Page 39 of Bobby Green

JESSICA TEXTEDhim at least four times a day.

Sometimes it was silly stuff she found on the net, and sometimes it was dream houses, and sometimes it was sample budgets for how much he needed to make to have an apartment for her to move out to Sacramento.

Sometimes it was selfies of herself at her job or with her brother or horseback riding—which was something she loved to do.

When he was done filming his scene with Rachel—who’d been bitchy to the point of making Bobby limp, if truth be told—he found Jessica had left ten texts for him during the six hours of work.

He wasn’t sure who he’d been most irritated with by the end of that day—the girl waiting for him in his hometown or the girl who’d said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake—that’s not a fucking baseball bat. You can stop hitting me in the face with it anytime.” Jesus—there was nothing in the sex handbook that said she couldn’t hold it with one hand while giving a blowjob, was there? He was busy holding her hair back and opening up his chest so everyone could see her swallow his cock. Improvisation wasn’t just for Shakespeare!

But after his shower—and there were a thousand people in the locker room, so he found himself practically falling asleep in the shoot room and resenting the hell out of having to smell him and Rachel in the sheets—he realized he was both loving and hating every ding his phone made from his pocket.

He’d kept his job working Hazy Daze, even after he started getting all the work at Johnnies. The shifts were for three hours, and he only worked two days a week there, but his mom had texted him that Keith’s dad was raising her rent. He’d be damned if he let his mother get kicked out of her house because he stopped giving Keith Gilmore blowjobs and couldn’t protect her. But he hated waiting tables—and sucked at it for that matter—so he dreaded getting a text asking him if he could come work.

So that was two people he didn’t want to hear from.

Then again, it could be one of the guys. Rick and Skylar were funny—and they often got their clients to pose for him. They were good about having not just the eye candy too. The scrawny kid who could now lift five pounds more than he could last week, he got shown to all their friends so he could read all the “Good jobs!” and “Keep goin’ little bro’s!” that came rocketing back. Skylar had one client who had lost 100 pounds and had 150 more to go, and he told the woman that he’d send pictures to all his friends so they could cheer her on too. She’d declined the pictures—Bobby could have told him that—but she did appreciate the good wishes whenever he told his friends the newest weight-loss news.

Trey—tall, lanky Trey, with a smirk instead of a smile and perfectly coiffed black hair—liked to text his roommates his English professor’s quote of the day. Billy—almost as small and compact as Reg, but with pale skin and hauntingly dark eyes—would texthisprofessor’s geeky vector drawings whenever he went into physics. Bobby kept those. He particularly treasured the one asking about the speed of a monkey that fell out of a tree and got swatted across the river by the elephant’s trunk. If his high school teachers had been that funny, he might not have hated school so much.

Lance would text them chores or shopping that needed to be done, but since he usually threw something goofy on the list, like “Cranberries and popcorn to decorate apartment” since Thanksgiving was coming, that was okay too.

Reg had a trivia calendar at his desk. Bobby had seen it on the nights he’d spent when he was working on the bathroom. He’d had to leave the job half done and spend odd hours on it since waiting tables at Hazy Daze, but Reg didn’t seem to mind. They locked up the bathroom, and he used the tiny one off his bedroom when Bobby was gone, and on the days Bobby could make it, he was welcomed with a smile and lunch and company.

Reg’s smile seemed to increase in amperage and appeal every time Bobby knocked on the door. He’d send Bobby the fact of the day from the trivia calendar every morning since that first time, the time Bobby had made love to his hand, and neither of them had spoken about it. The trivia was an attempt at connection—which Bobby appreciated—and Reg usually added a comment on it.

Condoms only prevent conception 85 percent of the time. Jesus, Bobby, it’s a good thing we’re in gay porn, or I’d be a daddy.

Bobby would remember the trivia just because he loved the glimpse into Reg’s mind. And man, did he love getting texts from his Johnnies people—hands down. His roommates were fun and going out into the world to make the world a better place, and even though he was just a guy with a hammer (heh, heh), he felt like he was helping them by providing an air mattress to the last guy in the door.

But still—Reg’s texts felt different.

Every visit to Reg’s house to fix up the damned bathroom took Bobby a little further into Reg’s life—and a little closer to the man himself.

Bobby’s fascination with him hadn’t diminished in the two weeks since they’d had to care for Reg during his infection.

As much as Bobby liked his bright, mercurial roommates, there was something about Reg’s steadiness that he treasured more. As lovely as the other guys were at Johnnies, as muscular and stacked and, yes, hung like elephants as the guys in the catalogue were, something about Reg’s compact muscles and bowlegged walk made Bobby almost hunger to touch him.

And the fact that theydidtouch—snuggle in Reg’s bed, touch hands, touch faces, casually, tenderly, a brush to the shoulder, a kiss to the inside of Reg’s wrist—it filled something fundamental in Bobby’s soul. It was like all those times he’d wanted to touch Keith but knew he’d end up with a bloody nose whilestillreeking of Keith’s come—thosemoments were healed one by one, every time he and Reg touched freely and no sex was involved.

But Reg was right. That morning, before Bobby’s still shoot with Ethan, Reg had texted,I looked up ‘companion,’ and it still doesn’t seem right. We can buy a computer after Christmas—I keep fumbling my keyboard looking for a better word.

The text was riddled with spelling errors, and Bobby’s heart beat hard enough to crack and flake a little as he thought of Regtryingto spell anything so he could figure out what they were.

Friendswasn’t covering it—but they weren’t lovers either.

No.

Even if they did a scene together, Bobby was learning that didn’t really make them lovers.

Particularly after the stills shoot with Ethan.

“God, that was hard,” he said over a light veggie platter he and Ethan shared when it was over. Reg had coached him the night before—bring some nice clothes, be ready to go out. Even if it wasn’t the actual scene, Ethan was a nice guy to hang with.

Bobby had the feeling that hanging with Ethan was like facing a friend audition.

His chest ached to pass so he could be Reg’s friend too.

And Ethan was easy to like. During the shoot itself, they’d been skin to skin, doing weird, hard, twisty things with their bodies while constantly fluffing to make sure their dicks were hard during the frame.