by A. E. Wasp
At least until Robbie called out from the bathroom. “Hey, who’s U.B.?”
What? He couldn’t have heard Robbie right. “Who? What did you just say?”
“U.B?” Robbie said, walking into the room with a towel wrapped around him. “You were talking in your sleep last night.”
“Oh, no.”
Robbie shrugged. “I’m getting used to it. Usually, it’s just nonsense. But last night you apologized like six times to someone named U.B.”
Paul considered making something up. He could tell Robbie that Eubee was his old math teacher or coach or something. But maybe Robbie was the perfect person to talk to about Eubee. He could help Paul figure out what he’d felt.
Paul grabbed Robbie by the towel as he passed by, pulling him down onto his lap like he wasn’t six-feet tall. “Still want to go for that ride after breakfast?” he asked, nuzzling Robbie’s neck. He smelled so good. Fresh and clean, skin still warm from the shower.
“Hell, yeah.” Robbie tilted his head so Paul could kiss his neck. “Or we could just stay here,” he said, letting his towel fall open.
“That is a very tempting offer,” Paul said, running his hands up and down Robbie’s body. “But we’re burning daylight as it is. And I need food.”
Robbie slid off Paul’s lap onto his knees. He pushed Paul’s legs apart. “I don’t think this will take too long.”
It didn’t. Paul didn’t even have a chance to reciprocate because Robbie got himself off at the same time.
“Sorry,” Robbie said, not sounding sorry at all. “The sounds you make when I blow you are so fucking hot. And the look on your face when you come? It’s too much.” He pushed himself up, standing naked between Paul’s legs.
“I guess I can’t be mad about that,” Paul agreed, running his hands over Robbie’s legs. He had it bad for those thick, hard muscles. They were so wide, he couldn’t wrap both hands around them. “But I can blow you later?”
Robbie put a finger to his chin and pretended to think about it. “I think I can squeeze you in later.” He smirked. “See what I did there? ‘Squeeze you in?’”
“I saw.” Paul slid his hands up to knead Robbie’s firm ass cheeks. “Promise?”
With his index finger, Robbie drew an X over his heart. “Cross my heart.”
“Okay then. Get dressed, and I’ll buy you breakfast, and I’ll tell you all about Eubee while we’re driving.”
“Who is he? Short version,” Robbie asked as he got dressed.
“He was my best friend most of my life, and Queenie was his car before she was mine.”
Robbie picked up on the past tense, and his eyebrows drew together in concern, but he didn’t ask for more.
21
Robbie
The day was surprisingly sunny and warm for Washington in December. They bundled up in sweatshirts, and Paul took the roof off of the Stingray so they could enjoy the sun.
Paul opened her up as they broke free of the traffic on the freeway.
“I’ve never been a car person, but I think I want to have sex with your car.” Robbie caressed the dashboard, leaning his head back so he could watch the tops of the trees speed across the cloudless blue sky. With the top of the car open, they had to speak loudly to be heard over the roar of the wind.
“Sorry. She would never cheat on me.”
“Sex in the car then?”
Paul glanced over to Robbie, not losing a beat as he guided the Stingray around the curve. “We barely fit in the car. I can’t see that happening.”
Robbie started to say something, and Paul cut him off. “Don’t you even hint about having sex on top of my Queenie. First of all, she’s a lady. Secondly, I’m not putting dents in her or ruining the paint job even for you.”
“Can I look at a picture of her while I jerk off?”
“Sure thing.”
He wanted to ask about Eubee and the car. Wanted to find out why Paul talked about him in the past tense. Had the friendship gone bad? Probably not, or Paul wouldn’t have his car. So Eubee must be dead.
No one Robbie loved had ever died. Oh, he shouldn’t have said that. He looked around for something wooden to knock on to stave off the bad luck. Unsurprisingly, there was no wood inside the car. He settled for thumping himself on the head.
Paul looked at him quizzically.
“Knocking on wood,” he explained.
“Oh, okay. Why?”
“I was just thinking how I’ve never lost someone I’ve loved, and then I was afraid I’d jinxed it.”
Paul nodded, jaw tight. He concentrated on driving harder than he’d been doing. “You’ve had a very charmed life, Robert Rhodes.”
“I know.” He’d thought he’d had a pretty average life. Sure, the learning disabilities made school tougher for him than for a lot of people, but his parents never let him forget how privileged he was by simply having the opportunity to go to school. Millions of kids didn’t have that chance.
They drove for the better part of an hour in a not quite uncomfortable silence. The roar of the wind made conversation difficult anyway.
At one point Robbie reached across and rested his arm on the top of Paul’s seat. The wind-blown strands of blond hair whipped at his fingers as he gently rubbed Paul’s neck.
Paul tilted his head into the caress, so Robbie kept doing it as the road unrolled beneath their wheels.
Paul slowed down as they approached a turn-off. A few short turns brought them to a parking lot near the beach that was almost empty.
“This is amazing,” Robbie said spinning in a slow circle to take in the three-sixty view. Sand shifted under his feet, and the cold wind blowing off the water tugged at his sweatshirt, but it only added to the feeling that they were the only two people around for hundreds of miles.
Robbie felt wild and free. Reaching for Paul’s hand, Robbie pulled him against his front, and kissed him soft and sweet, a hand on the back of his neck. “Thanks for bringing me here. It’s perfect.”
They kissed for a while in the sun and fresh air. He dug his fingers under the layers of Paul’s shirt and sweatshirt to feel the soft, warm skin under his fingertips.
Paul twisted away with a laugh. “Tickles.” Keeping a hold of his hand, Paul led him over to the trunk of a fallen tree half buried in the sand and bleached white by the sun and salt water.
Where had it come from? Robbie wondered. Had it fallen from the cliffs above them? Drifted here from somewhere else?
They sat side by side on the trunk, watching the waves crashing along the shore, the sound rising and falling as the water fell onto the sand and was dragged back.
“Remember I told you I had messed around with a kid a long time ago, back at church camp?” Paul asked without preamble.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“That was Eubee.” Paul bent down and picked up a handful of the rocky sand.
“Tell me about him.”
Paul did, picking out the larger rocks from the sand and throwing them into the waves as he did. Robbie listened, making the occasional sound to show he was listening and laughing in the right places.
Even though he’d figured it was coming, it was hard to watch Paul talk about Eubee’s death. He was obviously struggling to hold in tears.
“Oh, Paul,” he said when Paul told him he had gone right from the funeral to the hockey game. “That must have been so hard.”
“It was.” Tears dripped down Paul’s cheeks.
Robbie pulled him in for a hug. “It’s okay to cry. You loved him, and he died. You should be crying.”
Paul choked on a sob, then let go of what felt like two years’ worth of grief. He clutched onto Robbie as if he was the only thing keeping him upright.
Robbie held him tightly, one hand cradling the back of his head, the other wrapped around his back.
The sobs died down, and Paul stopped shaking. With a wet kiss to the side of Robbie’s neck, Paul pulled way.
“Sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes.
“Don’t be.”
It was obvious to Robbie that Paul had been in love with Eubee, and he’d put money on Eubee feeling the same way. And then the guy just enlisted while Paul was in Canada with the Juniors? It didn’t make sense.
“Feeling better?” Robbie asked.
Paul nodded.
“Can I ask a question?”
Paul motioned for him to go ahead. He picked up some more pebbles, pouring them from hand to hand.
“I don’t get it,” Robbie said. “Eubee just up and joined the army? Just like that?” Something doesn’t add up. “What happened? Why did he change his plans? Your plans?”
Paul tossed an entire handful of pebbles at the ocean. “Beats the ever-living fuck outta me. I never got a chance to ask him. After he was already in, he texted some bullshit about skills training and job placement, but he wouldn’t talk to me on the phone or anything.”
“Why not?”
“He knew I’d get the truth out of him. The boy never could lie to my face.” Paul smiled wanly.
Robbie let a few more waves roll up and slide back down the beach before he spoke. “Why do you think he left?”
Paul pushed off the tree trunk with a sigh. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he strode down the beach, keeping close to the high water line. Robbie was right behind him.
“I think he got scared. I think he figured out what was going on between us before I did, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t, face it.”
“That you guys were in love with each other?” Robbie asked softly.
Paul chuckled harshly. “Yeah.”
“When did you figure it out?”
“Chicago,” Paul admitted.
Robbie stopped walking. “Chicago? As in a few days ago, Chicago?”
Paul strode a few more steps away before realizing Robbie had stopped following. He turned, holding his hair back from the ever-present wind. “Yeah. As in four days ago.” He walked back to Robbie.
“How could you not know? You knew you were gay, right?”
“Yes. But I didn’t want to be. Gay was bad. What I felt for – what I had with Eubee was good. Therefore, it wasn’t gay. Everybody loved us together. Girls and old ladies down at the church smiled. Pops Franklin loved me as much as he loved Eubee.”
Paul headed back toward the tree, much more slowly, eyes distant. “If Eubee and I had been gay...” He held up a hand to forestall Robbie’s argument. “If they suspected that we were even fooling around, they would have hated us.”
Robbie didn’t even know where to start. So many questions bounced around his brain. “Was it really that bad? Were people that homophobic?”
Paul looked up at the sky and sighed. “It was…” he searched for the word. “Constant. Ubiquitous. Something that almost didn’t have to be said because you knew it like you knew your own name. Water is wet. White sauce is the best. God is good. And gays are perverts who want to destroy families, wreck the American way of life, and will end up in hell.”
“Damn,” Robbie whispered.
“Literally,” Paul agreed with a humorless laugh. “I heard of this one little girl, couldn’ta been more than twelve, thirteen. I was probably sixteen at the time. She just disappeared. Stopped coming to church. I heard her own momma call her an abomination while she was standing in the social hall sipping a glass of tea like it were nothing.”
He drew in an unsteady breath and shook his head, rubbing his face with one hand. “I heard from some kids at school they’d sent her away. Well, not so much sent as had her kidnapped from her own bed. They came in the middle of the night, took her to some kind of ‘camp’ for ‘troubled teens.’ So they could pray the gay away or some bullshit.”
Robbie felt sick. “Fuck. I didn’t know places like that were still around. People still do that?”
“Yeah, Rhodes. People still do that.”
They’d reached the tree trunk they had been sitting on earlier. Paul dropped heavily back onto it.
Robbie sat down close to Paul but not touching him. He wasn’t sure what Paul’s reaction would be to the hug he desperately wanted to give.
He didn’t expect Paul to reach out to him, wrap an arm around Robbie’s waist and pull them together. Paul rested his head against Robbie’s. “My dad threatened, veiled threats mostly, to send me someplace more than once.”
“What kind of parent could do that?”
“One who cares for his son’s immortal soul, Rhodes. And you can just keep your comments to yourself about that right now. One thing I know; my father loves me. If you saw how he was when my mom first got sick.” Clenching his jaw, Paul cut that line of thought off, pressing the heel of his palm against his eyes.
“He’s my biggest fan. Anything I ever needed for hockey, for anything. Anything he could give me. All I had to do was not be gay. Just one thing. And I couldn’t do it.”
Robbie didn’t understand any of it. He hadn’t gone to church ever, but he’d always kind of vaguely imagined it as a place you went to on Sunday and didn’t think about the rest of the week.
Paul inhaled deeply. “So,” he said, “all week you get faggot jokes, bullying, and all the good ole boys going on about ‘them queers’ and what they’d do if they found any homo messin’ with their boys. And the nice southern ladies who allowed as it was fine and all for their pet gays – the hairdressers and interior designers, bless their hearts – but goodness gracious that wasn’t the same as letting them get married. Stars, no. And be around the children? Well, of course not.”
Paul’s accent was so thick now Robbie could practically see the women standing around all wide-eyed and clutching their pearls.
Paul reached down and grabbed another handful of damp pebbles. He stood, tossing it viciously at the choppy gray water. “And then—” He gathered more ammunition against the memories. “And then on Sunday, you hear that gays go to hell. And if you’re a kid just starting to understand what the fuck gay even means…” He let the pebbles slip through his fingers and trickle to the sand. “And then you realize, oh no, no, that ain’t me. That cain’t be me.”
He walked up to the edge of the water, head down, staring at the waves. Exactly like he’d been standing that day in the Stationstore parking lot.
Robbie hung back, unsure what to do, what Paul needed. When Paul raised his arm, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, Robbie couldn’t stand there anymore.
He walked up to Paul, wrapping his arms around him from behind and hooked his chin over Paul’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
Paul covered Robbie’s arms with his, lacing their fingers together. He sighed and laid his head back on Robbie’s shoulder.
“So you and Eubee never, I don’t know, talked about it? Acknowledged it in anyway?”
“Never. Not a word. Then he left me, and then he died.”
“I’m sorry,” Robbie said, tears pooling in his eyes. Sorry was such an inadequate word, incapable of saying all the things Robbie wanted to say. But words had never been his strong point. “That sucks.”
Robbie searched for a good way to ask his next question. “Did he die in the war?”
Judging by the way Paul tensed in his arms that probably hadn’t been a good way.
“Helicopter accident in Texas if you can believe it.”
Robbie lifted his head in surprise. “You mean he was in the U.S., and he wouldn’t call you?”
“Yeah.” Paul tried to shrug.
Robbie grumbled something unflattering under his breath.
Paul turned in Robbie’s arms. “Don’t speak ill of the dead. It’s not our place to judge him. He did what he felt he had to do. Whatever judgment he faced was between him and God.”
Robbie frowned.
“It’s almost impossible for you to understand, isn’t it, Rhodes? How much you can hate what you are. You don’t know what it’s like to pray every day for years to be something other than what you are and have those prayers go unanswered.”
&
nbsp; “No, you’re right. I don’t. I’m sorry.” He stopped again and squeezed Paul’s hand. “I don’t understand. But I don’t have to. You tell me you felt that way, that Eubee felt that way, and God only knows how many other gay kids feel that way still, and I believe it. I don’t have to understand; I only have to believe you when you say it’s real. It makes me so sad.”
“Yeah.”
There was one thing Robbie needed to know, a question he had to ask that he really didn’t want to ask. But if there was going to be anything between him and Paul, and he’d realized in the last week he wanted something with Paul, then he had to know one thing.
He loosened his hold on Paul, putting a little space between them. “Do you still feel that way? That being gay is wrong and that you’re going to hell?”
Paul dropped his hands from Robbie’s and took a step away. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. The wind whipped his hair against his face, and tugged at Robbie’s longer hair, making it hard for him to see Paul’s expression.
Paul kicked at the wet sand, and Robbie held his breath waiting for an answer. “Rationally, no.”
Robbie exhaled.
“I know I’m not a bad person,” he said, looking directly at Robbie. “And God, does it feel right, being with you. It feels so good it scares me.”
Robbie gave him a tentative smile. “That’s good, right?”
Paul shook his head. “No, I mean I’m really scared.”
“Why?” Robbie asked, frustration and despair in his voice. “Why should something that feels so good, and is so easy, be bad? I don’t get it?” There was so much about this he didn’t get.
“You’re going to think I’m a fuckin’ redneck backward idiot. I can see it in your eyes.” Paul looked so sad.
This was supposed to have been a good day. A fun drive into the country where he would learn about someone important to Paul, and they would trade stories of growing up. Get lunch someplace nice, and then back to one of their houses for a nap and then hopefully more sex.
He should let the whole subject go. Get the hell out of here, go back home and maybe get drunk and screw around.
