Chapter 5 #2
Spending the weekend at Goose Pride had reminded me that a lot of things had changed in the last twenty-five years. My reasons for acting the way I had no longer existed. And I’d had the uncomfortable realization that the only person standing in the way of me being my true self was, well. Me.
But maybe it wasn’t too late to change that.
When I got to the Adventurama, there was a battered metal sign on the lawn out front and an additional wooden sign sticking out next to it that proclaimed Now with Alpacas! I couldn’t help but smile, because that was Bobby all over—always aiming higher.
His truck was sitting in the driveway, so I knew he was home, but it still took me a couple of minutes to gather up the nerve to walk up to the front door and knock.
Barely a second passed before the door swung open. Bobby was still wearing his parade attire. “Wondered how long you were gonna stand there,” he said with a wry smile. “You comin’ in?”
I followed him inside.
The house was nothing fancy from the outside, just a typical mid-century Foursquare with peeling paint on the porch railings and the ugliest fake goose I’d ever seen standing sentinel on the steps.
On the inside, it was even less fancy and fairly cluttered with what looked to be bits and pieces from a hundred different DIY projects.
A toolbox rested on a stack of timber in the entryway, there was a bucket of screws set on a rickety-looking end table, and a massive old window frame without any glass was leaning against the wall.
A tabby cat wound itself through the frame.
“It’s a work in progress,” Bobby said by way of explanation, entirely unashamed. He scooped up the cat. “Ain’t you brave, coming this far in the house?”
Before I could ask what was brave about that, Lucille the goose exploded down the hallway. The cat leapt out of Bobby’s arms, landing halfway up the stairs that led to the second floor, and bolted.
Lucille, having lost one victim, turned her beady gaze on me.
“Now, now,” Bobby said. “Mind your manners.”
He ushered me down the hallway, and Lucille strutted after us. We stopped in the kitchen long enough for Bobby to grab a couple beers from the refrigerator, then push open the door to the back porch.
“Holy shit,” I said as an alpaca skittered off the porch and back down into the yard.
“Yeah,” Bobby said proudly. He cracked open his beer and passed me the other one. “Isn’t it something?”
It… surely was. The Adventurama was basically a series of pens and cages that sprawled throughout the backyard.
And I could only assume that the pens and cages were purely decorative because the animals were roaming free.
I saw a few cats, a three-legged dog, a goat, and a second alpaca.
Who the hell knew what else was out there?
I leaned on the porch rail. “It has to be some sort of code violation to have a petting zoo in your backyard, Bobby.”
“Who writes the local laws?” he asked with a lazy grin. “Or did you forget I’m the mayor of Goose Run?”
I straightened up. “Explain that to me. How the hell did you go from Lassiter and then law school to here?”
“Told you already,” Bobby said. “I just never left. It turned out that Goose Run was pretty much the perfect town for me. And the bits of it that weren’t…” He shrugged. “Well, I changed those, and it turns out that people around town liked what I did to the place.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t always easy, but I’m an ornery bastard and I just never quit.”
I laughed, because it was true, and the old, familiar pain lanced through me. “I saw the signs outside the church today. Not everyone likes what you’ve done.”
He shrugged. “No, not everyone.”
“Does that bother you?”
He gave me an incredulous look. “Granger, you were at the parade today. You saw the festival. Why the fuck would I be bothered by what those assholes think when I’ve already won?”
And that right there, I supposed, was the big question, and it turned out it wasn’t really about Goose Run at all.
“I owe you an apology,” I said, my throat tight. “I know you said you’re not holding a grudge, but I still need to apologize.”
Bobby’s gaze held mine, and he dipped his chin in a silent acknowledgement that he was listening.
My nerves thrummed as I searched for the words.
I was lucky Bobby was willing to give me the time of day, and I wanted to get this right.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was young and stupid, and too chickenshit to take a chance on what you were offering. I couldn’t see past my own fear.
But then, you always were braver than I was. ”
Bobby shrugged. “I dunno about brave. More stubborn, maybe.”
My lips twitched despite myself. “Maybe. But still, there was no excuse for me running out of town like a cat with its tail on fire,” I said.
“I didn’t even bother trying to find you, just packed up my stuff and headed back to Richmond.
Told myself it was because you said you didn’t want to see me again, but the truth is I was relieved you were gone. ”
“Yeah, I got that impression,” he said, and hurt flashed over his features, just like it had twenty-five years ago when I’d pushed him away and said we weren’t anything.
Seeing that expression on his face again brought back the pain of his leaving even after all this time, reminding me that the younger version of me had been a blind fool.
Back then lying about my feelings had seemed like it was my only choice. But now, I was determined to set the record straight.
I took a deep breath. “I was relieved when you left, but not for the reasons you think. Mainly I was glad you were gone because it meant I couldn’t beg you to stay.”
Bobby set his beer down on the porch railing, and his face did something complicated. “You said we weren’t anything.”
His gaze was steady, and it felt like he was looking right into my soul, making me squirm like a worm on a fishing hook. But I was done lying to him—and myself—about this.
“I lied, Bobby, Jesus. I was young and stupid and scared, okay? And I was so worried about the things I thought were important that I gave up the one thing that was. I told myself it was for the best, but I’ve regretted it ever since. You were everything.”
I stepped closer, Bobby’s presence drawing me in like a magnet even now. I swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat, and I finally told him the truth I’d been holding onto for twenty-five years. “I loved you, Bobby, and it scared the hell out of me.”
It was still scary, admitting I had feelings for another man, but the main thing I felt was overwhelming relief.
It was like a weight I hadn’t known I was carrying had been lifted.
I let out a shaky breath and waited for Bobby to say something.
I steeled myself for him to tell me it was too late, that too much water had flowed under that particular bridge, and I wouldn’t have blamed him.
He didn’t, though. His voice was rough when he said, “I loved you too, but I guess you already knew that.”
And then he cupped my face between his palms and kissed the hell out of me.
As soon as his mouth connected with mine, it was like we’d traveled back in time and all those old feelings came roaring back to life—although they hadn’t been lurking too far under the surface while they waited for me to catch up.
The rest of the world faded away, and it was just Bobby and me, the taste and feel of him as familiar as my own name.
I gripped his hips and remembered that some things had changed.
Bobby was a lot softer around the middle than he had been twenty-five years ago.
My fingers sank a little way into plump flesh instead of coming to a stop against muscle.
I couldn’t resist pinching a little of that softness between my thumb and forefinger, and Bobby pulled away.
“Now listen here,” he said. “If you don’t mention my love handles, then I won’t mention that you’ve gone gray.”
“Love handles seems a generous description,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “Fuck you, Granger. You’re still an asshole.”
He kissed me again, and I ruined it by laughing.
I felt almost giddy with relief, with disbelief, with the weight of the past twenty-five years gone so suddenly and so thoroughly that I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t drifted away on the breeze with nothing holding me down anymore.
We might have been older, grayer, and fatter, but I felt younger than I had in years now that we were in each other’s arms again and we were kissing.
Younger than I’d felt even at twenty-five, because I’d been so preoccupied with how to hide what I had with Bobby—and to hide from my own feelings—that I’d never been truly happy.
I’d been such a fucking fool.
“You’ve still got it, I guess,” Bobby said, reaching up to run his fingers through my hair, and that easy familiarity, something that would have made me jump like a scalded cat back in the day, almost broke me as much as the kisses had.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice rasping. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“If I ask you if you wanna take this upstairs, is it gonna be another twenty-five years before I see you again?” His tone was joking, but it didn’t disguise the hurt. And why should it?
“Ask me and see,” I said.
Bobby stared at me for a moment, my heart racing, and then he said, “Wanna come upstairs?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do.”
“Okay, then,” he said. He picked up his beer, drained the rest of it, and set the bottle back down on the rail. “Let’s go then.”
Bobby’s bedroom was neater than the rest of the house but not by much. His comforter was rumpled, there was a shirt tossed on the floor and left there, and a couple of dust bunnies danced in the draft caused by him opening the door. There was also a goose-sized basket by the bed.
“You sleep with Lucille in here?”
“Best alarm clock in the world,” he said, strolling inside the room. He turned to look at me. “You going to stand in the doorway all night?”
“Maybe.”