell you that… I just—still, every time you start to say something serious like this, a part of me thinks you’re about to end it. I don’t mean to go there, but I just—I’m sorry.”

I search his face for any clue that I haven’t just set us back months. Rex lets out a breath.

“I know,” he says. “I can see it in your face.”

“It’s just where my mind goes, automatically,” I say, wanting to explain.

“Well, I think we’ve established that where your mind goes and the truth aren’t exactly the same place,” he says. “Seriously? Is all you think about serial killers? I think you watch too many horror movies.”

I laugh, incredibly grateful that Rex is willing to joke about it.

“Hey,” he says, “I love the places your mind goes. I didn’t mean to make you self-conscious about it. Just… you know, you don’t have to think that way about me. You’ll see.”

“Okay,” I nod, trying not to sound suspicious. Rex kisses me, his hot mouth a shocking contrast to the cold air around us. I gasp into his mouth and try to put my arms around him, but I lose my balance in these damned boots and start to stumble. Rex tries to grab me, but he overbalances and we both fall into the snow, Rex landing on top of me.

Rex uses his position to kiss me again, and I try desperately to roll us over so he can be the one getting snow jammed into his collar.

“Ha, get off me!” I say. Rex is laughing, trying to find a way to stand up without squashing me. When he finally manages it, and pulls me up with him, he kisses me again, our faces both cold with snow. He reaches down and plucks the saw from its pocket of snow, putting his other arm around me.

“What does that look like to you?” he asks, indicating the spot where we rolled around.

“A murder scene,” I say, but I’m smiling at him.

“Hmph,” he says.

“Well, what does it look like to you, then, Mr. Sweetness and Light?”

“A snow angel,” he says, with an expression that clearly says that this is not what he thinks. “See? Complementary.”

“Fucked-up angel,” I say and grab the saw from him. “Come on. Are we doing this or what?”

It’s cold and I’ve got snow places snow should never be, but I feel warm from the inside out. Rex is gleeful, explaining to me the different types of trees and how long they last. He points out what makes them different, but I’m content just to walk next to him and practice thinking happy thoughts: this is our tree. We’re going to decorate it together. We’re having Christmas together. There will be a fire, and food, and the dog. There will be Rex.

“Hey, you okay?” Rex says, stopping when he realizes I’m a few paces behind him.

“Yeah,” I say. “Just happy.”

Rex’s smile is pure joy. He looks like a little boy who was told he did a good job.

By the time we find our tree, there are families wandering the lanes alongside us, kids plowing through snow that’s up to their thighs, pointing at which trees they want—always the biggest ones.

“That one,” Rex says, pointing to a medium-sized tree at the end of the row. It doesn’t look any different than any of the others to me, but what the hell do I know? The last Christmas tree I had was made of beer cans.

Rex kneels in the snow and starts to saw through the trunk of the tree. I’ve never seen anyone cut down a tree before. It’s strange.

“You want to try?” Rex asks.

I don’t, really, but it seems like one of those things that we’re supposed to do together. I take the saw and slot it into the notch Rex has started. After sawing for a few minutes, I’m exhausted. Rex touches my back and takes over again. When he’s sawn through, we stick the saw into the snow so we can find it again, and walk back to get Wallace. Rex gets on the tractor or baler or whatever it is with Wallace, but there’s only room for two, so I wait for them by the hut.

I’m watching an adorable little girl trying to braid tree branches when my phone rings. I expect it to be Rex, stuck in the snow with Wallace, or Ginger, calling to confirm when I’ll be in Philly for Chanukah. But it’s Brian.

“Dan,” he says.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, before he can say anything, because damn trying to be less suspicious, Brian has never called me in my life.

“Um,” he says, “have you heard from Colin?” His tone of voice says he assumes this is ridiculous but needs to ask.

“No,” I say. “Not since the funeral. Why?”

“We haven’t seen him since the funeral either,” Brian says.

“What? But what about the party at the shop?”

“He didn’t show.”

“Is he at home?”

“No, man, we didn’t think of that!” Brian says, like a jackass. “He isn’t at home and he hasn’t been at the shop. We haven’t seen him since the funeral. I keep calling his phone and he never picks up.”

“I haven’t talked to him, Brian,” I say, “but if I hear from him I’ll let you know.”

It’s a testament to how anxious Brian must be that he doesn’t say a single nasty thing as he hangs up the phone. I dial Colin’s number and his phone rings to voice mail.

“Colin,” I say, “um, it’s Daniel again. Look, Brian just called me and he says no one’s heard from you since the funeral. I just… want to make sure everything’s okay. Okay? So, even if you don’t want to talk to me, maybe call Brian or Sam? Okay, bye. Oh, and I didn’t say anything. Okay, bye.”

“All right, son, you’re all set,” Wallace says, pulling the trailer thing with the tree in it up in front of me. Rex hops off and hands Wallace some money. I reach for my wallet, but Rex waves me off.

“Thank you,” he says, shaking Wallace’s hand. He looks so happy.

“Merry Christmas, boys,” Wallace says, waving.

Rex smiles at me and then grabs the bundled-up tree like it’s nothing more than a baseball bat he’s casually resting on his shoulder and sets off for the truck. He straps the tree to the roof and we set off. Rex is unusually talkative, explaining some of the things Wallace told him about tree farming. I love seeing him so happy, but the call from Brian is nagging at me.

“Hey, what’s up?” Rex asks a few minutes later. I glance up at him.

“You don’t think….” I begin. “I mean….” I shake my head. “It’s just, Brian called while you were getting the tree. And he said no one’s heard from Colin since the funeral. He’s not at home, won’t answer his phone. I just… I don’t know, I just wonder if he’s okay. I’ve called him. A few times. And he hasn’t called back.”

A few nights ago, when I took Marilyn out for her evening walk, I called Colin again. At first I was just going to leave a generic, “Seriously, dude, are you ever going to call me back,” message. But as I was walking, I started to think about how it might have been if Colin and I had been allies instead of enemies. How different things would have been. How different I might have been. So, when his voice mail picked up, I said, “Hi, Colin. I’m so angry with you because you cheated me out of a brother. I don’t understand why you never told me. I mean, I can think of lots of reasons, but I don’t know what yours was. No matter what it was, though, I think it sucks. I think it sucks that you let me think I was alone in this, when I wasn’t. I wasn’t, was I, Colin?”

My hands were shaking when I hung up the phone, and Marilyn was sitting at my feet, looking up at me like she was worried about me.

The next night, I snuck into the bathroom after Rex was asleep and left another message.

“Colin, it’s Daniel. Look, I’m mad at you, but I still want to talk to you, okay? I want to know what the fuck’s going on with you. Why were you so horrified when you found out I was gay? Because I know you weren’t faking that. You almost killed Buddy when you found us together. I just want to know why. Please call me back, okay?”

“Do you know any of his friends he might go stay with?” Rex asks. “Any of them you could call?”

“No. I don’t know any of his friends. I don’t even know if he has any. If he hasn’t talked to Brian and Sam then he hasn’t talked to anyone.”

I stare out the window, the snow suddenly seeming oppressive instead of magical. I try to shake it off, though, because today is supposed to be about the Christmas tree—about making Rex happy.

“He’s probably with that man, don’t you think?” I ask. “The one from the funeral?”

“That makes sense,” Rex says. But I’m not so sure.

 

 

WE SPEND a lazy day decorating the tree with some tinsel and lights that Rex says he found in his workshop but that I suspect he may have bought especially for us. Marilyn is confused to see a tree inside and we have to keep taking her outside to stop her from peeing on it.

“I’ll take her,” I say when she circles the tree again as Rex is about to start dinner.

Outside, a few more inches of snow have fallen since this morning and the scene of snow-draped pine trees outside Rex’s cabin, with its warmly glowing windows, looks like a postcard that I can’t believe I can walk into it. I fiddle with my phone, flipping it open and shut uncertainly until it almost breaks in half. Jesus, I really need to get a new phone. I mentally add it to the ever-increasing list of shit I need to buy in a couple of paychecks.

I flip the phone open and call Colin before I can change my mind. But, of course, it goes right to voice mail.

“Colin,” I say, my teeth chattering. “I have this memory. At least, I think it is. I’m not totally sure it really happened, but… if it did…. It’s—it was a snow day at school and I came home early. You were in bed, drunk, and I remember Dad’s pills, for his back. Anyway, I remember a lot of them, Colin, and I just. I wanted to make sure—I wanted to see if…. Look, just don’t do anything fucking stupid, all right, you asshole? Because I…. Just, please be okay. Okay?”

 

 

I’M LYING in front of the fire, groaning, stuffed so full of Christmas brunch that I can barely move. I don’t even know how I’m going to be able to eat the roast chicken Rex is making for dinner. If I tip my head back a little, I can see the lights on the Christmas tree reflecting in the window, making it look like I’m surrounded by trees. Last night, Christmas Eve, Rex and I watched Little Women, which is one of Rex’s favorite Christmas movies—the 1933, Katherine Hepburn version, not, Rex explained, the 1949 one with Elizabeth Taylor. It was pretty good, actually, though I never cared for the novel. If one of my brothers burned the only existing manuscript of my book, he would be in a world of pain.

We watched because Rex told me how he and his mother used to have a set of Christmas movies they watched every year and how he hadn’t done it since she died. Their lineup was Little Women, Holiday Affair, It Happened on Fifth Avenue, and The Bishop’s Wife. He was shocked to hear that I’d never even heard of any of them except Little Women and hadn’t actually seen a single one. I made it about twenty minutes into Holiday Affair before falling asleep and drooling all over Rex, so we went to bed instead.

Now, Rex is in his workshop doing something mysterious that he wandered off to after brunch when I collapsed on the rug to try and digest. Presumably, it’s something to do with a Christmas present, since we’re about to exchange them.

I have Rex’s present hidden in the closet. I really wasn’t sure what to get him. Everything either seemed too generic—music, clothes—or so expensive I didn’t have a prayer of affording it. Like, probably there are some tools or something that he’d like for his workshop, but hell if I know what they would be even if I could afford them. I thought about something for the kitchen, but it’s pretty well stocked, and I wouldn’t know where to start there, either. I hope he likes what I finally landed on. I felt pretty good about it last week, but now I’m nervous it’s not a good idea.

I’m flying to Philly tomorrow to have Chanukah with Ginger and stay for a few days and I’ve been thinking about whether I should try and track down Colin. I’ve left a few more messages for him, but he hasn’t called back. I know it sounds sick, but, I mean, I would have heard about it if he killed himself, right? Someone would have found him and—

“Ready!” Rex saunters in with a wrapped box in his hands.

I groan, reaching out an arm toward him so he can help me up. He drops the box on the couch and smirks at me, then lies down beside me on the floor, leaning on one elbow so he can look at me.

“Do you think it’s possible to actually die from eating too much?” I ask.

“Yeah, probably,” he says, dropping a light kiss on my stomach and then lying back. I groan and flop over so I can bury my head in Rex’s neck. His arm comes around me and he lets out a warm rumble of contentment. Marilyn barks once, then comes over, turns in a circle, and lies down with us in front of the fire. I start to laugh, then clutch my stomach.

“What?”

“It’s just so goddamned picturesque,” I say, waving a hand at the Christmas tree, the snow falling outside the windows, and the dog curled up in her blue flannel bed in front of the roaring fire. Rex chuckles, his chest vibrating beneath me.

After I come out of my food coma, I go to the closet and get Rex’s gifts. I hesitate, then leave the second one in the closet for later.

“You go first,” Rex says when I join him on the couch. I’m suddenly really nervous that my brilliant gift isn’t actually brilliant after all.

“Okay,” I say, hesitating, “but you might not like it.”

“Okay,” Rex says very seriously. “Well, if I don’t like it I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll still like you a whole lot.”

I roll my eyes and shove the box at him, the wrapping this garish, 1970s-looking gold and green deer print that I found at Mr. Zoo’s. Rex untapes the paper and folds it neatly. He takes the lid off the box and holds up the thing on top. It’s a Christmas tree ornament of a dog that looks a lot like Marilyn.

“It’s to remember the night we first met,” I say, my cheeks burning at how sentimental this is. “I know it’s cheesy, but—”

Rex kisses me.

“Shut up,” he says. He strokes my cheek. “It’s great.”

He dangles the ornament in front of Marilyn, who merely lifts one ear and opens one eye, decides nothing that’s going on is worth her attention in the slightest, and snuffles back to sleep, turning to toast her other side equally in front of the fire.

Then Rex lifts a bunch of tissue paper out of the box and pulls out another, oddly shaped package wrapped in the same paper. I hold my breath as he struggles with my terrible wrapping job, looking at his face because I want to see his initial, unguarded reaction.

Rex’s mouth falls open.

“Oh my god,” he says, lifting out the vintage Marilyn Monroe ornaments. There’s one of her with her white dress blowing up from the scene in The Seven Year Itch, one surrounded by paste diamonds and feathers from Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, and one that’s shaped like a regular ornament but has Norma Jean on one side and Marilyn on the other. Then he lifts out the last ornament. It’s of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

“The Casablanca one isn’t vintage,” I say. “I just thought you might like it.”

“How did you…?”

“I found them online. Are they—do you like them?”

Rex’s finger looks huge tracing the tiny figure in the white dress. When he looks up at me, there are tears in his eyes.

“They’re just like the ones my mom had,” he says, pulling me to him and crushing me against his chest. “Thank you.”

He makes a big deal out of making me help him hang the ornaments on the tree. When we sit down again, he hands me his present. It’s wrapped perfectly, in thick silver paper, and it smells like wood shavings.

I tear off the paper and inside is a carved wooden box attached to an ornament hook. The box is three or four inches square and is made of several different kinds of wood.

“Great minds,” Rex murmurs. He’s gotten me an ornament as well.

“Did you make this?” I ask. “It’s beautiful.” Rex nods.

“I got the idea at Ginger’s. Looking at that puzzle box. I really liked that and I thought maybe I could make one. Turns out they’re harder than I thought,” he adds, sounding nervous. “Even a simple one.” His hands are clasped in his lap.

“Um, you have to open it,” he says.

I fiddle with the box, pulling on the corners and pushing the middle, then vice versa.

“Um….”

“Oh, you have to—” Rex points to a side piece and I slide it over. It takes me a minute—Jesus, this is an easy one?—but I finally hear a pop and it slides open.

“Ha!” I say, inordinately pleased with myself. Then I look inside.

It’s a key.

I look up at Rex, whose face is open, vulnerable and hopeful.

“I thought maybe you’d want to move in. Here. With me,” he says softly. It’s his shy voice. The voice he uses with strangers when he’s nervous. I look down at the box again. I pick up the key. It’s on a simple wooden keychain cut into the shape of Michigan. It weighs nothing in my palm, but it feels like the heaviest thing I’ve ever held.

“But,” I say, my mind racing. “But what if—what about the job? What if I get the job? We haven’t even talked about it and I—”

“Move in with me,” Rex says again, his voice resonant once more. “Live with me. Here, for now. Then, wherever. As long as you’re with me, I won’t care where we live.”

I swallow hard.

“You’d leave here? With me. But what about—” I gesture around us to the cabin Rex worked so hard to build. To the place he created out of grief and fear and desperation; the place that became a home.

I’m squeezing the key so tight I can feel its teeth cutting into my palm.

“Baby,” Rex says, putting warm hands on my shoulders, “I can build something else. Something just for us.” His eyes never leave mine. “I came here because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Didn’t have anyone. And now…. As long as I’m with you, I’ll be home.”

My eyes flood with tears.

Home.

I never felt at home in my father’s house. The apartments I’ve lived in since then have been crap. Just places to crash. Ginger’s apartment has been a home away from home—as close as I thought I might ever get to a place that feels right. That feels like home. Then I met Rex and, even that first night, when I thought I’d never see him again, something about him called out to something deep inside me. I love this cabin, these woods, but it’s not this place that feels like home. It’s Rex.

He’s looking at me, eyes tracking mine. I can see the moment he thinks I’m about to say no and it almost breaks my heart. I nod quickly, my mouth getting twisted around all the things I mean to say. So I just launch myself forward and hug him as tight as I can, arms around his neck and legs around his waist. Rex’s hugs feel like being wrapped in the warmest blanket.

We stay like that for a while, just holding each other, until I relax my grip and my fist that was clenching the key unfurls, revealing a perfect indentation of Michigan in my palm.

 

 

FINALLY, I haul myself off the couch to go to the bathroom. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and my expression is unfamiliar. I look younger. Happy in a way I never have. I can’t help but think of the first time I saw myself in this mirror, Rex behind me, the night we met. I shake my head, thinking that if I’d told myself that night that I would be living in this cabin, I would probably have drowned myself in the shower laughing.

On the way back to the living room, my phone buzzes with a text. At first I don’t believe it can really be from Colin because there’s not a profanity or an insult in sight.

I’m okay, it says. Can’t talk yet. Merry Christmas.

“Holy shit,” I say. “It’s a Christmas miracle.”

“What?” Rex asks, and while he seems relieved Colin’s all right, he doesn’t seem overly impressed with the message.

“Seriously,” I explain, following Rex into the kitchen, “this is unprecedented. This could be the only nonaggressive Colin text the archives will ever see.”

Rex pulls out a tray of gingerbread that’s been warming in the oven.

“Oh my god,” I groan. “That smells so good; what are you trying to do to me?” Rex waggles his eyebrows and wraps his arms around me from behind, kissing my hair.

“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.”