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A lump rose in my throat. I hated feeling this way about Adam. How long would it be until it didn’t hurt at all anymore? I didn’twanthim, but the pain lingered. It made no sense. Why couldn’t he and the grief both be gone for good?
Bobby lifted a hand that was stippled with bruises from needles and pointed a skinny finger between me and Daniel. “You’re jumping mighty fast into a new frying pan now. You like getting burned.”
“Bobby…” I sighed.
“Just friends,” Daniel repeated.
“Sure, and I’m just a little down-and-out.” Bobby rolled his eyes. “I’m happy you two made up, but please throw caution to the wind and screw already. I haven’t got forever to see you kids paired off and happy. Give an old man his dying wish, all right?”
My cheeks burned, but when I looked at Daniel, he just smiled at me and shrugged.
“Okay, Bobby. We’ll see what we can do,” he said.
I nodded. “Anything for you.”
Bobby groaned and shifted on the bed. “Guess what? I missed Marlena telling Roman she’s alive,” he said. “They had me knocked out when I first got here, and I damn well missed it.”
My stomach dropped in secondhand disappointment.Days of Our Liveswas Bobby’s favorite soap, and he’d waited all summer for that big reveal.
“Minty’s mom might have recorded a copy,” Daniel said. “She’s watchedDaysfor as long as Minty’s been alive, I think. I’ll ask her next time I see her, okay?”
“I won’t count on it. That’d be a piece of luck, and I don’t have a lot of those left to spend.” Bobby smiled and let his head rest back against the bed. “When I was your age, oh my, I spent my luck every hour it seemed. So many beautiful young men. So little time.” His lips twisted and he sighed. “It all went by too fast.”
“Who was your first love?” I asked, sitting down on the chair next to his bed with my back to the windows. Daniel pulled up a chair on the other side, the sunshine pouring in to light up his dark golden hair.
“Oh, a big strapping boy named Tipton Fisher. We called him Tippy.” Bobby sighed, remembering. “He used to take me out hunting for squirrels when we were kids.” He wrinkled his nose. “I hated how squirrel meat tasted, greasy and like pine trees smell, but I loved watching him hunt. I didn’t even mind watching him clean the animals. He was so respectful the way he did it, like he valued the life he’d taken, even the varmints.”
“I didn’t even know you could eat squirrel,” Daniel said. “I guess I never thought about it.”
“Oh, most folks don’t these days. His family was poor. They needed the meat.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Blond, blue eyes. Pimply skin.” Bobby laughed, again, a little clearer this time. “I didn’t care. His ass was like an apple, and I stared at it so long I just knew he’d catch me one day. He never did.”
“So, he was your first crush?”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s a better name for what he was. A crush. He never even looked at me twice. Got a girl pregnant at sixteen and settled into a life of poverty like all his family before him. I bet he’s got four or five kids by now. And maybe a second wife. And a kid or two with her.”
The room was quiet as we all thought about Tippy Fisher and second or third wives.
“Do you have more stories for me, Peter? Something juicy?” Bobby asked.
I started to tell him no, but then remembered the envelope my mother had given me with information about my uncle.
“I’m not sure it’s juicy, but I’ll tell you about it anyway.” I told him about my uncle first, leaving out the worst details of his murder, but giving enough information that Bobby wouldn’t be confused about why my mother didn’t talk about him or want to show me the contents herself.
“So you haven’t read all the letters yet? Or his journal?” Bobby said. “What’s the point of telling me all this if you don’t even know what the men felt for each other or how it ended? Ah, hell, give the letters to me, and I’ll let you know if there’s anything important in them.”
I laughed. “I figure I should be the one to read them first, if anyone does at all. That only seems right.”
“Since giving up his life of deceit, this boy’s bent on doing what’s right, isn’t he?” Bobby asked Daniel.
Daniel had walked over to the windows as I’d talked, adjusting the blinds and gazing out at the water. He turned now, putting his hands on my shoulders and squeezing. “He’s figuring it out. I’m proud of him.”
“Well, then, isn’t that a pretty picture?” Bobby smiled. “If I die tomorrow, I’m happy since I saw you both here together.”
“Don’t talk like that, asshole,” Daniel scolded. “You almost died last week!”
