In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(133)

“Here for a tree, I presume?” the woman chimes in. She’s got pink cheeks and her white hair is in a bun. I actually have to hold my hand in front of my mouth to keep from laughing. This is the most ridiculously stereotypically Christmas couple I’ve ever seen. All the guy needs is a beard and a team of reindeer pawing at the roof. Rex, of course, is the picture of manners.

“Hello,” he says, his voice soft like it always is when he’s speaking to strangers. “We’d like to cut down a tree, please.”

“Of course, of course,” the man says. I zone out as he and Rex discuss type of tree—who knew there were different kinds of pine trees?—height of ceiling, spread of branches, etc. The woman looks at me kindly and I try to smile in a way that doesn’t reveal my actual thoughts, which are, at this moment, running toward gore-splattered horror movie posters of the American Gothic aesthetic featuring a background of beautiful trees and this pleasant little hut.

“All right?” Rex is saying—to me, it would seem.

“Huh? What? Yeah, great,” I stammer, looking around.

Rex is holding a saw. I do not like Rex holding a saw. Wait, cut down a tree? As in, cut down a tree? Rex waves at the couple and takes my arm—fortunately for me, not with the hand holding the saw.

“Um, Rex,” I say, as we set off down one of the rows of trees. “Are you about to use that saw to… to fell a tree?”

“Is that what you say?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I reply, “because where I come from saws are something out of horror movies and trees live in parks so if you cut them down you go to prison.”

Rex laughs. He sounds truly delighted. I look up at him and his face is radiant. He’s striding through the cold air and shin-high snow like he’s never been happier to be anywhere in his life.

“When we find the one we want, we cut it down. Then Wallace will come with the tractor and take it to the car for us.”

“Wallace?”

Rex shakes his head.

“Where do you go sometimes?” he asks. “Back at the hut, what were you thinking about?”

“I was thinking that those two looked like Mr. and Mrs. Claus on a diet and that it was, like, the Platonic ideal of Christmassy coupledom and so of course it was too good to be true, so they would probably turn out to be creepy serial murderers who cut our heads off with saws”—I gesture to the one in his hand—“and turned us into mulch for next year’s trees.”

Rex is staring at me.

“Oh, and then I started thinking about American Gothic. You know, the painting of the couple with the pitchfork?” He nods. “Only, they weren’t actually a couple; they were the painter’s dentist and his daughter, but the point is that there’s this horror movie called American Gothic, and the cover of it is like the painting only the couple are these murderers who trap people in the house and kill them. And on the poster you can see people, like, clawing at the windows and stuff, trying to get out, and the pitchfork is all bloody and the woman is holding a knife dripping with blood.” I laugh.

“That’s what you were thinking about while I was talking to Wallace about Christmas trees?”

Rex looks serious.

“I mean, I don’t really think that they’re serial killers, Rex.”

“I get it now, I think,” he says.

“Come on, I was just kidding.”

He nods. He drops the saw and where it falls there is a perfect impression of a saw in the snow.

“You look at things that you think are nice or happy or cheerful and you think they’re too good to be true. You think they’re too good to be real, so they must actually be bad.”

“I….” Well, actually, yeah, that is exactly what I think, but he said it like it’s a bad thing.

“You’re suspicious,” Rex says, like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Suspicious that something you might like or want is a trap. That if you trust it, it’ll all go wrong. No?”

“Well, I mean—”

I drop my head and stare at the saw-shaped hole in the snow. Rex tilts my head up. I don’t know what to say, but it seems somehow crucial that I say the right thing. Rex looks like he’s in actual, physical pain.

“I… I used to,” I say. His face softens. He takes the ends of my scarf that have come untied and tuck them back in. I look back down at the snow.

“I… do you… you don’t like that, I guess?” I ask, unable to meet his eyes. Rex bends his knees to look me in the eyes.

“I don’t like that you’ve had to think that way,” he says. “But I get it.”

“I thought that about you,” I admit. “For a while.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“I just—you were too good to be true. So handsome and strong and kind. Understanding. And I felt like, if you were true, then why the hell would you want me? You know? And so I guess it was just easier to think that you didn’t.”

“What I think you still don’t get, Daniel,” Rex says, “is that, for me, you were too good to be true.”

I snort and Rex grabs me by the shoulders, his expression fierce.

“When I first met you, all I knew is that you were this real educated, real smart professor and I’m the guy who never graduated high school. Who can barely read.” His face flushes. “You’re gorgeous and sexy and ambitious. You’re from the city, used to hanging out with famous bands every night, and you showed up in this little town in the middle of nowhere where I barely leave my house.”