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We lie down side-by-side on top of the sheets, then stare up at the ceiling, our shoulders pressed together. After the mess we made, we’re down to our underwear, our clothes in a balled-up tangle on the floor.
In the cool, still silence of his room, the reality seems to wash over us both at once. We’ve said maybe ten words since we got up off the bed, cleaned up in the bathroom, and changed the sheets.
The room fills with our individual breaths.
I’m counting each and every one of them as they draw into our heavy lungs, then spill out gently from our nostrils. Thirty-six for Jimmy. Forty-one for me.
Forty-two. Thirty-seven.
Forty-three. Thirty-eight.
Forty-four …
“What does this mean now?” I ask quietly.
Jimmy tilts his head slightly, leaning it against mine. “I think we’re gonna have to figure it out as we go along, huh?”
“Yeah.”
The silence swells between us again.
Forty-eight. Thirty-nine.
Forty-nine. Forty.
Fifty.
“I really like you, Jimmy,” I tell him.
“I like you, too, Bobby. That ain’t nothin new.”
“I know, but—”
“I know,” he says, his tone more sincere.
A moment of significance passes.
“I don’t want this to … to change things between us,” I tell him in that moment. “I don’t want—”
“Neither do I,” Jimmy blurts at once, as if he was thinking the same things and is desperate to agree with me. “What we’ve got between us? That’s too fuckin’ precious. It’s the most important thing to me, you and I.”
“Me too.”
“I love you, Bobby.” He reaches over to give me a light slap and a bro-ish squeeze on my arm. His hand stays there, hooked on my arm, not wanting to let go of me. “You and I, we’re gonna be alright, no matter what. I’ve got you.”
I’ve got you.
I can’t help but smile, exploding inside at the sound of those words, said in his voice. “I’ve got you, too, Jimmy Strong.”
17
JIMMY
We were too spent to even take showers.
We fell asleep just like that: in our underwear, lazy and tired, full of dreams in our eyes. Thank God we shut and locked my door before drifting off, because my parents came home from their thing at around one in the morning. I woke to the sound of the front door slamming shut (Bobby stayed completely asleep, softly snoring in my ear) and then the loud and clacking footsteps of my mama’s heels as she checked things downstairs, then eventually the heavy-footed sound of my papa as he came up the stairs. He likely observed that my door was shut before slowly padding back downstairs to join my mama in their bedroom, the door shutting with a distant thump. All fell silent again, and I closed my eyes.
When the morning light is pouring obnoxiously over my face (I sometimes hate having a bedroom that faces east), I open my eyes to find Bobby turned away with his smooth back cuddled against me. We must’ve gotten warm during the night and separated, because I’m hugging myself.
I rectify that by facing him and bringing an arm around him.
Bobby shifts slightly, but stays asleep while I spoon him. I tuck him into me, nestle my face in his neck, and close my eyes, wondering if I can catch another hour or so of sleep. There’s no telling how little of it we got last night.
But I’m just too damned restless to sleep anymore.
In my restlessness, thoughts of last night flood right back into me. I feel his soft and careful lips on mine, our fingertips all over each other’s bodies, that thing he was doing with my nipple …
And his mouth on my dick.
Who am I …?
My eyes wander across the room and land on my half-open closet door, thinking suddenly of Camille when she was here and we were dumping out all that memorabilia from back in the day. The way she looked at me that night, it was like she figured out a secret about me—something I didn’t even know. A few years spent in Europe, and suddenly she’s got an up on me.
How could she possibly tell?
Is it how I treat Bobby? Is it what I say when I talk about him, the words I use, the expression on my face? What is it about me that gives it away?
Has anyone else suspected? My parents? My brother? Trey, or Billy, or any other gay dude in town who’s given me and my friendship with Bobby a second or third thought?
Not that it particularly matters, I guess.
Especially when I’m not even sure what it all means.
Am I really bi? I haven’t wanted to stick it in any dudes’ butts I’ve ever known, Bobby included. Though I do like how it feels to grab a nice handful of Bobby’s ass, but is that the same?
I don’t suddenly want to suck any dicks, as far as I can tell.
But the idea of sucking Bobby’s isn’t repulsive at all. I feel like I’d get a crazy hot thrill from watching his eyes roll into the back of his head, assuming I’m any good.
