Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
I stared at the wall for an hour before I realized my thoughts were just as tangled up as they’d been when Aaron left. I needed to talk to someone about this, someone who had been there. Unfortunately, none of my friends could help.
I only had one friend in a serious relationship, and they’d been together since high school. They’d lost their virginity to one another, after getting tested together. A few of my other friends hooked up, but as far as I knew, they’d never dealt with this. A few of those friends had dated people in the past, but they’d never mentioned anything like this either. It took me thinking of and turning down another few names before I remembered my boss.
James McMahon took a few weeks off every year, always at the same time. It was in honor of his late husband, a man who had died in the early 2000s from the same disease that was plaguing my mind now. There was a picture of him on his desk in the office at the bar he owned. I’d seen it every time I went in to talk to him about something. He was also the kind of guy that invited confidences, so much that I’d leaned on him every time I had a problem. He was the father I didn’t have.
I’d not talked to my own parents since I graduated high school. They’d been vocal with their opinions regarding my sexuality, and I’d left home a few days after graduation.
The more I thought about James, the more I realized that I needed to talk to him. I pulled out my phone and texted him, asking if he was free for a chat. He replied within minutes, telling me to meet him at the bar.
The drive to the bar took under ten minutes. Getting back to his office took a little longer. Several of my co-workers stopped to chat or give me hell for coming in on my night off. When I finally extricated myself from them, I was somehow more anxious than I’d been in the first place. Probably because every moment between the conversation with Aaron and the potential for answers felt like ten.
James was waiting in his office when I got there, sitting behind his desk, fingers wrapped around a small tumbler of whiskey. A second one sat untouched across from him. “Have a seat,” he instructed, pointing toward the uncomfortable folding chair on the other side of his desk.
I walked over and slouched onto the seat. My eyes landed on the back of the picture frame I knew housed a younger picture of James with his late husband, Henry. James’ dark hair had yet to get any silver. He’d been clean shaven, and there were fewer lines around his clear blue eyes. The mischief on his face hadn’t changed in the twenty-plus years since that picture had been taken. That look wasn’t on his face now. It had been replaced by concern, and it was directed at me.
I could feel the weight of his eyes on me, the questions he wanted to ask. I liked that he waited for me to decide what to ask. He was patient, every time. When I didn’t say anything for a few minutes, he spoke. “Okay, Adam, what’s up?”
I swallowed hard and reached for the whiskey, downing it in one gulp. The liquor loosened my tongue. I put the glass down. “It’s about Aaron.”
He took a small drink from his own glass and nodded. “Is everything okay between you two? You had a date tonight, right?”
I’d forgotten that I’d told him about that before I’d left the night before. I’d been so excited. I’d convinced myself that tonight would be different, even without the evidence of Aaron’s lips on mine. I’d been right, just not in the right way. Tonight was different. It had changed our entire relationship.
“We had a date,” I confirmed. I wished I had another glass of whiskey, but I knew James wouldn’t pour me one yet. Maybe I could get another one out of him before the conversation ended. He kept his steady gaze on me, egging me on. He needed me to say what I needed to say. More than that, I needed to say it. I drew in a deep breath, steeling my nerves. “He left early. After he told me…” I stopped. Was this a violation of his privacy? What if he didn’t want some guy he’d never met knowing?
But I needed to talk to someone about it, and James was the only person I had.
“He told me he has HIV.”
Silence punctuated my sentence, and it grew more deafening by the second. For the first time, James took his eyes off of me. They rested on the framed picture of him and Henry. I could see the sadness there, the ghosts that had haunted him since Henry died. I regretted saying anything. I should have figured this out on my own, instead of putting this on him and bringing back bad memories.
When he finally spoke, his voice was gravelly. “You two—You’ve used condoms? Right? You’ve been safe?” There was no mistaking the concern there, and I wasn’t surprised. He kept a large supply of condoms in the break room, so no one had an excuse not to practice safe sex. He also offered to drive people to the clinic if he found out that his staff weren’t getting tested regularly. More than a few staff members had taken him up on the offer.
“We haven’t gotten that far,” I assured him. “He wanted to take it slow. I guess I know why now.”
James let out a long breath and nodded. “Okay, good.” He stopped. “Not good that you two haven’t… Good that he told you. Before.”
“Except now I don’t know what to do.”
“I understand that,” James told me. I knew that he understood, because he’d been there. He’d dated someone with HIV when the medicines were still new. He’d married him, unofficially, and he’d loved him until the day Henry died. If anyone understood, it was was James.
That was why I’d come to him with this.
“How did you do it? It was different then, right?”
“It was very different then,” he agreed. “But the moment I met Henry, I knew that he was my person. After we met, he convinced me to go to college instead of just slumming around town with my brothers. He understood me in a way that no one else had, and it came so fast. I was in love with him before I even realized that I was falling. It was like something out of a movie. Except that he had HIV. He was on medicine, and we were safe. We were always safe, but there was still that worry. All the damn time.”
I couldn’t imagine that worry. I knew some of the things he’d gone through, coming of age in the 90s when the AIDS epidemic was running rampant through our community. He’d mentioned old friends, people he’d grown up with who had passed away. He told me about funerals he’d attended, and then he told me about stories he knew from people older than him. Who had gone through the worst of it.
It had to be scarier then.
“How did you handle it when you found out?”
He drew in a deep breath and finished his glass of whiskey. I watched as he poured us both another glass. “I didn’t handle it well at first,” he started. “I ended things with him. I broke my own heart, because I was terrified. I was afraid of being another dead body, another funeral. I didn’t want to leave my family. You’ve seen them in here.” I grinned. I had seen his family. He had four brothers, all loud and raucous, and the moment he joined them at the bar, he was just as wild as his brothers.
“But you two got back together?”
Obviously, they’d gotten back together. Otherwise, they never would have gotten married. The picture on his desk wouldn’t exist. He wouldn’t be telling me this story, because it would have ended there.
“It took a few weeks. I was miserable without him. My brothers worried about me constantly. I was drunk all the time, fighting everyone that even looked at me wrong. Then, one night, I went to the bar. I was planning on getting trashed, and he was there. He was nursing a beer with this hangdog look on his face. I’d never seen anyone look sadder in my life, except maybe myself in the mirror.” A ghost of a smile haunted his face. “I went over to him, and we started talking. I was happier than I’d been since the day I walked away from him. We made plans to talk the next night. Sober. Never looked back after that night.”
“So you were okay with it?” He raised an eyebrow. “With his HIV? Even though you were scared?”
“I chose to deal with it, because the alternative meant walking away from someone that I loved. Going back meant I got four years with him.”
“Only four years?” The way he spoke about Henry, on the rare instances he spoke about him, he made it out like some epic love story.
Maybe it was.
“Only four years,” he repeated wistfully, “and we were only married for a week.”
“A week? What… Shit, sorry. That’s probably personal, isn’t it?” I already knew the answer. Of course, it was personal. How could it not be?
He had a faraway look in his eyes. I assumed he was thinking of different times, of the years he spent with Henry. Of the end of his time with Henry.
“It wasn’t legal. It wasn’t even something we were thinking about, you know? It was an impossibility. We just figured we’d be those old gay men in town that died holding hands or some shit.” He shook his head. “Then he got sick. Some complication with his medicine. I got the call from his mom, saying he was in the hospital. Wasn’t the first time he’d been hospitalized, so I wasn’t that worried. Not until he was in there two weeks and the doctors came in. Said that things weren’t looking too good.” His voice cracked. “They didn’t think he was going to make it. That night, he asked me to marry him. He didn’t have a ring when he asked. Not like he could get one in the hospital.”
I wanted to tell him to stop, but that seemed more cruel than having asked him in the first place. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the end of this story. Not when I already knew what happened.
He kept talking. I wasn’t even sure if he realized I was still there, still listening to what he was saying. “The next day, I went to a pawn shop and bought two simple gold bands. We exchanged vows with him in his hospital bed. He was wearing his hospital gown. His parents,” he swallowed hard and took another deep breath. “His parents were there. My brothers. We were all crammed into this small hospital room. We kissed, just like any wedding. And we were married. Just like that. Maybe it wasn’t legal, but it was still real. A few days later, he went in his sleep. I was sitting beside him, holding his hand.” A tear fell from his eyes. I watched as it traced a path down his cheek. I watched as he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
I waited for him to continue his story, but he didn’t. It just ended. Like Henry’s life. Like his first marriage.
I knew that times were different now. Medication had changed, and there was more information available now. There were fewer deaths.
But that could still be my fate, saying goodbye to the person I loved most in the hospital, watching him fade away while he held my hand.
“Do you ever regret it?”
James looked up at me, shaking his head. “Not for a single minute. Losing him almost destroyed me, but I found my way through it. I moved on. I fell in love again, more than once. I married someone else, even if he turned out to be a piece of shit. But I never stopped thinking about him. Never stopped believing we’d still be together too, if things had been different.” He took a small drink from his whiskey. “He was the love of my life. How in the hell could I regret a single minute with him?”
I wanted that. One day, I wanted to look back at my life and remember all the love I had with someone. There had been exactly one person in my life who made me feel even a fraction of that.
Aaron.
“What do you think I should do?”
James reached across the table and clasped his hand on my wrist. “I can’t answer that for you, kiddo. You’re the only one who knows if you can handle being with him.”
“But do you have any advice?”
He looked thoughtful as he leaned back in his chair. “My advice? Follow your heart, but don’t stay with him if you’re not sure. If you don’t think you can handle everything that comes with loving someone with HIV, then don’t stay with him. But if you think that he’s worth it, then you know what you need to do.”
I nodded as his words settled over me. This was a man who had been through hell in the name of love. He’d walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and he’d come out the other side.
Could I do that? Was Aaron worth the risk?