In the Middle of Somewhere (52 page)

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.

W
E
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.

F
INALLY
, 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.