In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(111)

I love Ginger’s work. Many of them are based on tattoo designs, realistic black and gray skulls morphing into candle flames and melting wax, panthers morphing into sleek, black-haired women, and a very creepy one of a snake swallowing a grouse. My favorite hangs over the bed. It’s a self-portrait Ginger did from a photograph of herself from behind, so it’s really just her hair and shoulders. The detail in her long curls and short stubble are amazing. It’s stark and mesmerizing but framed in a heavy old baroque-looking gold frame. I’ve spent hours tracing the lines of the curls with my eyes when I woke up hungover in Ginger’s bed.

Rex is doing what everyone does the first time they come over to Ginge’s, which is walking around her apartment checking out all her stuff. He lingers over a puzzle box on a stand near the bed. Ginger did a tattoo of a really complicated Escher piece on this guy a few years ago. He was a puzzle maker—that’s how he described it. His signature work was these puzzle boxes carved out of chunks of wood from his family home, which partially burned down. He was a weird guy. Anyway, he came back when the tattoo had healed because Ginger wanted to take a picture of it for her portfolio and he brought her the puzzle box as a gift. It’s gorgeous, the wood stained this really dark chocolate brown. I’ve fiddled with it a million times.

Rex is turning it over in his hands, poking and prodding it. I should have known he’d go right to it, with his love of taking things apart. After a minute, though, which is how long it usually takes people to give up and assume it doesn’t open, Rex pulls something and pushes something else, and the first pieces come out.

“Holy….” Ginger mutters and we both walk over to Rex.

“Is it okay? Sorry, I should’ve asked,” Rex says, looking like a kid whose favorite toy might get taken away.

“No, no, it’s fine. Please,” Ginger says, raising her eyebrows at me as Rex gleefully sets his attention back on the box.

After five minutes he has it open and casually starts to put it back together again.

“Wait!” Ginger yells. She reaches into the center of the box and pulls out a piece of paper. In cramped handwriting, it just says, I’m impressed.

“Oh my god,” I say.

“What?” Rex asks, sounding nervous. He looks between me and Ginger. She’s gaping at him.

“No one’s ever opened that thing before,” I tell Rex. “Not even Ginger. We had no idea there was something inside either.”

“Holy mother love bone,” Ginger says, a grunge oath she reserves only for things that truly delight her. “Dandelion, you hooked a genius.”

“I know, right?” I link my arm with Rex’s. He’s actually blushing and he looks quite pleased. “Except, now, all I can think of is what happens to the idiots who open the puzzle box in the Hellraiser movies.”

Ginger laughs—she loves Hellraiser—but stops abruptly.

“Um, so your dad?”

It comes rushing back so suddenly that I can’t believe I ever forgot. I sink down onto the couch and Rex sits next to me, looking ridiculously beefy reclining against purple velvet. I tell Ginger about my dad. About getting the call and how the guys waited a whole day to bother telling me. When I get to Colin’s accusation that I didn’t care that Dad was dead, Rex is vibrating with anger.

“Rex might have had to pull me off Colin,” I say.

“Had he called you that before?” Rex asks hesitantly, and it takes me a minute to remember which of Colin’s vile comments he might be referring to.

“What, Danielle?” Ginger asks.

“Or the girl? Not,” I add quickly, “that being called a girl is an insult. Just, you know Colin.”

“Oh, I know,” Ginger says. “That little *. Not,” she adds, looking at me and drawling suggestively, “that there’s anything wrong with *s.”

“Oh f*ck, I’ve missed you,” I say. “Got a drink?”

Ginger nods and grabs a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen. I take a sip and feel the heat feather down my throat and spread through my breastbone.

“How is it, then?” Ginger asks seriously, finally raising the question I’ve been dreading.

“Oh, fine; a little harsh for my taste,” I say, raising the bottle at her.

“Ha-ha,” she says. Then she just waits. I close my eyes and lean back against Rex’s shoulder. His arm automatically comes around me and all I want to do is turn my face into his neck and never come out.

“I’m not sure,” I say finally. “I’m… I feel all messed up, but… not precisely sad. More like—f*ck, I don’t know.”

“Finish your sentence,” Ginger says. Jesus, she’s pushy. I can practically feel Rex taking notes.

“I don’t know if I’ll miss him. But, I guess a part of me always thought maybe the way things were was temporary. That, eventually, we’d be closer? Understand each other better. So now I feel like the… like that potential future has been… interrupted. Stolen from me.”

“More please,” Ginger says. I close my eyes again. I hate when she does this. I love when she does this. It’s like I don’t know what I’m thinking or feeling until I say it out loud.

“I was thinking, over Thanksgiving, that I don’t really know him. I don’t know what makes him tick—made him tick. Like, if he were the main character in the book I was reading, it’d only be chapter two. I’d know his name and who was in his daily life, but I’d be waiting to find out that thing that would make me care about his story. At least, that’s how I felt before. There was a whole book left. The promise that maybe if I kept reading I’d learn enough to make me like him—care about him. Only now, it’s like he was just a secondary character—a tertiary character. And the author hadn’t even thought about any more of a story for him. There just isn’t any more of him. And, I don’t know. That makes me f*cking sad because I think probably he felt the same way about me. I know he cared about me, at least a little. I mean, I think so. And Colin and the guys, they knew him. And they’re f*cking devastated he’s dead. And I’m jealous because….”