Heteroflexible

“I mean, like …” He lets out half a laugh before he finishes: “Well, you still have feelings for girls, right? Like, you find them attractive, right?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, when I think about them, sure.”

“So I was just wondering if … well …” He blushes. “I feel dumb. To ask it. I just …”

I rub his shoulder with the hand I’ve got around him. “Bobby, let me say a few things. First off, I haven’t identified as bisexual for very long, and I’m still not sure if that’s the right word or not. Also, I just really don’t care.”

“Yes, we established that,” he agrees with another chuckle.

“Second, yes, I still think girls are hot. I wasn’t lyin’ to myself about that. Only about what my feelings for guys really were.”

“Right, ‘cause you thought ‘all guys feel this way’.”

I give him a look. “You make me sound so dumb when you put it that way.”

Bobby lets out a booming laugh that touches the stars and makes the moon itself tremble. “I’m really just turnin’ your words right around and saying them back to you.”

I shrug. “Anyway, guys or girls, it doesn’t matter. I think what you’re really askin’ is, if I like both, can I possibly be satisfied with just you. Right?”

“Right.”

I put a peck on his cheek and his forehead before getting a good, firm look into his eyes. “Does it look like I’m satisfied?”

He’s fighting a blush. “Yeah.”

“Do I seem like a head-over-heels dude who’d go to any length to keep you happy?”

“Yes. Okay, you’ve made your point,” he decides.

“Not yet I haven’t.” Then I push him down flat—as flat as one can be on a slanted roof—and tackle his mouth with mine. Bobby’s response is a deep-throated groan of approval.

We’re so filthy.

Really, our secrecy is about protecting Spruce from us.

And this obscene, kissy-kissy grossness that the once-pair-of-best-buddies-we-were have since devolved to.

And I couldn’t be fucking happier.

The secret is so much fun to keep, too. Especially every time we meet for breakfast in the kitchen with my mama and Jacky-Ann, and we share private, knowing looks across the table.

Especially when my mama asks something like, “Did you catch a lizard in your room last night or somethin’? I heard some loud, strange noises through the walls. And a bunch of thumpin’! I was just certain it was a lizard you’d caught that’d gotten into the house. You used to love catchin’ them lizards. Was it a lizard?”

Bobby and I couldn’t look at each other; we couldn’t keep a straight face otherwise.

“Yeah, mama,” I answer her. “A big ol’ lizard.”

A big lizard down Bobby’s throat.

A big lizard up Bobby’s butt.

We’re sure huntin’ big, scary lizards, alright.

Sometimes Billy and Tanner join us for breakfast or lunch or dinner, and then it’s an even bigger game of keep-the-secret when they ask how our dance rehearsing is coming along. Bobby and I will share one of our knowing looks, then I’ll coyly say something like, “There is a lot of sweating and sore muscles involved,” while Bobby tries not to laugh.

We’re impossible.

But as fun as it is to play mind games with my family, the real special moments are between me and Bobby, and they come when we are all by ourselves in the safety of my room or his—whether it’s on the Strong ranch, or cozy in the bedroom of his house out in Spruce’s east suburbs. The nights are always peaceful, summer breeze playing against the windows and through the branches of the trees outside. And Bobby’s in my arms like always, cuddled against my chest on his bed or mine, two warm bodies, our hearts beating and speaking a language of their own to each other, and the enraptured pair of us whisper sweet things into the darkness of whoever’s bedroom.

Things like: “Jimmy, I love you.”

And I’ll say: “Bobby, you’re so dang good to me.”

And he’ll go: “Jimmy, I’m so glad you took a shower, ‘cause after all our dance rehearsing, you stank so bad.”

Then I’ll kick him for that.

He’ll shove me back.

Then our squirming bodies become aroused from the simple movement, his butt against my crotch, or my butt against his, and our tightly spooning quarters becomes a problem.

A problem resolved by removing our shirts.

And our pants.

And underwear.

One thing leads to another—and dot, dot, dot.

We’re not just lust-filled horny animals all the time, despite how I might be making it seem. He keeps me absolutely calm when I would normally be stressed out over choreographing a dance for this big Spruce Ball thing. In fact, he makes it so fucking fun that I’m looking forward to showing off our skills to the whole town.

And whenever he finishes a long shift at that movie theater—where he seems to be dealing with more stress than he tells me about, from the look of it, but I don’t press him—I get him back into a relaxed state by taking him out for dinner at some local place, blowing off steam at the arcade with a few games, or just whisking him off somewhere to gaze at the sunset and chat about nothing.