I glare at him.
“Here, let me do it,” he says.
“No, no, I got this,” I say, pushing him back down onto the stool by the shoulders. I totally do not got this.
Rex smiles and puts his arms around my waist, spreading his legs to draw me in to him. He kisses me and then leans his forehead against my chest. Then he stands up and opens the refrigerator, pulling things out.
“I’m going to show you how to make spaghetti,” he says. “Okay?”
“Great.”
Rex puts me to work cutting up a green pepper and some tomatoes.
“I’ll teach you how to make the pasta yourself another time—fresh pasta is the best. But for now let’s just use premade before you starve to death.”
Rex bustles around the kitchen making a salad and putting water on to boil. I consider the pepper, trying to figure out how to explain why I got so mad before I left for Detroit.
“Listen, about what you said Thursday night,” I say, concentrating on cutting up the pepper and not slicing my fingers off in the process. Rex looks up. “About how I won’t accept your help?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Well, a couple years after I met her, Ginger bought this motorcycle from a guy on Craigslist. She’d gone down to the guy’s house and looked at it and everything and she said it seemed to run fine, so she bought it. Then, like, a week later, the thing totally died. Ginger asked me to look at it for her and I did—I’m not as good as my dad or my brothers, but I know enough to tell that the engine was total garbage and the gas tank was leaking. I mean, it’s a miracle the thing didn’t throw a spark and ignite the whole gas tank. Anyway, Ginger tried to message the guy through Craigslist, but, of course, he’d taken his profile down once the bike sold.
“So, Ginger asked me if I would go with her to talk to the guy. When we got there, the dude was like, ‘Wow, I’m so sorry to hear that. It was running fine for me. You probably rode the clutch or something.’ You know, because she’s a woman, he thinks he can make it seem like it’s her fault because she’s not good with a bike or something, which is bullshit because Ginge’s a great rider, she just doesn’t know about mechanics. Anyway, the guy was a douchebag, but I made him give her her money back and everything.”
“What did you do to him?” Rex asks suspiciously.
“Nothing!” I say, still addressing the cutting board. “I didn’t hurt him, I just scared him. Told him what kind of loser I thought he was for ripping someone off like that. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I was really happy that Ginger asked me to help her, you know, because it meant that she trusted me and that we were really friends because you’d only ask a friend to do that. And, so, my point is that you were like me and I was like Ginger, only I didn’t ask you, so it was like we weren’t friends, and that’s my fault because I didn’t totally realize what was going on. But I do now. You know?”
Rex puts his hand over mine, taking my knife. I’ve cut the green pepper into such tiny pieces that it’s almost pulp.
“That’s wrong, isn’t it?” I say, pointing to the green pepper.
Rex doesn’t even look at the cutting board. He cups my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him.
“You’re saying you understand that I want to help you because I care?”
“Um. Yeah,” I say.
Rex looks at me seriously.
“You helped me today,” he says. “You took care of me. Do you think less of me because I let you?”
“Of course not. I never said—”
“You never said it, but it’s clear. Somewhere along the line you learned that it’s a failure to accept help. That it makes you weak. Right?”
I try to look away, but he’s still holding my face. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me so hard.
“Right?” he says again.
“Right,” I say, and my voice cracks. I clear my throat. “But I know it’s not true. That’s what made me think of it: how much I wanted to take care of you today.”
“You know it’s not true here,” Rex says, tapping my forehead. “But it’ll take a while to believe it.”
I shrug, but I keep looking at his beautiful eyes.
“Well, then I guess we’ll just have to keep looking out for each other until we both believe it, huh?” Rex says.
“Okay,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he says, and he kisses me matter-of-factly, like we’ve just sealed a deal.
“Um, did I mess that up?” I ask again, pointing to the pepper.
“Nope,” Rex says. “It’s perfect for the sauce. It’ll just cook faster now.”