Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  “Whoa,” the kid says. I hope I didn’t just sound like a music snob.

  “I like Christina Perri too,” I offer. “Her voice is awesome and her songs are kind of addictive, even though they’re a little bubblegum. She uses interesting progressions. My best friend, Ginger, tattooed her once, said she’s really cool.”

  “Hey,” he says, turning on the bench to sit cross-legged facing me. His face is serious again. “Thanks. For getting rid of them. I mean, I coulda handled it. Probably. I just. Thanks.”

  “No worries,” I say, and hold out my hand. “I’m Daniel.”

  “Leo,” he says, shaking it.

  “Short for Leonardo?” I ask.

  “No, short for leotard,” he says, rolling his eyes.

  “Smartass.”

  “You love my ass,” he says, winking, and there’s that mischievous smile again.

  “You must be okay if you’re trying to pick up a guy twice your age. I’ll leave you to your bench.”

  “Well, whattaya say?” He inches closer to me, clumsy and enthusiastic. “Want to make out?”

  I think he’s kidding, but….

  “Leo,” I say, breathing out through my nose and trying not to sound 876 years old. “You’ve got to be careful. You don’t want to go around flirting with older guys. With strangers. Okay? You’ll get into trouble.” I am such an incredible hypocrite right now.

  “Maybe I want a little trouble,” he says with an eyebrow waggle.

  I take him by the shoulders firmly, the bones delicate under my hands.

  “You don’t,” I say, as seriously as I mean it. “Not that kind of trouble.” Something changes in his eyes and he drops the smirk.

  “Got it,” he mutters, looking down at his dirty Vans. I feel like I kicked a puppy. I pat him on the shoulder and grab my bag and my wine.

  “I’ll see you around, okay?” I say. He brightens.

  “Yeah, cool, man,” he says. “I work at the record store. You should totally come by!”

  “Wait, there’s a record store in this town?”

  “Um, well, they don’t only have records. But still! On Willow, near the alley behind the library. Come on, please come visit me some time. I get so bored.” He’s giving me a look that’s equally dangerous to the smile, only this one is puppy dog, through and through.

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll definitely check it out. Night.” I wave at him and turn to go. Leo jumps up, nearly tripping over his skateboard. Skinny arms snake tight around my shoulders and I catch a whiff of sweat and clove cigarettes before he lets go. God, it’s such a familiar smell.

  “Thanks,” he whispers again. Then he grabs his board and runs away.

  “See, babycakes? He wasn’t blowing you off by asking for your number,” Ginger says.

  I’m slightly buzzed on cheap red wine—the kind of buzz that happens after one and a half glasses of wine on an empty stomach after not enough sleep—and lying on my back, staring at my ceiling as Pink Floyd pulls me so deep into my bed that I don’t ever want to come out.

  “Yeah, I know that now. But I still convinced myself of it, which made me think how dumb I would be to get involved with him.”

  “Clarify, please.”

  “Well, if it made me feel that shitty to think he didn’t want me when I’d only seen him, like, three times, then it’ll be that much worse when he loses interest a few weeks from now.”

  “Oh, that’s logical,” she says. “So, the more you like someone, the stupider it is to actually date them because the more it might, hypothetically, hurt if the relationship ever ends.” She snorts. “Wow, you’re smart. That’s, like, Nobel Prize material. Daniel Mulligan’s theory of dating relativity.”

  “Shut up,” I mutter.

  “Oh, come on. What’s really going on?” she asks.

  “Tomorrow,” I say. “I think I might have an actual date.”

  “Aw, baby’s first date!” She pauses. “Does he know you have no idea how to go on a date?”

  “I can go on a date,” I insist.

  “You’ve never been on one,” she says.

  “What about—”

  “Getting picked up at the bar where you work and blown in an alley does not a date make, pumpkin,” she says sweetly.

  “Fine,” I mutter.

  “Tell!”

  So, I start to tell her about what’s happened this week.

  “Wait,” she interrupts me. “Is that ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Put it on speaker so I can listen too,” she says. “I was just thinking I haven’t played this album in way too long.”

  I put my crappy phone on speaker and turn up the stereo. Then I tell her about everything that’s happened with Rex as Wish You Were Here soars in the background.

  “That’s awesome, babycakes,” she says. “So, are you going to finally—you know—uuuuggghhh,” she moans. “This song is so fucking good it’s making me cry right now.”

  “Ha-ha,” I say. “You totally wish I were there.”

  “I do!” she wails. Ginger’s very sensitive, but it makes her uncomfortable. “And thinking of you maybe, actually, possibly going on a date with a nice guy… I can’t do that and listen to Pink Floyd at the same time without getting emotional. I’m only human.” She sings this last to the tune of the Human League song and I groan.

  “Music social foul: no singing a song when another song is playing. Double music social foul: don’t ever fucking sing anything while Pink Floyd is playing. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I should be shot,” she says. “I should be dressed in a Dark Side of the Moon shirt and shot into space so I can never disrespect Pink Floyd again. And not even a concert T-shirt, but one of those ones they sell in head shops that white boys with dreads buy. But enough about me. What are you going to wear on your date?”

  “I dunno. I mean, he’s already seen me in a suit and jeans and a T-shirt. Oh, and half-naked. Oh! And carrying a half-dead dog. So, I don’t think it really matters.”

  “It matters because if you look like you made an effort to look nice then he’ll think you care about the date and if you don’t then he’ll think you think it’s no big deal.”

  “Um. Is that true?”

  “Yeah, totally true.”

  “Huh. So, what do I wear, then? I don’t want to dress up. I’m going to his house to watch a movie.”

  “Mmmm.” I can hear Ginger mentally flipping through my (very limited) wardrobe. “Wear the black jeans you got last year, your boots, and any shirt that doesn’t have writing on it.”

  “Uh, okay, if you say so.”

  “Ooh, no. Specification: wear the maroon button-down I gave you that that guy left at the shop after puking like a tiny wuss and running outside without it.”

  “The sleeves are too short.”

  “Cuff and roll, baby, cuff and roll. It’s hot. It draws attention to your forearms.”

  “You like my forearms?”

  “No, not yours in particular. I mean, they’re fine. Just, it’s a sexy body part.”

  “I totally agree. I just didn’t know girls liked them too.”

  “Oh, yes, Daniel. All girls like forearms. Every single one. No really, I’ve asked all of us and we all agree. We don’t even agree about whether or not the long arm of the law should be able to reach into our vaginas, but we agree about forearms.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Ginger, have you been fighting with the pro-lifers again? They’re gonna bomb your shop.”

  “They make me want to get pregnant just so I can get an abortion and make a YouTube video of it to send to them.”

  “All right, the maroon button-down and black jeans. Thanks. I’m going to ignore the thing about forearms, since I think you know what I meant.”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “Hey, I think I accidentally kinda made a friend.”

  “Oh yeah, someone you work with?”

  “No. I stopped him from getting beat up.
Little smartass skater kid. Babyqueer. He tried to make out with me.”

  “Um, you didn’t, did you?”

  “I didn’t make out with a kid, Ginger. What the fuck?”

  “Just checking.”

  “Jesus, you think I’m a pervert.”

  “Well, yeah, but not in that way.”

  I start to giggle.

  “He was skinny and smelled like cloves and he said he liked Kurt Vile.”

  “Oh my god,” Ginger says, laughing, “it’s like you have your own little you. I remember when you smoked cloves. And, jeez, you were scrawny.”

  Then she says something about the universe sending us pieces of our past selves to embrace so we can heal them and I must be drunker than I thought because I don’t follow her at all.

  “Aw,” I mutter. “The wine’s all the way over there.”

  And then it’s morning. I must have rolled over onto the phone and flipped it shut at some point because it’s lodged under my left hip bone. The light’s still on and my wine-stained coffee mug is perched on the windowsill, right about where my hand reaches if I stretch. My teeth feel grainy and I’m starving since I fell asleep without ever ordering pizza.

  But, despite feeling a little muzzy, I’m not hungover and I’m going to see Rex tonight, so things are looking just fine.

  My phone buzzes with a text.

  Ginger: You alive, kid?

  I text her back, Alive. Wish you *were* here, and jump in the shower.

  An hour later I’m showered, I’ve driven to Traverse City and bought a bottle of nice bourbon to bring with me to Rex’s tonight, and I’m parking in the lot at the library, congratulating myself on remembering to drive since I have a bunch of books to pick up and won’t be able to walk home with them. I have my laptop and I’m planning to get a ton of writing done today. Then I’ll get my books and run home with enough time to shower and change and get to Rex’s at nine. It’s a plan.

  The Sleeping Bear College Library isn’t particularly expansive and it isn’t particularly nice; it kind of looks like a book prison. It also doesn’t have windows above the first floor. Still, I have a faculty carrel with an actual door, so I can tear my hair out in privacy. I collect a teetering stack of books and haul them to my carrel, ready to start the new section that I’m adding to chapter two.

  A major part of what I need to do to get tenure is turn my dissertation into a publishable book. That means not just polishing what I’ve already written, but tearing it apart and rethinking central questions from a different perspective. Now, instead of having to prove to my committee that I know what I’m talking about and can make an interesting argument, I have to prove to an academic publisher that I have something to say about literature that hundreds of other academics will want to read.

  After about three hours of deleting every sentence the second I write it, I begin to get into a rhythm, and I’m actually drafting some not-terrible stuff when I finally look at my watch and see that it’s already 7:30. I had meant to be home by now. I scribble a quick half page of notes to myself so I’ll know where I left off, gather my things, and go to check out the books I have on hold at the front desk.

  All my life I’ve had this fear—no, not really a fear. A niggling thought that my annoying brain lands on again and again. I have it when I come out of a movie theater or a concert, or when I’ve slept all weekend without hearing from anyone. It’s this thought that just maybe, when I step outside, the world as I know it will be gone and it will have been replaced by another. It’s half horror movie and half wishful thinking, but I’ve had it ever since I was a kid. I remember I had it the first morning I woke up after my mom died. I woke up and she was there. For a second. But then I remembered that she wasn’t there anymore. That I’d woken up to a world where she didn’t exist.

  Now, that’s exactly what has happened. When I got into my car this morning, it was a pleasantly chilly day, one that made me glad I grabbed a hoodie. I vaguely remember that when I walked into the library the wind had kicked up a bit, but it was only a few yards into the building. Now, nine hours later, it is a world of swirling, whirling winter. There has to be at least a foot of snow on the ground and more is falling heavily, gusting against the side of the library and the few cars in the parking lot. It’s wet snow, creeping down my collar and into my nose.

  I heave my bags of books onto my shoulders and trudge to my car. The snow is up to my shins and it soaks through my beat-up Vans and jeans immediately. I throw my bags into the backseat of my car and jump in, freezing. I’ll have to kick the snow away from the back of the car so I can get out of the lot, but I figure I’ll warm it up first. I turn the key in the ignition and—of course!—nothing. Crap. Thanks, car.

  I figure I’ll walk home and call a cab to take me to Rex’s. It’s only a mile and a half or so to my house from here, and it’s cold, but it’s not too cold. I dig out my phone to check the time and remember that it’s still on silent from being in the library all day. When I flip it open to turn the volume back on I see I missed a call from Rex about two hours ago. He must have been calling to give me directions. I figure I’ll call to get his address when I get home, but as I’m slipping the phone back in my pocket, it rings. It’s Rex.

  “Hi, Daniel,” he says. “Sorry to call again, I just wanted to give you directions to my place.”

  “Um…,” I say.

  “Is it—do you not want to come anymore?” he asks, sounding wary. “I mean, I understand. The snow and all.”

  “No, no, it’s not that. It’s just. Crap, well, I’m just leaving the library to go home and I—my car won’t start. So I’m just going to walk home and then get a cab to your place, but I might be a little late. There are cabs here, right? Like, do I call a number or something?”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rex says, and the line goes dead. Well, shit.

  I pull up my hood and pop the car’s to take a gander while I wait for Rex. It’s probably just a dead battery since this one’s old, but I might need a new starter. It’s hard to see anything with the snow swirling around.

  “Daniel!” Rex calls from the window of a dark-colored Chevy Silverado that’s pulling up next to me.

  “Hey,” I say. “Sorry, man. I would’ve been fine walking, really.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” he says, eyes flashing. “You don’t even have a jacket. You should have waited inside.”

  “I wanted to see what was up with my car.”

  “I told you it was going to get cold, remember? Because I didn’t want you to be unprepared. I know you’re not used to this weather.”

  I’m annoyed at him for telling me what to do, but also a little weirded out because he actually seems concerned.

  “Yeah, but it’s October. I thought you were just making conversation. Like, ‘oh, the seasons are changing.’ I didn’t know you meant there was going to be a freaking snowstorm. Anyway, it’s no big deal. It probably just needs a jump,” I say, patting the hood of my car.

  Rex is looking at me with a mixture of annoyance and concern. Probably coming out in a snowstorm to pick up a guy he barely even knows wasn’t high on his list of pre-date activities.

  “I’ll just get my stuff,” I say, and duck back into the car.

  When I turn around with my bags of books and my backpack, Rex is right behind me. Even in the swirling snow I can feel his heat. He closes his eyes like he’s trying to get himself under control.

  “Hey,” he says, looking into my eyes, “Sorry if it sounded like I was lecturing you. But every year a tourist freezes to death or gets caught in a snowstorm up here because they don’t know the weather.”

  “Okay.” I nod.

  He shoulders one of my bags and I follow him to the truck.

  I’m soaked to the knees, so we head to my apartment so I can change and drop off all my books.

  As we walk through the door of my apartment I’m suddenly struck with a familiar feeling. This apartment, like every one I’ve ever had, is
run-down and musty, with garbage furniture, milk crate shelves, and floors that stay dirty-looking no matter how many times I wash them. I wish Rex would wait outside and never see my unmade bed, its mismatched sheets in a nest where I left them, my stove gummed with oil and dust and god knows what—not that I use it for much anyway—and my dresser with the drawers that sag out of their tracks from what must have been years of someone—Carl?—jamming them in and yanking them out, though dissatisfied with what they contained or the life that surrounded them I don’t know.

  It’s a dump, depressing even with every light on. I’ve gotten used to it the last few weeks, since it’s become my haven from work and from a town that seems to know what I do before I do it, but now, looking at it through a stranger’s eyes, I once again see it for what it is.

  “So, I’m just going to grab a shower,” I tell Rex. “Do you want some…?” I glance around the kitchen. Do I have anything to offer him?

  “I’m fine,” Rex says.

  “Wine,” I say, “or water?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Okay, well, make yourself comfortable. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  I grab the Ginger-approved outfit and duck into the bathroom. I catch a glimpse of myself as I run the water, and make a mental note to buy a heavy winter coat, like, now. My lips are almost blue and my cheeks are dead white against the black of my hair, which my hood has squashed into an unattractive helmet around my head. I look tired.

  “Great,” I say to the Daniel in the mirror.

  As I step under the mercifully hot water, I think I hear the opening notes of Wish You Were Here from the living room, but then the hiss of the water is all I can hear.

  It’s not entirely true that I’ve never been out on a date, though I never told Ginger about it. Richard and I went on one date before falling into the pattern that I thought was dating and he apparently thought was just getting his rocks off. It was soon after we met at a lecture on campus. Richard was a grad student in the chemistry department, done with coursework and writing his dissertation like I was. The lecture was dull and the question and answer portion that followed downright painful, and I caught him smiling at me when I accidentally rolled my eyes at some pompous nonquestion that the chair of the history department asked like he was a king bestowing a knighthood.