In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(117)

My vision blacks out with fury. I thought I was angry at my father before, but this is murderous rage. I ram into Colin, every single nasty, homophobic word, every disgusted look, every punch and slap and shove slamming into me with the force of a brick wall. My weight bears him down to the dirt floor and I get in two punches to the face before he shakes off his surprise and fights back. He boxes my ears and gets me once in the stomach, but I am filled with a heavy rage so strong it feels like I could rip his head off and barely even break a sweat.

I push his shoulders to the ground and put my forearm to his throat. His fist slams into my lower back, just missing my kidney, and I rear back. A punch to my mouth, one to his stomach, and then we’re just wrestling on the floor, grappling, grabbing whatever parts of each other we can, both trying to inflict the maximum amount of pain. It’s only when a strong arm rips me away that I realize I’m still screaming at Colin.

It’s Rex.

The man who was with Colin is still standing exactly where he was when I walked in, watching.

Rex pulls my back tight to his front and I break off, my voice gone. Colin scrambles to his feet, bleeding from his nose and mouth, and spits out blood on the dirt floor. I can’t catch my breath.

Colin hangs his head.

“I—” he starts to say. “I—please, Danny—”

“Don’t f*cking call me that, you f*cking liar,” I yell at him, lurching forward, but Rex holds me back. My voice is broken.

“But, can I—?”

“How could you?” I yell, and my voice gives out completely. I’m vaguely aware of tears running down my cheeks, but I never look away from Colin. His expression is pure self-loathing and I realize that I’ve seen echoes of this expression my whole life. It’s just that I always thought they were directed at me, not reflected back on himself.

Rex is holding me up, now. I can’t believe it. I cannot wrap my mind around it.

And I can’t even imagine how destroyed Colin must be over our dad if he let a man hold him at the cemetery where we all were.

Rex is making desperate eye contact with the other man, clearly trying to figure out what’s going on, but the guy is stone.

I shake my head when Colin doesn’t say anything, and turn to leave.

“Dan,” Colin says from behind me, his voice strained. “Don’t tell Brian and Sam. Please. Please?”

I spin around to look at him. He’s crying, tears running through the blood from his nose and leaving pink tracks down his face. His scraped up hands are out to his sides, beseeching. For a moment, all I want is to do exactly that: tell Brian and Sam and watch Colin’s world come tumbling down. But I take a deep breath and give Colin a single nod. Then I close my eyes and leave, because I don’t have a voice for any of my questions, and I’m pretty sure Colin doesn’t have any answers for me.




REX CATCHES up to me a few yards from the truck, where Ginger is standing, waiting for us. When I see her chomping on a huge wad of gum, I realize I must have lost mine sometime during the fight with Colin, but I don’t know if I swallowed it, it fell out, or what. I lift a nervous hand to my hair, hoping I won’t find it there.

“What in the f*ck happened to you?” Ginger says, blowing the gum out of her mouth like a spitball from a Bic pen. I shake my head in disbelief.

Ginger looks at Rex, who’s by my side again.

“Seriously, babycakes, what the f*ck is going on?”

“Colin’s gay,” I say, and it’s a screech, like how my voice is after a particularly late night of bar tending when I’ve had to shout at people all night.

Ginger laughs uncomfortably and cocks her head.

“I don’t get it,” she says.

“Colin is f*cking gay, Ginger,” I say. “I just saw him.”

She searches my face and when she sees I’m not joking or messing around, her mouth drops open.

“Holy…,” she breathes out.

Rex tries to put his arm around me, but I feel like fire ants are crawling all over me. I’m covered in dust from the floor of the shed; I can feel that there’s blood on my face in addition to tears, and traces of the puke taste are creeping back into my mouth. For all that, I can’t stand still. The idea of getting in the truck makes me nearly come out of my skin.

“I’m going to walk,” I say, though it sounds like every word scrapes my throat. “I’ll meet you guys at Ginger’s.”

“Are you kidding? It’s like six miles,” Ginger says.

“I’ll be fine,” I say, shoving some more gum into my mouth. “I just need to get some air.”

Ginger and Rex are looking sideways at each other in an extremely irritating way.

“I’ll walk with you,” Rex says.

“No,” I say. “Thanks, but you don’t have to. I’ll see you later.”

“It wasn’t a question,” Rex says, and tosses Ginger the keys to his truck.




I WALK in the general direction of Ginger’s, looking at the city I’ve lived in my whole life as if I’ve never seen it before. Rex trails along gamely beside me, not saying anything, but never letting me more than a few paces out of his reach. At first it’s f*cking irritating and I want to turn and yell at him that I’m not a child. That I’ve gotten along just fine without him for this long and he can f*ck off back home. But the truth is that I haven’t.