Bobby blushed and sniffled. “Um, thanks.”
“No prob. You okay? You look like somebody just slapped you.”
“Something like that. But never mind. I’m fine now.” To prove it, he smiled, and reached for his glasses again, as proof of his inward resolution not to cry.
“Do you need those to see?” Adam asked.
Bobby shook his head.
“You should leave them off, then. For me.” Adam smiled, eyebrows up. The expression was a little lecherous, but flattering nonetheless.
That was right. Bobby was attractive and sweet, and if Dylan didn’t see that, then he didn’t need Dylan.
Just wanted him. So bad.
He’d come out. He would. Tonight at dinner, he’d tell Dylan everything, and if Dylan didn’t like it, or shamed him for it, well, then he’d start over. Find someone new.
Not Adam and his creepy fetish videos, though. Bobby had some standards, thank you.
When he looked at Adam again, it was with renewed confidence. “Can I help you with something?” he asked, no cracks in his voice.
“Yeah. I was wondering if you could . . . advise me on something.”
“Sure!” Bobby said, and stood.
Adam led him to the wall of toys. “I was thinking of getting one of these cock ring things. I heard some of them can help girls come when you’re fucking them.”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby agreed. “The vibrating ones, definitely, and some of them have attachments meant to hit her clit while you fuck her.”
“Uh-huh?” Adam asked, eyelids dropping low at that last part. “And which would you . . . suggest?”
Yikes. Better pull this back to professionalism again. “Well, this one’s a pretty good seller.” Bobby stepped forward, taking off the wall a bright blue silicone ring with a leaping dolphin attached. “The dolphin has a vibrator in it. Basically turns your junk into one of those rabbits girls love so much.”
Wrong move, he realized, when that step forward put him between the wall and Adam, who suddenly lunged forward.
“Um,” he protested when Adam boxed him in, one arm pressed to the wall on either side of him.
“Don’t act like you’re surprised,” Adam said. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to try that gadget out with me right now in that little booth over there.” He nodded toward the disgusting peep show booths with a leer.
Bobby dropped the sex toy package like it had burned his palm. Looked Adam in the eye, as requested, but this close, he couldn’t help but notice the size difference between them as if for the first time. How much he had to tilt his face up just to look Adam in the eyes. But he stood his ground. “I don’t. Sorry.”
“Tease. Sounds like you need a little convincing.”
Bobby was about to ask how convincing it would be if he put his knee in Adam’s balls, but that was when Adam moved again, this time grabbing Bobby’s shoulder in one hand and cupping Bobby’s crotch in the other.
Adam’s eyes bugged out for a second, and then his expression turned cruel. The hand between Rob’s legs flew up to grab his shoulder instead, keeping him roughly pinned. “What the fuck?”
“Let me go,” Rob warned, dropping the girl voice. “Let me go right now, or I’ll call the cops.”
Swing and a miss. “Oh yeah? And what’s your little lying tranny self gonna tell ’em?”
“My little lying tranny self is gonna tell them you sexually assaulted me, that’s what.”
Adam gave Rob a hard shake, bashing the back of his head into the wall. The sharp pain in the back of his head turned to rolling nausea in his stomach. “Yeah? Well, in that case, I’ll tell them you came on to me. Maybe even wanted me to pay you. Sucky sucky five dolla. You versus me. Who you think they’re gonna believe?”
“You willing to take that risk?” Rob bit out. It took all the bravery he had, all the bravery he should have had with Dylan ten minutes ago. Maybe if he’d been honest, Dylan would be here right now. Dylan would be here, talking it out with him, maybe angry, maybe confused, maybe even grossed out, but he’d be here, and Rob would be safe. Or maybe he wouldn’t be here at all.
Adam smiled, baring teeth. “Are you?”
God, what if they didn’t believe him? Yeah, there was camera footage of what had just gone on between them, but cops fucked up cases like this all the time, even with all the evidence in the world to at their disposal. And he had to face the facts: Rob was a cross-dressing Asian kid working in a seedy porn store. And what if Adam was a Good Kid, a sports star, the son of someone important or well connected, a beloved meathead in the community? A whole new nausea overtook Rob’s body. “My boyfriend,” he yelped as a final gamble. “He’s coming to pick me up. Look, just let me go. Nothing has to come of this. I won’t call the cops, okay? I won’t even tell my boyfriend about what happened. Just let me go.”
That threat—plea?—seemed to stick better than the one about the cops, because Adam released Rob and backed off just enough that Rob was able to squeeze by him and make a sprint for the counter. Panic button safely in reach again, he took a deep, shaky breath.
Across the store by the toy wall, Adam calmly stooped to pick up the dolphin cock ring and return it to its proper place on the wall. Then, like nothing had happened between them at all, he headed for the DVD racks, browsed awhile, and finally returned to the counter with his selection. Fucking sociopath.
Rob checked him out, trying not to let the shaking in his hands show. But if he really wanted to prove he wasn’t afraid, he’d have to make eye contact. He forced himself to look Adam in the face, and it filled him with cold dread to see no defeat there. You’re not getting rid of me that easy, Adam’s expression said. You outsmarted me this time, but I’ll be back.
Someone braver and smarter with more resources and support might have looked right back at him with eyes full of And I’ll be ready. But Rob didn’t have any of those things. Without Bobby and Dylan, he had nothing. He was nothing.
Why had he ever tried to convince himself otherwise?
The hour before closing that night was slow, and Rob was out of the store by ten after eleven. But when he’d set the alarm and locked the door behind him, he didn’t go to the restaurant to meet Dylan, or to Celebrities to meet his sister and her friends.
He went home. Alone.
It wasn’t even the fact that Adam had put hands on him that had done Rob in and broken him down. Sure, his shoulders and the back of his head kind of hurt, but that pain would subside. He definitely had reason to be afraid of Adam, but not because he posed a physical threat. After all, if he’d wanted to hurt Rob, he could have.
Which, strangely enough, was a horrifying and shocking realization all on its own: even if Adam specifically posed no threat, dressing up as Bobby was fucking dangerous. All it took was one hateful person, one moment alone, one . . .
God, he didn’t even want to think about it.
It wasn’t the physical hurt that sent him home alone now. It wasn’t the fear of how much worse that hurt could get, the cold reality of the danger that he’d been ignoring all these weeks while he was high on the exhilaration of being flirted with and paid attention to. Wasn’t even the disgust in Adam’s voice or the things he’d said or the hurtful slurs he’d used to say them.
Part of it was guilt and shame. What-ifs, swirling in his head on the bus ride home like toxic fumes. What if he had been honest with Dylan? What if he hadn’t responded positively to Adam’s flirting and compliments? What if he hadn’t left the protection of the counter? What if he hadn’t used such sexual language describing the toy? What if he’d kneed Adam in the junk? Called Adam’s bluff on not being afraid of the cops? Not acted so damn afraid and pitiful, leaving Adam with the upper hand, ensuring that he’d be back?
So many things gone wrong. So many opportunities wasted. So many bad, cowardly choices. But he could talk himself out of all that, eventually, mostly. It wasn’t like Rob was any stranger to racism and harassment and confrontations
gone wrong. When the pain was fresh he beat himself up about it, but eventually he could look at things logically, forgive himself, move forward. All necessary skills, because otherwise the guilt would kill him.
What he couldn’t move forward from was the fact that all his precious illusions about Bobby had been shattered.
Bobby didn’t make him braver, or smarter, or more outgoing, or any of it. On the inside, he’d always just be Rob.
And despite all the jealousy he felt for his sister, being a woman didn’t magic away problems, either. It created new ones. Irritating new ones, like Charlie and his gross flirtation, but harmful ones too. Because Adam hadn’t lured or assaulted him knowing he was some cross-dressing freak. He’d done all those things thinking Bobby was a woman. An attractive, outgoing, real woman.
It had been a play act, all of it. He’d wanted the perks of being a woman without the downfalls. Wanted to play dress-up without committing to any biological or lifestyle changes. All that time he’d been talking himself into believing it wasn’t a lie, that Bobby was a genuine part of his identity, it’d been bullshit. He had a kink, and he had an inferiority complex when it came to his sister, and he had a stupid, rosy vision of what being a woman was, and all of that had combined into a dumb fucking scheme, and now it was biting him in the ass.
His phone buzzed for what felt like the hundredth time and he finally took it out of his bag, half tempted to throw the fucking thing out the bus window.
Missed call: Dylan
Missed call: Dylan
Text from Dylan
Text from Dylan
Text from Dylan
Text from Bernice
Text from Bernice
Missed call: Dylan
Missed call: Bernice
He settled for turning it off instead.
An hour or so later, he dragged himself up the front steps of the house and into the living room where Max was playing video games with Austin. “Hey, um, Max?” Rob said.
Max normally wouldn’t stand for being interrupted in the middle of a shoot-’em-up, but he must have heard something in Rob’s tone, because he paused the game, blatantly ignoring Austin when he bitched him out for it. He turned to Rob. “Yeah?”
“You know how . . .” Rob twisted his mouth, almost chewing his words. “You know what you said about . . . about not letting just any guy . . . Well, anyway, I was wondering if you could put your money where your mouth was on the whole protecting-me thing.”
Now a genuine look of concern came over Max’s features. “What is it, Nugget? What happened? Are you okay? Jesus, you’re shaking.” He moved to get up off the couch, but Rob stopped him with a raised hand.
Rob was shaking, though. He grabbed two fistfuls of his jeans to try to steady his hands. “I’m fine. I just . . . If Dylan comes by, I need you to not let him in to see me, okay? He didn’t hurt me, but I don’t want to see him right now.”
Couldn’t face Dylan after everything had happened, not when Rob’d stood him up like the pathetic coward he was, and especially not when maybe being honest with Dylan about who he was, when he’d had the chance, could have prevented this whole fucking mess. If he saw Dylan now, would he correct that error—too little, too late—or would he keep his secret and learn nothing at all from his past mistake? It was a lose-lose situation, and Rob was tired of playing the game.
Even Austin was looking at Rob with an expression of pity now.
“Sure,” Max said gently. “Of course. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Just shaken up,” Rob replied. “Promise. Going to bed now.”
An hour or so later, Rob heard the yelling coming from downstairs. Max’s raised voice. Dylan’s much softer one. And then the door slammed and Dylan was gone and Rob rolled over, pulled the blankets over his head, and went to sleep.
Creating a self-portrait when you didn’t even know who or what you were, now that was a fucking joke.
Rob tore the page from his sketchbook, balled it up, and tossed it into the trash with the others. Even if he had been allowed to work in his own medium, he still wouldn’t have been able to come up with a concept for this piece. He was so confused. So fragmented. So drowned in self-pity and self-hatred.
But then, why bother at all? It wasn’t like he was planning on going to school come Monday anyway. He’d already emailed Doctor Chastity to tell her that he’d come down with another crippling illness. Luckily, she wasn’t enough of a hardass to ask for a doctor’s note, but then, if she had, he’d have just dropped the class entirely. Taken the ugly Withdrawal on his GPA and redone the class once Dylan wasn’t in it.
Pathetic.
He couldn’t summon up the balls to just come out to Dylan already, but he couldn’t break up with the guy, either. Didn’t have it in him to lie about the reason. Hell, didn’t even want to face the questions why. He was a class-A coward.
After all, hadn’t the Bobby thing just proved that Rob was a master at avoiding rather than confronting his issues?
Problems with making friends and influencing people? Don’t bother changing your behavior, just make up a female persona to do it all for you!
Don’t want your boyfriend to dump you, but don’t want to dump him, either? Just drop out of school and never speak to him again!
Hell, right back to that night with Mike. Afraid of saying no to a guy when he’s about to ask a potentially awkward question? Just stop speaking to him, even if it means losing a good friend and flaking on your guild responsibilities!
Oh yeah, Rob had an idea for a self-portrait all right. He flipped to a new page of his sketchbook, grabbed a thick black marker, and wrote the word LOSER in all capital letters, the word so big it took up every inch of space on the page. That about covered it.
He closed his sketchbook in disgust and logged on to his new Kingdom of Elves account. A buff human warrior in head to toe armor that actually covered his vital organs. Collect twenty-seven wolf spleens. Okay. He sure as hell had nothing better to do.
Rob didn’t go to school the following Monday. Or Tuesday, for that matter. Didn’t work on his assignments, including the self-portrait whose deadline was fast approaching. Didn’t leave his room much at all, except to piss or to eat, the latter of which he only did at times he could be reasonably sure he wouldn’t have run-ins with his roommates. Didn’t answer his phone when it rang; Dylan had stopped calling after that first night, but Bernice persisted with her usual tenacity. Didn’t do much of anything but grind, leveling his new human warrior from one to sixty in record time.
Wednesday, however, was a different story. Not on the school side of things, no, because Rob still skipped the day’s classes, but there was no skipping his shift at Rear Entrance Video. After all, if he flunked any of his classes, he had a feeling that the money he was getting from his parents would dry up. In that case, a job would definitely come in handy.
From now on, though, Rob would earn the paychecks, not Bobby. Sure, he still had the whole getup in his bag, but he wouldn’t put it on. Not tonight, not ever again. Time to leave Bobby, and all the trouble she represented, behind. Maybe after going cold turkey for a while, he could finally throw out the Bobby bag once and for all and just do what normal cross-dressers did. Gather a collection of bras and pantyhose and wear them for sexual kicks in the privacy of his own bedroom. Not like he had a boyfriend or friends anymore who could accidentally stumble upon them.
When he got to the store, he dropkicked his bag under the counter and took a seat next to Austin, who was working the dayshift. Thank God. He couldn’t stand the thought of bearing Noah’s or Max’s or Christian’s concern right now.
Austin wouldn’t ask any questions. He was too busy avoiding eye contact and awkwardly clearing his throat to make any expressions of pity.
They worked side by side in (relative) silence as they counted out the till, and Rob was just thinking how maybe he could do this, maybe he could go back to being a normal lonely guy, and then the bell over the door chimed.<
br />
Adam, of course. Because who else could it possibly be? Rob never thought he’d see the day when he wished Charlie VIP would come around more often.
“Hey, man,” Austin greeted.
Rob stared hard at the bills in his hands, like counting by fives had suddenly become the most difficult calculation he’d ever attempted.
“Hey.” Adam’s voice was close. Definitely standing right over him. Rob tossed his head a little, hoping his bangs would fall over his eyes. Maybe Adam wouldn’t recognize him. Ha, fat chance. Who did Rob think the guy was, Dylan? “Where’s that little Asian cutie you guys got working nights?” Adam was a shit actor; there was no denying he knew full well that the “little Asian cutie” was sitting right under his nose.
“Little Asian cutie? I don’t—oh, do you mean Rob?”
Shit, Rob had to look up now. He lifted his chin, staring at Adam like he didn’t recognize him. Adam, unperturbed, just smirked back. “Nah. This was definitely a girl.”
Austin shook his head, totally oblivious to the tension between Adam and Rob. Too busy being thankful that whatever it was, it wasn’t gay. “No chicks work here, man. Not for a long time.”
Bad actor Adam now plastered a look of fake shock on his face. “Really? I could have sworn there was one here when I came in the other night. Actually, she looked a lot like—”
“Must have been a different store,” Rob snapped. Fine. Whatever you want from me, whatever you’re playing at, fine. You win. Just don’t ruin my life any more than you—no, I—already have.
“Must have,” Adam said, playing it off without comment. “Oh, well. Gonna go pick out a DVD now.” With one last sneer, he made for the DVD racks.
Austin closed the till and turned to Rob like everything was totally normal. “Well, that’s it for me. You okay here?”
No! Please don’t leave, please!
But if he asked, then he’d have to reveal why. Not to mention that whatever Adam wanted, he’d be willing to wait for it. If not today, then another day. All Rob was doing was delaying the inevitable. There was no avoiding whatever unstated pact he and Adam had just made. He felt sick to his stomach. And at the same time, he felt . . . calm. Yes. This is what I asked for. This is what I deserve. “Yeah, have a good night, okay?”
Wallflower (Rear Entrance Video, #2) Page 13