Page 85 of Bobby Green

Reg saw them, a series of them, when Bobby was done. His mouth open and his eyes wide in surprise, then his teeth biting his lip shyly as he looked away. Finally he was looking directly into the camera and smiling, his nose wrinkled a little, one side of his mouth twisted just a bit higher than the other.

“Those are real good pictures,” Bobby said, his voice low and sort of intimate. “I’ll put this one as my screensaver.”

“That one?”

Reg’s chin was pointed away, but his eyes were looking into the camera, and he was biting one side of his lip.

“That’s the one,” Bobby said, winking before he turned to the salesman. “Here—is there anything else I have to sign?”

“Nope.” The guy smiled at the two of them warmly. “You guys have a real nice day.”

They left the store, and it hit Reg as they neared the car. “Hey, Bobby?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think he knew we’re a couple?”

Bobby shrugged. “I think he might have guessed.” He let out a breath. “Target next?”

“Yeah.”

Reg started the car to steer them deeper into midtown before Bobby spoke again.

“Would it have bothered you? If he did?”

Reg grunted. “No. I mean, I go in public with Johnnies guys all the time. Some of ’em are… uh…outout. Doesn’t bother me. Just, you and me, I just… we didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. Didn’t hold hands or… you know.”

“PDA?”

“Yeah. PDA.”

Bobby grunted. He did that a lot when he was thinking, and Reg didn’t mind, because it meant neither one of them was comfortable with words. So many of the guys were going to school or just really smart in general. One of the nice things about Bobby was that words weren’t toys to him. Like everything else around Bobby, they were strictly functional.

“I used to hold hands with Jessica in public, and I spent a lot of time trying to get away from that. I’d go fetch her ice cream or hold groceries—anything so I didn’t have to touch her personally.”

Reg grimaced. “That’s not friendly.”

“No. But… well, there was this guy, her brother, Keith. And we’d….” He looked out the window. “This is embarrassing,” he said glumly. “This is, like, the worst thing I’ve ever done. But we were both going out with girls—I was going out with his sister, for chrissakes. But we, you know. Blowjobs. And that was all it was. He’d give me mine and I’d give him his. And I’d want to….” He sighed. “I wanted to touch him. So bad. You’re the first man who let me touch you like I wanted to touch him when we did that. That’s why I got so confused, I think. There were the blowjobs, and I wanted to touch him, but if Ididtouch him, I’d be gay. And… the truth was, I just really, really…likedhim.”

“Like you like me?” Reg asked, trying to put this in perspective. Reg wasn’t the first guy Bobby liked. That would take some getting used to.

“Well, not nearly as much,” Bobby told him as they came to a stop. Reg looked at him sideways then, and found that same shy smile at his lips that Bobby had captured on his camera. He’d had no idea that was in him—prettiest picture he’d ever taken.

“But I didn’t know that,” Bobby added, looking away. “Light’s green, Reg.”

“’Kay.” Reg pulled through the light and kept going toward Target.

“Anyway, there was no touching. No softness. And I… I wanted that. But he was getting married in a few months—they put the wedding off, but it should have been October. Anyway, I told him no. No more. Wasn’t right. We were lying, and it didn’t sit right.”

Reg had to smile. “That’s my boy.”

“Yeah?”

He didn’t even have to think about it. “Yeah. You make mistakes—but same mistakes everybody else does. You’re just super good at learning from them, that’s all.”

Bobby grunted again, but it sounded like a happy grunt. “Well, thanks. Unfortunately this mistake didn’t go away.”

“How could it not go away?” ’Cause it was that simple, right? You tell a guy no, he backs off.