Page 101 of Bobby Green
“I won’t leave you hanging,” Reg mumbled, but his eyes were already closed, and his body was practically not even his anymore. “I’ll say them.”
“You already did,” Bobby whispered, and before Reg could argue, he’d fallen fast asleep.
Old Business
IN EARLYFebruary they threw duffel bags in the back of the pickup, locked up Reg’s house—new fence and all—and took off for Dogpatch.
They’d visited V the day before, and she’d sat sullenly, eyes averted, at a cheap Formica table. The place was every bit as bad as Reg had feared—scuffed beige walls, cracked green tile and all. On their way in, Bobby had seen a frantic young man with quarter-sized gauges in his ears and face and neck tattoos begging a dead-eyed girl with bandages on her wrists to please, for the love of God, just talk to him.
Inside the visiting room proper, people sat at crappy cafeteria tables in folding chairs, or in the battered, duct-taped couches. Everyone had an attendant with a clipboard. Some of the groups were actively engaged in conversation, and some of them were sitting in cold silence, but the attendants—casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts and tennis shoes—all looked around alertly, like whatever the situation, it could change in a long breath.
The stink of cigarettes, ammonia, and vomit was thick enough to cut with a steak knife. An attendant—a thick, muscular woman with a steady smile for Reg and Bobby and a flat-eyed assessment for V—brought V in from the sleeping quarters.
She looked like hell in rumpled pajamas Reg had brought from home. Her hair lay piled on top of her head haphazardly, and Bobby had needed to work to not recoil at the smell.
“She’s not bathing,” the attendant told them matter-of-factly. “She’s afraid people will steal her clothes.”
“You want my fuckin’ clothes,” V snapped at the woman.
“Got my own, thanks. Sit down and behave, Veronica. Your brother and his friend came to see you.”
V snarled, “What the hell you doin’ here, retard?”
Reg had bit his lip. “I just wanted to see how you were, V. If you were taking your meds yet, you know. So you could come home.”
“You want me to take my meds? Fucking poison! Get me the hell out of here!” V half stood, slamming her fists on the table, and the attendant sighed, stood up from her folding chair, and grabbed V by the elbow.
“You may want to try again next week,” she said with resigned cheerfulness. “Her regimen had to be started practically from scratch.”
V was hustled out, and Bobby stared at Reg.
His full lips were parted, making him look vulnerable and young, and his almond-shaped blue eyes that Bobby had found so appealing from the beginning were wide and dazed. The blank devastation on his face did things to Bobby’s chest he wasn’t sure would heal.
“Next week,” Reg said weakly to the air. “We’ll work at getting her home next week.”
“Sure,” Bobby said.Another week for you to maybe think of option three. Come on, Reg. It can’t be me.
That night Bobby made dinner, a recipe he got from Kane because he could cook and didn’t snap at Bobby if he didn’t know the difference between sage and basil, like Tommy did.
Reg ate it and thanked him shyly, his front teeth worrying his bottom lip like he did when he was embarrassed. Bobby had kissed him then, dirty dishes on the counter, backing him against the wall until the shyness burned away and he leaped up, wrapping his legs around Bobby’s waist so Bobby could carry them both to bed. Face-to-face this time, Bobby up on his knees at the end, watching Reg’s head tilt back and the utter abandon wash over his face, cleansing him of the worry.
Bobby shuddered in climax and collapsed next to him, studying Reg’s face in the borrowed light from the kitchen.
Maybe it was the fading acne scars, or the way Reg angled his chin out into the world like he was taking every hit directly without question, but the soft light made his features look delicate—poignant, even.
He grinned at Bobby, teeth glinting softly in the faint glow, the corners of his eyes crinkling up just enough to remind Bobby that he would be thirty next year. Bobby had always known that Reg had a special magnetism that had made him one of Johnnies’ mainstays, but here, in the dark, in Bobby’s bed and Bobby’s bed alone, Bobby could see a beauty the cameras could never capture.
“You’re very good to me,” Reg said in that quiet moment.
“I want the world for you.” Bobby kissed him then, trying to drink that simple beauty into his soul. Even when they eventually dressed in sweats and went back to finish the kitchen, he knew he’d failed somehow.
He would always need another kiss, another taste, another moment.
He wasn’t sure how that happened, how the “I love you” had happened nearly two weeks before, how he’d found the patience to wait to reclaim Reg, to wait for the “I love you” in return. Reg took his time, maybe. Bobby had to learn to take his.
And now, clearing Auburn, heading toward Truckee and beyond, Bobby couldn’t help taking sideways glances at that deceptively pretty face as Reg made the connection between the mountains that had lived in the horizon his entire life and the topography that surrounded him now.
“This is amazing,” he breathed. “There’s snow on the ground. Can you see that? No wonder you told me to bring all my warm clothes.”
