Page 121 of Bobby Green
“That sounds nice. Thank you.”
They disappeared up on the landing, and Bobby came back down in a few moments, smiling tentatively.
“So. That was good,” he said hopefully, nodding.
Reg nodded back. “She remembers Queenie more now that she’s on her meds.”
“Well, you know. All men here, Reg. Maybe she’d like to meet my mom?”
Reg gave a half smile. Bobby’s mom—the cure-all for everything the Johnnies guys might have. “No,” he said softly. “No. I don’t trust this to last. I don’t… I mean, she likes me now. What happens if….” He wasn’t making any sense.
“The guys still like you,” Bobby said, drawing near. He gave an instinctive look over his shoulder, making sure V couldn’t see him as he pulled Reg into his arms. Reg’s heart shrank into his gullet as he realized they would have to do thatforeverwhile she lived here. Living to the alarm, making sure she had her medication every time, making sure he and Bobby never touched when she could see, and that Bobby only stayed the night if she went to bed first and that she never realized any of Reg’s friends were gay and that Dex and Kane could never bring the baby and neither could Chase and Tommy, or Kelsey, or—
He couldn’t breathe.
Bobby’s arms tightened around him, and Bobby soothed him, breath after breath, as he tried to pull himself together. Oh God. Oh God. This was his life, and he’d promised, he’d promised her, and he’d signed the papers, but he’d never seen, until right now, how much of himself he’d signed away.
It took Bobby the better part of an hour to calm him down, until he could breathe again and talk in sentences. But he couldn’t put words to what panicked him so bad, because all the words were disloyal and painful and things he’d never voiced before, not when he was sixteen, not at eighteen, not at nineteen when he’d decided to whore himself out…. Oh God… oh God… he’d fucked for a living for most of his adult life, and he was doing it, had been doing it, for someone who would never know what price he paid and would hate him if she did.
Bobby had to fix lunch and set her pills out, and Bobby kept her company when Reg retreated to his bedroom, distraught, unable to think, unable to do anything but sit and watch television, letting the mindlessness hypnotize him as he’d been mesmerized into trading his adulthood for family, when he’d never had much of either one.
In late afternoon, Bobby brought him a plate, sat him up, and made him eat.
“She’s reading,” he said quietly. “Not watching the news. It’s something you’ve read before. Maybe you can come talk to her about it in an hour.”
Reg nodded and took a bite of spaghetti. “Sorry,” he said, voice broken and wretched. “I don’t know what happened.”
One corner of Bobby’s wide, wicked mouth turned up. “It hit you, is all,” he said. “What you’ve given up your whole life. What you had for a couple of months. What you’re giving up again.”
Reg nodded and forced himself to take another bite. His scene had been five days ago—he was still hungry. “How come?” He took another bite and swallowed, then clarified, because Bobby was still looking at him gravely in the long shadows of the April afternoon. “How come I never thought about it before?”
Bobby reached out and stroked his cheek. “Maybe ’cause I’m here. And you can’t have me when we’re out there in front of her.”
Reg shoved another bite into his mouth. “God, I’m dumb. I mean,sodumb. How can you love someone this dumb, Bobby? How can you just stand there and watch me fuck up my life and struggle to figure shit out, and I’m slow. I’m so goddamned slow. How can you—” His voice was rising again, and Bobby stopped him, scooting closer and wrapping his arm around Reg’s shoulders, kissing him softly on the temple.
“Not stupid,” he said. “Not stupid. Slow isn’t bad. Slow is just… taking your time. Not doing what everyone says because they’re saying it. Figuring out for yourself what’s right.”
Reg nodded and tried to center himself again. “Porn is getting to be not right,” he admitted, voice shaking. “How is that? How can I be fucking the whole world one minute and just… just wanting one person the next?”
Bobby’s laugh was dry. “Four months, Reg. I kissed you almost four months ago. I touched you six months ago. Think about that. We’ve been snuggling like this for half a year. That’s growing time, right there.”
“Two goddamned inches,” Reg said sourly. Bobby had started out six foot three, and now he was officially six foot five. His chest looked narrow again, although he was working out like a boss. It was in-fucking-sane.
Bobby chuckled shamelessly. “Yeah. Both of us. Growing.”
“What am I gonna do?” Reg asked, the pain in his chest congealing.
“Mm….” Bobby thought for a moment. “How ’bout come out to the couch and sit between my legs while we read, like you do. If she says something nasty, tell her it’s how you and me are. Sometimes I think it’s the label she doesn’t like—not the people. When your head’s confused, it’s the label that’s easy.”
Reg grunted. Well, yeah.He’dbeen all caught up on labels too—but then, he was so bad with words, with matching them to concepts, that labels were all he had.
“We can sit together,” Reg said. Small things. Like he’d done all his life. He could grab for small things. “Okay. It’s not so bad, then.”
He could breathe. He could breathe. One breath at a time.
V WENTto bed on time, without putting up a fight with her meds. She didn’t watch the news and, in fact, talked to Reg excitedly about the Regency romance she was reading.
And Reg had a terrifying realization.
