by Lindy Zart
“You could be talking to kids, explaining how important it is to use caution, and condoms, and how even when you think you know someone, you still need to be smart about things. Explain to them the danger of needles, and drugs, and how one seemingly unimportant moment can be life-changing. What about the kids born with it? The ones who are even less blameless than you? They need someone to look up to, someone who understands what they’re going through.”
Beth sucked in a ragged breath, her body shaking with emotion. “Who are you helping right now? No one. You say it doesn’t bother you, and I know it does. You say you want this isolated life, and I know you don’t. You’re scared, but you don’t have to be. Do something about it.”
“You don’t,” he began in a voice that shook. “Get to tell me how to feel.” His eyes were cold, filled with deadly resentment. “You have no idea, none, what I’m going through, or how I feel, or what I’m thinking.” Harrison’s voice grew, lashed out in quiet destruction.
“Then tell me,” she beseeched, wrapping her arms around herself in a desperate attempt to get warmer, to not feel quite as lonely as she did right now.
His jaw hardened.
Harrison drove her to create, to be something better. And what did he do? He kept himself in a prison of his own making, cut off from a million beautiful moments. It didn’t have to be this way. It could be different. Not perfect, but who really needed perfection? She didn’t want perfection; she wanted Harrison. That was all. That was it. A simple request with all kinds of ramifications. The unfairness of it stung her eyes with the promise of tears and Beth looked away from his form, the sight of him painful to her.
“You gave up,” Beth choked out. “You said you didn’t, but you did.”
His reaction was instantaneous, and explosive.
“I didn’t give up,” he roared, flinging his arms in the air.
Harrison cursed as he watched her, as she felt the color leave her face. Snarling, he tugged the stocking cap from his head and flung it across the snow. Harrison’s chest heaved and his face twisted with fury as his control snapped.
“I didn’t give up, Beth. The world gave up on me. Me.” He slammed a hand to his heart. “What was I supposed to do after that? Huh? What?”
Beth blinked, all of her crumpling inward under the haze of his pain, and rage, and injustice.
“They judged, and they ridiculed, and they made me feel like a piece of shit.” Harrison turned and stalked away, whipping around to face her. His eyes were lightning, and his face was the storm. “I didn’t give up. I didn’t choose this. All right? I just—I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t be around my friends, knowing they couldn’t understand. I couldn’t be around my family, seeing the fucking sadness in their eyes, every day, like I was already dead.”
Harrison took a shuddering inhalation and looked at the ground. Bleak and quiet, he said, “They put me in the ground before they ever knew if it would come to that.”
Beth took a breath, and her heart rejected the motion, squeezing, squeezing. Until she couldn’t breathe anymore, and her chest ached, and she feared it would never stop aching. She didn’t understand. He was right. Beth didn’t know what he went through, what he was still going through.
She couldn’t imagine having everything figured out, and then being told there were no more certainties. She placed a hand on her heart and pressed down, trying to alleviate the pain it throbbed for Harrison. And then she stopped, her hand falling away. It was okay for it to hurt. It should hurt. Harrison needed it to hurt for him.
Cracks lined his face, heartache oozing out of them. Harrison stood like he was being attacked on all sides, outwardly, inwardly, his body curved in around itself. He should never stand in such a way, never feel so beat down for being who he was. “I thought I’d make it easier on everyone and just be alone.”
“But you’re not alone,” she whispered in a wobbly voice. “I’m here. You have me.”
Harrison stared at the ground, looking up with eyes brightened by tears to ask, “What should I do then? Since you seem to have all the right answers. What do I do?”
Beth shook her head. “I don’t have the right answers. There are no right answers. But I have hope, and you don’t even allow yourself to have that.”
“And you? What are you going to do, Beth?” He took a step closer, snow crunching beneath his boots.
“What do you mean?” Her throat burned from all the words that earlier catapulted from it, and in the absence of anger, came apprehension of the unknown. Where would she and Harrison go from here?
Harrison’s eyes took on the sun, captured it inside the irises, and annihilated it. His expression mocked, demanded. “All these things you tell me I should be doing, you see yourself standing by my side as I do them, right? You, with your big heart, and your big dreams—what are you going to do? Live in the castle with the moat full of alligators with me?”
“Are you telling me I can’t?”
“I’m telling you it would be reckless, but no, I’m not telling you, you can’t.”
She said the words on an exhale. “You make me want to be reckless. You make me want to be everything I never knew I could be.”
His jaw shifted forward, and his eyes took on their own life. Shadows and light whispered through them. Happiness, fear, shock, doubt. His forehead wrinkled, and smoothed. Harrison’s expression went so blank she swore she imagined it ever holding any kind of emotion.
“One day at a time, Harrison,” Beth told him shakily. “Each one a chance to make it brilliant. That’s the only goal either of us should be thinking about.”
He blinked, a flash of sorrow hit his eyes, and then it was gone. “I’m going for a walk. I need to think. I can’t think when I’m near you.”
She watched him swoop down to retrieve his hat, slap the snow from it before slamming it on his head, and then he strode away. She turned to look at the road that angled down. Beth took a deep breath, feeling her chest expand. She let it out. The more times she did that, the calmer she became. Minutes passed, and she let her mind wander, go as unpainted as a bare wall, and it helped. The cold didn’t touch her; she was an inferno of conviction.
Beth walked up the short incline to the Blazer, took back the notepad and pen, and followed the trail of Harrison’s footsteps. She thought she knew him. Partly, she was right. Mostly, she was wrong. Beth didn’t have a clue how Harrison really felt, but she didn’t have to, to know she cared.
Finding a spot far enough away where she could observe him, but also wouldn’t disrupt Harrison from his thoughts, Beth sat on the winter ground and set her notepad on her knees. The snow seeped through the bottom of her jeans, a shockwave of cold that got her brain working. Beth’s eyes bored into the figure in the distance.
Suddenly Beth felt unworthy to try to put all he was into words. She dropped her gaze to the pen in her hand. She wasn’t talented enough, smart enough, she didn’t know enough. Harrison couldn’t be explained in a book. She chewed on the inside of her lower lip as she thought. Simplify your goal. Show the world how you see him. That she could do. And maybe it wasn’t enough, and maybe it would be found lacking, but she would do her best. Beth would pen Harrison in thoughts and feelings and color and life.
She forced her eyes back to him as he strolled through the melting snow, his hands shoved in the pockets of his orange jacket, the black cap tight against his skull. His head was angled to the side, the cut of his cheekbone and brow visible to her. Harrison looked reflective, lost in thought as he gazed toward the creek. Beth jotted down notes, her hand struggling to work as quickly as her mind.
The sun found him, shone through and around him as if he was the show and it was the spotlight. What will he do next? an invisible audience wondered, hushed and expectant. As she observed Harrison, she realized she was the audience. Beth was the one waiting, enthralled by the physically unwell man who exuded his own form of life. His frame was slight, gaunt with disease, and yet he stood tall, defia
nt against the thing that strove to defeat him.
Beth blinked her eyes and wrote about how the proud tilt of his chin told a tale of unconquerable spirit. He stood alone, nothing but trees and hills around him, and he was vibrant. A painting of red and black and brown with white skin. He wasn’t classically handsome, but Harrison was large, overtaking space from his mere presence. Undeniable. Intimidating. Intense. A force that, knowing he would fall, would go down fighting.
“You fight, Harrison,” she said softly. “Don’t stop fighting.”
She didn’t write about the man before, the man he’d been, as Harrison had requested. Beth couldn’t. She didn’t know that man. She wrote about him as she knew him. He’d said his life wasn’t about the disease, and that was true, and in keeping with that frame of mind, writing about him before it became a part of his existence would be wrong. It would separate him, turn him into a story of before, and a story of after. Beth only wanted to write of Harrison. And she did.
Music and nature, walks and reading. Cold eyes, heated eyes. A face carved from the toughest of stones. A man with a disease, a man who packed all of his pieces tightly inside, and tried to make them invisible. Dark fire, black fire, blazing fire. A warrior who only had to decide to not give up. And he hadn’t. Beth knew that now.
THE SKY WAS black and starry, peaceful for someone other than her. She let out a slow, uneven breath, and used the spare key Harrison had given her to unlock the front door. Beth didn’t really know what she was doing. But the hours spent at home forced her to admit that she didn’t want to be at home, and she didn’t want to be alone. What she wanted was simple. Singular.
Harrison.
Her heartrate was fast, chaotic. It pounded with anxiety and need, with fear and anticipation. In the daylight hours, she gathered up her things and went home as soon as he came back from his walk. An afternoon of eyes that never quite touched and soundless voices did not appeal to her. Beth didn’t say goodbye, and neither did he. Maybe it was madness to come back. Maybe Beth was asking to be hurt again. But she needed an answer, something, and then she would know what to do.
He would tell her to go, or he would ask her to stay.
The lock clicking open sounded abnormally loud, and she wondered if all of the countryside heard it. Beth tiptoed inside, locking the door behind her. She took off her boots and coat in the darkness and headed for the stairs. She didn’t pause or take a moment to reconsider, because if she did, she might leave.
His bedroom door was open. She stood in the doorway for a moment, listening to his steady breathing. It was lyrical in its symbolism. It meant he lived. Beth tiptoed to the bed, watching his chest lift and lower, seeing the puckered line between his eyebrows. What thoughts haunted his dreams? She smoothed it with her finger and leaned down to press a kiss there.
A hand, strong and hard, clamped around her wrist. “What are you doing here, Beth?”
Harrison smelled like cotton and life, clean. Strong.
“I wanted to see you.” Her voice was soft, and it wavered. Harrison wouldn’t like that. It would let him know she was upset about something, and if he thought it was over him, he would tell her to stop. Like she could just turn off her feelings.
“You saw me once today. If you recall, it wasn’t all that good of a time. Go home. Get some sleep.”
“No. I needed to see you. Now. And I’m not going, not yet.” Beth reached for him, her hands touching his jaw, her blood singing with a bittersweet ache. She wanted him to stop telling her no, and instead tell himself yes.
He shot up to a sitting position so fast his forehead banged against hers, and she fell partially onto his lap. His grip tightened on her wrist. It didn’t hurt, but it was firm, an unspoken warning for her to stop whatever she planned to do. Beth’s free hand braced his chest, feeling the thundering of his heart beneath her palm. His skin was warm, and taut; it didn’t seem real that he could be anything other than eternal. Harrison felt like everything she ever wanted wrapped up in one man.
“We can’t, Beth. We can’t do this,” he warned, his voice vibrating with heat. But the tone of his words brought her closer. He didn’t mean them.
“We can. I want you, Harrison. All of you. I’m not letting you push me away anymore.”
“Don’t think I don’t want you. I do. I want you,” he panted, grabbing her hand and squeezing.
Harrison moved her hand to his erection, pressed it there. He groaned, guttural and deep. His chest heaved, and his breaths came quicker, a shield splintered by the touch of a woman. She went still, fascinated, all of her flooding with warmth. Liquid desire mixed with adrenaline. That sound, she wanted to hear that sound pass his lips again and again, more and more. Beth’s core throbbed, her fingers wanting to wrap around him and make him lose his mind with pleasure. Her pinky twitched, and Harrison’s hand pressed harder to still the movement.
His skin burned through the boxer briefs, hard with want. “I want you so bad, bad enough that I could die tomorrow if I was guaranteed all of tonight with you. Any night. All the nights,” Harrison whispered. He gently pushed her hand from him. “I’d sell my soul for it. You drive me mad with your scent, and your eyes, and your words. And your heart, always your heart, staring at me from your big blue eyes. You think I’m strong, you think so many things I don’t have the heart to tell you aren’t true. I want to give you what you want, Beth. I want to give you everything, all of me. But I can’t.”
“I love you,” she blurted, snapping her teeth together at the unintended confession.
Harrison turned to stone, a dark shadow crisscrossed with light from the moon outside the window. “Then I feel sorry for you.”
Beth’s mouth trembled, her hand reaching for the man who never allowed her comfort. “You don’t mean that. I know you don’t. Harrison—”
He jumped from the bed. Back and forth, he paced, his shoulders hunched forward, the pads of his bare feet slapping on the hardwood floor as he moved, an angry beast caged inside four walls. Four walls he chose to build. Four walls he could destroy.
“No. You’re right, I don’t. I feel sorry for me. I’m so fucking stupid,” Harrison muttered. “So fucking stupid!”
He spun toward the wall and punched a fist against it. He stood like that, his back waving as he breathed, his hands splayed against the wall with his head bowed. “You are not allowed to love me,” he said raggedly, pleadingly.
Beth scrambled from the bed, hovering behind him. So near, and so far. She lightly rested a palm to his shoulder, and he jerked in response. Harrison went still, and when he didn’t push her away, Beth touched her mouth to the place near her hand. His skin shuddered around it. She couldn’t understand how her heart pounded the way it did without stopping.
“It’s too late. I already do.”
“I came here to be alone.” The words were low, without emotion.
She nodded behind him, both hands touching his back, each on one shoulder blade. Beth slowly turned her head and set her cheek to the smooth, hot, unblemished skin. She closed her eyes as she loosely barricaded him in, not to trap him, but to let him know he had her strength as well. She stood with him, and she would fall with him. Beth would pick him up when he couldn’t stand on his own. And if he couldn’t stand with her, then she would lie down beside him.
“I accepted it. The plan was almost beautiful, really. I was going to eat and drink whatever the hell I wanted, or whatever my body would allow, and I was going to read. Reflect on things. Listen to music. Go for walks. Enjoy my time. I simplified my world so that it was easier to one day leave it.”
Beth trailed her palms down and around his torso, her arms meeting at the center of his stomach. Too skinny. He was too skinny. She inhaled, exhaled, held him. Harrison’s hands slid down the wall and stopped on her arms. She tensed, expecting him to remove them, but he didn’t. He cocooned them, hugged her arms as her arms hugged him.
“What you said today—you were right. All of it. You’re right.”
Beth held him tighter. “I won’t give up on you, Harrison.”
He took a shaking breath, his head further lowering.
“I haven’t let anyone touch me in years,” he said quietly, his voice rough. “And then you showed up, and all I’ve wanted since is for you to touch me.”
She brushed her lips across the hollow of his spine, felt him tremble in response.
“I did this. I brought you into my life.”
She smiled faintly against his back. “You didn’t make me fall in love with you. It just…happened. I want to be in your life. I want to be a part of it.”
“No one will look at you the same. They’ll stare, and they’ll talk, and your life will be harder than it has to be. They’ll say you have the disease. If you’re linked to me, Beth, then you might as well have HIV. You’ll be treated like you do. There will be nothing quiet, nothing peaceful, about being with me.
“They’ll look at you funny when you eat at restaurants. If you use a public restroom, they won’t use it after you. They’ll look at you like just being in your presence is enough to guarantee them catching it. Or even worse than all that, they’ll look at you with pity.”
“I don’t care,” she said in a wobbly voice, and she meant it.
“Are you listening to this, Beth?” Harrison flung her arms away and turned, pinning her with his tormented black eyes. “Your life won’t be anything like you’re used to.”
“I want to be with you. I don’t care about anything but that.”
“You can’t be with me,” he said shortly.
Anger at Harrison, at the unfairness of life and death, bristled through her like spiked bones of determination. Beth felt her face twist, the corners of her mouth fall. “You wanted me here. You asked for me.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me.” She crossed her arms and stared at the pale features facing her. “You were lonely, that’s why you hired me. You didn’t need a book written, you needed someone in your life to make you feel not so lonely.”
“If you think that’s true, then why did you keep coming back?”
