by Witt, L. A.
I couldn’t even hide behind the worry that my late husband would be hurt to know I was already getting involved with another man. No, Sean had made sure I didn’t have that bunker to shield me from my own cowardice.
Though I’d mostly blocked out the memory while I’d been smoking with Scott, it came back in full force now, and there was nothing I could do but let it fill my mind and take me back. It had been in the early months, before the disease had started gaining the upper hand, back when my husband had still been vibrant and lucid. I’d never forget standing there in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher, when Sean had walked in with we need to talk in his eyes.
“I need you to promise me something,” he’d said after convincing me to abandon the dishes and sit down on the couch with him.
I’d flinched hard, and God, I hadn’t wanted to have that conversation. Not then. Not ever. I couldn’t imagine he had either, but he’d recently started accepting the fact that he wasn’t going to see thirty, and he’d started preparing both of us. So whenever he’d sat me down like this, I’d known damn well it would be something related to the end, and I hadn’t been ready to think about that. Maybe he’d accepted his mortality, but I hadn’t. In some ways, I probably never would.
Sean had needed it, though. No matter how much it tore me up each and every time, I’d promised myself I’d have a million of these conversations with him if they brought him some peace before he . . . before it was over.
I wasn’t ready, though, when he took my hand and whispered, “Promise me you won’t turn away happiness after I’m gone.”
My mouth went dry. “What?”
He swallowed, holding my gaze even though it seemed to take a monumental effort. “It’s up to you when you start dating again, and—”
“Sean. Don’t.” I shook my head, trying not to get violently ill. “I don’t even want to think about that. Not now.”
“I know. And I don’t either. But I need . . .” He bit his lip and dropped his gaze, staring down at our hands, which were clasped so tightly together it was getting painful. “Please. Just listen to me.”
I took a deep breath to pull myself together. “Okay. I’ll listen.” I steeled myself against how bad this was going to hurt, but there was only so much emotional armor a man could put up.
It was Sean’s turn for a deep breath, and as he pushed his shoulders back, he met my eyes again. “When someone comes along, if he’s good to you and you’re into him, just . . .” His expression was filled with so many things I couldn’t read, and his voice was barely a whisper: “You decide when you’re ready, but just promise you won’t let me get in the way.”
My heart stopped. I stared at him, unable to speak.
“If . . . if you meet someone, and the only thing keeping you away from him is me . . .” He met my eyes. “Like you feel guilty, or you think I’d be angry that you’re moving on . . .” Sean shook his head. “I want you to know right now that I won’t be. I want you to be happy, Garrett, and if a guy drops out of the sky after I’m gone . . .” He swallowed again, and his voice shook as he whispered, “Don’t say no to him because you think I’d want you to.”
“Sean . . .”
“Please,” he’d whispered. “Promise me. I want you to be happy.”
In the bathroom of my tiny Bluewater Bay apartment, I broke eye contact with myself and swiped at some unwelcome tears. This wasn’t the time.
That conversation a lifetime ago had been excruciating, but now, even as my heart ached at the memory, I was glad we’d had it. I could practically hear Sean standing next to me, gesturing in Jesse’s general direction and yelling, Oh my God, go for it! What are you waiting for? In fact, I could see him giving Jesse an appreciative down-up, then smirking at me and complimenting me on snagging a guy that hot.
The thought made me laugh, which helped me put a stop to the tears. Trust Sean to be able to make me feel better when I was freaking out about going on a date.
It was ironic how everyone had thought that as young as he was, he had to be entirely too immature for someone my age. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Immature didn’t spend the last year of his life making sure everyone who loved him was ready to let him go. Not that it had been remotely possible to be prepared—the moment of his death had torn something out of me that would never come back—but damn if he hadn’t tried like hell, all the way to his very last waking breath, to make sure the rest of us had peace.
I closed my eyes and exhaled. The thought of moving on was still hard. And admittedly, it was beginning to ignite some guilt and self-loathing deep in my chest. The prospect of sleeping with Jesse had my mind twisting in on itself in search of justification and permission. The thought of going on a date had reopened all the wounds and given the grief a second wind.
Going out with Jesse meant Sean was really gone. The last several months had been peppered with moments and milestones that had meant the same thing, and each one hurt in a new and unexpected way. Getting bills in the mail with only my name on them. Watching his car disappear down our street with its new driver at the wheel. The first Christmas without Sean putting on a Santa hat and entertaining our nieces and nephews with made-up carols. How long would it take for that to stop happening? Fuck if I knew.
I stared at myself in the mirror again. Yes, it hurt to remind myself he was gone, but I was still here. Jesse had reminded me that I was still alive and that I could feel things again that weren’t grief and loneliness. I still keenly felt those things, but there was also desire, excitement, attraction, and . . . want. I actually wanted. I wanted to see where things with Jesse could go, and I wanted him. Not the memories he sometimes triggered of my husband. Him. Kissing him the other night had almost ripped me to pieces because I’d suddenly been aware of just how starved I’d been for intimacy, and now I wanted more of that.
I wanted more, and if I played my cards right, there’d be more tonight.
And not a moment too soon, I decided. It wasn’t like I’d ever given myself a designated mourning period. I’d never decided to wait six months or a year or two years. There’d been no point because I hadn’t seen myself ever looking at another man. Even if I’d known intellectually that I’d probably move on sooner or later, it had been impossible to consider. Laying down a time frame had made about as much sense as drawing up an emergency escape plan from a house I’d never seen before.
I gave my reflection one last look and set my jaw. I could do this. Scott had given me a sanity check, and I took his advice to heart. Who better to offer me some guidance than a licensed counselor who was a widower himself? And he’d given this his blessing.
I nodded sharply at myself and walked out of the bathroom to get my wallet and keys. Nerves were okay tonight. I’d have been worried if I didn’t have them. But chickening out? Not a chance. I wanted to see what could happen with Jesse. It was too soon to call it anything, but it wasn’t too soon to recognize that tingle of attraction. Or to act on it. I was in no hurry to push this thing forward. I just didn’t feel the need to rein it back.
In the living room, I ignored my roiling stomach and thundering heart and kept right on walking. Out of the apartment. Down to my truck. Then I drove, and I didn’t let myself think about bailing anymore. I was doing this and that was final. Maybe I’d fuck it up somehow, but I was going. I sure as shit wasn’t standing up a man who I’d met because he’d been stood up by someone else.
On the way into downtown Bluewater Bay, I forced back another wave of fear that desperately wanted some attention. I held the wheel firmly and kept driving. I was doing this. I wanted to, and anyway, if I refused to give love a shot on the off chance tragedy might strike twice, there’d be hell to pay in the afterlife. I could see Sean standing at the Pearly Gates, arms crossed and head cocked in his classic you done fucked up fashion, ready to inform me of his disappointment.
The thought actually made me laugh again, with more feeling than earlier. Maybe that was a good sign too.
In town, as I walked from my truck toward Il Trovatore, the Italian restaurant Jesse had suggested, someone called my name. I stopped in my tracks, looked around, and found Jesse heading up the sidewalk toward me. He waved. I waved back.
Okay. We’re doing this.
He stopped at the corner, facing me from one end of a crosswalk.
The signal changed to Walk.
Jesse started toward me.
And I waited.
Here goes . . .
Chapter 11
Jesse
The hostess seated us against the far wall of the warmly lit restaurant and handed us a couple of menus. After she’d taken our drink order, she left us to peruse the selection.
“So what’s good?” Garrett asked.
“Don’t know. I’ve never been here.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Haven’t you?”
“Nope. A friend recommended it, but I have no idea what they’re good at.”
“Fair.” He glanced at the menu. “I haven’t had a bad meal in this town yet, so maybe my luck will hold out.”
I laughed. “You haven’t lived here very long, have you?”
“Nope.”
“Give it time.”
“Yeah?”
“Trust me.”
“Noted.”
We shifted our attention to the menus. I skimmed over it, but all the words were jumbled. Or at least they didn’t make it to my brain. They might as well have spelled out, Tell him, tell him, tell him, because that was all I could think about.
My gaze landed on one clear word: chicken.
Yep. That was me. Chickenshit.
My stomach churned. My fingers left little smears of sweat on the laminated pages I wasn’t reading. I couldn’t stop tapping my foot, and if it kept going much longer, the table was going to start shaking like we were having a séance. I hadn’t taken a single bite or drink of anything, and I felt like something was stuck in my throat.
Fuck it. If I didn’t get this off my chest, I would just keep feeling queasy. The mere thought of ordering made me want to hurl. Stupid nerves. Stupid bad experiences. Once bitten, twice nauseated as fuck.
There was no point in waiting until after we’d had dinner. So, taking a deep breath, I closed my menu and met his gaze across the table. “Look, um, there’s something I think we should talk about.”
Garrett’s forehead creased. He closed his menu and folded his hands on top of it, as if to tell me I had his full attention.
Squirming under his intense, inquisitive gaze, my leg still shaking and not doing a damn thing to disperse this nervous energy, I struggled to hold eye contact. “The reason I wanted to take things slow last night, it’s . . .” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “Before we take this any further . . .” This part hadn’t gotten any easier with time. “I need you to know . . .” Fuck. This was all happening in the wrong order. It was all fucking backward. Guys were supposed to know this shit before I’d invested enough to actually hurt at the thought of watching them leave. I was supposed to be on a hair trigger, ready to bolt at the first sign of rejection, not already hurting at the thought of dropping that hammer.
Garrett’s brow pinched. After a moment, he reached across the table and put a hand on my forearm. “What’s on your mind?”
I glanced down at his hand, then pulled in another deep shaky breath. “To cut right to the chase, I’m positive.”
He blinked, and his fingers twitched. “Come again?”
“I’m . . .” I swallowed. “I’m HIV-positive.”
Time stopped. It always did right then, a single nanosecond stretching out while a million possible reactions played out in my head. A disgusted sneer. Shrugged acceptance. “That’s okay—me too.” Every possibility. And my body and brain flowed with preemptive relief, anger, hurt, nerves, and God only knew what else while I waited for that nanosecond to tick past so I could see how Garrett would take the news.
Tonight, reality played out unlike any of the mental movie screens.
Garrett? He blanched. His whole body slowly stiffened like it was turning to stone, and he stared at me like I’d just told him I had a bomb strapped to my chest with three seconds left till boom. Lips parted, eyes wide, he didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
With each heartbeat, the ball of lead in my stomach got ten pounds heavier. Under my clothes, my skin crawled. Even more under where his hand rested—not as firmly now—on my arm.
Yep. Definitely should have told him sooner. Charlie’s response hadn’t cut this deep.
“You know what?” I jerked my arm away and stood so fast I nearly toppled my chair. “Fuck you.” Then I turned to go.
I made it three steps before another chair ground across the wood floor. “Jesse, wait!”
I didn’t.
He followed me, and when I stepped out into the cooling evening, he reached for my elbow. “Just listen to—”
I wrenched my arm away again and spun around. “What part of ‘fuck you’ wasn’t clear?”
He halted, eyes huge and mouth agape. “Jesse . . . I . . .”
“Don’t.” I shook my head and put up a hand. “Whatever you’re going to say, I’ve heard it before, and . . .” Fuck. Now my voice was shaking. On the verge of cracking. “I really don’t want to hear it from you.”
Then I turned again, and this time I didn’t go back. He didn’t try all that hard to change my mind either.
Fuck him. I didn’t need this shit in my life. I’d had enough of assholes like him, and besides, there were plenty of queer fish in the sea. Thanks to Wolf’s Landing, a lot of those queer fish were here in Bluewater Bay. I knew from experience that plenty of them weren’t ignorant assholes when it came to HIV.
I was just surprised—yet again—when someone turned out to be one of those ignorant assholes.
Especially when that someone was Garrett.
* * *
I didn’t sleep that night. I’d tossed and turned, refusing to let myself cry even if I knew I’d exhaust myself and fall asleep. Alone in my bedroom, I was still too proud, too stubborn, and too fucking pissed off to let Garrett drive tears out of me. I’d given enough of those to Charlie.
In the morning, with another lament about the coffee shops in town not having Super Big Gulp sizes, I made it into work without crashing my car or faceplanting on the sidewalk. That was a start, I guessed. And I was clocked in. Earning my paycheck. Not really doing anything besides chugging coffee and breathing, but whatever. I busted my ass in this place. One day of feeling sorry for myself on company time wouldn’t be the end of the world.
It wasn’t fucking fair. In my entire life, I’d had sex with one person who I hadn’t had to say those words to. One. After him, every single goddamned sexual encounter I’d wanted had been on the other side of an awkward conversation. Every relationship. Every screw. Every make-out session. It was like in order to get to any kind of intimacy, everyone else in the world just had to cross a concrete footbridge, complete with safety railings and streetlights, while I was over here hoping a strong wind didn’t drop this rickety suspension bridge out from under my shaking legs. Sometimes it held. Sometimes it didn’t. Every time, though, the sickening fear was there and it was real and sometimes it was fucking justified.
I was exhausted. I was just . . . so done.
“Jesse?” Lydia’s voice startled me. I glanced at her, then down at everything laid out in front of me. I’d forgotten what the hell I was doing.
Unpacking a shipment of gaming dice. Right.
“Hey.” I gave her another glance before reaching in to pull out a few more packs of the colorful twenty-sided dice. “I was just . . . uh . . .”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Why?” I flashed her a quick and probably not very convincing smile.
Lydia exhaled. “Don’t bullshit me, Jesse Brooks.” Oh crap. When she broke out my full name, she wasn’t fucking around. Especially not when she backed it with that look—same one s
he gave Simon or Ian sometimes when they were testing her nerves. “Tell me.”
I swallowed. Admittedly, the pushiness and refusal to back down were comforting. She really did care, and she wasn’t going to let me wallow on my own when we both knew I’d just bottle it up until it broke me. Plus she, unlike most people I wasn’t planning to have sex with, knew my status. I’d confided in her about it a long time ago, and I didn’t think she’d even told Simon.
I took a deep breath. “That guy I went out with last night? I told him. About my status. And he freaked out. Like . . .” I sagged against the stack of boxes and wiped a hand over my face. “I’ve never seen someone look as horrified as he did. I mean, some guys get all disgusted and won’t touch me, but his reaction was . . . it was so weird.”
Lydia grimaced. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry.”
I slumped a bit more. “I get all kinds of reactions. His . . . Fuck. My skin is still crawling.”
“I believe it. You said he’s older, though, isn’t he?”
I nodded without looking at her. “Fortysomething, I think. Forty-two.”
“He is from a different generation, then. He probably still hears ‘HIV’ and thinks about what it was like twenty, thirty years ago.”
“But he’s a gay guy.” I threw up my hands. “He can’t be that out of touch, you know? Knowing how treatable and transmittable HIV is . . . that’s, like . . . Being Gay in the Twenty-First Century 101.”
She nodded slowly. “You’re probably right. And either way, it’s no excuse for him to be a dick-weasel to you.” She put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a gentle squeeze. “It sucks. It really does. He sounded like a nice guy.”
“Yeah. He did.” And that was the worst kind. Especially since he’d still think of himself as a nice guy after this. After all, he hadn’t been an asshole. He’d just been protecting himself. Making sure he didn’t get sick. I couldn’t be offended by a guy looking out for his health, could I?
