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“Me too,” I say. “It’s actually the only time I’ve ever eaten turkey. That wasn’t in a sandwich, I mean.”
As I’m about to say something incredibly sappy, my phone makes a loud and unfamiliar sound.
“What the?”
It’s a text, but I always keep my phone on vibrate.
Rex chuckles.
“Will.”
“Huh?”
“I bet Will changed your ringtone. He does that. It’s a gesture of goodwill, I promise.”
“Some fucking gesture,” I grumble as I open the text. And immediately grin, tilting the phone to show Rex.
There, lying against Ginger’s purple velvet couch, is a naked (and red-haired) chest. And on it, a huge, half-eaten Thanksgiving burrito.
Chapter 14
December
THE LAST week of classes, my students are in the usual frenzy, flooding my office hours for help with their final papers, writing me desperate e-mails at 3:00 a.m. (probably from the library) to beg for extensions, and falling asleep in strange contortions in the middle of classes. Usually, I kind of like this final week. It feels buzzy with the promise of winter break and the end of another semester. Unfortunately, this semester, in addition to grading all my final papers, I also have to read all the essays for that damned committee I accidentally volunteered for.
As a result, I’ve been locking myself in my office every day since classes ended. I can’t bear trying to work in my shithole of an apartment. It’s dark, depressing, and, now, freezing. I do have to smile every time I see the table Rex built, though, which looks amusingly out of place among my otherwise disposable furniture.
Rex. I can’t stop thinking about him. It’s like once we started spending more and more time together I got addicted to him or something. Everything reminds me of him or of something I want to tell him. I keep starting to text him things and then deleting them because I don’t want to inundate him. I asked him about texting tentatively last week. I wasn’t sure if, given plenty of time to read them, texts would be fine for him, or if he wouldn’t like them. He said he’d never texted with anyone so he didn’t know, but he was happy to try. I promised him that I wouldn’t care about his spelling, which he’s very self-conscious about. So, finally, this morning, after accidentally falling asleep and spending the night in my office, I sent him a simple, if sappy, text: Hi. I miss you.
About five minutes later, he texted back: Come here when yore done? It made my heart beat with anticipation. I didn’t exactly mean to sequester myself, but I know from long experience that the only way I can make grading bearable is to tackle it all at once, so I’ve been motoring through it all for the last few days. I’ve been grabbing to-go food from the diner or eating out of the vending machine in the basement and I really need a shower, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m not done by tonight. I’ll submit my grades to the registrar, drop my essay selections in the main office, and then I’m done for a blissful month. Just thinking about it makes me giddy with desperation to finish.
I text Rex back—Absolutely. See you tonight—and then dive back in. Now that I’m so close to seeing Rex, though, I’m back to what’s been distracting me for weeks. Will’s comments before Thanksgiving about whether or not I was in Michigan for the long haul. Whether I was with Rex for the long haul. I’m fucking crazy about Rex. That much I know. But I don’t even really know what a long-term relationship would look like. I’ve just never thought about it before. Does it mean, like, holidays and vacations? Barbecues and choosing paint colors?
There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach thinking about it. But it isn’t precisely anxiety. It’s something more tentatively… hopeful? What would it even look like to do those things with Rex? To be responsible for someone else—to someone else?
I shake my head to clear the fog and squint at the stack of essays in front of me. It’s page after page of potential and futurity and possibility and, for the first time in a long time, those seem like good things to me.
“HI,” REX calls as I drag myself through the door, my vision practically blurry from staring at papers for four days straight.
I drop my stuff by the door, scratch Marilyn’s soft ears, and slouch into the kitchen with her trailing behind me. I didn’t even go home to change before coming here, I was so desperate to feel the sense of calm that only Rex can provide.
The whole house smells wonderful: a combination of wood smoke, trees, snow, and cooking that smells like, well, home. Rex is wearing a tight navy blue henley worn almost transparent in places. It’s pushed up over his powerful forearms and he’s doing something at the stove when I walk into the kitchen. His smile warms me immediately, and before he can turn toward me, I plaster myself across his back and hug him from behind.
