by Amy Lane
“I love you,” he said, blowing Reg’s mind. “I don’t know if any other boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, has said that, but that’s how I feel.”
Reg couldn’t breathe. Those words? Who said them? Those were wedding words. Engagement and diamond-ring words. Since when did men say those words after screwing around?
He shivered, and Bobby pulled him closer. His eyes stung, no matter how much he squeezed them shut.
“That would make me yours, then,” he croaked.
Bobby dropped a kiss in his hair. “I hope so.”
“How do you say those words?” he asked, feeling stupid in ways he didn’t think he could.
“When you’re ready, you’ll say them,” Bobby said. He sounded a little uncertain, a little sad.
“I won’t leave you hanging,” Reg mumbled, but his eyes were already closed, and his body was practically not even his anymore. “I’ll say them.”
“You already did,” Bobby whispered, and before Reg could argue, he’d fallen fast asleep.
Old Business
IN EARLY February they threw duffel bags in the back of the pickup, locked up Reg’s house—new fence and all—and took off for Dogpatch.
They’d visited V the day before, and she’d sat sullenly, eyes averted, at a cheap Formica table. The place was every bit as bad as Reg had feared—scuffed beige walls, cracked green tile and all. On their way in, Bobby had seen a frantic young man with quarter-sized gauges in his ears and face and neck tattoos begging a dead-eyed girl with bandages on her wrists to please, for the love of God, just talk to him.
Inside the visiting room proper, people sat at crappy cafeteria tables in folding chairs, or in the battered, duct-taped couches. Everyone had an attendant with a clipboard. Some of the groups were actively engaged in conversation, and some of them were sitting in cold silence, but the attendants—casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts and tennis shoes—all looked around alertly, like whatever the situation, it could change in a long breath.
The stink of cigarettes, ammonia, and vomit was thick enough to cut with a steak knife. An attendant—a thick, muscular woman with a steady smile for Reg and Bobby and a flat-eyed assessment for V—brought V in from the sleeping quarters.
She looked like hell in rumpled pajamas Reg had brought from home. Her hair lay piled on top of her head haphazardly, and Bobby had needed to work to not recoil at the smell.
“She’s not bathing,” the attendant told them matter-of-factly. “She’s afraid people will steal her clothes.”
“You want my fuckin’ clothes,” V snapped at the woman.
“Got my own, thanks. Sit down and behave, Veronica. Your brother and his friend came to see you.”
V snarled, “What the hell you doin’ here, retard?”
Reg had bit his lip. “I just wanted to see how you were, V. If you were taking your meds yet, you know. So you could come home.”
“You want me to take my meds? Fucking poison! Get me the hell out of here!” V half stood, slamming her fists on the table, and the attendant sighed, stood up from her folding chair, and grabbed V by the elbow.
“You may want to try again next week,” she said with resigned cheerfulness. “Her regimen had to be started practically from scratch.”
V was hustled out, and Bobby stared at Reg.
His full lips were parted, making him look vulnerable and young, and his almond-shaped blue eyes that Bobby had found so appealing from the beginning were wide and dazed. The blank devastation on his face did things to Bobby’s chest he wasn’t sure would heal.
“Next week,” Reg said weakly to the air. “We’ll work at getting her home next week.”
“Sure,” Bobby said. Another week for you to maybe think of option three. Come on, Reg. It can’t be me.
That night Bobby made dinner, a recipe he got from Kane because he could cook and didn’t snap at Bobby if he didn’t know the difference between sage and basil, like Tommy did.
Reg ate it and thanked him shyly, his front teeth worrying his bottom lip like he did when he was embarrassed. Bobby had kissed him then, dirty dishes on the counter, backing him against the wall until the shyness burned away and he leaped up, wrapping his legs around Bobby’s waist so Bobby could carry them both to bed. Face-to-face this time, Bobby up on his knees at the end, watching Reg’s head tilt back and the utter abandon wash over his face, cleansing him of the worry.
Bobby shuddered in climax and collapsed next to him, studying Reg’s face in the borrowed light from the kitchen.
Maybe it was the fading acne scars, or the way Reg angled his chin out into the world like he was taking every hit directly without question, but the soft light made his features look delicate—poignant, even.
He grinned at Bobby, teeth glinting softly in the faint glow, the corners of his eyes crinkling up just enough to remind Bobby that he would be thirty next year. Bobby had always known that Reg had a special magnetism that had made him one of Johnnies’ mainstays, but here, in the dark, in Bobby’s bed and Bobby’s bed alone, Bobby could see a beauty the cameras could never capture.
“You’re very good to me,” Reg said in that quiet moment.
“I want the world for you.” Bobby kissed him then, trying to drink that simple beauty into his soul. Even when they eventually dressed in sweats and went back to finish the kitchen, he knew he’d failed somehow.
He would always need another kiss, another taste, another moment.
He wasn’t sure how that happened, how the “I love you” had happened nearly two weeks before, how he’d found the patience to wait to reclaim Reg, to wait for the “I love you” in return. Reg took his time, maybe. Bobby had to learn to take his.
And now, clearing Auburn, heading toward Truckee and beyond, Bobby couldn’t help taking sideways glances at that deceptively pretty face as Reg made the connection between the mountains that had lived in the horizon his entire life and the topography that surrounded him now.
“This is amazing,” he breathed. “There’s snow on the ground. Can you see that? No wonder you told me to bring all my warm clothes.”
“I went and bought chains last week, just in case we need ’em,” Bobby said. He’d been planning to wait until after the snows, just to spare the expense, but the weather people kept predicting a long wet winter—he wanted to see his mom before April.
“This road is amazing—this is I-80? I mean, it’s right out our back door, right? And it leads here? That last curve, we could look down and see all of Auburn and Sacramento to boot. You lived here? That’s super cool!”
The roads were more than clear. Bobby reached across the bench seat and grabbed Reg’s hand. “It felt like a cage,” he said quietly. “But then, you know, turned eighteen, graduated, found the key. Like you.”
Reg fell quiet for a moment. “This is more like a visitor’s pass,” he said sadly. “I don’t think there is a key.”
Bobby grunted and refrained from saying that there had to be a key or his sister was going to shred Reg’s sleek little body by dragging him through the bars.
“Dogpatch is in a little valley between mountains,” Bobby said. “There’s a branch of the river going through the middle, and lots of pastureland. It’s still pretty high up, but it’s not, like, on a mountaintop, you know?”
It was Reg’s turn to grunt. He followed it up with “I guess I can see how that would feel like prison. But seriously—can you see stars at night?”
Bobby let out a small smile. “Yup.”
“So, see? Already better’n Sacramento.”
“We should take a trip to the sea,” Bobby said, letting excitement build up in his stomach for it. “I mean, I’ve been a few times with my mom.” His eyebrows drew together at the memory. “And once with my dad. I really loved it there.”
Reg was still looking through the side window, trying to gaze upward to see the tops of the trees. “Let me get through this first, Bobby,” he said, obviously tempted to roll down the window and stick his head ou
t. “I still gotta meet your mom. I can’t believe you really think that’s such a good idea.”
“Here, Reg. I’ll pull over in town, and you can look up at all the trees while we fill up. And did you bring all the books we’ve read?”
“Oh yeah. First things I packed.”
Bobby smiled, glad he’d brought gifts. “She’ll love you. She’ll even have books to give back.”
THE ONE thing Bobby had noticed since he’d moved away was how much younger his mother looked when she smiled at him on his return.
This time, though, she literally looked younger. “Mom!” he laughed, as he swung out of the truck. “You dyed your hair!”
She grimaced. “Yeah, yeah. Well, you send me money, and suddenly I don’t have to worry about feeding you, and I’ve got time to do foolish things.”
“Not foolish,” he said, liking the subtle blonde/brown she’d chosen. “Looks good. You look way younger.”
She frowned up at him and played with his hair. He’d left it long but taken Kane’s advice and gotten a trim. It fell around his ears in layers now, and when he slicked it back for a scene, it looked tousled on purpose by the time they called “cut.”
“You look older,” she said, biting her lip. “And slicker. Not that it’s bad, mind you, but even your boots are new.”
Bobby shrugged. “Well, you know. People tip better when you look good.”
She appeared to be appeased by that, but Bobby felt a hollow spot under his breastbone. How often was he supposed to lie to her about this?
“Well, your friend must get great tips,” his mom said, laughing as Reg grabbed all the luggage from the back. “Hold up there, son—let Vern help you.”
Reg stumbled on a duffel strap, obviously confused. “Vern—sorry. I gotta remember you call him that. We call him Bobby, ’cause, you know, Roberts.” Bobby had made him practice that, and it came out real good. He grinned from behind his mom’s back and gave Reg the thumbs-up.
Bobby’s mom harrumphed. “That’s a likely story. He’s hated the name Vern since he was a baby.”
Bobby nodded emphatically as he went to help Reg with the duffels. “I’m saying.”
“Reggie,” Reg said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not even Reginald. I think my mom got Reggie and Veronica from some sort of comic as a kid.” He paused. “Don’t know where she got Queenie.”
“Archie, though, for you and Veronica!” His mom clapped her hands, delighted. “That’s wonderful.”
Bobby looked at Reg and winked. “That’s easy for her to say. Her name’s Isabelle.”
Reg smiled, full force. “Pretty name for a pretty lady,” he said as she turned to lead them into the house. Bobby bumped shoulders with him, because God, they were making it work, and that alone made him happy.
“Vern said you two wouldn’t mind sharing his bed,” Mom said as she walked through the door. “So I’ll let him show you around. I made stromboli for lunch—I hope that’s okay.”
Reg looked at him in confusion, and Bobby said, “It’s like an all-meat pizza baked in a croissant bun.” He looked ruefully at his mom. “It’s apparently designed to make us fat.”
“Well, look at you—you’re both built like racehorses. A stromboli isn’t gonna kill you.”
“I hope not,” Bobby said, feeling gratitude in his bones. “Because seriously, anything we don’t have to cook is the best.”
He ventured into his room—which had a few more big plastic boxes of needlepoint supplies than he remembered. He used one to put his duffel on and had Reg put his on another one. They were like coffee tables in the front room—moveable furniture.
His mom watched them from the doorway, a half smile on her face. “Do you guys cook together a lot?” she asked, but not judgy-like.
“Reg has a big kitchen,” Bobby said, keeping it casual. “My apartment has a minifridge and a hotplate.”
“Bobby brings groceries over,” Reg said guilelessly. “He’ll cook for me and, uh….” His face fell. “My sister. She’s not at home now—but he cooks for us a lot.”
“That’s nice of him,” his mom said, a quizzical smile on her face. “I didn’t know you liked to cook.”
Bobby gave her a half smile. “Well, you know. You do such a good job of it, why would I need to do it here?”
She nodded, but thoughtfully. “Speaking of, let me go put lunch on the table.”
She left, and Reg looked at him in agony. “I forgot to give her the books!”
“Later,” Bobby told him. “After lunch.”
Reg nodded and pulled out the bag—Bobby had bought one of those pretty recyclable grocery bags so it would be more like a gift. “Okay. It’s going good, right?”
“Great, Reg. Why wouldn’t it?”
Suddenly Reg was standing close—perfect distance, from Bobby’s POV, but Bobby understood.
“’Cause we don’t want her to… you know,” Reg whispered.
Bobby stared at his open door. “Maybe,” he said quietly. “Maybe not. Like I said—see how the weekend goes, okay?”
Reg nodded unhappily. “Yeah, sure. But this is a real nice place, Bobby. You may want to think twice about getting kicked out.”
Bobby resisted the urge to look around the crumbling little mother-in-law cabin Frank Gilmore rented out for the price of a mansion. It wasn’t a “real nice place.” It was, in fact, just as cramped and out of repair as Reg’s place.
The one difference—and one difference only, that Bobby could see—was that his mom lived there, and she’d greeted them both with a hug and pizza in a bread crust.
Well, who’d want to risk that, right?
“SO, REG,” his mom said as they sat down to steaming platefuls of pizza pastry and salad, “Bobby didn’t say what you do for a living.”
They’d talked about this too. “I work for John Carey Industries,” Reg said dutifully. It was the company name that appeared on the check to help give the employees privacy. “It’s, uh, sort of a small media business. I hold lights and help them set up scenes and stuff.”
“What sort of scenes?”
And this was the one thing that was an out-and-out lie. “College students making commercial products.” But not much of one.
Isabelle looked at Reg quizzically. “What sorts of products?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
Bobby took over. “Anything they want—the company pretty much just provides the equipment.”
His mom fixed her eyes—clearly set on “bullshit detecting”—squarely on Bobby. “Do you work there?” she asked.
Bobby shrugged. “Couple times a month. It’s where me and Reg met.”
“That’s nice,” she said, eyebrows still doing that thing that said she knew Bobby had spent his Friday night out drinking with friends behind the Frostie after the football game and not at someone’s house like he said. “It’s nice that you two boys just sort of hit it off.”
“Yeah,” Reg said, taking a bite of lunch. He closed his eyes. “Oh man. Bobby, you gotta try this—it’s amazing.”
Bobby did and had to agree—Mom’s cooking wasn’t getting any worse.
“This is good, Mom. You’ll have to give me the recipe.”
“Sure. So, Reg—you got a girlfriend?”
Reg took another bite and closed his eyes. “Nope. Mostly my sister keeps me busy. She’s sort of crazy. Most girls don’t want to hang around when she’s there.”
“That’s a shame,” his mom said, her eyebrows untangling long enough for some honest concern to show through. “That doesn’t allow for much of a life of your own.”
Reg avoided Bobby’s eyes too. “Is there any milk?” he asked out of the blue. “I’m sorry to trouble you—this is just so awesome, I’d love a glass of milk to wash it down.”
“How silly of me,” she said, moving to the fridge.
Bobby met her eyes then, because usually milk would have been the first thing on the table. She used to complain that Bobby sucked it out of the refrigerator through his pore
s as he walked by, and she hadn’t stopped buying a gallon of it when he visited.
She looked levelly back at him as she reached for it, her mouth pursed in suspicion.
“I’ll get the glasses, Mom.” He stood up belatedly, and she waved him down.
“No, no, not at all. So, Bobby has told me your sister’s sort of a handful. How have you managed so far?”
“The guys from John-uh-Carey.” Reg carved off another bite and nodded before he took it. “There’s a few of us who’ve been there awhile.”
“That’s really nice of them,” she said. “What about—”
Reg was starting to sweat. “Mom, stop it,” Bobby said, keeping his good humor in his voice. “Reg is going to think you don’t like him.”
And oh, God bless his mom. “I think he’s a very nice young man, honey.”
Reg looked up guiltily and swallowed. “I’m not that young,” he confessed. “I’m twenty-nine, actually. Bobby’s way younger than I am.”
“That doesn’t seem to have stopped him,” she murmured, and now Bobby was sweating. He stayed that way—sweating and uncomfortable—for pretty much the rest of lunch.
HE HELPED his mother do the dishes while Reg took a walk outside. Bobby directed him to the west side of the house, where he could see the horse pens of Frank Gilmore’s stable.
“Don’t go in the pen,” Bobby warned him, pulling out a little bag of carrots from the fridge. “But if you hold the carrot like this”—he demonstrated on his palm—“they’ll nibble it out of your hand. But only if you hold your hand flat—otherwise they’ll bite.”
“Can I pet them?” Reg asked, wide-eyed. Bobby smiled, remembering Reg hadn’t ever seen a horse up close.
“Like this,” he said, holding his palm gently to the bridge of Reg’s nose, cupping his forehead. “Firm-like. They like that. But don’t give them any flesh to bite, okay? They like to explore that way. I got dragged by a snotty little pony when I was a kid—”
“Those scars under your arm?” Reg asked guilelessly, butting his face up against Bobby’s palm. Bobby worked hard not to wince and look at his mom to see if she thought there was anything odd about Reg knowing that. Well, hell—they worked out together, right?
