Page 80 of Bobby Green

“You’re fixing our plumbing for free, Bobby. And apparently trying to fix our lives too. Let us at least pay for our own parts.”

“Yeah,” Lance said. Then he wrinkled his nose in thought. “And weren’t you going to ask us for a favor?”

Bobby nodded and waited for the clerk to bag their parts so they could leave.

As they were walking toward the truck, he told them his idea and how he needed an overnight watcher for Reg’s sister.

He wasn’t surprised when they said yes—but he was grateful.

“So you’re taking Reg to meet your mom why?” Trey asked into the engine-rumbling quiet.

“Because.” Bobby was glad he was driving. Trey’s voice sounded thick, and Lance had been mostly monosyllabic since checkout. He wondered if this was what an intervention looked like, and if there was always an exhausted calm after the storm.

“And?” Trey prompted.

“Because there’s not enough fucking moms here,” he muttered. He remembered Dex, trying not to cry. He hadn’t known, then, about Dex’s best friend, Tommy, about Tommy’s lover, Chase—but then Bobby had been dealing with Reg and the guys in the flophouse up close and personal. He was starting toknowabout how badly they needed some frickin’ moms.

“Dude, we’re grown,” Trey snorted, and Bobby shook his head.

“The hell you are. You may think you are, because going home is like going to a hostile country, but you’re not. I mean, I turn nineteen in May. I get that I have to register for the draft and I can get convicted for a felony, but I’m telling you! If I ever get arrested or deployed, the first person I’m frickin’ calling is my mommy!”

Lance’s choked laughter told him he’d hit a nerve.

“I know it’s not that way for everybody,” Bobby said quietly. “But Dex can’t mom the whole company. And I’ll do my best. But right now, Reg needs a mom. He needs to know it’s not all awful. And my mom lives in a shitty little house because the guy who owns it is an asshole, but you know what? She brings out her best cooking every time I go. And I may not tell her everything—she might never know about the porn. But whether she knows exactly who he is to me or not, I want her to know about Reg. Because it’s important, and she’s my frickin’mom.”

He’d left early on Christmas. That thought haunted him. Jessica and Keith—people he’d be happy if he never saw again—had influenced his decision, and he hadn’t stayed through Christmas night. Maybe he hadn’t felt how much he needed his mom until he saw how hard Reg’s life was without his.

“So okay, then,” Trey said into the following silence. “We’ll let you take Reg to get mothered.” He let out a huge sigh. “I think that’s one of the most awesome things I’ve ever heard, actually.”

“Think she’d adopt us?” Lance asked, and he pitched his voice playfully, but Bobby heard it. The longing. His stomach cramped with how much awful was in the world he couldn’t fix.

But he could do something here. He could make sure Lance and Trey knew that hurting themselves was unacceptable.

It was all he had.

THE GUYShad cleaned up the mess with bleach and everything, so Bobby had no problem replacing the pipes and reconnecting all the clamps. He turned on the water again and flushed the toilet, then ran the water, just to make sure it all worked and nothing dripped. Then he turned to the watching roommates.

“Done,” he told them. “But you’re gonna rot another hole through the pipes if you guys don’t fix yourselves.”

Lance and Trey nodded soberly, and then Lance surprised him. “Hey—do you have to go back? You can stay and watch movies or something. We promise—everybody’s clothes stay on.”

Bobby grinned. “Yeah—absolutely.”

He ended up staying the night. In the morning he woke up on the air mattress in time to hear Lance finish making an appointment with someone—Bobby assumed it was the shrink.

Bobby rolled over and saw him in the corner of the couch, arms wrapped around his shins, cheek on his knees.

“That was hard,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” Bobby felt like he’d made him do it.

“Don’t be. It came from the right place. I just… I hurt.”

Bobby nodded, thought about Reg at home with his sister. About his mom stuck up in the snow. About all these guys in this apartment, doing the best they could. “I hurt for you,” he said. Meant it.

“Reg is a really good guy.”

Bobby sat up in bed, surprised. “Yeah. I think so.”