by Amy Lane
“Love,” Bobby said irritably. “Jesus, who’s got the tissues?”
Skylar took a handful from the box by the TV and passed it to Bobby, who started to wipe off his hand. “What makes you say that?” he asked, and to his credit, he sounded genuinely puzzled.
But Bobby got a good look at the devastation on Rick’s face. “Never mind,” he said, feeling like ass.
Rick shrugged and turned away, and finally Skylar looked at him. “Rick?”
“I don’t know why he said it,” Rick lied.
“Wait—wait, Bobby—why would you say a thing like that?”
Bobby saw the confusion, the cluelessness, and his irritation wiped away like the come on his hand. “You guys do everything together. You work at the gym, you see movies, you eat. You talk and screw around, and Jesus—did you or did you not try to get me to go walking in the fucking park with you two days ago?”
“But,” Skylar said, looking hurt, “it’s Capitol Park. It’s nice this time of year—and, you know, it’s free.”
Bobby nodded. “Yeah, Skylar, but when I couldn’t go ’cause I had work, you went together anyway. And you may not have held hands, but I’d put money on the fact that at some point in the walk, each one of you wanted to, and you just pulled back. ’Cause I know how that feels. And it’s bullshit. It got me where I am now, eating my fucking heart out and going up to visit my girlfriend because I can hold hands with her and not have to change my entire goddamned idea of who I am. But you guys don’t give a shit about any of that. You just… just screw everybody in your apartment in the hopes that nobody figures out that who you really want to screw is each other. Every day, all the time, only fucking you!”
“Rick?” Skylar asked, voice lost. “Rick—is that…?”
But Rick’s back was toward him, his shoulders drooping, his entire body screaming defeat, and Bobby was suddenly a third wheel instead of a valuable cog in a threesome.
Well, he was slowly learning, wasn’t he? The difference between sex and love.
“We were having fun,” Rick said, voice low and aching. “You know. Didn’t want to spoil the fun, because if I spoiled the fun, maybe I wouldn’t have you anymore.”
Oh God. Bobby wanted to put his face in his hands and howl.
“But….” Skylar pushed up, shamelessly naked in his body, cluelessly naked in his soul. “But you’ll always have me, bro. I mean, you and me—why would we split up?”
Bro. Bobby was listening to confessions of love, and Skylar used the word “bro.” Laugh, cry, or throw up—he was on for all three.
“Because Bobby’s right,” Rick said sadly. He turned around and rolled his eyes. “He was a prick about it, and his timing sucked, but he was right.”
Bobby shook his head. “You involved me in a kinky threesome before coffee,” he said, hating everybody. “I regret nothing.”
“Whatever,” Rick snorted. “I’m in love with you, Sky. I… I loved you from our first scene. But you were all… free sex! Let’s play! And I… man, I was along for the ride.”
Skylar started to laugh as he draped himself along Rick’s back. “Well, it was fun,” he defended. “But, you know. Only ’cause you played too.”
“But… love. I… I don’t know if I can keep playing with you, now that you know I—”
Skylar pulled his chin around and kissed him, so tenderly, so sweetly, Bobby forgot all about the rude awakening and the weird threesome and remembered all the things he used to yearn for when Keith Gilmore was sucking him off.
These guys together—they made Keith look like an ass clown. The give and the take of them, the way Skylar held Rick’s chin, the way Rick closed his eyes—it wasn’t for a camera or for show.
It was for each other.
“Keep playing with me,” Skylar said softly. “And I’ll keep playing with you. And only with you. And that’s all I need. It’s all I ever needed.”
“Sky?”
Bobby wondered if that was Skylar’s real name, because if it really was, Reg could quit kicking himself for the whole Digger thing that wasn’t quite sticking.
Fuck. Reg.
“I love you too, Derrick. Jeez, don’t be dense.”
Rick turned around, and they started kissing some more, in earnest, stumbling until they made it to the door to their room, slamming it behind them.
Bobby stared after them, confused and heartsick and stunned and still deliriously happy for them at the same time.
“Well, that was the damnedest thing,” Lance said from the couch.
Bobby swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and stared at him, running his hands through his longish hair. “Lance, don’t take this the wrong way, ’cause you all been really decent to me and I appreciate the hell out of that, but I think I need my own place.”
Lance regarded him with compassion. “Things too messy here, farm boy?”
He grimaced. “Sex confuses things,” he said and then remembered he was probably going to have to have sex with Jessica, and his stomach cramped.
“Yeah.” Lance shrugged, and in the silence they both heard the unmistakable sounds of Skylar and Rick doing what they apparently did best. “And sometimes it makes them really wonderful.”
“Haven’t had that happen yet,” Bobby confessed. The moment of his audition, when he was coming down from afterglow and Reg was stroking his hair back from his face, kept running through his mind. “Maybe once,” he whispered.
“Whatever you have to do to get back to that,” Lance told him. He stood up and let the blanket fall down his fine athlete’s body while he stretched. “You can shower first, I’ll make coffee, and then we can go work out before you leave for the hills.”
Bobby nodded, thinking that he’d really, really miss this place if he left.
And that he absolutely, positively had to fuckin’ leave.
HOME.
The tiny house on Frank Gilmore’s property had peeling paint that Frank wouldn’t let them paint over, peeling linoleum he wouldn’t pay to replace even if Bobby did the work, and plumbing that groaned like an old whore because Frank was waiting for it to rust and explode.
Jessica clinging to him like a limpet when she got off work, grabbing for Bobby’s cock the minute they were alone, and planning their wedding and their apartment and their children and their lives, never pausing for breath or giving Bobby a chance to tell her no, no, he couldn’t be her knight in shining armor—she was going to have to do what he did and rescue herself.
His mom, trying to cook things for him like chicken Alfredo when a grilled cheese would do, stared at him worriedly, trying to figure out the changes, from the waxed eyebrows to the bulging muscles to the grim look even he knew rode his face when he wasn’t paying attention.
And Keith Gilmore, blackmailing him into giving a blowjob, every goddamned time.
This time Bobby hit the line. The line where he didn’t give a shit what Keith thought of him. He was a professional at giving a goddamned blowjob—he knew how to squeeze, how to stroke, and goddammit, he was getting to be an expert at the spit grope. He had Keith shaking and ready to come with two fingers up his ass before he could say the words “Don’t do it, faggot!”
This time he moved out of the way while Keith shot come all over the hay bales in his daddy’s barn.
“Damn,” Keith swore throatily, his knees buckling as he landed on the slide of hay coming off the bale stack. “Jesus, Vern—I shoulda clocked ya for doin’ that, but God, that was amazing.”
“Thank you,” Bobby said, going to the sink to wash up. He had a chubby going on in his shorts, because this was his profession, he guessed, and getting aroused was part of it, but all in all, he felt pretty damned dispassionate about this scene now.
Those moments with Reg, lying in bed, looking to see Reg’s eyes glint as they told secrets, held hands, laughed softly—that seemed to matter so much more than going down on his knees in this dusty damned barn.
“You been studying up?” Keith aske
d suddenly, voice hard. “Sucking other dicks than mine?”
Bobby looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes. “What’s it to you?” He grabbed a hand towel and wiped off his hands and face, then pulled some lip balm out of his pocket to soften the cock burn around his mouth.
He’d had a scene three days before, and sucking a dick for four hours tended to leave a mark.
Keith got up and buttoned his jeans, then pulled his sweatshirt over his head. “What’s it to me? You’re my goddamned—”
Bobby cut him off before he could take another step, fisting his hands in Keith’s sweatshirt and shoving him back up against the hay bales. “Goddamned what?” he growled. “Goddamned whore? Goddamned property?”
He couldn’t mistake the hurt on Keith’s face, but he was beyond caring. “I thought we were friends!” Keith swallowed. “But look at you—you’re all buffed out and waxed—your hair’s cut special. Hell, your jeans ain’t even worn. You got yourself a sugar daddy down in the city, Vern? ’Cause I won’t hold for no—”
Oh Jesus. “Let’s get one thing straight,” Bobby said, making sure Keith was looking directly at him. “I would have done anything for you once. Yes. Fucking anything. But right now, the only reason—the only reason—I just got down on my knees is that my mom lives in this fucking town too. But that’s not going to be the case always. So the day I can pack up and move her ass the hell out of here, you will forget you ever begged me for it and we can end our association. Are we clear?”
“What about my sister?” Keith snarled. “Aren’t you going to take her too?”
Hell to the fuck no. “Whether I do or not,” Bobby told him, relentless, “it has nothing to do with you wanting your dick sucked.”
“Jesus, you fuckin’ whore—”
Yup. At least Bobby knew what he was at this point. No illusions there. “I am what you made me,” he said simply. “You’re lucky you got the finger bang for free.”
He dropped Keith then—just dropped him—and walked out to his truck. Keith’s house was within walking distance of the barn, so he felt no qualms at all jumping in the cab and driving back to his mother’s house.
His pocket buzzed as he pulled up the gravel-and-mud driveway.
For a minute he was tempted to ignore it, thinking it was Jessica talking about getting off work. There was a text to that effect, and he answered a vague That’s okay—go home and I’ll see you tomorrow, but he had to type every letter twice because he was sweating so badly.
There was another text. This one from Reg.
I miss you. I didn’t mean to make you so mad.
Oh Jesus. Jesus. Bobby had just walked away. Had he left as big a hole in Reg’s life as Reg had left in his?
I miss you too. I was more mad at myself, and I didn’t want to be an asshole.
He stared at the phone, wondering what Reg would do with that.
You can visit again, if you like.
Bobby closed his eyes and imagined what he’d do when he got home. Waiting tables. Fucking guys. Finding an apartment and moving his air mattress in.
Hanging out with Reg?
Could he do it?
Could he come in and have a beer and play video games and talk and not touch Reg’s hand? Not rub his back? Not want to….
He did. He wanted to kiss Reg all the time.
Because God, yes. Touching without kissing… he kissed the guys at Johnnies on set all the time. Hell—Lance had kissed him during that hallucinogenic, drunken pity fuck.
Was that what Bobby had been missing? Reg’s lips on his own? Had he been working up to that?
Hell.
He was going to type I can’t. He was.
But he remembered Rick saying “If I spoiled the fun, I couldn’t have you anymore.”
How long had they been roommates? How long had Rick pretended he wasn’t in love, just so he could be next to Skylar, doing things with him? Just so they could be together.
I’d like that, he wrote. Bobby wouldn’t dick with him. He’d keep his promise to Trey. He would. No touching. No… yearning. They’d be friends. Rick and Skylar had done it. Bobby could do it. He added, Make sure it’s okay with Trey first.
Bobby and Trey had been civil to each other. They made each other coffee if the other one was up. Bobby offered him the couch if Trey got in late from his other job. But Bobby wouldn’t forget that moment when they’d been chest to chest with each other over the man on the other end of Bobby’s phone right now.
He said to ask you. Said you were feeling sad.
Augh! God love those guys in that damned apartment.
I was. I didn’t want to leave things like that. I’m glad you texted.
Me too. What are you doing now?
Bobby smiled a little. So normal. Like he hadn’t been the walking dead for nearly two weeks.
Going in to say hi to Mom. She’s making dinner for me. Probably us and the TV tonight.
Is she nice?
Oh hell. Had Bobby not even talked about his mother during those moments of holding him? He must have. Maybe that’s why Reg was curious.
She’s the best. She loves me. Sacrificed a shit-ton so I could have a truck and go down to Sac and work. I want to get her out of here.
Does she want to go?
That there was an important question, wasn’t it?
I suppose I should ask.
That’s a good idea. I don’t always know what people are thinking even if I see their face. Sometimes I need them to tell me.
Oh, ouch. Fucking ouch.
I’ll text you when I’m back in town. I’ll come over to watch TV on Thursday if you want. Bring dinner.
That’ll be real nice. Thanks, Bobby.
Course.
Bobby scrubbed his face with his hands and tried to fight the burn behind his eyes. Sucking Keith’s dick hadn’t done it. Seeing Sky and Rick together hadn’t done it. Spending the night before with Jessica, watching her shamelessly use him like a ten-inch human dildo, hadn’t done it.
A few lines of text from Reg had broken through, shattered that self-protective layer of scar tissue he’d worked so hard to spread over his heart.
Dammit, Reg—how am I going to do this if I can feel shit again?
“VERN?”
Bobby yanked his attention away from the far horizon and focused on his plate. Mom used old china, the kind with wreaths of wildflowers under a crackled finish, when she was serving something special.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said, taking a bite. “It’s really good. I’m just—”
“About a hundred miles away,” his mom said, smiling faintly. “Seriously—I called your name three times.”
Ugh. “The guys at work call me Bobby.” He grimaced apologetically. “You know, ’cause Roberts?”
His mom recoiled. “Well, I’m still calling you Vern,” she said, sounding affronted.
Good call, Mom. It would have been awkward to have his mother call him by his porn name.
“That’s fine. I’m just thinking… you know.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t know. Explain.”
He grimaced. “Do you want to live here forever?”
Her eyes opened. “Do you want to take me away from all this?” She sounded half-kidding, but also a little wistful.
“If I could…,” he said haltingly, “if I could get us a nice apartment in Sacramento, someplace near where you could get a job, would you work there? Could we… I dunno. Never come to fuckin’ Dogpatch again?”
She didn’t reprimand him for his language—but then, she never had. “I wouldn’t mind. But Vern, don’t you want to save that sort of thing for your girlfriend?”
He groaned. “Mom….”
“You’re not breaking up with her, are you?”
“Well, not now,” he mumbled. “But… I’m not sure if, well, being in two places is exactly….” Conducive. He knew the word. He didn’t like sounding too smart in front of his mother. “Good for a relationship. It’s… i
t’s hard enough when you’re right there with them, across the couch, you know?”
“Vern, do you have another girl?” His mother looked concerned, and he didn’t blame her. “I didn’t raise you like that.”
“No other girl,” he said, sighing. She hadn’t mentioned boys. Or hookups. Or women who made his penis hard and helped him ejaculate for the job. There had only been two of those—might not ever be more—but he had to think of them in a way that didn’t count. “Just… Mom, would you hate me if, if maybe I was a little different than you thought I was?”
“Like smarter than your grades?” she asked grimly. “Because we covered this through high school.”
He grimaced. Hadn’t gotten the best grades. Swim team, wrestling, partying out by the swimming hole, finding a job—anything sounded better than sitting down and doing math and English when kids like him didn’t go to college.
In a million years, he didn’t think he would have realized the joy of random paperbacks, passed around by friends, to be read and discussed like television shows that no one had time to watch, but it was too late now to go back and take English again. Besides…
That wasn’t what he was talking about.
“I mean… like, settling down with a nice local girl and having babies,” he said, because that was a start.
Her expression lightened around the eyes, so much so that she looked years younger, young enough to be Bobby’s mother, young enough to go have another life besides this one.
“Oh, Bobby. Why do you think I wanted you to do better in school so bad? I mean….” She shook her head. “My whole life, I thought there was something bigger than hanging in a small town and having a kid. Not that I wasn’t happy to have you,” she hastened to say, “but your dad….” She looked at her hands and swallowed. “Sometimes I think the reason he was so angry, and drank so much, was that he wanted out too. But he just… he didn’t want to make the sacrifices, you know?” She closed her eyes. “Making your life work the way you want it to—you’ve got to give some things up.”
“Oh,” Bobby said, thinking he understood very much. “So… like giving up the person you care for the most, because they’re not who you’re supposed to have.”
