“I’m worried about him,” I said as I shucked my jacket, then my tee. (This one had the Atari logo against a green grid.) I heeled off my Mexico 66s and dropped my jeans. Then, standing there in nothing but my Bowser boxers, I shivered and started picking through a drawer. “No one’s heard from him.”
After the encounter with Millie and Louis—not to mention Keme running off—we’d limped through another half hour of the town’s festivities before calling it quits. We’d come back to Hemlock House, and we’d each found our own ways of spending the rest of the day. I, for example, had taken a perverse pleasure in slowly deleting each letter of the chapter I’d written that morning.
Sitting on our bed, Bobby was already down to a pair of white boxers, and he was tugging on a sleep shirt. As the fabric passed over his head, he said, “He’ll be okay.”
“I don’t know about that, actually.” My search for pajamas forgotten, I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned against the drawer. “Bobby, you saw his face. He was heartbroken. Scratch that, he was devastated.”
Bobby’s head popped free of the shirt. He finished pulling it on, and then he smoothed his hair. The movement was automatic, and it was such a Bobby movement that I could have drawn it in my sleep. (If I’d had any artistic talent. Which I don’t.) He seemed to consider my statement for a moment. And then he nodded.
“And whereishe?” I asked.
“Do you want to go look for him?” Bobby asked.
“I don’t know. Should we?”
Bobby’s pause was longer this time. “Keme knows where we are. If he wanted to be with us, he’d be here. I think he needs some time alone.”
“But he’s not thinking clearly. He’s hurt. And I know he’s eighteen now, but he’s basically still a kid, and he’s out there, and it’s cold—” I couldn’t say any more. And even though Hemlock House was snug and warm—well, as snug and warm as a Class V haunted mansion could be—I shivered as goose bumps broke out up my arms and across my shoulders.
Bobby stood and came across the room. He wrapped me in a hug. He was warm. He was solid. His breath tickled my neck. As he rubbed my back, I slowly relaxed into his embrace.
“Keme’s going to be okay,” he said again. “You’re right—this is going to be hard for him. But he’ll get over it.”
I shook my head. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to put into words what I was feeling. I knew it was more than a crush that hadn’t worked out. I knew it meant more to Keme than that. But I didn’t know how to explain it, so I settled for that simple, silent shake of my head.
“Everybody goes through their first heartbreak,” Bobby said. One of his hands settled at the small of my back, above the elastic waistband of my boxers. “We all make it to the other side.”
The only thing I could think to say was “He loves her.”
“And he knows she loves him too,” Bobby said. “But not in the same way.”
He was referring to the night of Keme’s eighteenth birthday, when Bobby and I had accidentally witnessed the moment when Keme overheard Millie describe him to her friends using the words:like my little brother. At the time, I’d thought maybe that would put an end—however painful—to Keme’s unrequited feelings. But in the months since, Keme hadn’t changed hisbehavior around Millie, and it was obvious to everyone (or at least to me) that Keme had decided to keep hoping and trying.
Until today.
That half-formed thought floated up again, but since I still couldn’t put it into words, I settled for an unhappy sigh.
“If you want me to go look for him,” Bobby said, and he kissed my cheek, “I will.”
After several long seconds, I shook my head. “If he knew I sent you after him, he’d kill me.”
Bobby pulled me closer. He rubbed one hand up and down my back, then sideways, then up and down again. The fingers of his other hand curled around my waistband.
“I know you’re going to think I’m making this up,” I said. “But I swear one time I saw his eyes turn red.”
Bobby kissed my shoulder.
“Like the Terminator,” I said.
“Dash?”
“Hm?”
“Pay attention,” he said and kissed the spot where my neck joined my shoulder.
The thing about sex with Bobby was that it was just sogood. I mean, I don’t want to go on and on about it. (See above, about my inner thirteen-year-old.) But it was so easy, and everything felt natural. Sometimes, it was playful—Bobby, for all his stoicism and reserve and iron self-control, seemed to find an outlet for all those bottled-up emotions when we were together like this. And sometimes it was slower, sweeter, like drop after drop of honey filling me up. And sometimes it was fast and frantic because a certain deputy had needs and also wanted to be at work on time. (I’m not complaining.)
Tonight, it was slow. Bobby guided me over to the bed, kissing his way up my neck to my jaw, then to my mouth. He eased my glasses off, lowered me onto the mattress, and crawledup next to me, still kissing me, his hand sliding up my belly, following my chest, curving along my arm. Exploring me by touch first. And then his mouth followed. The front of his T-shirt hung down, pulled by gravity, and it was easy to slip my hand up there and find the densely compact muscle. I mean, my God, he had abs. Louis who?
