When we get back, a much happier Marilyn curls up in front of the fireplace. It feels a little cold in here, so I decide to light it. The only fires I’ve ever made have been by squirting gasoline in garbage cans in abandoned lots or in the alley behind my dad’s shop if we had to burn garbage, but I’ve seen Rex do it a few times. How hard can it be?
Hunh. Kind of hard. Every time I get the kindling going, it burns up before it lights the rest of the fire. Finally, with some maneuvering that almost loses me the skin on the back of my right hand, I get a pretty respectable blaze going. Then I go back to check on Rex.
I sit down next to him on the bed. I don’t want to wake him, but I want to see how bad he feels—if I should be getting him a prescription for something. I stroke his hair back and he whimpers. Poor Rex. He looks really awful.
“Rex,” I whisper softly.
“Hey,” he says.
“What can I do? Do you think you can keep any food down? I could get you something to eat?”
He laughs weakly. “I don’t need food poisoning on top of a migraine,” he says. “The pills are helping. Could you….” He trails off, like he wasn’t going to say anything.
“What?”
“Maybe just stay with me a little while?”
“Okay,” I say, “sure,” and I kick off my shoes. Rex scoots over a little and looks up at me. His eyes are uncertain behind the pain, and I realize we haven’t talked about anything yet. But it’s not the time. I slip my jeans off and slide under the covers, careful not to jostle him. I lie on my back next to him, not quite touching, like the night we were at my house, only this time it’s physical pain I want to protect him from. I hate that I don’t know what else to do for him. That there isn’t anything I can do. There wasn’t that night at my house, either. I hate feeling helpless and for a second, I’m almost mad at Rex for making me feel that way. Then he reaches his arm out, encouraging me to rest my head on his shoulder, and my anger melts away. It isn’t really at him anyway.
I lay my head on his shoulder and stroke his stomach lightly. He squeezes me a little, lets out a sigh and seems to relax. I listen to his slow breathing, my mind drifting.
When I wake up, it’s dark and, for a second, I have no idea where I am. I tense, but my hand feels the warmth of Rex’s body next to me and I relax. I tilt my chin up and kiss the underside of Rex’s chin.
“Hi,” he says.
“You’re awake.”
“Just for a minute.”
“How do you feel?”
“A bit better. It’s the tail end of it now, I think. It started on Friday night, and they don’t usually last more than two days.” He yawns. “I have to piss like you wouldn’t believe.”
Rex pushes himself up, his muscles trembling, and swings his legs over the side of the bed to heave himself upright. As Rex shakily makes his way to the bathroom, it gets me right in the gut: I want to take care of him. Not because I think he’s weak, but because I care about him. It’s so obvious. Ginger’s been saying it to me for years, but I’ve never—not once—actually believed her because I’ve never felt it before. Every time I asked my brothers for help they gave me shit about it. Anytime I asked for help from someone at school, they made me feel stupid or like I wasn’t trying hard enough. And the few times people offered help, it was obvious they expected something in return. Even my father’s gruff attempts at taking care of my car just made me feel awkward, because he so clearly resented them.
And Ginger… well, Ginger always just felt like an exception. I wanted to take care of her, of course, but, deep down, it felt a lot like paying a debt. She saved me the day I wandered into her shop. Somehow, she saw me differently than my brothers or my teachers and the other kids at school did. Not as a fuckup or a loser or a pansy. She really saw me, and so of course I felt indebted to her. I felt like each small thing I could do for her might go a little way toward paying her back for giving me a chance to be something other than a fuckup and a loser.
It’s not that way anymore. At least, I don’t think it is. But it segued from that to true, deep friendship so slowly that I can’t pinpoint when it happened exactly. And I’ve never felt it with anyone else. Definitely not with Richard, who would have viewed the idea of me taking care of him as absurd since, as he saw it, I didn’t have anything I could offer him except a hard fuck, which, clearly, was a service others could provide. And other friends? I don’t know. They never seemed to need taking care of—at least not from me.