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But now, seeing Rex curled up in that big bed, struggling to get to the bathroom, all I feel is an itchiness in my palms to reach out and help him; a manic desire to somehow take his pain into my own body because I’d rather feel it than have to watch him suffer.
“You sticking around for a bit?”
Rex’s voice startles me. I look up at him. He looks better. The tension is mostly gone from his face, though he still looks a little out of it.
“Yeah,” I say, “if you want me to.”
Rex smiles, but he looks a little sad. Was that the wrong answer?
“I mean, unless you just want some quiet, for your head,” I amend. He pulls me gently toward him, hugging me to his broad chest.
“No, I want you here,” he says, and I relax at the rumble of it through his chest. “The pills really helped. How’d you know what to do?”
“Ginger gets them—migraines. She always throws up and the only way she can keep a pill down is with the applesauce. She says it’s like the migraine wants to take over, so it makes her brain reject the pill, but if she can’t see the pill in the applesauce, it tricks the migraine and lets her swallow it. I think that’s what her mom told her when she was younger, I mean. And the pressure points really help her. She’s a die-hard acupuncture believer. Her hands get really cramped from holding the tattoo machine all day, and her back hurts from sitting bent over, so she goes to this guy in Chinatown who’s done acupuncture for, like, sixty years. I swear to god, you look at this guy and you’d think he was forty, but he’s seventy-five. Anyway, she says it really helps.”
“Maybe I should try it,” Rex says.
“Maybe. I read that for a while in the seventies, it got a lot of press because in China doctors were doing open-heart surgery using acupuncture instead of anesthesia. I asked the guy in Chinatown about it and he said that that was a hoax they did for attention when Nixon visited China, and that the patient was getting morphine, but that it’s actually completely possible to render a part of the body pain-free using acupuncture if the person doing it is skilled enough.”
“I really love that,” Rex says.
“Yeah, it’s pretty amazing,” I say. “Especially since so many people end up dying after surgery from the anesthesia even when the surgery goes fine.”
“No, I mean, I love how you tell me all this information about stuff. I love how you always have some fact about something.”
“I don’t mean to be a know-it-all,” I say. My brothers hated when I’d bring up things I’d read, so after a while, I just shut up about it. But sometimes, I’d think it would be something they’d definitely be interested in, so I’d tell them. It never worked out how I thought it would, inevitably leading to them calling me a know-it-all or a smartass.
“Did I say that?” Rex asks, gently, tilting my chin up.
“No,” I say softly. “Listen, Rex. I’m sorry about the other night. How I yelled at you. I should have thought to ask you fix the table. I’m just… not used to having anyone to…. I’m just used to looking out for myself, you know?”
He nods.
“I know. I think I get it. You’ve never had someone help you who didn’t make you pay for it somehow. I shouldn’t have walked out like that. I just felt stupid. I’d already made such an ass of myself acting like a jealous caveman about your colleague. I’m sorry about that.”
He kisses me on the cheek, his lips a little shaky against my skin.
“So, you watched the Food Network, huh?” he says, taking my hand and walking into the living room.
“You heard that?”
He nods, grabbing the remote and flopping down on the couch, pulling me down next to him. He turns to the Food Network and I settle against his shoulder.
AFTER TWO episodes of a cooking competition show, I’m a total Food Network convert and my stomach is growling so loudly that I can hear it over the television.
“Can I make something?” I ask Rex, gesturing toward the kitchen.
“Sure.” He stands up with me.
“You can just stay here and rest,” I tell him. “I got it.”
“No, I’ll come.”
“Man, you really do think I’m going to poison you, huh?”
“No. But I’ll keep you company.”
I don’t believe him, but I shrug and walk into the kitchen, thinking I’ll just throw a frozen pizza in the oven or open some soup. But when I look in the freezer and open Rex’s cupboards, I don’t find anything.
“You don’t have any food,” I say.
“I have a ton of food,” Rex says, chuckling. “I just don’t have anything encased in a block of ice or preserved to the point that it could be space food.”
