Never a Hero

by Marie Sexton

  “Yes. And because I should never have let it happen at all.”

  “I did some research. I know you didn’t lie to me about the risks.”

  “I was careful. But I still feel terrible about it. I can’t ever let myself get carried away like that again.”

  “So, what? Your plan is to never have sex again?”

  He laughed, although there wasn’t much humor in it. “When you say it that way, it sounds ridiculous.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He jerked into motion as if it pained him, sniffling and wiping at his eyes. I hadn’t realized he’d been crying. “Ridiculous or not, it’s the only thing that feels right. It’s the moral thing to do.”

  I suspected he was just trying to punish himself more for a few nights of carelessness in his youth, but it didn’t seem worth arguing about.

  Bert padded across the room to nudge my hand. I scratched his ears and thought about Nick’s story so far. “So you caught it in Cancun. What happened after that?”

  “Well, I was lucky, in a way, because we caught it early. And because I had insurance, so I could start treatment right away.”

  “And you kept working?”

  “I did, but only because I couldn’t afford to lose my coverage. I was like a zombie. I went to work, and I had doctor appointments, and I came home, and that was it. I didn’t even spend Christmas with my family that year. All I could do was sit at home and think, ‘This is my life. This is it. I’m going to die.’”

  “I can imagine it would be easy to give in to depression.”

  He nodded. “Exactly.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Pink Floyd.”

  “What?” I asked, laughing despite myself.

  He turned to face me for the first time, leaning back against the counter. He didn’t look sad anymore. He looked like himself. Like the Nick I’d come to know—confident and in control.

  And sexy. No matter what, still sexy.

  “I know it sounds stupid, but I was depressed, and I was wallowing in it, and what’s better for that than Pink Floyd, right? I was listening to ‘Wish You Were Here.’ And there’s this line. ‘Did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?’ And I thought, that’s me. That’s what I’m doing. I’m living in a cage. And I started to cry.” He blushed a bit at that, but he didn’t look away. He didn’t stop talking. “I started thinking about how much of the world I hadn’t seen, and all the things I hadn’t done, and I realized that if I never did them, that if I died alone in that apartment, it wouldn’t be because of the HIV. It would be because of me. Because I was choosing the cage.” He reached up to touch his hair, a familiar nervous gesture that made me smile. “So I decided to start over. I moved here and opened my clinic.” He crossed his arms and sighed, looking sheepishly down at the floor, suddenly seeming unsure of himself again.

  “I never meant for this to happen, Owen. I hope you know that. I’ve been so careful. I don’t go to clubs. I don’t date. I don’t flirt. You may laugh at this idea of being celibate, but it always felt right. But with you….” He looked up at me, his eyes full of anguish. “I wish I’d done better. I wish I’d told you from the beginning, but it’s not something I tell many people. Seth knows because he does my ink, but otherwise I keep it to myself. I’ve never even told Paul, and I work with him every day.”

  I could understand why he wouldn’t want his HIV status to be common knowledge. “I suppose there’s never a good time to share information like that.”

  “There really isn’t. The problem was, I shouldn’t have had to. I shouldn’t have ever let it get that far. I shouldn’t have flirted with you or touched you. I just—” His words jerked to a halt, and he wiped his eyes again, his gaze locked on the floor at his feet. “Something about you makes me want to help you and protect you and spend time with you. It makes me want to… to….”

  “Sleep with me?”

  He nodded. “That’s not what I was going to say, but yes. That too. I was attracted to you from the very beginning.”

  “But you didn’t want to tell me about being HIV-positive.”

  “I kept trying to convince myself I didn’t need to, that I could be your friend and not your lover, but then I couldn’t ever keep my hands off you. All those years of abstaining, and suddenly I was like a horny teenager again. You’re like some kind of drug I can’t get out of my system. I don’t know. I realize it’s a lame excuse to say I couldn’t help myself, but it’s the truth.”

  “It’s not so lame,” I said, because ridiculous or not, it made my heart swell to hear him say it. “It’s not all your fault, you know. I pushed you pretty hard.”

  “I’m not sure that justifies it.”

  “I don’t know.” He opened his mouth to object, but I rushed on before he could. “You told me no, Nick. Not just once, but multiple times. I should have respected that, but I didn’t. I knew you were having a hard time keeping your hands to yourself, and I intentionally used it against you. I pushed and pushed until I got what I wanted.”

  “Owen, no. Please—”

  “No. Listen to me. I know in your mind, I’m some kind of blameless victim, but that’s not how I see it. I coerced you into doing something you didn’t want to do. I refused to take no for an answer. And I’m sorry for that.”

  He shook his head. “Please don’t apologize to me. I don’t deserve that.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true. “I have something to tell you too.” I’d thought about this, and although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why it mattered, I knew that it did. “I’ve told you about my stutter and my mother. But I didn’t tell you about what happened to me in high school.”

  He leaned back against the counter, watching me. Waiting. Patient, as always.

  “I met a boy. He was new to our school. He moved in around the block. It was summer break, and he didn’t know anybody else, so we became friends. He was patient, you know. The way you’re patient. He l-let me talk. He didn’t laugh or get annoyed when I stuttered.”

  “Why do a sense a ‘but’ coming on?”

  “About the time our junior year started, we began fooling around. It wasn’t much because we were scared to death. Just touching each other. Making out a bit.”

  “And your mom caught you?”

  “Worse. We got caught at school. Under the bleachers, as cliché as that sounds. We were kissing. That’s all. We still had our clothes on and everything, but this was Wyoming, after all. The teacher who caught us was trying to be cool, but the principal freaked. They called my mom. She was furious. Embarrassing her was b-bad enough, starting gossip all over town. But the fact that it was with another boy.” Up until that point, my mother’s attention had always been domineering, but I’d mostly thought it was for my own good. But knowing I was gay seemed to have been the last straw. “And the boy—Jeremy—he told everybody that I’d kissed him. That he didn’t like me and that he was trying to pull away. I couldn’t even defend myself. I couldn’t stop stuttering enough to g-g-get my w-words out. Anyway, up until then, I’d been doing better, but after that, everything f-fell apart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The stuttering got worse. The few friends I’d made abandoned me. Jeremy ended up on the wrestling team, and he called me a f-f-fag every time he saw me. He and his friends spray-painted my locker and v-vandalized my car. I couldn’t even look at anybody. And the worst part of it was, my m-mom acted like I deserved it all. She told me that’s what happens to deviants. That maybe being teased would make me think twice next time, like maybe the bullies could sh-shame me into being the kind of son she wanted me to be.”

  Nick scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the kitchen floor. “I guess that’s what angers me the most about your mom. I mean, here I am, sick because I did something stupid, and my parents support me no matter what. My sister moved here from Grand Junction in case I needed help. But your mom blames you for things that aren’t your fault. Your arm, and
your stutter, and being gay.” He shook his head in disgust and finally looked back up at me. “So what happened?”

  “Nothing really. I begged to switch schools, and my dad wanted to let me, but my mom said no. She said I had to take responsibility for my actions. That running away was never the answer.”

  His gaze was sympathetic but unwavering. “Owen, why are you telling me this now?”

  I shrugged. “It seemed like I should. You’ve been honest with me, and it was time for me to be honest with you.”

  He laughed, but it was a sad sound. “I don’t think you withholding your darkest high school moment is the same as me not telling you about being HIV-positive.”

  “I know. But I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us.”

  “Fair enough. No more secrets.” He crossed the room and sat down in order to lean close and look into my eyes. “I really am sorry.”

  “I know. We both screwed up. We’re both sorry. How about if we say we’re both forgiven too?”

  “Works for me.”

  I wanted to reach out and touch him. To take his hand. But I couldn’t. I was still attracted to him, and yet I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea of his illness. I couldn’t make it fit with the way he looked, so healthy and strong. I couldn’t think of how it felt to kiss him without thinking of the virus too.

  Still, I missed him.

  I cleared my throat and made myself ask, “Can we be friends again?”

  “I never stopped being your friend.”

  “But I feel like I stopped being yours.”

  He looked down at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. When he looked up again, there was a tentative smile on his face. “I was about to make dinner.”

  “You’ve spoiled me, you know. I’m actually starting to crave broiled fish, and I can’t stand to eat frozen pizza anymore.”

  “Does that mean you’ll stay?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Chapter Ten

  FOR THE most part, things between us returned to normal, although there was undeniably more distance between us than before. He stopped flirting with me completely. I missed it, and yet I wasn’t sure it would be wise to initiate anything either. We were friends again, and for the moment that felt like enough. I spent evenings at his house practicing while he made dinner, and afterward we’d walk his dogs. I finally canceled my weekly grocery delivery and started driving to the store when I needed something. It was a small step, but it felt momentous, and I began to realize that people didn’t stare at me nearly as often as I’d imagined.

  “Would you like me to give you a hand out to your car with these?” the girl who bagged my groceries asked one day before she noticed my arm and turned beet red. She gave me that look—the look that meant “Oh shit, I hope I didn’t just offend this guy.” And for possibly the first time, I was able to laugh at such an innocent blunder from an adult.

  “I can always use another hand,” I told her.

  Her relief was almost palpable, and I thought about what Nick had said to me. Most people are trying to treat you the way they think you want to be treated. It had taken me twenty-eight years, but I was starting to learn one of my greatest life lessons: high school wasn’t a reflection of real life. People were generally good. People like Nick, and like June. Like their friends from the pawnshop, El and Paul and Seth and Michael and Nathan.

  Yes, Nathan, who probably had no idea how much he’d helped me. It suddenly seemed important that I tell him.

  “Wow,” he said when he answered the phone that afternoon. “Will wonders never cease? I’m getting a second call from the mysterious one-armed man?”

  “Not much mystery here, I assure you.”

  “Honey, don’t sell yourself short. You need to learn to work what you’ve got.”

  “Well, in the meantime, you interested in meeting for coffee again?”

  “I’d love to.”

  It was cooler and windier than the time before, and the coffee shop was warm and cozy, so we opted to stay inside. We settled on a couch in front of the gas fireplace.

  “How’s the boyfriend?” he asked as we shed our coats.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “I’ve heard that before, but then you went home with him.”

  I laughed. He was teasing, and it felt good. I loved the way he could so quickly put me at ease. “Thanks for meeting me again.”

  “I’m glad you called, even if it isn’t to take me up on that offer of a booty call.” He leaned a bit closer, more playful than flirtatious. “That isn’t why you called, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.” But it was said with mock disappointment.

  “I wanted to thank you, actually.”

  “Thank me?” he asked, looking genuinely confused. “For what?”

  “For being my friend that day, even though you barely knew me.”

  He waved his hand at me. “It was nothing.”

  “No. It wasn’t.” I hated that I was beginning to blush, but I made myself say the rest. “It meant a lot to me. It helped. So, thank you.”

  All of his playfulness fell away in an instant. He reached out and took my hand. Not flirting. Not making a pass. Just acknowledging me. “I was happy to do it.”

  We stayed there another hour, chatting about work and the weather and my upcoming recital. Two months ago, I’d been alone. Now I had friends. More than one, even. It was hard to believe I’d come so far.

  NICK’S PARENTS came for Thanksgiving. Despite my newfound confidence, I was nervous about meeting them. “What did you tell them about me?” I asked Nick on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving as we waited for them to arrive.

  He laughed. “Not a damn thing, but you can bet June filled them in.”

  As it turned out, my fears were ungrounded. His parents were as delightful as him and June. Their father had spent his life working construction, and it showed. He was big and burly and seemed to love football more than life itself. He doted on June. Their mother, Truvy, was everything mine wasn’t—happy, loving, and supportive. I had worried that she’d be suspicious or curious about my relationship with Nick, but if she wondered, she never let on. She welcomed me into the family like some kind of long-lost nephew.

  We spent Wednesday playing board games, and that night we all went out for dinner. Nick took us to the Greek restaurant where we’d had our disastrous first date. It was still crowded, but it felt far less claustrophobic than before. Maybe it was because June was there, spinning some ridiculous tale of how we’d lost our arms while saving a runaway baby carriage from a speeding train. Maybe it was Nick laughing at his sister’s antics. Or maybe it was only because I finally realized that nobody was there to judge me. I barely stuttered as I ordered dinner, and the only thing I broke all night was the plate they gave me for that exact purpose.

  It felt like victory.

  The next day Nick helped his mother cook Thanksgiving dinner while June and her dad watched football. Betty and Bert sprawled next to them on the couch. Bonny stayed in the kitchen, ready to pounce on any scrap of food that hit the floor. I wandered between both rooms, not quite knowing my place, but feeling comfortable nonetheless. My home had never been so peaceful, or so filled with the simple joy of togetherness. I felt like I’d fallen through the rabbit hole and landed in a Norman Rockwell painting. I hoped I never had to leave it.

  I was relieved to find that Thanksgiving was one of Nick’s splurge days with regard to food. He seemed happy to let his mom take the lead in the kitchen. He didn’t mention sodium or trans fats or glutamates even once. He spent more time dipping his fingers into whatever his mom was working on than actually cooking. She swatted at his hand and scolded him each time, but I could tell she loved every minute of it.

  “Owen,” Truvy said to me at one point, “come stir this cranberry sauce for me. I don’t want it to scorch.”

  I took the spoon and began to stir the bright red concoction. It had actual
cranberries in it, which surprised me. “I had no idea you could get cranberry sauce that didn’t come from a can.”

  “This is so much better,” Nick said from behind me. He put one hand on the small of my back as he leaned over the stove to look into the pan. “And my mom makes it better than anybody. You’ll never eat that fake stuff again.”

  “I never ate it to begin with.”

  His mother was on the other side of the room, spreading jarred pimento cheese into celery sticks. She pointed her knife at him. “Your flattery will get you nowhere,” she teased.

  He laughed. “We’ll see.”

  He started to reach for the spoon, and Truvy said, “Owen, don’t let him have it! If he starts tasting it now, there won’t be any left and he’ll have a stomachache for the rest of the night.”

  “I was ten when that happened. I think I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He shook his head, letting me in on their game. “She’ll never let me live that down.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  He smiled at me, his eyes bright and mischievous, and my heart did some kind of acrobatic tumble in my chest. I was ridiculously aware of how close he was. It was the most physical contact we’d had since Halloween, and I was thrilled at his hand on my back and the way his hip brushed against mine. He leaned over the pan again to sniff the steam coming off the sauce. “I love the way it smells.”

  And I love you. The thought came unbidden, so strangely out of place and yet so strong and so true that for a moment, I forgot to stir the cranberries.

  I loved him. I loved the way he smiled, and the way he teased, and the way he adored his mother. I loved everything about him, and about his family, and about the day. I felt at home. At peace. Completely whole and loved and accepted. But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t put any of it into words. I concentrated instead on the sauce, on the cheery smells of sugar and cinnamon and ripe, tart fruit.

  He was right. It smelled amazing. “Like Thanksgiving and Christmas all in one,” I said.