AllFreeNovel
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“Okay,” I say. “If you don’t mind. I’ll go to the store and drop my stuff off, then grab my laundry and bring it back?”
“Sounds good,” Rex says. He’s looking at me closely and his eyes are soft.
“What?” I ask, suddenly self-conscious.
“Nothing.” He shakes his head and kisses me on the cheek. “You want some breakfast before you go?”
I shake my head and go change back into my gross, dirty clothes from yesterday.
“Okay,” I tell Rex. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
He smiles and kisses me, his hand falling to rest on Marilyn’s head, where he strokes her absently.
My phone rings as I close the door behind me, and I grab for it, assuming it’s Ginger, since no one else really calls me except Rex. But it isn’t Ginger; it’s Sam.
“Listen, Dan,” Sam says when I pick up. His voice sounds thick and weird. Nasal. “Pop’s gone.”
“What?” I ask stupidly.
“Pop’s dead,” Sam says, and it sounds like he might be crying. I’m not sure. I’ve never heard him cry.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I’ve read about this in books but never experienced it: the feeling of being unable to process a simple sentence even when you know what all the words mean. Vaguely, I wonder if this is what Rex feels like when he tries to read—grasping after meaning and finding only nonsense.
“Damn it, Dan, Pop’s dead,” Sam says, as if I’m being intentionally obtuse. “He had a heart attack and died.”
“When?” I hear myself ask, as if at the other end of a tunnel.
“Yesterday.”
Momentarily, fury pushes aside some of the fog in my head. Yesterday. I look at my watch. It’s almost noon.
“Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”
Sam’s talking, but I barely hear him. There’s a roaring in my ears so loud that I look around, wondering if someone’s riding a motorcycle down the street outside Rex’s house.
“Dan! Dan?”
“What,” I say.
“Did you fucking hear me?”
“No,” I say.
“I said you don’t have to come if you’re busy or something, but—”
“Are you fucking crazy? Of course I’m coming. I’m leaving now.”
I close my phone and slide it into my pocket, staring at the snow-heavy branches of the fir tree next to the driveway. Little lumps of snow drop off it onto the hood of my car as the wind sways its boughs. It’s beautiful. When it snows in Philly the trees are all bare.
I jump when I feel a hand on my arm.
“Hey,” Rex says, “I thought you were going to—baby, what’s wrong?”
“What?” I ask.
“You were just standing out here. What’s wrong?” Rex cups my face and I try to blink away the weird black spots at the edges of my vision.
“Um,” I say. “Um. My dad died. I have to go home now.”
“Oh no,” Rex breathes, and he looks so sad.
“I have to go home,” I say again, fumbling for my keys.
“Let me just grab my keys and I’ll drive you,” Rex says.
“No, I mean I need to go home. To Philly.”
But of course my damn car won’t turn over. I pop the hood and start automatically going through the list of things that are usually wrong with it. Honestly, there’s no way the thing is going to last the winter. It started okay for me yesterday, but now it’s just dead.
“Fuck,” I say, kicking at the tire.
“Baby,” Rex says, coming back outside with his keys. I shrug him off and slam the hood. Rex reaches out a hand to me. “Let me drive you,” he says.
“No, Rex, I need to go home, now.”
“I know,” he says. “You need to go to Philadelphia. But your car’s dead and you’re in no condition to drive anyway. A last-minute flight will be very expensive. I don’t have any jobs lined up this week. Let me drive you home. Let me help you take care of everything.”
Let me help you. Let me help you. This is it. This is the moment that everything we’ve talked about has been leading to. Either I trust Rex enough to let him help me or I don’t.
“I can’t ask you to—” I start to say.
“You didn’t ask. Daniel, look at me.”
Rex pulls my chin up. I can’t quite breathe.
“Baby,” he says again. “I’m so sorry. Please, let me help.”
I nod, and Rex is in action immediately. He puts me in his truck, starts the ignition to get some heat, and runs inside. He’s back five minutes later, carrying a duffel bag and thanking someone on the phone. He hangs up and gets in the car.
“Okay,” he says.
We pull up in front of my apartment and Rex leads me to the door. I look up at him, confused.
“You need to grab some clothes,” Rex says. Right. Of course.
Fortunately, I think I have some clean underwear and a pair of jeans that aren’t too dirty. I start to put things in a backpack robotically. Rex runs his hand over the wood of the kitchen table he built, which is currently home to stacks of library books.
