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He wanders around my apartment like he’s hoping to distract himself, but he’s shit out of luck because there isn’t much to look at except one bookshelf and a bunch of CDs.
“I didn’t have any friends,” Rex says, looking out my window toward the woods. “In school. We moved so often I never had time to make any. And anyway, I was so shy I couldn’t talk to anyone, even if I’d wanted to.”
He wanders over to my bed, and then to the stereo. He flips through the CD book I left out and then turns the stereo off, Tori cutting out mid-”Winter.”
“But people didn’t really mess with me either. I was just invisible.”
I can’t imagine it. Rex invisible. Even now, it’s like the whole room has arranged itself in relation to him.
“When I was fifteen, we moved back to Texas because one of my mom’s boyfriends had some business there. Shitty little town called Anderson. The school was smaller, though, and after about a year, I made this friend. Well, he made me, really. Kept talking to me all the time at school even though I didn’t say anything back. Real chatterbox.” Rex smiles. “Funny-looking kid. This wiry red hair and a big old grin. Kinda scrawny. Anyway, he’d show up at my house and just take me with him wherever he went. He’d talk and I’d listen. And then one day he kissed me. I was so surprised I about fell over. He socked me on the shoulder and said, ‘Just wondering,’ and smiled at me. When I picked my jaw up off the floor, I kissed him back.”
Rex wanders over to my bookshelf and he scans the titles. He goes right for The Secret History, running a finger over the mud-spattered spine. When he speaks again his voice is strained.
“We’d have sex in the woods, near this little park. No one really went there. One day these three guys found us. I didn’t hear them. They started… you know, whaling on us. And Jamie. He was a little guy.”
Rex walks back to the window and looks out, hands in his pockets. From the way he’s talking, it’s clear that Jamie wasn’t just some fuck in the woods. I want to ask about what he was to Rex, but I don’t want to interrupt. I can barely hear him when he starts talking again, his deep voice gone low and tight.
“One of the guys picked up a stick. Started hitting us with it. I kept trying to get up. To stop them from hurting Jamie. But I wasn’t strong enough.” When he says this, his muscles flex, arms tightening and shoulders bunching. “They ran away when some trucker wandered over to take a piss in the woods. He’s the one who radioed for an ambulance, they told me later.”
My stomach is in a knot. I stopped eating about two bites into Rex’s story, but I wish I hadn’t eaten those. I walk over to him, but his posture radiates “Stay away.” I sit down on my bed facing him.
“What happened?” I choke out.
“I was out for days,” he says, squinting at something out the window. “Busted eye socket and chin. Broken ribs. Took my appendix out.” He rests his forehead against the window. “Jamie never woke up. Head trauma.”
My swallow sounds loud in the quiet of the room.
“Fuck,” I breathe. I don’t know what else to say.
Rex taps the windowsill with the heel of his hand, and I can see him getting it together. “So, you can see why I don’t take real kindly to your brother.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed next to me and bumps my thigh lightly with his closed fist. “Listen,” he says, “I think maybe that’s not the kind of thing you talk about on a date. But I’m not real good with polite get-to-know-yous. So.”
I like this about Rex. He goes for things and explains them if he thinks they need to be explained, but he doesn’t seem to second-guess himself and he doesn’t seem to regret anything he says.
I turn my nose into his shoulder and breathe him in.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I know that’s not—”
“Thanks,” he says quickly, and I can tell he’s done talking about this.
I scoot backward and lie down on my bed, holding my arm out to him.
He hesitates, but then sinks down beside me, turning into my body and throwing his arm over my stomach. I hold him as close as I can.
“After that,” he says softly, leaning into my touch, “I knew I had to make it so I’d never be in that position again.”
His voice is muffled in my neck and I feel the words before I hear them.
“I had to be strong enough. For whatever happened.”
“Rex,” I say, “it wasn’t your fault.” It sounds like a useless cliché before it’s even out of my mouth.
