In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(6)

“So?” I ask again.

“Rex,” he says, and ducks his head a bit shyly. Rex. King. It suits him.

“I guess I should go,” I say, making a vague gesture toward the door. “Oh shit, my car—I have to call someone—and I didn’t even check in to my hotel yet, so I need—” God, I’m tired.

“I took care of it,” Rex says, turning back to the sink. “Here, do you want another drink? You look like you could use it.” He pours another whiskey and holds it out to me.

“Thanks. What do you mean, you took care of it?” I sip this whiskey a bit slower. My head feels like it’s full of cotton.

“I called someone and had your car towed. It was a rental, right?” I nod. “So, you can just pick one up at the airport. It’s right near here.” Relief floods me that I won’t have to handle that. I can’t even remember the last time someone took care of anything for me.

“Thank you,” I say, and I can hear the relief in my voice. I finish the whiskey in my glass and hold it out for a refill without thinking about it. Rex gives me an amused nod and refills my glass, pours one for himself, and then gestures me into the living room.

I sink down onto Rex’s green plaid couch and pull the blue flannel blanket over me. The couch dips with Rex’s weight as he sits beside me and I open my eyes. In the firelight, he is a god. The flames flicker over the planes of his face and the straight lines of his eyebrows, create a shadow under his full lower lip, turn his stubble to velvet and his eyes to molten gold. I slug back the rest of my drink and put the glass down. I can’t look away from him. He’s regarding me calmly and I can smell him on the blanket I’m wrapped up in.

Something is happening to me. It’s like there is a magnet drawing me toward him and I am in actual danger of making an idiotic move on a stranger who is, as far as I know, straight, in a cabin in the woods, when no one knows where I am. Okay, now is when I need to remind myself of all those stereotypes of rural cannibalistic serial killers. Remember The Hills Have Eyes, Daniel! Texas Chainsaw Massacre! Or, more realistically, I just need to focus on how much it actually hurts to get hit in the face, which is what’s likely to happen if I get any closer to Rex than the other side of the couch.

I clear my throat and shake my head, trying to banish the fog that’s taken over.

“Is everything you have made of plaid?”

“No,” Rex says. “Some of it’s just plain flannel.”

I start to laugh and can’t stop, even though it’s not particularly funny. All of a sudden I realize what should’ve been obvious: I’m drunk. I’ve had three whiskeys after being in a car accident and I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Can Rex tell?

“When was the last time you ate?” he says. Yep, I think he can tell. And I almost don’t care. It’s so nice and warm here, so cozy. No one I know is here to witness me potentially losing my shit in Holiday, Michigan. No one ever has to know that I hit a dog. And no one here knows that in approximately one month I will be evicted if I can’t grab a whole lot of extra hours at the bar so I can afford my rent. None of it matters while I’m warm and tipsy here, in the land of flannel and wood.

Suddenly, the middle of nowhere seems like the best possible place I could be.




I MUST’VE fallen asleep for a minute, because when I wake up, Rex is standing over me holding a sandwich.

“Daniel.”

I sit up a little and take the plate from him.

“Uh, yeah.”

“What are you doing here?”

I look around the room, my head still spacey. No, Daniel, he means in town. Get it together.

“I had a job interview. At Sleeping Bear College.” I take a bite of the sandwich and feel a little sick, the way I sometimes do if I wait too long to eat. But the second bite is heaven.

“What kind of jam is this?” I ask.

“Mixed berry.”

“It’s good.”

“What was your interview for?”

“To teach in the English department.” The words make my stomach clench with anxiety. Or maybe that’s just the peanut butter.

“You’re an English professor? You seem so young.”

“Yeah. Well, technically, I’m still a grad student, but if I get the job, it’ll start in the fall, and I’ll defend my dissertation in the summer, so then I’ll be a professor. It’s funny you think I’m younger than usual. Most people, when they hear I’m in grad school, they’re like, ‘Oh, so that’ll take you, what, two or three years?’ And I’ll say, ‘No, more like seven or eight,’ and they think it’s crazy because they’ve seen TV shows where all the characters have three PhDs by the time they’re twenty-three. It’s unrealistic and propagates total misinformation about higher education. Drives me crazy.”

“A dissertation. That’s the book you write to get your degree, right?” Rex seems to actually be listening, even though I’ve gone off on a grad school tirade.

“Yeah. I’ve been working on it for five years.” Alongside teaching every semester, bartending on the weekends, applying for fellowships, and, recently, applying for fifty-six jobs across the country, that is.

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, it’s boring; you don’t want to hear about that,” I tell him.