Page 63 of Bobby Green
His whole soul felt warm.
An Old Thing Made New
“JESUS, REGGIE!Don’t drop that thing on my foot. You’ll crush me!”
“Sorry, Trina.” Reg adjusted his grip on the weight he was trying to bench. “Sorry.”
“No worries, big guy—what’s got you spooked?”
Reg grinned at her, because they both knew he wasn’t that big. But Trina was five foot nothin’ and a half, so maybe to her, he was as big as he needed to be.
“Was just watching Bobby do squats. He’s looking real good.”
Trina secured Reg’s weight before looking up. “Bobby, fix your form or we’ll be carting you to surgery!”
Bobby straightened and grinned at the both of them before doing another one—this time with his back straighter.
“Yeah, Reg,” she said patiently, rolling her eyes. “He’s looking great for a dead man. Why you looking at his ass like that?”
Reg chuckled. “’Cause that ass is gonna be mine,” he said, with no self-consciousness at all. Well, Trina knew the Johnnies guys. He was pretty sure they couldn’t shock her by now.
Trina cocked her head. “Yeah? You two hooking up?”
Reg gave a little headshake and lowered the weight carefully to his chest, and then pushed it back up. And again. And again. He finished the set and let Trina help him set the weight in the cradle before swinging his legs around.
“No,” he said, like she’d just asked. “Not hooking up. Just….” He tried to put it into words. Couldn’t. “Kissing. We’re planning to kiss. And he swore there’d be sex. So I’m gonna assume the ass is mine.”
Trina cackled. “Well, you do that.Assume away. But why’s the kissing a big deal?”
Reg thought about it. “Well, ’cause usually, when I’m trying to have a relationship, it’s girls. But when I just hook up, it’s guys. But I haven’t had a relationship in years, and Bobby says that’s what he wants withme. So it’s gonna be different. I mean, I don’t really think of myself that way, but if it means I get to bang Bobby, I guess that’s okay.”
Trina opened and closed her expressive brown eyes very slowly. “Well, I’m not sure if I can fault your logic there, Reg. But you ever think that maybe you’re lucky?”
Reg just gaped at her. “I’m sorry, have you met me?” Of course she had—she’d been his trainer for the last five years, ever since John had gotten their local guys a discount on a personal trainer—which was about two days after Reg pulled his groin muscle so badly he had to cancel two scenes because he couldn’t fuck anymore. Trina had literally saved both his lifeandhis penis by showing him that sometimes the quality of the lift was more important than the weight.
Reg was grateful to her every day—and he’d been sure to tell John that she earned every penny he paid her.
The other guys who used her as a trainer sort of loved her too, but Reg liked to think he was her favorite. Until Bobby, he didn’t get to be the favorite very often.
“Yes, Reg, I’ve met you,” she said, tagging him playfully on the arm. Trina could ride double-centuries on her bicycle—that was two hundred miles in a day. She could probably kick his ass to sundown, like she threatened to do when he fucked up his lifts.
“Not that lucky,” he reminded her. He’d had to put off bench presses for a while as his stab wound healed—Trina knew how not lucky he really was.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “Some of your life is pretty much the definition of not lucky, but the thing where you’re not sure if you want girls or boys—that’s a lucky thing.”
Reg cocked his head. “Huh. Really?” He wrinkled his nose. “’Cause… ’cause it’s confusing. ’Cause you’re supposed to want girls—and I do! But you know, all the shit on television and stuff—the news. You’re supposed to want girls. And I thought if I was doing boys for money, that was okay, ’cause, you know, money is good too. But….” Oh, he was so not good at thinking inside himself. “But I want Bobby like I’m supposed to want girls.”
Trina’s mouth was parted slightly, and every so often it would work, like she was going to say something but then couldn’t figure out what.
“Look,” she said at last. “Reg, I see what you’re saying. You were told your life was supposed to look a certain way, and it doesn’t. But see—that’s just a guideline. My whole family has had congenital heart failure—I wasn’t supposed to live past fifty. But I had surgery, and I’ve lived my whole life fit, I eat right, and I’m planning to be giving you shit for another thirty or so years.”
“But I eat like crap,” Reg said, feeling a little guilty.
“We’ll change that,” she told him, and it didn’t even break her stride. “What I’m saying is that sometimes the thing they tell you your life is supposed to look like, that’s not the thing that’s good foryou.” She turned around to where Bobby was doing preacher curls, his biceps bulging satisfactorily with every curl. “I mean, look at him,” she said, nodding. “You could have the life they show you in the picture, or Jesus God, you could go home to that. I mean, Reg. You gotta find guys a little bit attractive or you couldn’t get it up when you film.”
“Oh, I could,” Reg said, nodding. Not everybody knew that. “Some of the guys use the stuff that gives ’em an autoboner, but I don’t fuck so good when I do that, so yeah. You’re right. For me, I like touching guys just fine.”
She gave him another slow blink. “You don’t… how do you not… oh hell. I can’t ask.”
