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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.
