Say Their Names

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

I unlocked the front door to my tiny apartment, grinning over my shoulder at the man laughing behind me: Aaron Rogers, the guy I’d been seeing for about six months. The man who made my stomach flutter every time I laid eyes on him. He was starting to dominate my dreams as well as my every waking thought. I hadn’t expected it when I’d swiped on him on that dating app or when I’d met him for our first date, but every time he texted me a quick good morning or good night text, I was thankful.

And tonight, it felt like we were going to cross the final hurdle.

Because Aaron was different than any guy I’d ever met on a dating app. Most of them were looking for one thing, and one thing only. The dinner or drinks or movie or whatever first date cliche they drummed up was a formality before inviting me back to his place for sex. Or me inviting him back to mine. I wasn’t going to pretend that I was some innocent who didn’t know exactly what he was signing up for when he went on those dates.

Aaron, though, he’d only kissed me good night after our first date. At my car. I’d thought I’d blown it until he’d sent the first good morning text the next day. It had blown me away. (What could I say? The bar was in hell.) He kept up that pattern for four more dates, an entire month of dating, before I asked him about it. He said he just wanted to take it slow, and so we had.

We’d gone on dates. We’d defined the relationship. We’d gone over to one another’s houses and watched movies, making out on couches like teenagers. It made my heart race every time. It also made me desperate for things to push further, to discover more of this magnificent man.

But every time I tried, he caught my wrist and stopped me. The most I’d gotten was a little bit of grinding that only made me want him more. I’d started to get a complex about it. Maybe it was me. Maybe he didn’t find me attractive. He might not have been into scrawny guys with floppy carrot orange hair, too many freckles, uneven lips, and a disproportionate nose. A lot of guys hadn’t been, not for anything more than a quick one night stand.

Except that he didn’t even want that.

I didn’t get it.

But that night, things felt different. He’d been more physical during our date. His hand had barely left my thigh during the entire movie, which had me half hard before the end credits rolled. During dinner, he’d been playing footsie with me. When we got out into the parking lot, he pinned me against the car and kissed me so thoroughly that I spent several blocks on the car ride home catching my breath.

And the way he was looking at me now?

Tonight was different.

When the door closed behind us, he crowded against me, pushing me back against the small stretch of wall next to my mounted coat rack. He kissed me the same way he had in the parking lot, tongue probing and searching my mouth. His body caged me in, and I could feel how much he wanted me, his hard dick pressed against my stomach.

Tonight was different.

I lost track of how long we kissed there before he lifted me up and carried me the short distance between my front door and the couch, bravely navigating the clutter on the small apartment floor. He settled with me on his lap, and I could feel him underneath me. I rolled my hips and swallowed down his moan. I didn’t know what had changed, but I could feel it heavy in the air between us.

His hands began to explore my back, first over the fabric of the black tee-shirt I’d worn that day, and then, miraculously, underneath it. The sensation of his bare fingers on my skin had me moaning. Actually moaning. It might have had something to do with his hard dick pressing up against my ass though. For the sake of my image, I was going to pretend that was entirely what it was. I tangled my hands into the familiar territory of his ash blonde hair and deepened the kiss.

Yeah, tonight was definitely different.

We lost ourselves in making out. I kept waiting for him to push it to the next level, something beyond hands on my bare back. After all, he’d been the one that wanted to take things slow, and I didn’t want to pressure him into something he wasn’t ready for. But damn, I needed more. He made me need more every single time he touched me.

Without thinking, I slid my hands down his sides and grabbed the hem of his shirt. He let me take it off of him, and I was drunk on the sight of his bare chest. His lean musculature might not has been as defined as a porn star’s, but it wasn’t nothing either. His nipples were a pale brown against lightly tanned skin. They were smaller than mine. He had a small black triangle tattoo over his left pec, and I wanted to run my tongue over it. He captured my mouth with his, delaying my plans to get my mouth on that perfect chest.

I settled for running my hands up his bare chest, savoring the new area to explore. I traced my fingers over the delicate lines of his tattoo, grinning into the kiss as goose flesh rose under my fingertips.

Then my shirt was removed, joining his on the floor. We pressed our closer bodies together, and he lowered me down onto the couch. I didn’t care about the feeling of the scratchy fabric under my bare skin. I only cared about the weight of the man on top of me. It was everything I’d dreamed it would be. Better even, because it was real.

Because it was him.

Tonight really was different.

I didn’t know how long we laid there, making out. I only knew when it became too much, when I needed more again. Given how well my last attempt at bravery had gone, I was empowered to make another move. Maybe he’d been waiting on me to make the next move this whole time. I could kick myself if that were the case. I brought my hands down to his ass. I squeezed his cheeks over his jeans first, pushing him down harder against me. We both groaned at the friction, and he didn’t stop me.

I took another small step, reaching underneath his pants and over his boxers. He stilled for a moment, but he let me proceed. He kept his movements controlled, a tease, a taste for what would (hopefully) come later.

I slipped my hands underneath his boxers. My hands sprawled over his bare ass cheeks, and then he pulled away.

I’d barely gotten a chance to touch him. The moment he pulled away from the kiss, I withdrew my hands from his ass, feeling like a chastised child. My heart sank as he pulled himself off of me, planting his feet back firmly on the floor. I stared at him for a moment before following suit. That insecurity was back, the ever echoing question in the back of my mind: was it me?

“Is it me?” I heard my thoughts spoken out loud, in my voice, falling from my tongue. I hated how the words tasted as they left, how they sounded when they hit the air. My voice shook, and the sound made my stomach sink down to the very tips of my toes.

I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see his face when he heard the pathetic tone of my voice. I didn’t want to look at him when he admitted it was me. And when he put his hand on my knee, I didn’t want him to be touching me either. Every time he touched me, my brain got all foggy. I convinced myself that he actually liked me, but I didn’t want to do that this time. I didn’t want to delude myself that this thing that I thought was building with my boyfriend over the past six months was real.

“It’s not you.” His voice sounded as shaky as mine. I couldn’t help looking at him, and the sadness on his face hit me like a sucker punch. He might be gearing up to break my heart, but I still hated seeing him look like that. Feelings were stupid.

Love was stupid. Love. At least I hadn’t been dumb enough to tell him that I was in love with him, not if he was about to end it. Because what always followed, it’s not you?

“It’s me.”

Ding, ding, ding. We had a winner. Right on time. It still hurt. The words I knew were coming still made it hard to inhale. “Do you know how cliche that sounds?” I asked him. “If you’re breaking up with me?—”

“Whoa! Who said I’m breaking up with you?” He sounded confused.

Was he not breaking up with me? Because I’m pretty sure he just used the most cliche break up line known to mankind. If he wasn’t breaking up with me, then why would he say that? I groaned. “You’re not breaking up with me?”

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. He leaned over and planted the most tender kiss of my life on my lips. It had none of the heat from our make out session, but it somehow made me feel warmer than I ever had in my life.

It still didn’t answer anything. Was he just not attracted to me? Was he not into sex? It wasn’t a deal breaker. I’d figure out a way to cope… through lots of masturbation and sex toys, which had been the past six months for me anyway. If it meant being with him, then I could do that. Because I loved him. The words stayed unspoken on my tongue, but that didn’t make them less true.

I still needed to know though. I drew in a deep breath and repositioned myself on the couch, turning to look at him. “Then what it is? Every time we start to get physical, you pull away. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you shirtless, and it’s been six months.”

He looked uncomfortable, and I hated myself for prying. I should have been a better person, a more patient person. I should have let him figure out what he wanted to tell me and waited. I wished I could pluck the words from where they hung in the air and stuff them back in my mouth, unheard. Too bad that wasn’t possible. Words couldn’t be unspoken.

“I didn’t mean to push you,” I said instead. I gave him the out. “If I was going too fast.”

It was his turn to pull in a deep breath. He reached out and took my hands in his, wrapping his fingers around them. “It’s not that,” he assured me. “Trust me, going slow is kind of new to me.”

“Why?” Foot. Meet mouth. “Sorry. I—If it’s something you don’t want to talk about right now, you can tell me that. I’ll stop pushing. We can watch a movie and snuggle or something.”

And then, when he went home, because he never stayed the night with me, I’d beat off and then beat myself up for being such an idiot. It was the status quo.

He didn’t say anything at first. Maybe he was going to take me up on the offer, but he also didn’t let go of my hands so I could grab the remote and move onto the second part of that offer. Turn on the TV, cuddle up, and pretend that I hadn’t just made an ass of myself.

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, before he finally spoke. “I need to tell you something, and it might change everything,” he started. He sounded scared, terrified actually. I squeezed his hand, glad that he’d grabbed mine. Because it meant I could reassure him without interrupting him. He took the squeeze as an invitation to continue. “A year ago, I was a different person. I was making a lot of bad decisions. Reckless ones.”

I hummed, trying to keep from asking more questions. What kinds of wild and reckless decisions had he made? He’d always seemed so steady the entire time I’d known him.

“I was partying with the wrong people. Drugs, hookups, drinking too much. My parents came to visit, and they found me overdosed in my bathroom while they were sleeping in the living room.” I drew in a deep breath. That wasn’t what I was expecting. It would explain why he wanted to take things slow, if he’d just had that history. “They sent me to rehab, and my doctors did tests, and I came back—” He drew in a deep breath, trying to steady the shake in his voice. “I came back positive.”

Positive.

I didn’t have to ask for clarification. He wasn’t talking about coming back with a positive attitude.

“Are you—are you okay?” That was such a stupid question. He’d just told me he’d gone to rehab and tested positive. And here I was, asking if he was okay. God, I was a damn idiot. “I mean…”

“I’m undetectable. I’m on medicine.” I nodded. “But this is the first time I’ve tried to have something real since I got the diagnosis. I didn’t know how to tell you, and honestly, I was afraid of how you’d react.”

Another punch to the gut. But then, I didn’t know how I was going to react either.

A part of me wanted to tell him that it didn’t change anything between us. I wanted to tell him that I loved him and that nothing in his past could change that. I wanted to assure him that he’d made bad choices, but they didn’t make him a bad person. I believed the last part of that, and I wanted to believe the rest of it. I wanted to believe the rest of it so bad.

The rest of me though? I was terrified. I knew that undetectable meant that it couldn’t be spread. I knew that I wasn’t at any increased risk, and I’d been on PrEP since I was eighteen and out of my parents’ house. I knew it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it was.

I kept my hand in his, though, as I tried to sort through the tangle of thoughts in my head.

I loved him, but I was afraid.

I wanted him, but I didn’t know how to have him.

And there were the other fears too. What if something happened? What if I lost him? What if he forgot to take his medicine, and then we forgot to use protection and I forgot my pill that day. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The biggest fear screamed at the back of my mind: what if I couldn’t handle this?

He studied my face for a moment before leaning in and giving me another gentle kiss. He released my hands and picked his shirt off of the floor. “It’s a lot,” he told me quietly. “I know it’s a lot. I know that you’re blindsided. I think… I think I need to go home now.”

I wanted to tell him no. That I wanted him to stay. I did want him to stay, but I also knew he was right. It was a lot, and I needed to wrap my head around it. I needed to decide if this was something that I could handle. I caught his hand in mine. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

He nodded and put his shirt back on. He paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“Good night, Adam.”

His voice was quiet, reaching me as he opened the door and stepped out. The moment the door closed, I wanted to chase after him.

Instead, I stayed planted on my couch, head swimming with more thoughts than I could manage.