by Amy Lane
Another pause.
But you ARE going to come over and invade me, right?
Bobby swallowed, and his eyes burned for the second time that day. But this time in happiness.
What are you doing tomorrow?
Working out. Grocery shopping. Trying to convince V to for God’s sake let me watch a movie instead of the fucking news.
Wanna work out together?
Sure.
We can go grocery shopping together.
Okay.
We can check in on your sister together.
Fine.
And then we can come here and kiss a lot.
GREAT! Why can’t we do that here?
Bobby chuckled.
Because I’ve never done it with someone I cared about, Reg. Not a guy. I just might get loud.
Heh heh heh
Bobby laughed again, and his body tingled. This was good. This was important. He and Reg—they could be the start of something real.
His whole soul felt warm.
An Old Thing Made New
“JESUS, REGGIE! Don’t drop that thing on my foot. You’ll crush me!”
“Sorry, Trina.” Reg adjusted his grip on the weight he was trying to bench. “Sorry.”
“No worries, big guy—what’s got you spooked?”
Reg grinned at her, because they both knew he wasn’t that big. But Trina was five foot nothin’ and a half, so maybe to her, he was as big as he needed to be.
“Was just watching Bobby do squats. He’s looking real good.”
Trina secured Reg’s weight before looking up. “Bobby, fix your form or we’ll be carting you to surgery!”
Bobby straightened and grinned at the both of them before doing another one—this time with his back straighter.
“Yeah, Reg,” she said patiently, rolling her eyes. “He’s looking great for a dead man. Why you looking at his ass like that?”
Reg chuckled. “’Cause that ass is gonna be mine,” he said, with no self-consciousness at all. Well, Trina knew the Johnnies guys. He was pretty sure they couldn’t shock her by now.
Trina cocked her head. “Yeah? You two hooking up?”
Reg gave a little headshake and lowered the weight carefully to his chest, and then pushed it back up. And again. And again. He finished the set and let Trina help him set the weight in the cradle before swinging his legs around.
“No,” he said, like she’d just asked. “Not hooking up. Just….” He tried to put it into words. Couldn’t. “Kissing. We’re planning to kiss. And he swore there’d be sex. So I’m gonna assume the ass is mine.”
Trina cackled. “Well, you do that. Assume away. But why’s the kissing a big deal?”
Reg thought about it. “Well, ’cause usually, when I’m trying to have a relationship, it’s girls. But when I just hook up, it’s guys. But I haven’t had a relationship in years, and Bobby says that’s what he wants with me. So it’s gonna be different. I mean, I don’t really think of myself that way, but if it means I get to bang Bobby, I guess that’s okay.”
Trina opened and closed her expressive brown eyes very slowly. “Well, I’m not sure if I can fault your logic there, Reg. But you ever think that maybe you’re lucky?”
Reg just gaped at her. “I’m sorry, have you met me?” Of course she had—she’d been his trainer for the last five years, ever since John had gotten their local guys a discount on a personal trainer—which was about two days after Reg pulled his groin muscle so badly he had to cancel two scenes because he couldn’t fuck anymore. Trina had literally saved both his life and his penis by showing him that sometimes the quality of the lift was more important than the weight.
Reg was grateful to her every day—and he’d been sure to tell John that she earned every penny he paid her.
The other guys who used her as a trainer sort of loved her too, but Reg liked to think he was her favorite. Until Bobby, he didn’t get to be the favorite very often.
“Yes, Reg, I’ve met you,” she said, tagging him playfully on the arm. Trina could ride double-centuries on her bicycle—that was two hundred miles in a day. She could probably kick his ass to sundown, like she threatened to do when he fucked up his lifts.
“Not that lucky,” he reminded her. He’d had to put off bench presses for a while as his stab wound healed—Trina knew how not lucky he really was.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “Some of your life is pretty much the definition of not lucky, but the thing where you’re not sure if you want girls or boys—that’s a lucky thing.”
Reg cocked his head. “Huh. Really?” He wrinkled his nose. “’Cause… ’cause it’s confusing. ’Cause you’re supposed to want girls—and I do! But you know, all the shit on television and stuff—the news. You’re supposed to want girls. And I thought if I was doing boys for money, that was okay, ’cause, you know, money is good too. But….” Oh, he was so not good at thinking inside himself. “But I want Bobby like I’m supposed to want girls.”
Trina’s mouth was parted slightly, and every so often it would work, like she was going to say something but then couldn’t figure out what.
“Look,” she said at last. “Reg, I see what you’re saying. You were told your life was supposed to look a certain way, and it doesn’t. But see—that’s just a guideline. My whole family has had congenital heart failure—I wasn’t supposed to live past fifty. But I had surgery, and I’ve lived my whole life fit, I eat right, and I’m planning to be giving you shit for another thirty or so years.”
“But I eat like crap,” Reg said, feeling a little guilty.
“We’ll change that,” she told him, and it didn’t even break her stride. “What I’m saying is that sometimes the thing they tell you your life is supposed to look like, that’s not the thing that’s good for you.” She turned around to where Bobby was doing preacher curls, his biceps bulging satisfactorily with every curl. “I mean, look at him,” she said, nodding. “You could have the life they show you in the picture, or Jesus God, you could go home to that. I mean, Reg. You gotta find guys a little bit attractive or you couldn’t get it up when you film.”
“Oh, I could,” Reg said, nodding. Not everybody knew that. “Some of the guys use the stuff that gives ’em an autoboner, but I don’t fuck so good when I do that, so yeah. You’re right. For me, I like touching guys just fine.”
She gave him another slow blink. “You don’t… how do you not… oh hell. I can’t ask.”
Reg looked down, a little embarrassed. “It’s like… you ever get a really bad itch? Like, in a place nobody can see?”
Trina stared back. “Like a yeast infection?”
Reg shrugged. “Sure. I don’t know. But I guess. Anyway—imagine having to scratch that itch so bad, you don’t care if the person you’re scratching it on actually likes being a… a….”
“Scratching post?” she asked.
“Sure. But, you know. Shaped the opposite.”
“I got nothin’,” she said after a long pause. “Well, I mean, I’ve got a long conversation with my husband that’s going to make him put his hands in front of his crotch for a while, but other than that… okay. That doesn’t sound pleasant on either end. I’ll pass.”
“I’m going to do toe lifts,” he told her, and she followed him to the small Pilates ball with the platform. These things were hard. “Let’s see how I can fuck this up.”
“Here,” she said, holding out her hand so he could balance. “Let’s see how you can make this work.”
Once he was locked into place, his stomach and thighs doing most of the work, he started to go up on his toes and then settle back down, slowly and deliberately. Trina held her hand out so he could grab it in case he lost balance.
“It’s not awful,” he confessed after the first ten reps.
“What’s not?”
“Being on the juice, or being with someone on it.”
“Oh,” she said, and he had a moment to wonder if he wasn’t blowing this poor nice married lady’s mind out of the fu
cking water by talking about fucking, but then she asked, “But is it awesome?”
“No,” he said promptly before launching into another series of lifts. Oh, this was rough on his stomach. That damned ball was tough to stand on.
“What’s awesome?” She caught his hand for a moment as he flailed. “To you, I mean. What makes you want to be in a relationship as opposed to… I guess, just do it for the camera.”
And six and seven and eight and nine and ten.
He grabbed her hand and steadied himself as he went still.
“He likes me.” Reg took a deep breath, his stomach aching. “He wants to be with me because he likes… me, I guess. I mean, not just sex, because God knows we ain’t had that yet. But he likes… the person I am. He wants to make me happy.”
“Hm.” She held still, and he caught his breath and started on his last set.
He finished, sweating, and she handed him a towel.
“Having someone—anyone—who wants to make you happy. That you could be happy with. And that you don’t have to juice up to bone—I think that’s an important thing right there, don’t you, Reg?”
Reg nodded and hopped off the platform.
“Let’s see how I can fuck this up,” he said, winking at her. She didn’t laugh, though. She patted his back, even though he was sweating through his tank.
“Let’s see how you can make this work,” she corrected. “Just like lifting weights.”
He grinned at her. “You’re good at this coaching stuff. You should stick with it.”
“Yeah, well, I never thought I’d be putting my training license to work by life-coaching porn stars,” she admitted. “Let’s hope I make this work!”
Then she walked him to the ropes and proceeded to destroy him in a good way. He figured she did okay.
LATER HE and Bobby walked down the aisles of Safeway, and Reg watched as Bobby stocked his cart with things like apples and water and brown rice. He bought a little saucepan, and some frozen chicken and some spices too.
Reg watched him woefully and threw things like mac-and-cheese, hot dogs, and spaghetti in his own cart.
“You’re eating all healthy-like,” he said, wondering what V would do if Reg brought home brown rice. He’d brought home salad in a bag once, and she’d thrown it up on purpose. That had been a fun night. “I go with old standbys.”
Bobby smiled faintly. “My mom is always trying to make gourmet stuff,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t mind, really. She… you know, it’s a way she tries.”
“Tries to be what?”
“A good mom.”
Reg threw some cookies in his cart and tried not to cringe. He gave V two cookies every night after dinner, because everybody deserved dessert.
“I think my mom was sick like V,” he said after a moment. “Sometimes she tried really hard, and we were washed and dressed and everything had to be perfect and she’d scream if it wasn’t. And then we’d get home from school and the house would smell like weed and she’d be asleep and we’d have to get dinner.” He saw another kind of cookie V liked and added that. “V was in high school by then, you know? So she’d get me dinner, and then she’d walk down to the liquor store and buy us cookies. So it’s like a tradition. A couple of cookies at bedtime.”
Bobby grunted and added his own box—his were Nutter Butters, and Reg liked those too. “When’d your mom go?”
Reg didn’t like talking about this. He was usually pretty good about goofing off so girls didn’t ask. But this was Bobby, and it felt serious, so he didn’t have it in him to start juggling cookie packages or grabbing bags of M&Ms or something just to change the subject.
“I was in high school. We have an older sister, Queenie, but she got pregnant twice and moved out when I was in, like, eighth grade. She sends us Christmas cards but never visits. There’s always a new kid. I can’t even remember their names.”
“Oh God.” Bobby half laughed. “But after she moved out, it was you, V, and your mom.”
“Yeah. High school was when V started getting sick—started yelling at people on the bus, slapped a lady at the store where she worked. Mom took her to the doctors once or twice, and then….” He shrugged apologetically. This story—not his favorite. “They had this fight that made shoving pills down her throat look like story time at the fluffy-bunny factory. It was…. They took apart the house. Took me a week to clean everything up. Every glass and plate got broke—that’s why all we got is plastic shit now.” Reg saw some crackers he liked with tinned soup and threw them in the cart dispiritedly. “Mom left, like… before the dust settled, and it was just me and V. And one day—I remember this, ’cause I was cleaning out Mom’s room, and there was doctor’s pills and ashtrays and syringes and shit—it was bad—V comes to me and tells me she’ll finish the cleaning but she needs me to do some homework.”
“Homework?” Bobby said the word like he was tiptoeing. Like he was afraid to put too much weight on the word, or something would break.
“Yeah—I’ve got to do it every year. It’s, like, conservation papers.”
“What?” Bobby was looking at him oddly. “What are you conserving?”
“My sister. See, I promised her. First I filled out the papers and put Mom’s name on ’em—Willa. But then when I turned eighteen, I signed them for myself. And then someone from the state came over and looked at the house and looked at V and asked me about her meds—and I was better at getting her to take them then.” He grimaced. “She’s gotten wilier about not taking them. Anyway, they’re the papers that say I’m in charge.”
Bobby ran his cart into an endcap of rice cakes, and they both spent a few minutes picking stuff up and stacking it right.
“You’re in charge of her,” he said, like this was a big deal. “Legally?”
Reg nodded, solemn, like he was in front of the social worker. “Yeah. It was real important—if I wasn’t in charge of her, she’d go into a state place. And she, I guess she stayed there a couple of times, before the big fight. I didn’t know—they told me she was with friends, but she wasn’t. She was in the loony bin, and it was awful.” Reg lowered his voice. “They don’t feed you real good there—and I remember this, ’cause when she came back from ‘visiting with friends’ she’d be starving. And she’d smell like cigarettes. And she’d scream at night—it’s bad there, Bobby. I don’t want my sister there. So I signed the papers when I turned eighteen. She’s my sister. I’m in charge.”
“But, Reg….” Bobby shoved a rice cake package on the cardboard display. The damned thing fell back down, and Bobby threw it in his cart. “Reg,” he said again, standing up straight. “You’ve been in charge of your sister for ten—”
“Twelve,” Reg said proudly.
“Twelve years! Without help?”
“Well,” Reg said, not sure what the deal was. “I had Johnnies.”
Bobby nodded, but he still looked upset. “But… but I can see you not wanting her to go to the state place, Reg. Maybe… I don’t know. We’ve got benefits at Johnnies.”
“She’s got social security,” Reg said, nodding. V had walked him through that too. It was a good thing she was so smart when she wasn’t crazy, or the two of them would have been lost.
“Yeah, but maybe there’s a better place through the Johnnies insurance,” Bobby said, like he was thinking things through. “Like, a place that would make her take her meds, and they’d be nice to her, but they could maybe keep her off the internet so much.”
“But I promised her.” Of all the things in his life that got hazy and confused, Reg was crystal clear on what a promise was and damned proud of this one. “You don’t understand. When we were kids, she kept me safe. Mom would be breaking up the house and screaming weird shit and having knife fights with some guy, and V, Queenie, and I would be in the closet. She’d wake me up and keep us safe. She loves me. Why would I want to send her somewhere else?”
Bobby stopped and closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and
looked at Reg with determination.
“Because she stabbed you in September, Reg. Can you promise that’s not going to happen again?”
Reg shrugged and scowled. He scratched the back of his ear and studied the freezer food behind Bobby and wondered if Bobby knew how to cook steak, because Reg loved steak but couldn’t ever seem to make it without it being tough.
Bobby watched him impassively for a few moments and finally sighed.
“I’m going to take that as a no,” he said quietly. He ruffled Reg’s hair then, like they were friends, and shook his head. “But I’m also going to take that as the discussion is tabled for the moment.”
Reg narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Does ‘tabled’ mean ‘not over’?”
“It means I think you deserve more of a life than this, Reg, and I think there should be resources out there to help you.”
“But that’s why I started porn!” Reg wailed. “Because McDonald’s didn’t pay for crap, and I needed more resources to take care of her!”
Bobby took a deep breath. “But, I don’t know. A nurse? A home visit? God, someone to come watch her for you while you go out of town for a day?”
“Where would I go?” Reg asked, and Bobby rubbed the back of his neck.
“Dogpatch?”
“Isn’t that where you live?”
“Not anymore,” Bobby told him soberly. “I have an apartment here in Sacramento.” He turned then and stalked through the meat department, going too fast for Reg to ask him if he knew how to cook steak, but he slowed down around the ham. “Was there something here you wanted?” he asked courteously. “I can’t cook much in mine, so if you’re getting big-meal stuff, this is your stop.”
Reg bit his lip. “Uh… steak?”
Bobby reached for a packet of the thick-cut kind, with lots of fat. “Sure. Do you want something to marinate it in?”
Suddenly the conversation, which had seemed to exist in a black whirlpool for the past ten minutes, grew a bright silver ring. “Do you know how to do that?” he asked desperately. “Because I love steak, but I have no idea how to make it.”
