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I dropped back to the sofa. “Me and Daniel?”
“Yep. He was a mess even before this shit with his mom went down, and I noticed the distinct absence of any mention of one Peter Mandel during his visits. When I asked what you were up to, he’d change the subject.” Bobby narrowed his gaze. “Tell me, kid. What did you do to my Daniel?”
I looked down at my hands in my lap and took a slow breath. “I, uh… I kissed him?”
Bobby laughed. “Finally. But the truth now. There’s no way you turned that boy head-over-ass with just one kiss.”
“It was a long kiss. Areallylong kiss. That ended, you know…as something more than a kiss.” I didn’t look at him, but I heard him sit up higher on his pillows.
“Ha! I knew it. Saw it coming a million miles away.” He chuckled. “So, what’s the problem? Why aren’t we happy about this completely predictable turn of events?”
I shrugged.
“It’s that rascal you were seeing, isn’t it?”
“Kind of. He’s back from Rome, but he’s in Atlanta. With his girlfriend.” I slumped and let my knees fall open, throwing my head back against the sofa. Bobby’s ceiling had spackled stars across it.
“Okay, we’ll come back to that in a minute. Let’s focus on what happened with Daniel. Were you horny, and he was convenient?”
“Yes. No! I mean, I was horny but I wasn’t using him.” No matter what Minty thought, that wasn’t what my feelings for Daniel were about. “I care about him.”
“You’re like a heat-seeking missile for drama, aren’t you?”
I laughed softly but there wasn’t any joy in it.
“What are you thinking about, boy?”
“I’m just wondering… Is it so wrong for Adam to love us both? Me and his girlfriend, I mean. Is it really so bad that he has too much love?”
Bobby pursed his lips. “Well, depends on what you do with that love, doesn’t it? Back when I was younger, I knew a man named Ralph. Handsome, strong, and damn, could he sing. Made my knees weak whenever he crooned, and he loved to sing at all the parties back then. He was married to a woman named Dorothy, and yet he always came to the parties with his boyfriend Wade.”
“Yeah? He was cheating on her?”
“That’s the thing. He wasn’t. Dorothy knew all about Wade. They were good friends even. Shopped together. Vacationed, the three of them. In the end, when Wade got sick…” Bobby trailed off, his eyes going wet and misty. “Well, Dorothy and Ralph were with Wade until the end. Together.”
I stared. “She knew?”
“She loved Wade too, but not like that. From what Ralph told me, he was in love with them both, and slept with them both, and neither was jealous of the other.”
“How does that happen?”
“I don’t know for sure, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it starts with honesty.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t think Leslie would want that.”
“Forget Leslie. Do you?”
I held very still, trying to imagine a world where Leslie knew about me and Adam and didn’t care. How would I feel? What would I want to do?
Bobby shrugged. “Some people don’t want to share. Others do.”
I thought of Robert and Barry’s open relationship and nodded.
Bobby slapped his knee. “So, what are you going to do about this mess?”
“Nothing.”
“That always worked well for me,” he said sarcastically. “Doing nothing got me a lot of good places in life.”
