In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(20)
It’s locked on the weekends, so I don’t have to worry about running into students—another perk of my office. The building is quiet and dark, and my heels echo on the hardwood floors. The downstairs walls are white and dotted with fliers for film screenings, clubs, fundraisers, and tutors. My office is on the third floor, in the back of the building, which overlooks the parking lot.
I barely manage to avoid scattering glass everywhere as I juggle open the door with my egg sandwich in one hand and my coffee in the other. I drop my stuff on my desk, making a mental note to clean the mess up before I leave for the evening, and settle in with my course planning for the upcoming week, playing Mark Lanegan on my iPod (which, thank god, I did not squash when Marilyn knocked me over).
I’m so caught up in what I’m doing that I don’t even notice anyone’s in the building until the door swings open and scares the shit out of me.
“Fuck!” I say, dragging my earbuds out. I’m lucky not to find myself clutching my heart. I don’t like to be startled.
And double-f*ck me. The huge form in my doorway, carrying a heavy toolbox, is Rex.
For a few days after our… um, encounter, in the woods, Rex was on my mind constantly. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he smelled, about how it felt to be held like that, how he touched me. I mean, sex is great and all, but it felt different with him. He was so sure of everything he did, and it was like he knew me already—what I’d like, how I’d respond. He seemed to know things I didn’t even know myself. And while he was touching me, it felt like he actually cared. I know it’s stupid to read anything into someone getting off, but it felt… I dunno, personal. Then, after, it was clear I was wrong, since he didn’t even ask for my phone number. But then, that kiss. No idea what to make of it.
As soon as the semester started, all thoughts of Rex and his strange hot-cold switcheroo were replaced by teaching, office hours, putting books on hold, finding the best printers on campus, course planning, grading, finding the best coffee in town, getting a school ID, making nice with/avoiding my colleagues, and so on.
Well, maybe not all thoughts.
At night, in the uncomfortable bed that Carl left in the apartment for me, thoughts of Rex still trickled in. Like, I still hadn’t seen him completely naked. That I wondered what his come tasted like. That, although I usually topped, I was fairly desperate for him to f*ck me.
Then there were the other thoughts. Idiotic, sappy, confusing thoughts that must have meant I was half-asleep. Like, I wondered how his mouth tasted in the middle of the night, just woken up from sleep. I wondered if he let Marilyn sleep in bed with him. Did he shower in the morning to get ready for the day, or at night, falling into bed clean, with the day washed away? What would it feel like to kiss his stubbled cheek?
And somehow it’s those thoughts—the sappy, confusing ones—that flood through me when he appears in my office doorway. I realize that I’ve never seen him in the daylight before and that there’s a lot of red in his brown hair and in his stubble, and a little gray in his sideburns. I wonder if there’s a chance at all that giving him a hug so that I could smell him and feel his heavy arms enfold me could be seen as in any way normal, and immediately answer no.
“Hey,” he says, sounding confused. “This is your office?”
“Yep, every last crumbling inch of it.” He’s still hovering in the doorway, looking around. “Um, do you want to come in? Watch the glass.” He closes the door behind him and I can hear the glass crunch under his heavy footfalls. “So, do you work for the school?” I can’t believe I never asked him what he did when we met in February. I guess I was too busy freaking out.
“No,” he says, setting down his toolbox on the corner of my desk. “Well, yeah, I do work for them, but they don’t employ me.”
That clears things up.
“Um,” I say, “what?”
“I mean, I’m not a janitor. I fix things. For lots of folks around town. And the school sometimes calls me to fix things for them. And I make furniture.”
Does he think I’d think there was something wrong with being a janitor? Well, maybe so. A lot of professors are weird about class shit—crusading for the working classes in their lectures about Dickens but thinking anyone who does a blue-collar job is too stupid to do what they do.
“That’s cool,” I say. “That you can fix things, I mean. My dad has an auto shop in Philly and all my brothers work there. I’m not very good at it, though. I mean, I can do basic maintenance and fix easy stuff, but I never really got into it the way they did.”
Rex visibly relaxes.
“Cars are one thing I never really learned to fix. So, your light fixture fell,” he says, shifting into professional mode. His whole posture changes: his shoulders loosen and he shifts his weight from foot to foot in a wide stance as he looks up at the ceiling.
“More like it committed suicide,” I say. “This student slammed the door and that’s what made the crack. I think the light fixture just decided it couldn’t stay in this office one day longer.”
Rex turns to me, his eyes intense.
“What happened?” He looks weirdly protective, like if I told him that students complain about bad grades he’d offer to beat them up for me or something.
“Just an entitled brat pissed off because I wouldn’t change his grade. First-semester freshman. Some of them are so nervous to be in college they work really hard. But some of them have never been told no before. They’re convinced they’ll never have to sacrifice anything. Like, they can skip class and party and still get all As, you know? It wears off.” Jesus, Daniel, stop rambling.