Chapter 11 #2
One shoulder skims his ear. “I meant there’s no wrong way to feel or be the way you are, Sam. If you want to put a name on it, you’re probably bisexual.”
“Bisexual,” I say. “Sounds like a fence sitter.”
He laughs. “Just means you like both.”
“Half gay, half straight. Half white, half Cuban. Figures.” I ash into the wind and shake my head.
A little ways down from us a riverboat’s coming in to dock, its smokestacks puffing away.
I fixate on those white clouds of steam.
“Anyway. Me and Gabriel, we fooled around for a while. Fucked a few times. Me on top, ‘cause I wasn’t sure I’d be into…
the reverse.” I sneak a peek at Ash. “Maybe that’s not a surprise? ”
He gives me a small smile. “I really don’t make assumptions about anyone. Or judgments, either.”
I want to ask badly what he likes. I want to change the subject because I’m scared I might cry and look like a total bitch if I don’t. But I have to get this out there. Talk about it, talk about him for once. Do Gabriel this much justice, at least. He deserves that.
“We weren’t in love or in a relationship or anything.
Like it wasn’t ever serious. But he…I mean, we were good friends, you know?
I knew him for years. I told him everything I couldn’t tell anyone else, so he was like this confidant.
He knew everything, like—my hopes and dreams, basically.
And he was this out gay man so he knew what it was like, feeling like you were different.
It was like the first and only time I felt like someone was hearing me.
“After I met Adriana we stopped, obviously. Everything.” I blow out a breath.
“The sex and being friends. I had a shiny new girlfriend to distract me and y’know, the prospect of being gay was scary as fuck.
We had a few fights about it, nasty ones.
He was really hurt when I dipped on him.
So there’s just been this awful silence between us for a couple years now.
And…a few months ago he was diagnosed with HIV. So my tía told me.”
His breath catches in his throat. “Oh my god, Sam. I’m so sorry.”
There’s some note of sorrow in his voice that resonates exactly with the grief I’ve been trying not to feel since I found out. Putting it off and putting it off and shutting it out. Placing it high up on a shelf somewhere. In some dusty, dark corner. Out of sight, out of mind.
There’s a brief, horrifying moment where I think I’m going to actually cry, but it passes, thank Christ, and I can look at Ash again without dissolving entirely. The sun’s etching him in golden relief—ski-slope nose, perfect mouth, sharp jaw—and his hair falls, wind-tousled, across his eyes.
Nope. I have to look away. I press the heel of one hand to my eye as I take a long drag of my cigarette.
“Sam…” Haltingly. “Did you—get tested?”
I laugh unhappily. “Yeah, of course. It was the worst day of my life. Because I couldn’t actually tell anyone I was doing it.
Like, no one actually knows about any of that.
Or what we did. It’s not like I could tell Adriana, ‘Hey, I’m getting tested, I could use the support,’ because I knew she’d flip her lid and demand to know why.
Of course, if it was positive, I’d have to tell her anyway.
” I drop my cigarette on the ground and watch it smolder for a second. “At least it wasn’t, though. Positive.”
Ash lets out a breath. The bracelet on his wrist jangles as he fingers it.
“Gabe’s still around. Still alive. Getting treatment and stuff.
But I’m not part of any of that. I haven’t talked to him since our last big fight a year and a half ago.
I guess…” I gnaw on my swollen lower lip, tearing at the scab.
“No, I know I’m a coward. I’m just not letting myself face it.
Some part of me thinks if I distance myself enough, it’ll hurt less when he goes.
” I glance sidelong at Ash. “You can tell me I’m a piece of shit. I know you want to.”
He seems to be weighing his words, his own gaze having slid off somewhere, staring unseeing across the water. His lips are slightly parted, and even now I want to do something about that. Amidst everything, telling him this awful thing. Or maybe it’s because I still—
—want him.
I do. I want him.
“I didn’t know Ben was sick,” he says at last. “He never told me. Didn’t even hint at it.
Or if he did, I totally missed it. It’s not like you find out you have AIDS and die overnight.
He had to have been sick for a while before and after finding out.
Must’ve suffered. But he just kept telling me how amazing Miami was and how he wished I was there with him.
“And then…the postcards stopped coming. I didn’t find out til months later what had happened. He hid it the whole time, so I never even got the chance to say goodbye.”
“Ash.” I press my shoulder to his.
“That’s what I regret the most.” His voice is very quiet now.
“Not saying goodbye. Not getting that time he had left, however much of it there was. I wish so freakin’ bad that he told me.
I don’t know why he…” And then he drops his own cigarette, clapping a hand over his mouth, breathing in sharply.
I don’t even hesitate. Fuck it. I wrap my arms around him and pull him against me.
I let him bury his face in my shoulder. I hold him as he relaxes by slow degrees in my arms and wait for a sob to erupt, or quiet weeping, and I make no judgments, either.
I set my head against his and brush his long hair back, my fingertips grazing the butterfly tattoo behind his ear, careful to avoid those little crescent-shaped scars.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to him. It’s about the millionth time I’ve said this to him today. I still mean it as much as I did the first time.
He lays his cheek against my shoulder. It’s dry. He hasn’t shed a single tear, even though I would’ve understood completely if he had. “Me too,” he whispers back. “Look, my point is—hold your people close, Sam. You never know when you’re gonna lose them.”
I squeeze him just a little bit tighter as the sun sinks by small fractions toward the horizon. “You’re right,” I say. Because he is.