Work Text:
Bob doesn't pretend to be drunk the first time he kisses a boy. Or is kissed by a boy. There's a difference, he knows that. Thirteen year old Bob is well aware of the difference between the two -- but it was a good kiss, so he doesn't mind. He's surprised, but not unhappy. He'd definitely wanted to get kissed. He's not an initiator. Silent please put your mouth on my mouth vibes are more his thing.
It's his first kiss, and he thinks only once that he's supposed to kiss a girl first, but that thought seems fruitless, because this is a good kiss, and this guy is cute. They're both dressed for the dance, but there's a group of guys hanging out in the baseball field behind the high school, getting a game of kickball going. Someone's got a flask, but Bob keeps to himself. Keeps to this guy. He doesn't know his name anymore, but if he thinks hard, it was something like Greg, or Craig, or something like that.
It doesn't matter. It's his first kiss, and it's good. It shapes him, in a lot of ways. Good ways.
Linda thinks it's a beautiful story. The first time she hears it, she makes this high-pitched wobbling noise, and Bob thinks maybe she's going to pass out -- but he's learning fast that this is just what she does.
"You were a baby, it's so sweet. You didn't talk to him again?"
"I don't really remember seeing him after that. Didn't really ever think about it."
"Aw, Bobby. That's adorable! C'mere--" She pulls him in and Bob thinks she's going to kiss him, straddle him, something -- but she tucks his head against her chest and combs her fingers through his hair. It's better, in a weird way. He falls asleep like this, wakes up like this, and realizes right then that he's ecstatic that he gets to wake up like this forever. With her. The woman who heard his story, one of his favorite, secret stories, and held him.
He's so lucky she said yes. She'll never understand how lucky he feels.
Or maybe she already does. That's kind of the point of Linda, he realizes -- that she understands before you tell her, exactly what you need, exactly what you feel. Coffee in your hand before you know you're cold. A coat before you check the weather. A kiss before you feel exhausted and lonely.
For a while, Bob can't think of anything more important than Linda. He wakes up next to Linda, he works with Linda -- everything about Linda is important and present and Bob can't think of anything in this world he'll love as deeply as this.
It's a funny thing, meeting the person who changes that. Bob holds Tina in his arms, which feel suddenly too large for her, like his hands have swollen up and could crush her and he wants to hand her back to the nurse as politely as he can, just say no, no thank you. But Linda is falling asleep and the nurse is on her way out and Bob is standing in this room with a tiny person in his arms, a shock of dark hair on her head -- too much, he thinks, for the smallness of the rest of her.
"Uh. Hi."
She's an infant. She doesn't answer.
"I'm new at this. I wasn't expecting this, actually. Not so soon. I mean, I guess no one, like, expects this. Oh boy." She's still an infant, two minutes after babbling at her, and so she still has nothing to say. "I love you, though. I don't want you to think this means no one wanted this. Because we did. We wanted you. We still do. We love you. So." The nurse comes back in and rescues Bob from himself.
"Louise, do not throw that."
"Throw!"
"No, Louise! Do not throw that!"
"Throw!" Gene joins in now, and even Tina, who is five and speaking in complete sentences, starts chanting.
Louise throws the glob of spaghetti at him and Bob hates spaghetti, he always has, and now it's in his hair and probably up his nose and Christ having kids is hard, it's so hard and Linda is out of town visiting her mother in the hospital and Bob doesn't know why he made pasta because he hates pasta and now his children are throwing it at him and he's going to lose it he's going to he's going to --
"Sorry."
Louise's voice is tiny and meaningful and she lets the spaghetti fall to the floor with a plop and Gene and Tina do the same. And suddenly everyone is chanting sorry sorry sorry and Bob thinks this might be a good time for him to cry, but maybe that time is later, when the kids are in bed or something and he can do it peacefully and think about how this was not what he had expected when he moved away from home -- to find another one so soon.
When Linda comes home the next day, she's surprised to find the apartment still standing, let alone clean. Bob and the kids are half-asleep on the sofa, watching cartoons and struggling to stay awake. He doesn't really remember going to bed, but he remembers the way she presses her lips to the back of his neck, just before he finally goes to sleep, and says: "I missed you guys."
"Dad, can I have this?" Tina brandishes a blue book in his face, the red sticker shouting at him that it's been marked down to seventy-three cents. The corner is a little bent, the cover a little scratched. Bob's on the floor at Goodwill, trying to pull out the dinosaur toy from under a display that Gene dropped and really really wants while Linda looks for school clothes for the kids.
"Uh. Yeah. That's fine. What is it?"
"It's a diary. I'm going to keep a diary. Miss Porter says it's important that we catalogue our feelings--"
"Oh God. Okay, yeah you can have it. Put it in the basket." Tina throws the book into the basket and turns to find her mother.
Later, Linda is sifting through the bags and handing everything out -- new work pants for Bob; a sweater and two pairs of shoes for Gene; pink bunny ears for Louise, at her own insistance, and a few new dresses; heels for Linda she'll never wear; and the diary and two skirts for Tina. All in all a pretty good haul for sixty some odd dollars. Bob watches Tina run off with her blue notebook, feeling weird about it.
"She's very emotional, Bob. She needs to channel that. You be glad she isn't bottling it up. Like some people."
"Hey, I don't bottle it up. I'm brooding. There's a difference. I think."
"Oh, Bobby."
"Today's my birthday?"
"Yes, Bob."
Bob isn't going to cry because it's Louise's first day of kindergarten. That would be ridiculous. That would be the most ridiculous thing ever, probably of all time. No, he's definitely not alone in the restaurant all morning, thinking about how Louise used to stand on the step-stool and draw pictures on the Burger of the Day board, or how she'd set up her tiny toys right by the grill, and sometimes melt them.
He's not missing her tiny little cackle or the way she'd latch onto his leg and he'd walk around the back like that, his kid attacked to him like a damn koala. It wasn't that cute.
"You can miss her, you know."
"I'm a grown man, Linda. I can make it a few days without my kids in here."
"Alright. You be a big dumb baby about it. That's fine."
She heads out to take an order, and Bob stares at the grill -- he's going to be a doing a lot of that, he thinks. Sometimes he'll hear a noise and think it's Gene, or he swears he sees Louise and her hat out of the corner of his eye. He keeps it to himself.
And if he goes all out for dinner, cooks their favorites and insists they tell him everything about their day -- no one has to know it's because of this small, little empty feeling he gets whenever he watches them get ready for school, head out the door.
Thank God, is all he can think, for Linda.