Costas walks into his bedroom, side-eyeing me with that smoldering, deep brown stare of his. “Katarina, what are you doing in here?”
His T-shirt slides off my shoulder as I shift on the bed, trying my best to be sexy. “Waiting for you.”
He continues into the room, barely looking in my direction. “You know how I feel about my privacy, darling.”
“When we're married, we'll share a bed. What's the difference?”
Frustration sets in. This isn't how I imagined this going. The age difference between us makes him nervous. We both agreed to no touching below the waist until I became legal. Cut to today. Eighteen years old and being brutally rebuffed by my twenty-one-year-old fiancé.
“Yes, but we aren't married yet,” he says, tapping his finger on the tip of my nose.
“Costas . . .”
“Come.” He extends his hand.
“That's what I’m trying to do.” I lean forward and press my mouth to his. After all these years, kissing him still gives me a thrill. It's not like the few I’ve shared with random boys at school. Everything with them is fast and clumsy—all pokey tongue and too much saliva—but Costas is no high school boy. He knows the art of a seductive kiss. His soft lips caress mine, taking their time before parting. He holds my face and never pushes me further than I'm willing to go. But it's been two years, and I'm ready for more.
“Our first time should be special.”
Costas comes from a traditional family like I do. In fact, our parents have been friends for as far back as I can remember. We waited a lifetime for each other. What's more special than that?
“I love you, Costas, and I’ve been patient, but I want to be with you.”
With a defeated sigh, he squares his shoulders. “Okay. Lie down.”
The serene sounds of trickling rain tap on the windows in Chase’s kitchen. The acronym HIV-1 leaps off the little white box on the table in bright blue, green, and orange. You’d think it was a coffin-shaped box with letters dripping blood by the way I’m feeling right now, but that stupid happy logo taunts me as his slender fingers tear open the top.
He bought it from the drugstore on his lunch break. Who would have guessed you could buy do-it-yourself HIV test kits right at Walgreens? Is this what we’ve become as a society? So rampant with disease that scientists have found a way to let idiots like me do this in the privacy of our own homes?
“You aren’t taking one, too?”
“I got tested end of last year. I haven’t been active.”
My jaw drops. “Why not?”
“Hasn’t been on my list of priorities.” Blue eyes scan the directions. I watch them slowly scan to the right then snap back as he goes over them line by line, flicking the lip ring with incessant zeal. I touched another nerve.
“Okay,” he says after a few minutes. “All you need to do is prick your finger and squeeze a few drops of blood into the well of the collection cassette thing.”
I sit like a stone. “This shit doesn’t happen to real people. This is a movie they show you in health class about the dangers of safe sex.”
He looks up through his lashes, waiting for me to move. A cruel mix of pity and relief swirls inside his kind gaze. “It happens. Best to get it over with.” Why is he making me do this? We’re not close. Certainly not hold-my-hand-while-I-die close. No one cares enough about me for that. Costas was my one chance at love. He was the only man who ever touched the tiny piece of my soul that still shined with innocent light. I thought we were going to be together forever. But instead, he’s underground, and I’m a potential ticking time bomb of disease. As usual, Costas got the last laugh. He wanted me dead, and I am.
I feel my face scrunch like an overused stress ball. Used. That’s what I am. It’s all I’ve ever been from day one. Until now. “Will you do it?” The question comes out so meek I hardly recognize my own voice.
The foil crinkles as Chase pulls out an alcohol wipe. The irony of it all smacks me upside the head. The contents of a little foil packet could have avoided this entire thing altogether.
When he lifts my hand, a five-fingered sweat mark slowly dissolves from the shiny surface of the table. “When I was in eighth grade, there was this talent show.” He gently works his thumbs in small circles from the heel of my hand to my fingers before swabbing the pad of my middle finger clean. “A lip sync challenge called Puttin’ on the Hits.”
“What did you sing?”
A shy smile tugs on the corner of his mouth. “‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye.”
“You’re jerkin’ me, right?”
“No. The entire school was there—everyone’s parents, too.” He pauses, his smile growing wider. “So there I was on the stage, miming the words and dancing along like a regular lounge singer, when the principal cuts the music and chases me off.”
“That’s the funniest shit I’ve heard all year.” I snort.
“Yeah. My career as an R&B singer was over before it even started.” Lost in the softness of his smooth, calm voice, I forget all about what he’s doing with my hand. It’s not until he lifts it to his lips, dotting a kiss to my surprisingly bandaged finger, that I realize he’s finished. “You’re all set.”
A moment passes. A lifetime, it seems. Our eyes lock as his thumb gently grazes the back of my hand. An army of butterflies dances in my gut. “Chase?” I whisper.
He shakes his head as if waking from a trance. “Yeah . . . so . . . let's get this sealed and sent out. We’ll get the results back in” —he picks up the box, avoiding my intent gaze— “seven days.”
I nod. Did we almost have a moment? For a split second, his eyes flared with some kind of animal hunger. I saw it eating through every fiber of his being, watched it gnash its teeth and prepare to feast upon my flesh next. “I really need a drink.” Or a cigarette.
Chase rolls his eyes and rises from the table. A halo of light filters around him as he opens the fridge. It adds an angelic glow around his dark persona. It fits him. My guardian angel. “I have water and OJ.”
My phone is already in my hand texting Devin before I answer. “Unless you have a little vodka to go with that OJ, I’ll pass,” I mumble, my thumbs whizzing across the screen.
The feeling of a hard gaze searing into me steals my eyes from the illuminated screen. “Who are you texting?”
“You wanna go out?”
“A minute ago, you were on the verge of tears, and now you wanna go out?” He cracks the seal on a bottle of water and brings it to his mouth.
“What can I say? You gave me renewed life.”
He leans his ass in the crook of the counter, crossing his long legs out in front of him. “If you mean, do I wanna watch you get drunk again, then no.”
“Party pooper.”
With a snort, he pushes off the counter to start bagging up my sample in the prepaid envelope. I was so scared when I got here, but Chase put me completely at ease. It’s only been a couple of days, but I feel like I’ve known him my whole life. The constant buzzing in my brain quiets to a low hum whenever he’s around. It’s the craziest thing.
“Chasey . . .” I start, rising from my seat and stretching my arms up around his shoulders. He quirks a brow and looks down at me. “Will you come with me to my family’s beach house this weekend?”
“Uh. Negative.” He unclasps my hands and takes a step back.
“Come on. I’d sell my left tit to get out of it, but I can’t.”
“Sell your left tit?”
“I could certainly use the money.” A cheeky grin splits my face. “Seriously, though. I don’t know why, but I feel so comfortable around you. My family stresses me out something fierce. I just know if you’re there, it will relieve some of the pressure and help keep my mind off all this.” I wave my hands over the remnants of recent events still scattered across the tabletop. “Come with me. Please, please, please?”
“Okay, okay.” With the water bottle gripped between his thumb and forefinger, he raises both his hands in defeat. He lets out a sigh. “How do I let you talk me into this shit?”
“Because I’m cute,” I quip, batting my eyelashes with dramatic flair.
His lips curve into a tight-lipped smirk. “Mmmhmm.”