In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(81)

“So, Leo should be here in a few minutes. We’ll just hang out in the yard, okay? Just ignore us and keep doing what you’re doing. It looks nice,” I add, looking down at the satiny wood of the tabletop.

“Thanks,” Rex says, running his hand over the grain. “Needs another pass.”

“Do you like Halloween?” I ask.

Rex cocks his head and shrugs.

“I really like old monster movies.” Of course he does. “Hey, I invited Will over for a beer while you guys are… training, okay?”

I nod. Will’s irritating, with his power plays and innuendos, but he’s not as bad as I thought. And he’s Rex’s friend. The only friend Rex seems to have. Of course, I didn’t know about him until recently, so who knows who else could come out of the woodwork.

“Hello?” Leo calls from outside. “Oh, hey,” he says. “Thought maybe I had the wrong house.” He’s wearing a battered army jacket and standing in the driveway with his skateboard propped on his foot.

“You can’t skateboard on these roads,” I say, confused. Leo blushes.

“Yeah, well, when you gave me the address I didn’t realize it was in the middle of the woods. It’s cool.”

“Oh, sorry,” I say. “Should we get started?”

Leo’s face goes slack as he looks over my shoulder. Rex has come out of his workshop looking like exactly the kind of hot carpenter fantasy that Leo was spinning the other day. His muscles are bulging under the worn T-shirt and jeans, his hair is messy, and he’s sweaty and covered in sawdust and curls of wood. Leo’s mouth falls open.

“Hi, Leo, I’m Rex.” He puts out his hand and it swallows Leo’s up. “Can I get you something?” he offers, gesturing toward the house, and I feel like a bad host.

“No thanks,” Leo says, having apparently managed to pick his jaw up off the floor. He’s smiling and his big brown eyes shine as he looks at Rex with naked admiration. “I wish you would teach me a thing or two,” he adds flirtatiously, sidling closer to Rex. Then he sneezes at the sawdust smell and I snort. Rex doesn’t even seem to notice.

“I don’t like fighting,” is all he says. He squeezes the back of my neck, then goes inside.

I try to get a baseline on where Leo’s at. He can’t throw a punch, can’t block without losing his balance, and can barely seem to distinguish left from right.

“It’s hopeless,” Leo moans after about half an hour, his face red with embarrassment and exertion.

I eye his skateboard.

“Can you actually skateboard?” I ask, realizing I’ve never seen Leo on it, only holding it.

“Yes!” he fires back.

I put the skateboard on the grass in front of me.

“Stand on it like you usually would.”

He hops onto the skateboard and bends his knees a little to get his balance. I swing at him and he throws his hand up to block, but this time he stays upright. I do it a few more times and Leo stays balanced. He grins at me.

“Better,” I say.

“Yeah, now all he has to do is ask the person who’s about to punch him if it’s okay if he sets his skateboard down and stands on it first,” says Will through his car window as he parks. Leo’s face burns and his smile is gone.

“Fuck off, Will,” I say. “We’re just building his basic skills first.”

“Ooh, skill-building. Guess you really are a teacher, huh.”

Leo is looking at the ground, his eyes darting up every few seconds to look at Will.

“Leo, this total * is Will; Will, Leo,” I say.

Will walks up to Leo and looks him over. Leo falls off his skateboard. Jesus Christ.

“Hit me,” Will says to Leo once he’s picked himself up.

“Um,” Leo says unsurely, looking to me.

“If you’d spent any more time around him you’d already have taken him up on that offer,” I tell Leo.

“Are you su—?”

“Hit me!”

Leo arranges his hand into a fist the way I taught him and throws a weak punch from the shoulder, which would have landed somewhere around Will’s nipple if it had connected. Will brushes him aside.

“No, no, no,” Will says, “pick your heel up. No, your other heel. Bend your knees. Lean back. No.”

“Will, we hadn’t gotten there yet.” I shoulder Will aside and stand next to Leo.

“Okay,” I say. “You have to get the weight of your body behind the punch because you’re skinny, okay? So, widen your stance a little and, yeah, get your back heel up. Now you can lean backward to get some momentum, right?” Leo does it and nods. “Good. Bend your knees like you do when you skateboard. Duck your chin a little. Not so much that you can’t see. There you go. Okay, now lean back. This is like in baseball, how you start with the bat back to get more power, right? Good. Now relax your arm a little. Now try.”

Leo throws the punch and almost falls forward.

“Better,” I say.

“You’ve got to let him see how it feels to connect with something, Daniel,” Will says. “Fucking hurts. Here, Leo, hit me.”

“Yeah, end his modeling career, Leo,” I say. “Please.”

“You’re a model?” Leo asks, his head jerking up. Will rolls his eyes and flips me off.