Page 84 of Bobby Green
She clapped her hand over her eyes. “Go away,” she groaned. “I love you, Reg, but go away. I’ll see you both tomorrow, after you’ve had sex and you can pretend you’re not a thing some more.”
“I’m not getting laid, Kelse,” Reg said, laughing. “I’ve got two more days before my shoot—you know that.”
She banged her head softly against the counter. “Could you… could you both just not? You’re masculine pheromoning all over my nice little desk here. Go away.”
“Sure,” Bobby said, bumping Reg’s shoulder with his own. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Kelsey. We love you, Kelsey. You’re gonna be a good mom, Kelsey.”
“Shoo!”
They laughed and left, and Bobby walked toward Reg’s car. “Tell you what,” he said, sounding happy. “I’ll follow you to your house, and we can check on your sister, then do what Kelsey said and get an iPhone, ’cause she’s right. I’m not up to getting the laptop yet, but I understand you can get books cheap on your phone too.”
“Wow,” Reg said, suddenly seeing the potential of having books in his back pocket without abusing his beloved paperbacks. “You’ll have to show me how that works.”
Bobby nodded soberly. “Sure thing. See you at your house.” Suddenly he grinned, the tiredness of filming the scene seeming to fall away, along with that weird shame that had seemed to take him over in the hallway. “We can celebrate a little,” he said softly. “No sex until your scene—but we can have some fun.”
Oh wow. Like a date. It had been so long since Reg had gone on a date with someone, he’d almost forgotten that was an option.
V HADbeen in a dark mood when they brought her lunch, and Reg had made her take the extra pink pill, just in case. She’d downed it with a scowl and some curse words—but no violence—and Reg called it good.
He and Bobby had opted out of fast food, because Bobby had asked for some recs and found a bistro not far from his apartment in midtown. Reg felt very fancy in a place that served tasters of beer and a special fruit-and-veggie plate. Bobby was starving, so he ordered a hamburger, all the extras, and he carved off a little bite.
“I won’t tell,” he said with a wink. “You’ve got two and a half days—it’ll be gone by then.”
Reg laughed and told Bobby the Skylar’s-special-sauce story (as Dex had called it by the end of the shoot), and Bobby chortled, washing down his hamburger with soda, since he was too young to order beer. When they were done, Bobby left a big tip because he said the service was great, and Reg was impressed too.
“I never tried to wait tables,” he said, embarrassed, as they walked back to his car. “Fast food was hard enough—always loud and people yelling.”
“I just smile a lot,” Bobby said, shrugging. “And when I screw up, I try to fess up.” His face clouded. “Which reminds me—well, of a couple of things. A good thing and a bad thing, really—but you have to know the bad thing before we talk about the good thing.”
Oh crap. “You do know I’m not that bright, right?”
To his surprise, Bobby smacked him on the back of the head. “Stop saying that. Just… just stop. I was being confusing. That was not your fault.”
“Okay, fine.” Reg squinted at him and repositioned his stocking cap. “Could you maybe belessconfusing? Just a little?”
Bobby grunted and buttoned up his jacket. Kelsey had been right—warm leather coats were sort of the Johnnies uniform, and Bobby was wearing a denim jacket with a hooded sweatshirt underneath. Reg remembered how, right after Thanksgiving, Kane had come in wearing a really nice warm coat and new hat, because Dex had bought them for him. They had become a couple, and Dex wanted to take care of him.
Reg paused, almost tripping over a crack in the sidewalk. “Do you want a coat?” he asked, baffled by this sudden impulse. But… but Bobby wascold. And he was wearing a denim jacket that was coming apart at the seams.
Bobby rolled his eyes. “I’ve got one. And it’s not hardly cold here—it’s way colder in the mountains. My mom’s up to her ass in snow. I just need a phone.”
Reg stared at him, hood up around his neck, his hands—skilled and work-roughened—red and chapped. “You… you need warm stuff,” he said stubbornly. “We’ll get a phone first. Then Target.”
“Not Walmart?” Bobby asked, amused.
Reg shook his head. “The ceiling freaks me out,” he answered. “Target has gloves. We’ll go there.”
“You’re driving,” Bobby said, bumping their shoulders together. “I can’t stop you.”
Reg wanted to take his hand—his cold, rough hand—and blow on it, make it warm. Who did that in public? Boys and girls, that’s who. Reg shrugged unhappily. “Yeah. Yeah. Then that’s where we’ll go.”
He kept his word too, after he and Bobby spent a long damned time talking about data plans and bandwidth and available apps. Reg got it, because most of the guys at Johnnies had, at one time or another, spent time with him buying a phone. Bobby’s eyes were glazing over by the time the sales guy put in the SIM card and activated the phone.
“There you go,” the smiling salesman said. He was cute—in his twenties, big brown eyes and pale bronze skin—and had shown off his phone with pictures of his wife and kids as he’d shown Bobby the works. “Now all you gotta do is take a picture of your girlfriend for wallpaper.”
One corner of Bobby’s mouth quirked in, and for a moment, Reg was afraid he was going to be mean or militant or even just really, really personal in the face of this stranger.
“Reg,” he said instead. “Here—let me get a few pix.”
