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Bobby found himself in the bathroom again, talking to himself through the mirror. He was going to boil over with how mad he was at himself. Another day that he had the perfect opportunity to talk to Liam was gone, and all that they talked about was whether french fries should be dipped in milkshakes.
“Milkshakes?!” He groaned at himself when he saw his reflection. “What the hell, dude!
“You should just tell him. Tell him something! Tell him that you’re…something.
“Oh my God, just say it! I’m…
“I don’t like Monyca with a y.
“I don’t like girls.”
He stood up straight and shook his head. “Just tell someone.”
Who would be the first person to tell? He clearly couldn’t tell Liam; for some reason his body wasn’t letting him do anything to advance in that. He wasn’t sure if he could tell Danny and Ziggy, they didn’t really talk about feelings and it could mess up their dynamic. He knew he shouldn’t tell Monyca with a y, even if she did know what was going on. He did not want to tell Elena and have her freak out, same with his mom and Sam. They all tend to go overboard with support and his mom would also want to budge in on everything, Elena was terrible at keeping secrets and would try to act like an activist, and he didn’t even know Sam that well. He didn’t want to put that extra pressure on his relationship with his mom. There weren’t a lot of other people he could tell. He could tell Camilla. She’s a lesbian, she’d be cool with it and maybe give him advice. But she also had a big mouth and he didn’t want her to tell his mom.
But he had to figure this out sooner rather than later. And Camilla was going to pick him up from his tennis match the next day.
#######
They luckily didn’t have to bring Liam home, so it was just Bobby and Camilla alone in her car for the quick drive home. He didn’t want to run out of time to tell her or to just talk, and the aching silence scratched at him as each moment passed. The thought of telling her bursted into his mind before Camilla had the chance to bring up a different topic, and before he knew it, Bobby was saying “I broke up with my girlfriend.”
Camilla’s driving (ten miles over the speed limit) slowed as she tried to balance her attention between Bobby and the road. “Oh, why?” She asked, trying to push the conversation in the direction she thought it was going.
Bobby chose to look at his hands. He shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t think I like her.”
“You don’t think you like her? Are you not positive?”
“No, yeah, I don’t like her.”
They drifted back into to silence, and, before Bobby could stop his mouth from running with the first thought his mind came up with, “I don’t think I like girls,” came out to break through the cold air.
Now it was getting even harder for Camilla to focus on the road. She wanted to squeeze Bobby into the biggest hug, but opted to just squeezing the wheel even tighter than normal. Not that Bobby noticed the proudness seeping out of her, his eyes were fixed on his folded hands in his lap and the only thing playing over in his head was the sound of his own running heart.
She saw that he was drifting off into his own state of anxiety, and, putting on her most supportive voice, all that Camilla said was, “Okay.”
Bobby still sat frozen and Camilla pulled onto a residential street close to their own to pull over—she just couldn’t help herself. She continued, “You know that that’s okay, right?”
She reached out to wrap her arm around his stiff shoulder and grab hold of his still hand. She continued to look at his eyes, despite the fact that he wasn’t entirely in them. “Bobby, it’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling is okay. You don’t have to like girls; it’s not a rule. You can like whoever you want. And you can still be you.”
He finally let out a breath. She shook his shoulders a bit. “You are Bobby Cañero-Reed and you don’t have to like girls. You can still be everything that you are; I won’t think of you any different.”
He looked up at her, his self returning to his own watery eyes, now filled with something she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen in them. “You can’t tell anyone.” His voice was so faint it was almost a whisper. He wasn’t exhausted from the tennis match, his lungs were failing him because they were hugged so tightly by his aching heart.
Camilla cupped the side of his face. “I won’t. I promise.”
They stayed in a comfortable state before Bobby switched out back to mumbling, “Thanks.”
Camilla let go of her hold on him and gave a mocking, “It’s chill,” before continuing on their route to home. She even watched him walk inside, seeing him live his life as a normal teenager as he struggled to get his key to unlock the front door.
#######
It had been a while since he thought about his feelings toward Liam. Well, disregarding the nearly every other day when Camilla would text him to see if there were any new developments or if he had told his mom yet (to which he would always rebuttal with “Have you told your mom yet?”), and the swell of his heart running up to his cheeks every time Liam looked his way, or just when Bobby looked at him, or he heard his voice, or even when someone else just mentioned him. Every day it was getting harder to just act like everything was fine, like he was still the same Bobby Cañero-Reed as before, even though Camilla said he was, because he just wasn’t. He broke up with one of the coolest girls in his grade because he felt stuff with his best friend. Who is a boy. That wasn’t the Bobby he wanted to be. That wasn’t who he wanted his family or his friends to know.
The new Bobby was ripping at him and trying to drag him down into this new life. A life with a boyfriend where they both wear suits and are both “Mr.” and don’t know where to put their hands when they’re dancing. And the old Bobby wanted to play tennis and video games with the boys and have a girlfriend and be normal.
He didn’t even want to talk about it with Camilla. She was too much with wanting him to be completely involved in gay culture and confident with whatever he was feeling, but he didn’t even have a label for himself! Whenever he would talk to himself to sort out his thoughts, he referred to his feelings as “feelings” and “stuff.” He couldn’t bring himself to say any of the normal words anyone would say. His mouth just wouldn’t let him.
He practiced coming out to his mom in the mirror, but the speech fell short at “I think I’m…not a person who likes girls.” He would have to really push everything he was feeling down until he was ready to tell his mom what the new Bobby inside was telling him to say, which would be tricky with how overbearing his mom was. He tried to just stay out of the house, which called for more sweetly agonizing times with Liam, or staying locked in his bedroom when he was home. He just needed the time and space to figure out what was going on and how he was going to deal with it. He didn’t realize, though, that he wasn’t going to be needing that time and space any longer and it was all a waste.
Bobby’s life was about to try to go back to normal the day that Liam sat down at lunch with a wide grin on his face. Bobby greeted him with a smile equally big, but it faded once Liam said, “So Jada and I went to the movies last night and now we’re officially dating!”
Danny and Ziggy immediately lit up, but Bobby’s light was fading. “Dude, that’s awesome!” His ears heard one of them say.
Time was frozen inside of Bobby and he didn’t get clicked back into reality until Liam met his eyes and asked, in the amount of compassion that only he could accomplish, and asked, “Bobby, you good?”
His brain snapped back and he tried to recover, saying, “Oh, yeah, I’m good. That’s great; good for you.” before slipping back into the soul-crushing feeling of disappointment.
He was off for the rest of the day, just sweeping along the floor of the school, dragging a bag of emotions that he was trying not to open. He didn’t even want to acknowledge the bag until he was inside of his bedroom, but he wasn’t going to last. He skipped tennis after school to avoid Liam and wanting quiet time at home by himself before seeing anyone. Sam was supposed to pick him up after practice, but Bobby walked home with his mind blank and body walking towards the edge of break. He would text Sam later that he didn’t need to pick him up, tell Coach the next day that he wasn’t feeling well and that’s why he bailed, he just needed to get home.
Sam was home. Bobby didn’t even realize it at first. He slammed the door shut and groaned loudly on his way to his room. It wasn’t until Sam called out his name that Bobby stopped dead in his tracks.
He was standing in the kitchen, making something, looking confused and Bobby had to come up with an excuse, saying, “Practice was cancelled.”
“Oh, you should’ve called; I still could have picked you up.”
The panic inside of him was enough to send his overflowing emotions back deep down and he needed the conversation to be over so that they could crawl back out. “It’s chill. I liked the walk.”
He didn’t know whether he could go back, and Sam could surely pick up on his stress. He asked, “Is everything alright?”
Bobby chose another lie. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“How was school?”
“It was chill. Nothing exciting.” Now he could go to his room. He quickly turned to be done, but Sam was persistent, asking, “Anything else going on in the life of Bobby?”
“Nope.” Yes.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” No.
Sam knew he was lying. Maybe because he’s a lawyer, maybe because Bobby’s a bad liar, or maybe because parents have a different kind of understanding. He wasn’t necessarily a parent yet, but he was still that figure for Bobby and Elena, and still gave them the support their dad would’ve. He said, “You’ve just seemed really distant lately and your mom and I are worried about you. I just want to make sure everything is okay.”
The world made an amazing mistake by pushing silence into Bobby’s mouth.
“Do you want to talk about anything? You know you can talk to me.”
He had to bring it back down. He wasn’t opening anything up until he was in his room. Alone.
“Don’t you have to get back to work?” Bobby asked.
“No, I actually came home early to start dinner for your mom because she’s stuck at the office for a while.”
That would explain the cooking that Sam had started when Bobby walked in. His mind was all over the place that he didn’t make sense of how clearly Sam was settled in at home for the night with his shirt untucked and sleeves rolled up, jacket on one of the chairs, a dinner getting ready in front of him.
“Is Elena here?” Bobby asked.
“No, she went to Jessi’s house after school.”
Bobby might have chosen the silence. Maybe not whatever part of his brain that was controlling his current scattered choices, but the part that chose the good stuff that happened to him. It didn’t seem good when Sam said, “Come sit down, Bobby,” but it was good. It was going to be good.
Bobby watched as Sam went and sat down on one side of the couch and Bobby went to follow, but he couldn’t sit. The only movement his body could focus on was pushing his beating heart to go faster and harder.
“What’s up?” Sam pressed.
The heart beat was taking over his being. He couldn’t do anything else but listen to his anxiety running in his ears. “Really,” Sam continued. “You can tell me.”
“You can’t tell Elena or my mom or anybody.”
“Okay, I won’t,” He tried to laugh to lighten the mood, but Bobby wasn’t himself and a laugh wouldn’t change that. “What is it?” He tried to bring Bobby over to the couch again, but now he was trying to form words and he could only focus on one thing at once.
“You know Liam?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Well he has a girlfriend.”
“Oh, okay,” Sam sat back, trying to see where this was going. Clearly Bobby had the Cañero-Reed overreacting gene that had caused him to get into a fight at the dance over a failed prank, so it made sense to Sam that he was upset about losing his friend. “Does that make you upset?”
Bobby knew what he wanted to say and ignored Sam’s question. He didn’t need prompting; whenever he had these talks, there were only his own thoughts spilling out of his mouth. So, Bobby continued to say, “I feel like…
“I think I feel stuff with him.”
Now Sam was confused. “What kind of stuff?"
“I…” he sighed and his mouth said, in a quivering slash, “I think I like him,” and it stunned even his own ears.
The silence settled softly. Bobby wasn’t looking at Sam and so he couldn’t see the contemplation on his face. The silence in his ears tricked him into thinking that Sam was mad or disappointed and it wasn’t until Sam was walking over to him and saying, “Bobby,” that he snapped out of the motionless harmony between his mind and body.
He could feel Sam’s arm around his shoulder. Was he crying? He might have been on the inside, but Sam could still see that and he said, “That’s okay.”
“I know it’s okay.” Did he? “I just…
“I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know. I’m just upset right now. Like I know that he doesn’t like me but now I really know.”
“Yeah. It’s a hard thing, bud.” Bobby could feel the shadow of his father inside of the hand that Sam was rubbing on his back. He took the hand back and clapped suddenly, as if he could also feel the absent fatherly longing, and, with a surge of energy, said, “Well, instead of me cutting all of these vegetables for your mom, why don’t you and I go get some milkshakes and fries?”
Bobby was confused. “That’s not really a dinner.”
Sam was already going off to clean up. “Well we can get some dinner later. Any preferences?”
“Shouldn’t we ask mom and Elena?”
“No, man, this is your night!”
Bobby shrugged as if he was still unsure. He didn’t have anything else to do and getting his mind off of things might be nice. Maybe even talk to Sam about the entire situation, or something else, just spend time with him. He didn’t know if he still wanted to lock himself in his room and explode out all of his emotions, but he could always do that later if they were still inside of him. He nodded. “Uh, sure.”