I turned the light back off.
“It was too bright,” I said. “So what happened?”
How was it that even with the lights off, Rex still had the brightest blue eyes under the sun?
“A lot happened,” Rex answered. Now he was the one dodging things. Was he paying me back for shutting the door on him earlier? I really did appreciate that moment, way more than I was able to put into words. Even though I could still remember the text he sent, ending any and all hope of us ever being together, I still felt a warmth fill me when I heard Rex’s voice on the other side of my door.
And now he’s leaving. Great. Just like old times.
“Where are you going?” I didn’t want to let up. Part of me felt a spark of something—anger? Confusion?
Fear?
Whatever it was, I wanted to keep feeling it. It had been so long…
“I’ve got a friend in Tampa—I can crash on her couch for a little. Lay low until this tape situation gets unfucked. Maybe while that happens, I’ll hit the books again. Reapplying to law school is on the table.”
“Really?” I said, wanting to smile and cry at the same time. I’d been such a blank slate of emotions that this sudden tug-of-war inside my chest made either one feel extreme.
“We’ll see. First priority is getting out of your hair.”
“Out of my hair? What’s that mean?”
“As in leaving your proxi—”
“Rex, I know what the phrase means. I’m asking why do you think you have to ‘get out of my hair’?”
“Because it’s obvious you don’t want me here, and I don’t think I blame you. I hate having these dreams of you smiling and then seeing you shut up in your bedroom all day, avoiding eye contact whenever you do come out. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable or upset, so if I have to go, then I’m going to go.”
I turned the light back on.
“Whoa, whoa, okay, I don’t know where all this is coming from—”
“From the fact that this is the longest conversation we’ve had since I got here. I can tell there’s friction between us, and I fucking hate it.”
I huffed. “That’s true.” And then I put a hand on my face. “Ugh, I’m sorry, Rex. I’ve been going through it, all right, and none of ‘it’ has to do with you—” Not entirely true, but… “It’s more with me, and how defeated I’ve been feeling.”
“Defeated about what?”
A shrug was all I could really offer. I didn’t want to talk about it, not now. Maybe not ever. But definitely not now.
“Benj, talk to me. Forget about everything for a second and just be here, with me. Talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”
Nothing. I wanted to shout that I was feeling nothing, and that felt like the scariest thing in the entire world. Motivation ran out of me like a broken faucet, every day getting worse.
“I’m feeling… not great.” I didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t have the energy to. “But it’s fine,” I said, trying my best to brush it off, wishing the lights were off again so Rex couldn’t look into my eyes. “But now that you know it’s got nothing to do with you, are you still gonna head out?”
I tried to make the question sound as casual as possible, as if I didn’t care either way, but the way Rex looked at me, with a half-cocked grin, told me I didn’t do a great job.
“Well… My main reason was leaving to make you feel better, but if that won’t be the case—”
“It won’t.”
“Then yeah, I’ll stay. I’d have an easier time studying by the lake than in my friend’s living room anyway.”
“I can help out, too. If you want my help.”
Rex chuckled. “Of course I’d want your help.”
More of that same warmth from earlier, flooding through me. It was very different from the cold anxiety I’d been doused with when Rex first arrived, when all I could see of him was that damn text. The one seared into my head like a paragraphs-long burning brand.
“Benjamin, we can’t ever speak about what we’ve done, and we can’t ever do it again. You were a mistake, and now that it’s out of my system, it’s done. Never again.”
That was on the last day of our trip to Costa Rica. I had cried for hours on the plane ride home, burying my face in a pillow and pretending I had gone straight to sleep. Rex had never spoken to me after that, not until two weeks ago when he’d shown up at the sanctuary like a bear needing rescue.
“Since we’re being so talkative…” This was me dipping my toe in potential murky waters, but still, I had to know. “What happened between you and your dad? Why did you leave everything in New York for our little sanctuary in Georgia?”
Rex cracked his neck. He didn’t say anything at first, making me worried that I might have overstepped some invisible boundary.
“My dad, he’s running for re-election this year. It’s probably the worst time ever for his only son to be involved in a sex scandal.”
“In a what?” I must not have heard right. Rex, although definitely not the most vanilla guy around, didn’t seem like someone who’d get wrapped up in a salacious scandal. Even in Costa Rica, he had been extra careful about us kissing and hooking up.
“Benji, since our trip, since that one night we spent together, I’ve known one thing for sure: I’m not straight. I’m bi, a hundred percent. I love dick way too much to be straight. But no matter how sure I felt, I could never be open about it. So when I hooked up with this girl, Penelope, who told me she loves to watch two guys go at it, I asked if she’d help, uh, facilitate this. We’d hook up, the three of us, at least once a month, sometimes more. I trusted them. It wasn’t some random people I met through an app, so I felt safe. I let my guard down.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah. Crap.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth, stress lines forming on his forehead. “Last week, I was at a party with Mav. I was hooking up with Penelope and Scott, and that’s when I saw the hidden camera.”
I gasped, my heart sinking and my stomach twisting into a tight knot. “Are you fucking joking? What happened?”
“I grabbed the camera and threw it against the wall. But it was too late—whatever they got was streamed up into the cloud or whatever.” He lifted a weak hand up toward the ceiling. “They sent an email to my dad before I had even left the party. They threatened to leak the video if he didn’t send a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Rex… My God.”
“My dad didn’t send any money—I wouldn’t have wanted him to. But he did cut me off immediately, and seeing as how I wasn’t exactly being frugal up until then, I didn’t have anything saved. Your brother offering me the guesthouse was a lifeline I’ll never forget.”
“I can’t believe it… Do you have any idea of who has the tape?”
“None. Mav helped hire a private investigator, who’s looking into it for me, but I’m not all that hopeful. I feel like they’re either waiting for the hundred thousand or waiting for the week before voting starts to dominate the news cycle.”