“I’m not stupid.”

“Good thing I brought it.” He chuckled again, giving Ronny the shirt to hang on the chair. “You’re taking charge. Good boy.”

They were quiet together for a second, faces side by side, touching.

“I’ll stop saying that thing. You know. The one I’m not supposed to say.”

“Talk to me a little bit first. I like it when you answer shit, you’re so slick. Why do you think I’m not going to be around?”

At the moment Ronny felt no slickness in himself, not in thought or in speech; his heart was pounding again. He was speaking in a rush. “I don’t know why you’re even doing this with me. Except you’re such a nasty son of a bitch, you don’t care who sucks your cock.”

“Hey, fucker.”

“So I think you can find a woman and be with her just as well. You always have.”

“Why ain’t I doing that right now?”

“Because you have such miserable taste in women.”

“You shit.”

Ben wrestled him, rough, even play-punched him a couple of times, all contained so as not to create much racket in the room. They got into it and kept it up until Ronny was breathing hard, pinned in the corner of the room, between the bed and wall.

“You done?” Ben asked.

“Me?”

“Yes. You going to keep still now or do I need to give you some more?”

“I almost had you there.”

“Uh, yeah. Dream on.”

“I’m done.”

“Want to know what I think?”

Ronny started to straighten out his shirt and Ben opened it for him. Unbuttoned each button, fingers large, concentrating, as if it were a difficult task. Ronny said, “Sure.”

“I think what you think is full of shit.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re right what you say about me, mostly, you got that part. But you’re crazy if you think I can feel like I do this last few days and just walk away.” He was serious, staring out the window toward something in the sky. “Hell, last few weeks, really. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with me. But I know I ain’t going anywhere.”

It was not the expected thing, had not been; Ben should have been angry, even the first time Ronny touched his shoulder, should have shoved him away, should have treated him as if he were a freak—he felt a freak—but Ben had yielded. There wasn’t anything to say, though Ronny felt warm enough and happy enough at the words and wanted to believe them.

“I never meant you’d just leave me, Ben. But there might not be a choice.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“What if you’re all of a sudden a starting football player for Carolina, you think we’ll be able to get away with this?”

The words had finally taken a shape that hit Ben without his having to think about them, words he could see, and he knew what Ronny meant. He pulled Ronny closer.

He turned over on top of Ronny and closed his eyes. “What the hell. Every good thing gets fucked up anyway.” Lifting his head, he looked at Ronny, heavy and sad. “Right? We’ll do the best that we can fucking do and forget about it.”