34
CHRIS
"I don't need to ask if Chris is home, I can smell him." The front door closed with a bang, followed by the sound of footsteps approaching. Chris sat up a little straighter. "And I don't need to ask if Lee’s in my hallway because I can hear him."
Lee paused at the entrance to the kitchen with Tom behind him.
"I thought you'd be in the studio." He looked around the kitchen. His gaze lingered on the mountains of food covering every surface.
"What's going on, are you catering for a public event?" Lee stepped forward into the kitchen.
"Can I get you a drink, Lee, a cup of tea?" Without waiting for a reply, Tom walked over to the kettle.
Chris felt embarrassed as the evidence of his emotional breakdown surrounded him. His two best friends knew exactly what it meant when Chris baked too many sweet and savoury pastries at all hours of the day.
"Time for your pill." Tom reached into the cupboard, pulled out the box, and put it on the table in front of Chris, who ignored it.
"I know I lose track of the days of the week, but I'm fairly sure you're supposed to be at work right now, Lee. It's ten. So to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Tom told me about all this." Lee opened his arms wide hands, palms up. "I thought I better come round and check it out for myself and see if you needed someone to eat it."
Resigned, Chris knew he couldn't make an excuse and hide everything from his two best friends. If there were two people he could tell everything to, they were right there in that room.
"It's a man."
"When isn't it," Tom mumbled, his back to the others as he sorted out the drinks.
Lee sat down facing Chris. "You haven't had a man in your life for so long I thought you'd given up. When was the last guy?"
"It was around about the time you got with Connor, I think. And we didn't meet him," Tom answered, when Chris took to long to reply.
"Yes. That's the guy. Do you remember him, Tom? He lived near the studio. Nice tattoos down his one arm and over his chest."
Tom looked as if he were trying to recall.
"We never met him, did we?" Lee asked.
"It was a short-lived thing." Chris sighed. "You know when you meet somebody, and he's different to everyone you've ever met before. You seem to have things in common and be on the same wavelength. That's what it was like. I thought I'd found my soul mate."
Tom put drinks on the table for them all and sat between them. "I remember you moping around for weeks after it ended. It was months ago, though, so what's that got to do with now?"
"I met him again at the weekend, and that connection was there again from the start. I've never experienced anything like it. Like meeting the one man out there who was made to be with me."
"And I guess by the state of this kitchen, it didn't go well?" Lee asked.
"At first it did. We exchanged numbers, and he seemed keen. Really interested. Then he found out I'm positive."
"Oh, I don't believe it." Tom leaned forward. "I remember you moping around for ages when he didn't call you, and it's Frank, isn't it?"
Lee looked between the two of them with confusion on his face.
Chris nodded.
Tom continued, explaining things to Lee. "He left so abruptly from the table when we were talking on Saturday. Then Chris left as well. I didn't know there was anything between them. I didn't put two and two together." Tom turned toward Chris. "So Frank who works with Ben is the same guy who broke your heart by not calling you, months ago."
Lee leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. "Frank at work is into men? I don't know why I ever thought they were all straight."
"You must turn your gaydar off when you go to work, Lee," Tom said.
The men sat in silence for a few minutes.
Chris pointed to his phone."The good news is there is someone interested in me. He's texting regularly to try and fix a date."
The men stared with full attention.
"You remember Jeremy? He'd like to get back together I think."
"Not that slimy git from way back?" Lee asked.
"Yes, that's the one." Of course his friends remembered Jeremy. Chris had dated him for long enough. Too long. His friends had encouraged Chris and been supportive of his ambitions and at the same time pursued dreams of their own. Jeremy was one of a string of boyfriends that dismissed their dreams as unattainable fantasies. Putting it bluntly: that the three men should set their sights lower.
"Urgh." Tom turned away.
As if he could smell something rotten, Lee didn't hide the disgust on his face either. "No way. So what happened with Frank?"
"We met at your party, exchanged numbers, things seem to be going well. And then we were sat at a table where other people were talking about HIV."
Tom stood up from the table and fetched some plates from a cupboard. "Urgh. That conversation was toxic." He handed a plate to Lee and put one down in front of Chris. "Eat up."
Lee picked up a pastry that was in front of him and started to tear it apart. "So what happened?"
"I told you there was a strong connection between us, because I said nothing, and he read my mind. He got up and left. I've gone over and over it in my mind. I shouldn't have followed him because alone it meant we had that conversation. You know, the one where he asks if I'm positive, I tell him I am, he storms off in disgust. If I hadn't followed him I could have found a way to be more in control of how and when and where he found out. We could have talked."
"This all happened on Saturday, and you're only telling me now?" Tom looked exasperated.
"I tried to do some work at the studio, and I didn't want to talk about it." Chris looked up at Lee. "Tom sets his own hours, but why aren't you at work?"
"I should be at work, but I am working on a job local to here, and everyone's entitled to a break. Admittedly, this is a long break after we'd only been at work two hours, but I don't think the boss will sack me." Lee grinned. "Although the other guys aren't gonna be pleased about me taking liberties. I will just tell them it's a family emergency."
Tom picked up his tea and took a sip. "He's not worth it if he's not interested in you just because of HIV."
Frank had looked at Chris as if he were an attempted murderer. Chris didn't want to relive the details. He'd talked about it often enough with his friends over the years. Most young gay men under thirty years of age wouldn't date a man because of his HIV status, for reasons born out of fear and ignorance. They couldn't catch it. Not from Chris. "I don't want to sound like a whining kid, but it's not fair. You know Frank's almost perfect."
Lee nodded. "It's true, he’s well-respected at work."
"I've baked enough here to feed the county's homeless, so if you want to take some into work Lee, I'll get a bag." Chris stood up to get a bag when the alarm sounded on his phone, reminding him to take his daily medication. He turned off the alarm and picked up the box from where Tom had put it.
"I'll certainly take some off your hands and use them to bribe my way back into the blokes' good books as I've left them working without me. I won't see Frank though, he and I rarely work on the same site. He often works with Ben. And you know I don't work with Ben." Chris knew his friends wanted to be supportive. They'd be all for reminding him there were more fish in the sea. What Chris couldn't adequately explain was how everything seemed different with Frank.
Better.
Their conversations, the way they understood each other, and the chemistry between them. These were things you couldn't put into words, and no amount of ticking the right boxes on complicated matchmaking websites could account for it. Shared attitudes and values. They'd only spent a short time together, but Chris never met anyone like Frank and never felt this way about a man before. His friends were right; he had to get over it. Get over the fact that life was so unfair.
Tom put down his tea. "If everything was perfect about this guy and he's only not interested in you because he's ignorant about HIV, perhaps he just needs education. Ben works with him. Shall I get Ben to talk to him?"
Chris shrugged. He had no answer.