Out of Nowhere (Middle of Somewhere 2)

When the waiter comes to take our order, Daniel and Rex are whispering, pointing to things on the menu like they’re planning a covert military action or something, and then Daniel orders for both of them.

Once the food comes, things are a little less awkward. Daniel starts leaning over Rex to answer Ginger’s questions about when he starts teaching at Temple and something about Christopher’s cousin, so Daniel and Rex switch seats.

“Daniel was telling me that you built the cabin you guys live in,” Rafe says to Rex, who’s paying a lot of attention to finishing Daniel’s plate of spaghetti and meatballs.

“Yeah,” he says. “Well, not from scratch. It was… it was going to be torn down, so I started working on it. I saved what I could, but it was kind of a mess.”

“Do you know where you want to live in Philly?”

“Um, well, I’m not real familiar with things here,” Rex says, “but—”

“That’s bullshit,” Daniel interrupts, tuning back in to the conversation. “Rex took one look at the map and knew the city in, like, ten minutes.”

“Well,” Rex says, shaking his head, but he’s smiling a little, so maybe it’s true. “We were talking about… is it called Fishtown?” he asks Daniel, who nods.

“Yeah, there are all these converted industrial spaces—like, living space over what used to be an ironworks or a welding place. So Rex could turn that space into his workshop. We’re looking at some more places tomorrow.”

Rex nods and then starts eating again, clearly uncomfortable being the center of attention.

“You know,” Christopher says, “I have some friends who are opening a bar near my shop and they’re looking to do custom built-ins. A bar, some shelves, a few booths. I wonder if you could talk to them about putting in a bid for the work?”

Rex’s head snaps up and he nods immediately. “Yeah. Yes. That’d be great. I could do that. Do you… they’d want a… formal bid, I suppose?” His eyes dart to Daniel, who just smiles.

“I think you could probably talk with them first, then write down whatever you agreed on later,” Daniel says.

Rex lets out a breath and nods. “Thanks, Christopher. That’d be great. Really great.”

“Rex,” Rafe says, “I know you’ll have your hands full, with your work and moving and a new city and everything, but if you ever have some free time, maybe you’d want to run a workshop at YA? I know the kids would love to learn some carpentry and woodworking. It would need to be stuff that isn’t too dangerous, but if they got permission slips….”

I squeeze Rafe’s knee. It’s not surprising to me at all that he’d be thinking of ways to help the kids even though he can’t work at YA anymore.

Rex looks a little anxious, but he smiles. “Yeah, I—I think I could probably do that.” He turns to Daniel. “It’ll give me something to do while you’re hanging out at Ginger’s shop.”

“Yeah, seriously, babycakes,” Ginger says, “I’ve missed out on, like, a whole year of you, so you’d better be ready to hang hard.”

Christopher says, “Yeah, I don’t know what I’ll do when these two kick me out. Maybe I can come hang out at YA too?”

“Maybe,” Rafe says. “What do you have to offer?”

“Um. I make sandwiches.” It’s clear Christopher’s joking, but in the pause that follows, I can almost hear Rafe scouring every last corner of his mind to think of how he can translate that into anything but a workshop that would imply he thought the kids were going to work at McDonald’s someday.

“Well,” he finally says, “you could just volunteer to supervise programs they’ve already got running.”

“I can supervise with the best of them,” Christopher says, smiling. Ginger snorts.

“What? I can!”

“Yeah, sure, babe. That wasn’t you the other day totally letting your cousin walk all over you. And you definitely don’t let your employees get away with showing up late and taking extra time off.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, “so I’m a lenient boss.”

“It’s no way to run a business,” Ginger says, her eyes narrowed intensely, like probably this isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation.

“I think I’m doing fine,” Christopher says, his tone lazy. He leans back, looks her up and down, and winks at her. “Yup, I’m doing just fine.”

I swear, if there wasn’t a table between them, they’d be making out right now.

“Um,” I say, desperate to change the subject, “did you see Brian since you’ve been back?” Brian’s guilt over the way he—we—treated Daniel growing up was out of control for a while. He kept calling Daniel to apologize. So often that I think eventually Daniel just told him he forgave him to stop the incessant phone calls. After which, Brian showed up at my door one evening and was so relieved that he didn’t even notice Rafe, just said, “Dude, it’s okay now!” and plopped his ass down on the sofa with the remote while Rafe and I eyed each other over his head.