“Um, anyway, he’s only eighteen—no, nineteen now, I guess—and he’s got this huge crush on Rex’s friend… ex-boyfriend, really,” he says, his nose wrinkling in distaste.
I shoot Rafe a look to say Why the hell do we care about this shit? but he gives me that stern eyebrow raise that means “You’re being a dick,” so I just shut up and listen.
“Will. And Will’s—how old’s Will, twenty-six?” Rex nods. “They met in Michigan when Will was visiting his sister, but Will lives in New York. Anyway, Leo was devastated when he left and I guess they kissed…. Leo’s very secretive about what actually happened.” Daniel trails off like he’s trying to put a bunch of pieces together and has distracted himself by doing it. “I don’t know,” Daniel muses finally, “maybe when Leo goes to school in New York….”
“I don’t think so, baby,” Rex says softly. Daniel shrugs and leans into him.
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.