In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(114)

“You guys take the bed,” Ginger says, and Rex immediately protests.

“Oh, stop,” she says. “I’ve slept on this couch a hundred times. It’s fine. No way are the two of you going to fit on it. Unless”—she waggles her eyebrows at Rex—“you want to ditch this sad sack and cuddle up with me.”

“Back off, bitch,” I say, smiling at her. “Thanks, Ginge.” I hug her and she squeezes me just like she always does.

“I’m sorry, babycakes,” she says.

I strip down to my boxers without thinking about it. Nothing Ginger hasn’t seen before. Rex seems uncharacteristically shy, and crawls under the covers before he takes his shirt off, like we’re in high school or a nineteenth-century novel or something.

Ginger’s bed is a safe place, and almost immediately after crawling under the covers, a warm lethargy creeps over me, relaxing me.

“Thank you for bringing me here. For being here with me, I mean,” I say to Rex softly. I can hear Ginger brushing her teeth in the bathroom.

Rex kisses me lingeringly.

“Anything for you,” he says. Then he gathers me against his heat and I drift off to sleep, held in Rex’s arms and Ginger’s familiar bed.





Chapter 15


December



REX DRIVES us to the funeral with one hand on the wheel and the other heavy on my thigh. He’s been so calm this whole time, so steady. I could see it in him the night we met—how solid he was.




THIS MORNING I woke up to Ginger crawling into bed next to me while Rex was still asleep, one arm thrown above his head.

“He’s gorgeous and awesome,” Ginger said matter-of-factly.

“I know, right?” I whispered back. “What the hell is he doing with me?”

She smacked me lightly and rolled her eyes.

“Listen, Ginge, will you come with us to the funeral? I’m afraid I might murder one of the guys and then the two remaining ones will turn on me, which will make Rex kill them and really I don’t want to be responsible for Rex going to prison on top of all this….”

“Obviously, I’m going to the funeral with you, you idiot,” she said, but she smiled.

Rex ran down to the bodega on the corner and got eggs and bread. After a late breakfast, Ginger called my brothers at my dad’s house to get the specifics of the funeral while Rex and I changed. She figured they wouldn’t be rude to her at least. I don’t know why she’d think that after all these years. She started with the phone on speaker, but after Brian made some disgusting comment and Ginger told him he should go eat a dick and he replied, “Why don’t you get Danielle to do that since it’s his favorite thing to do,” she took it off speaker and went into the kitchen.

Rex let out a controlled breath, shaking his head, and clenched his fists.

“Honestly, Daniel, I’m impressed you can even be in the same room as them,” he said.

“I…. Brian’s not usually so bad. When I was younger, we were—well, not friends, but friendlier? We’d play catch or poker sometimes when he didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. And Sam. He calmed down a lot after he and Liza got married. He never really gave me too much shit because he was so much older.”

I knotted my tie and shrugged into my jacket, which Ginger had taken one look at when I pulled it out of my backpack and immediately hung in the bathroom to steam while we all had our showers. Rex ran his hand down my lapel.

“This is the suit you were wearing the night we met,” he said softly. I couldn’t believe he remembered. I was only wearing it for an hour.

“It’s the only one I have,” I said. “How do you…?”

Rex’s eyes never left mine.

“I remember everything about that night, Daniel.”

He looked like he wanted to say something else, but then he took a deep breath and his eyes skittered away from mine and back to knotting his own tie.




“SO, WHAT’S the deal with this funeral?” Ginger says from the backseat. “I mean, are you all secretly Jewish or something? I thought you guys waited, like, weeks before you buried people so you could do whatever voodoo you do to make bodies that can rise from the grave.”

Rex snorts.

“Fucking Vic,” I say. “He and Sam worked out some kind of deal with his cousin or something. I don’t know. They wouldn’t hear a word against him. Jesus Christ,” I say, running a hand through my hair, “I just hope this doesn’t turn into that scene in that movie you made me watch after you broke up with Stephen.”

“Oh yeah, Death at the Funeral,” Ginger says. “Ha, good movie.” Then to Rex she says, “The body falls out of the coffin.”

“Yeah, I saw it,” he says, his hand tightening on my thigh.

“Knowing Vic, he might bury Dad even if he’s not actually dead just to make a buck,” I say, going for levity, but it just comes out a little shaky.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, Dandelion turns morbid when he’s uncomfortable,” Ginger says to Rex, leaning forward to stick her head between our seats. Rex smiles at her in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” he says, rubbing my leg with his warm hand.