Rex kisses me lingeringly.
“Anything for you,” he says. Then he gathers me against his heat and I drift off to sleep, held in Rex’s arms and Ginger’s familiar bed.
Chapter 15
December
REX DRIVES us to the funeral with one hand on the wheel and the other heavy on my thigh. He’s been so calm this whole time, so steady. I could see it in him the night we met—how solid he was.
THIS MORNING I woke up to Ginger crawling into bed next to me while Rex was still asleep, one arm thrown above his head.
“He’s gorgeous and awesome,” Ginger said matter-of-factly.
“I know, right?” I whispered back. “What the hell is he doing with me?”
She smacked me lightly and rolled her eyes.
“Listen, Ginge, will you come with us to the funeral? I’m afraid I might murder one of the guys and then the two remaining ones will turn on me, which will make Rex kill them and really I don’t want to be responsible for Rex going to prison on top of all this….”
“Obviously, I’m going to the funeral with you, you idiot,” she said, but she smiled.
Rex ran down to the bodega on the corner and got eggs and bread. After a late breakfast, Ginger called my brothers at my dad’s house to get the specifics of the funeral while Rex and I changed. She figured they wouldn’t be rude to her at least. I don’t know why she’d think that after all these years. She started with the phone on speaker, but after Brian made some disgusting comment and Ginger told him he should go eat a dick and he replied, “Why don’t you get Danielle to do that since it’s his favorite thing to do,” she took it off speaker and went into the kitchen.
Rex let out a controlled breath, shaking his head, and clenched his fists.
“Honestly, Daniel, I’m impressed you can even be in the same room as them,” he said.
“I…. Brian’s not usually so bad. When I was younger, we were—well, not friends, but friendlier? We’d play catch or poker sometimes when he didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. And Sam. He calmed down a lot after he and Liza got married. He never really gave me too much shit because he was so much older.”
I knotted my tie and shrugged into my jacket, which Ginger had taken one look at when I pulled it out of my backpack and immediately hung in the bathroom to steam while we all had our showers. Rex ran his hand down my lapel.
“This is the suit you were wearing the night we met,” he said softly. I couldn’t believe he remembered. I was only wearing it for an hour.
“It’s the only one I have,” I said. “How do you…?”
Rex’s eyes never left mine.
“I remember everything about that night, Daniel.”
He looked like he wanted to say something else, but then he took a deep breath and his eyes skittered away from mine and back to knotting his own tie.
“SO, WHAT’S the deal with this funeral?” Ginger says from the backseat. “I mean, are you all secretly Jewish or something? I thought you guys waited, like, weeks before you buried people so you could do whatever voodoo you do to make bodies that can rise from the grave.”
Rex snorts.
“Fucking Vic,” I say. “He and Sam worked out some kind of deal with his cousin or something. I don’t know. They wouldn’t hear a word against him. Jesus Christ,” I say, running a hand through my hair, “I just hope this doesn’t turn into that scene in that movie you made me watch after you broke up with Stephen.”
“Oh yeah, Death at the Funeral,” Ginger says. “Ha, good movie.” Then to Rex she says, “The body falls out of the coffin.”
“Yeah, I saw it,” he says, his hand tightening on my thigh.
“Knowing Vic, he might bury Dad even if he’s not actually dead just to make a buck,” I say, going for levity, but it just comes out a little shaky.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Dandelion turns morbid when he’s uncomfortable,” Ginger says to Rex, leaning forward to stick her head between our seats. Rex smiles at her in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah, I’m getting that,” he says, rubbing my leg with his warm hand.
“Dude,” I say, “you’re kind of turning me on. Do you want me to show up to my father’s funeral with a hard-on?”
Rex shoots me a dark and filthy look that says if he had his way he’d have me showing up everywhere with a hard-on, but he just pats me on the knee and puts both hands on the wheel.
“Brian said there’s going to be some kind of party in the shop?” Ginger continues.
“Yeah. For everyone who can’t make it to the cemetery today. You know my family: it’ll just be a shit-ton of beer and fried chicken and they’ll drink and cry and undoubtedly those creepy twins will smoke in the shop and set a garbage can on fire. There are these friends of my dad’s,” I tell Rex, “who no one can tell apart. Like, sincerely, I don’t even think my dad could tell them apart. He just always calls them The Twins, and no one’s ever seen them when they weren’t together. They’re super skinny so it kind of looks like they’re just one person that got sliced in half.”