Bobby Green

by Amy Lane

  “So you’ll be….”

  “Going to shows,” Reg crowed, hopping on both feet while Bobby dug out the old planters in the front lawn. Bobby handed him a spare shovel so he’d have something to do.

  “Like movies?” Because Bobby had already seen a lot of porn—more than he’d ever dreamed of, as a matter of fact. He really didn’t want to watch his friends fuck anymore.

  “No, like, say there’s a celebrity night at Gatsby’s Nick—that dance place you took me to.”

  Bobby smiled. That had been a good night, Reg bouncing around like a cork in the wake of the music. They’d touched then, in public, and the sky hadn’t fallen over their heads.

  “Okay, so you’d be the celebrity?”

  Reg wrinkled his nose. “No. You would, or Lance, or any of the new guys. And we’d bring posters and shit, and the guys would sign them and give away DVD collections. So apparently the front desk gets, like, calls asking for guys to come out, and usually it’s been Kelsey calling ‘Hey, any goober wanna do a thing?’ around the office, first come first serve. But they’re gonna give me my own phone line in the corner of Dex’s office, and I’m going to book events and go there with the guys and make sure everyone treats ’em right and, you know. I mean, if the guys wanna sell ass that night, that’s up to them, but if someone wants to buy and they’re just there to sign? I mean, we’re all built, but I get to be in charge of saying ‘don’t touch that.’ And they want to advertise online, so I get to surf websites and see who advertises porn and how much it costs and shit. I mean, John’s gonna teach me, and so is Dex, and mostly I’ll just pick up the slack for them, but….” He bit his lip, and for the first time since V had come home the month before, Bobby felt something besides soul-sucking anxiety from him.

  “It’s new,” Bobby said, smiling with encouragement. “It’s new, and you’re… you’re free. You don’t have to do scenes anymore.”

  The smile that washed over Reg’s face, the relief that washed over his body—oh God, it let Bobby breathe again.

  “I was having a really hard time getting it up,” Reg confessed quietly, like this was shameful. “Bobby, I’m sorry—the only guy I wanna bone is you.”

  Bobby laughed, setting down his shovel and walking in to hug him, public or not. Reg dropped his shovel too, and for a moment, the two of them stood in the hot May sunshine, sweaty and happy, holding each other like lovers, like the whole world could see.

  There was a noise at the front door, and V stuck her head out just as the two of them flew apart, grabbing their shovels and standing up to work some more.

  But inside, Bobby was rejoicing, hoping, praying.

  Something had happened to Reg that he hadn’t expected—something good. Something he’d earned. He was growing.

  Veronica asked nightly when she could go back to the other hospital, the one with her boyfriend in it, until Reg had started to ask if they could bring her in to visit. So far the answer had been no—Kevin hadn’t been doing so well since V left—but that knowledge, that the worst things that could happen—V being in the hospital, Reg being out of porn—could also be the good things that could happen, was starting to build inside him.

  Bobby started to wonder what it would be like to move all his stuff into this house, to rip out the cabinets, replace the kitchen floor.

  He liked living in the apartment with his mom fine—in a way, it was like living in Dogpatch, except he and his mom talked openly now, even when she was trying to talk him out of Johnnies. She didn’t yell at him, she didn’t suspect him of things—they just talked.

  But he didn’t feel like it was home.

  Reg’s house felt like home now, but it was one he wasn’t welcome in. They all knew that.

  V stood on the porch now, practically vibrating. “It’s time for my pills!”

  “No, it’s not,” Bobby said calmly. He pulled out his phone. “See? Pills in an hour.”

  “It’s wrong,” she snarled. “I feel like shit. Get your lazy ass in here and make my lunch!”

  Bobby and Reg met eyes, and he could tell the good feeling brought on by Reg’s sudden change in fortune had just dissipated like cloud vapor in the ninety-degree heat.

  “V, that’s not nice,” Reg said, trying to be conciliatory.

  “Fuck you both,” she sneered. “Faggots.”

  And she turned into the house and slammed the door.

  “Oh fuck,” Bobby muttered.

  “It’s gotta be this last week,” Reg said, both of them analyzing every exchange with her. Yeah. The last week, their quiet evenings had turned into the news station blaring again. This was the first time she’d been overtly hostile, but her body language had become more aggressive.

  When she’d first come back, she’d smiled sometimes, said please and thank you. But she didn’t now.

  Bobby took a deep breath. “I’m going to go put the shovels in the back of my truck,” he said thoughtfully. “I think you and I need to spend the rest of the day cleaning the house.”

  Because they needed to find her stash of pills, and count them, and make sure she got what she needed today.

  Because they both knew where this was heading if they didn’t.

  THEY HUNTED.

  They searched her room, her closet, under her bed. Bobby felt like a total asshole when he opened her box of feminine protection—but then he found the little repository of pills. He thanked his lucky stars it was in the box and not with the used product in the trash.

  “Nine doses,” he counted grimly. “Reg, call the hospital and tell them she’s missed nine doses.” He glared at V, who was sitting unrepentantly at the table and chewing her dose for the day without water. The pills in the box had been spat out into the glass—and then fished out after she finished the water.

  “That’s just what I saved,” she snarled.

  “Why do you save them?” Bobby asked, curious. “I mean, if you flushed them, we wouldn’t have any evidence at all.”

  Her eyes flickered. “Well, last time it was so Reg’d forget the doctor’s appointment and wouldn’t figure out I wasn’t taking them.”

  Bobby had figured that out in the hospital. “But now?”

  She picked a cuticle. “’Cause I do okay without ’em. But if I stop doing okay, I want them there to take.”

  Bobby stared at her and tried to process that. “You think this is doing okay?” he asked, making sure. “You’re not nice without your medication, V. You scream shit at your brother. You’re mean to people. You deliberately hurt their feelings. He can’t sleep when you don’t take your medication—he’s afraid you’re going to hurt him. You understand that, right?”

  “He keeps me trapped here,” she said, eyes bright. “Like a prisoner.”

  “He takes you shopping, out to eat,” Bobby said, at a loss. “But he’s worried—”

  “Worry worry worry,” she snapped. “I’m not a little kid.”

  “No!” Bobby snapped back, done. For a brief shining moment, he’d seen the kind of life he and Reg could have. “You’re a mentally ill adult, and you’re abusing your little brother, just like you abused him when you made him sign your papers!”

  That seemed to take her back. “But… but I did that for him,” she said, suddenly in tears. “He was sixteen! They would have put him in foster care. I’m the one who kept him safe!”

  “Well, now I have to keep him safe from you,” Bobby cried. “And you’re not helping me one goddamned bit!”

  “Well, you people should let me do what I want to do,” she replied, starting to rock back and forth. “Just let me do what I want to do. Stop thinking about the past. Just let me do what I want. I’m not a little kid. I’m not stupid. Just let me go.”

  Bobby looked at her, feeling helpless, wondering if Reg could get out the cuffs right now. Reg came back from the bedroom, phone still in hand, and sighed.

  “What?” Bobby asked.

  “Two things. One, I reached out to Gatsby’s Nick, and that was Dex.
I did it—they want us to show up. I booked my first gig.”

  “Seriously? Oh wow! Go Reg!”

  “Yeah—and he took me off the other schedule.”

  Bobby gaped at him, so happy in his heart he could burst.

  “What’s the other?” he asked, remembering that Reg had been in there to talk to V’s doctor.

  Reg gave a little chin-nod, and Bobby started toward him before V interrupted.

  “You two, always plotting. You and your filthy little secrets—what’s he even doing here, Reggie? Why’s he making me take these fucking pills? I was good to you when you were a baby. Why are you trying to keep me drugged!”

  “Fine!” Reg burst out. “Doctor says you can either take your pills and be good, or you can go back to the first place. Not the good place with Kevin—we don’t get that place anyway, not when I can take care of you. No—you go back off your meds now, you gotta go all the way back down the ladder, to the place that stinks like vomit and piss and cigarettes and we don’t even get to talk to you without an enforcer. That’s what I was gonna tell Bobby. So it’s on you, Veronica. You can take your meds, behave, and let us try to get you in touch with your boyfriend, or you can be a god-awful bitch and end up there.” His voice broke a little. “That’s what we got, V. That’s where we are. I know you don’t like the pills, and I know you don’t like your life. But I don’t got nothing else. I’m trying—I’m trying to make a better life for all of us, but it’s been damned hard when every breath I take is filled with whether or not you’re gonna fuckin’ kill me in my fuckin’ sleep!”

  Veronica caught her breath like he’d slapped her and triple swallowed in rapid succession.

  She had been, Bobby realized sickly, keeping the pills lodged somewhere so she could spit them out later.

  “You hate me,” she sobbed, throwing herself away from the table. “Everyone’s fucking against me. I hate you all!”

  Bobby met Reg’s bleak gaze.

  “I’ll go,” Reg said softly. “I know where the handcuffs are.”

  A WEEK. A hard one.

  Bobby had a scene in the middle of it—but he didn’t want to leave Reg alone. He stayed the night, reading on the couch until six in the morning so Reg could sleep, and then went to wait tables before going home to crash at his mom’s. Reg got up, took care of V, went in to Johnnies, and came back to give her medication during lunch. Bobby got there, and they were a team for dinner. They were both cranky and tired—and hungry for each other’s touch but afraid to set V off.

  The night after Bobby’s scene, Bobby stayed up to read until around midnight. Then he set the book down and crept into Reg’s room. He called softly first so he didn’t startle Reg, then came to sit on the side of the bed.

  “What?” Reg mumbled groggily.

  Bobby put his hand on the back of his neck, keeping him still, and then swept his palm down Reg’s bare arm, taking in the toughness of the muscle, the smoothness of the skin on his shoulder.

  “Just want to touch you,” Bobby whispered. “Remember, that’s how this all started? With touch?”

  Reg hmmed in his throat. “I wanted to take you,” he confessed, voice strained. “I get so… so mad when you have a scene. And I hate that feeling, but I’d hate it worse if I didn’t have it.”

  Bobby nudged him to his back and kept stroking, from his throat, down over his chest, over his abs. “I’m sorry,” he said, genuine regret filling him. “Johnnies… it worked for me. It worked for me when we first got together. But if it’s not working for you—”

  Reg shook his head, and Bobby could see his shy smile in the dark. “Maybe a little while longer. Maybe until we know this thing I’m doing works.” He ducked his chin. “I really want to promo an event with you in it.”

  Bobby laughed, and Reg covered his eyes. “It’s dumb! I know it’s dumb! But… but you are so….” He pulled his hand away from his eyes and cupped Bobby’s cheek. “So beautiful,” he said, biting his lip again. “So hot. And I love that I’m not the only one who sees that. I love that the world sees that. I… I know that you bring home something that only I get. And for now, that’s enough. When it stops being enough—”

  “You’ll tell me, right?” Bobby asked anxiously. God help him, he’d been the invisible kid from Dogpatch for so long. Being Bobby on Johnnies, having the whole world look at him, being beautiful, being sexy, fucking like a god—it felt powerful.

  He felt powerful.

  It had taken him a while to figure out why—why he loved his one scene every three weeks or so. Why he didn’t want to actually be with anyone but Reg, but why he wanted to fuck guys as long as the camera was rolling.

  But now that he knew, he’d like to keep it.

  Not at the cost of Reg, though.

  He’d seen enough shitty human connections, even at nineteen, that he knew to treasure the ones that were wonderful.

  “I’ll tell you,” Reg said softly. “I’ll tell you when it gets too hard.” He rubbed his thumb across Bobby’s lips—a tender, grown-up gesture from a man who’d tried hard to find his inner adult this last year. “I’ll tell you when it’s getting in the way.”

  Bobby smiled and lowered his head for a kiss. Reg responded, and the kiss kept going. Not urgent. Not fuck me now. Just a gentle build, their mouths in the night, their hands on each other’s skin. Bobby pressed him against the bed, wanting more—not more sex, but more kissing, more touching, more them.

  Eventually their clothes came off, and their final coming together was in each other’s fists, but that was secondary. They never stopped kissing, never stopped touching—

  Never stopped loving, with all they had learned.

  Bobby held Reg for a long time after Reg fell asleep and before he got up and dressed, going to sit watch in the next room, because he just… just didn’t trust the well-being of the man in his arms to the sister who wasn’t able to care for him the way she probably wanted to.

  They had learned a lot since October—both about each other and about themselves.

  Would it be enough?

  Please God—let it be enough.

  AT THE end of the week, they asked Skylar and Rick to come over and sit with V while Reg went and manned his first show—but they were under strict instructions to act like they were in the closet.

  Skylar had rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, just like the rest of our lives in front of my parents. Awesome.”

  “Really?” Bobby grimaced. “You’re going to keep visiting and tell them you’re friends?”

  Skylar shrugged. “Well, they didn’t take ‘boyfriends’ too well, right? And seriously. How often do I see them? Once a year? I mean, not everybody can be Mrs. Bobby’s Mom.”

  “Vern,” Rick said maliciously. “Vern’s mom.”

  “And what is your real name?” Bobby asked, showing all his teeth. “Because my mom is starting to call me Bobby ’cause I like it better.”

  “Yeah,” Rick returned, needling. “But doesn’t that make you Bob Roberts?”

  Skylar chortled. “Dude! Burn!”

  Bobby let out a mock growl. “Skylar, what’s his real name?”

  “Gaylord,” Skylar said promptly.

  Bobby’s whole body went transcendent with joy. “Really?”

  “It is not!” Rick protested. “It’s Derrick.”

  “Hunh.” Bobby wrinkled his nose.

  “Yeah, I know,” Skylar agreed. “It’s the epitome of anticlimax. So, no holding hands or having sex in the living room. Anything else?”

  They were standing in the newly seeded front yard, under the shade of the single tree on the side, and Reg and Bobby looked at each other. “You need to give her meds,” Bobby said. “You remember where. You’ve done this before, right?”

  Skylar keened. “Really? That again?”

  “Well, she’ll pretend to take them—but you need to make sure she really does.”

  Rick grunted. “Aces.”

  “Sorry, guys,” Reg said, looking way more
embarrassed than he had in the fall. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

  “No—it’s okay,” Skylar said, and Rick wasn’t far behind. But as the two of them, dressed in their best jeans and athletic-fit Johnnies shirts, got into the truck, Bobby’s heart sank a little further.

  It was a lot to ask.

  Anybody.

  BOBBY WENT with Reg for moral support and to make sure Lance and the other headliners had their posters and water and someone to escort them to the back if they needed a break.

  He didn’t expect to be popular himself—nor for Reg to provide him with promotional posters and a corner along the back wall where the signing was happening as sort of a surprise.

  “Sign them,” Reg said with grin, handing him a Sharpie. “You’re hot, they connect with you. Go!”

  So Bobby took his own turn, saying things like, “You like the scenes? That’s awesome. It’s great of you to watch!” And it didn’t matter who was asking him to sign—men, women, old, young, waxed and young or furry, paunched, and grizzled. He was just so happy he’d done something they liked, meeting them felt like an incredible honor.

  Finally, though, Reg called an end to the event but promised the guys would be out on the floor for a good half hour to dance. He grabbed Bobby’s hand then and hauled him to a quiet corner, and even though the music was loud and rocking, Bobby pulled him close and started to drift in small circles. They were both hot and sweaty, but it didn’t matter. They were flushed with excitement, thrilled to be there, happy with the triumph of what Reg had accomplished.

  He’d organized the gig, the crowd had loved it, the guys felt appreciated—and the manager of Nick himself had come out and thanked Johnnies for showing up. He’d even asked them if they could make it a monthly thing, now that there was someone in charge of promotion.

  It was a win—and Bobby was so proud of Reg, he couldn’t stand it.

  In spite of the crowd and the excitement, he lowered his head and took Reg’s mouth, letting his pride fill them.