Page 56 of Bobby Green
So when he’d texted Trey and Lance and found out that Tommy and Chase were hosting Christmas night at their house, he was thrilled. A few beers, the guys he’d gotten to know—the guys from the flophouse who he missed since he’d moved his air mattress and his sleeping bag into a bare corner of a big apartment—he was down with that.
But then Reg had texted him, and his heart dropped into his stomach.
Being with Reg right now… God! Bobby’s emotions were so close to the surface.
He’d moved into that damned apartment, working his ass off for the manager for the right to sleep there while he saved money for the lease, and the result had been a whole lot of time in his own goddamned head.
A whole lot of time to read books and think about Reg.
And Reg was in his head even when he was reading books.
He’d read an action-adventure book, and he was saving Reg from the bad guy. He’d read a romance book, and he and Reg were sailing into the sunset at the end. It didn’t matter what kind of book it was, Bobby could find a way for him and Reg to be in the story somehow, even if they were just minor characters, sharing a cup of coffee at the place where all the action went down. Bobby, who used to write one paragraph for a three-page essay and avoid creative writing like the plague it was, could suddenly spin a tale in his head from beginning to end, as long as the sweet guy in the crumbling house with the big grin was a part of it.
It was the damnedest thing.
But Bobby had seen the way guys hooked up with him—had seen the way Reg approached sex in general.
If Bobby “hooked up” with Reg and it was just that—a hookup, sex as trade for a body and a friend that night—Bobby would scream and disappear. Someone would come looking for him in his apartment, and they’d find an air mattress and a sleeping bag and a shit-ton of paperbacks, and a little ball of agony in the center, because in his whole life, Bobby had never imagined how much raw emotion he could focus on one person.
Not his girlfriend. Not Keith Gilmore. Not the people he worked with naked.
Reg.
Bobby turned off the ignition of the truck and closed his eyes. When he opened them, the object of all this sweaty, painful introspection was standing at the open door, waving cheerfully at him like Bobby was the best Christmas gift ever.
Bobby couldn’t disappoint him.
He grinned and hopped out of the truck, doing the handshake/chest-bump thing that seemed to make most guys happy.
“Good to see ya, buddy,” he said, thumping Reg twice on the back and trying not to dwell on how good he smelled. He used Old Spice body wash—Bobby had seen it in his shower, and it should have smelled dumb and cheesy, but it didn’t. It smelled classic.
“Did you have a good Christmas?” Reg asked, capering up the porch stairs like a kid. “V liked the presents you gave her. How did you know to get stuffed animals?”
“’Cause girls just like ’em,” Bobby said, shrugging. “Besides—these went with some of the books I’ve been giving you.”Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. The stuffed animals had been macabre, but V—when she was lucid—seemed to have a sort of macabre sense of humor.
“I liked those books,” Reg said, nodding. “They were some of the few books me and V agreed on.”
Bobby grinned and looped a companionable arm around Reg’s shoulders, trying not to yearn. “Good. Did you open your gifts?”
Reg shook his head. “Nope. Told ya—waiting for tomorrow. You coming by?”
Oh yeah. “Course,” Bobby said, trying not to let his voice drop. God. He had to go into his apartment tonight. Aces. It was a beautiful place—a giant front room with two smaller bedrooms behind it, and a kitchen almost larger than the front roomandkitchen of his mom’s place in Dogpatch. Arched doorways, little indentations up near the ceiling—if the kitchen stuff hadn’t been installed by a blind lunatic with a contractor’s license, it would have been a perfect place. Bobby had discovered so much stuff out of code, if he wasn’t fixing the place up under the table, he would have reported it.
“Good.” Reg turned a smile up at Bobby’s face that made Bobby feel like he hung the sun and the moon and the stars.Dammit, Reg. I just want to be with you.
They entered the party, which pretty much the antithesis of the small, cozy dinner and breakfast he’d had at his mom’s place. Guys playing video games, guys at the table playing board games, guys in the kitchen eating the spread.
Dex and Kane were there, casually holding hands and talking in the hallway with Ethan.
Chase and Tommy wandered from group to group, playing games, talking to the guys. Lance and Trey were there, playing Monopoly with a few guys Bobby didn’t know.
Bobby looked at Chase for a long moment, wondering about how he’d done it, done the porn and the girlfriend, and the being in love with someone and the double life. Bobby couldn’t. His heart felt fractured and crumbled, and he wasn’t living with Jessica, making a home with her. He couldn’t judge Chase—not at all. But he could wonder, maybe, why it had taken the guy a year to fall apart.
Bobby wasn’t doing so hot after two and a half months.
But he couldn’t just stare at the guy. John was on the couch, watching Rick and Skylar punishing people inCall of Duty. Bobby hadn’t seen him since his first shoot—and he wasn’t looking great.
Bobby’s stomach rumbled in unease as John’s eyes shifted from place to place while they talked. Meth addiction was a big deal in the hills, and Bobby had seen enough of his old high school people go under to recognize some of the signs.
