II.
Bobby lost his virginity to a woman twice his age.
He didn't exactly like her. It was awkward. They were balancing as best they could, with him, propping her up onto one of the stalls in the woman's bathroom in some cheap bar that he shouldn't have been in, in the first place. She smelled like cigarette smoke and the whiskey she had been drinking and he didn't like her makeup. He went home smelling like cheap perfume and worked furiously at getting the lipstick stain out of his shirt.
He had thrown it away and Evelyn had found it in the trash a couple days later and wondered why he didn't just come to her and ask her how to get the lipstick out and then she wondered who her fifteen year old son had been around. Or, at least who Bobby had been hugging because even though kids are getting rather promiscuous earlier on, she hadn't seen any yet, with bright red lipstick.
She would effectively get the stain out and leave it on his bed and she wouldn't ask him about it– contrary to her usual tactics of getting him to talk– and he'll wonder if she wonders.
But they won't bring it up.
Bobby can't get the smell out of his mind. He keeps thinking about her. And he thinks about why she looked so pretty under the bar lights and why he told her that he loved her, even if he really didn't know her name, and why he wanted to impress the guys at school so much.
And Evelyn never asks.
And anytime Bobby fucks a girl he can't help but to think of her and how when he said 'I love you' she didn't say it back and how he hadn't said it to anyone, ever since. Even if he– at select moments of insanity– had wanted to.
And how he'll never-- no matter what-- say it again. Even if he doesn't mind the prospect of hearing it back.