One hot Saturday, we took it easy. I’d driven out to the stables with Leika early that morning, while Danny had gone running and then spent some time training at the gym.

At noon, I brought Leika to my parents’ house and then drove back to Danny’s alone. Leika was so exhausted from the heat that I didn’t want to make her go out into it again.

When Danny got home, we went for a walk with Maya, but not far, because it was already much too hot. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon underneath the huge linden tree beside the ponies’ paddock. We thought about going swimming in the nearby river but decided we were too lazy. Instead, we dangled our feet in the water, eating ice cream we bought at a gas station, and listened to music.

Danny’s taste in music took some getting used to. He either blasted dark, epic music that could never be loud enough for him, or he listened to soulful ballads with profound lyrics in English. I didn’t understand a lot of them, because of the language barrier—or because I was just too superficial to understand poetry like that. So he’d always explain them to me and then try to speculate about their meanings.

We ate dinner at a little pub and then spent the rest of the evening on the couch. Christina was at a friend’s house all weekend. She claimed she wanted to spend more time with Natasha, but I suspected she just wanted to give me and Danny time to ourselves.

We watched The Matrix, but Danny was lying on his back, and I kept catching myself sneaking glances at him instead of following the confusing movie. At one point, Danny laughed quietly to himself. I didn’t really get the joke, but I couldn’t help laughing along with him anyway. As always. He had me completely under his spell.

I scooted over to him on my knees and gently touched the blond hair on his tanned arm. He raised his eyes to meet mine and gazed at me intently.

My heart skipped a beat, and my stomach tensed up almost painfully. Danny extended his arm invitingly and patted his chest. Obediently, I crawled over to lie on him and laid my head on his shoulder. He curled an arm around me, pressing his lips to my forehead as he tenderly brushed a few strands of hair out of my face. His touch gave me goosebumps, and a delicious shiver ran down my back. I tilted my head expectantly and found his lips with my own, and he returned the kiss deeply.

Tonight would be perfect, I thought. Tina’s away—we’re totally alone.

Little by little, I slid further on top of him as we continued kissing passionately. My fingers found his T-shirt, and I tried to pull it off him. But he pulled away with a smile. “We should stop.”

Why? I wanted to yell.

Determined, I pushed my hand underneath his shirt, but he caught it and pressed it against my thigh.

“No,” he said in a friendly but firm tone.

Now I was really starting to lose my patience. “Why can’t I touch you?” I asked petulantly.

“Because I don’t want you to.”

“Great,” I growled. “What exactly would you say if I didn’t want you to touch me?”

He raised both hands. “No problem. Then I won’t do it anymore.”

Sighing, I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Danny, you know that’s not what I want. I was just trying to say that we should talk about this one of these days.”

He didn’t react, except to cross his arms and turn away from me, as he did so often.

“It’s because of what your dad did to you?” Though it had come out like a question, I already suspected the answer.

He looked at me, his eyes wide. Then he sprang to his feet and left the living room at a sharp clip. I shook my head, shoulders sagging in frustration, and followed him to his room. He was sitting on his bed, staring out the window.

“Danny, I think I already know. He abused—”

“Abused?” he interrupted, his voice cold and derisive.

Dammit, I shouldn’t have said anything!

Maybe if I just gave him a minute…

Danny leaped up again and began pacing across the room. “Abused,” he sneered again, as though the word was nowhere near powerful enough for what had been done to him. “He raped me!”

I felt like I was falling from an unspeakable height. Suspecting something and hearing it directly were two very different things.

“Do you understand that?” He was nearly screaming. “He raped me! Over and over again! For two whole years. And my mom did nothing to stop it. Nothing!”

My breath was coming quickly. “Maybe… Maybe she didn’t know it was happening.”

“She did! Oh, yes, she did. She knew exactly what he was doing. He was in my room for hours, sometimes even the whole night. He’d scream at me, and I’d cry, I’d shout for her, beg her to do something. She ignored it. She ignored me. She created her own reality.” He was pacing incessantly, like a caged tiger, and kept running both hands through his hair. He cursed under his breath in English. “But why am I even telling you this?” he suddenly snarled at me. “You say you already knew.”

“Maybe because it does you good to talk about it,” I said hopefully. “And because that’s the only way we can figure out how to handle it.”

He snorted. “I’ve talked about it enough. In court. On a continuous loop. To total strangers. Do you have any idea how that feels? Having to tell a room of strangers about that shit? I sat there in that courtroom feeling guilty while my father just grinned like an idiot, like it was his God-given right to do what he’d done to me.”

Without warning, he kicked the dresser. I flinched. Although he was only wearing socks, the wood splintered immediately. But it wasn’t enough for him. He kept kicking it, again and again, until the whole thing collapsed.

I sat on the bed and stared helplessly at my hands while he got it all out of his system. Suddenly, I was glad I’d left Leika at my parents’ house—Danny’s unusually aggressive behavior would have frightened her.

“I think I need a new dresser,” he said at last. He sounded completely composed again. I looked up. “Will you come with me on Monday to buy one?”

“Of course.”

Sighing, Danny sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, his gaze locked on an imaginary point on the wall. For a few moments, he sat in silence, taking deep breaths. “For the first ten years of my life, everything was totally normal,” he said. “Then I made a mistake, and my mother had a miscarriage—”

“Hold on,” I broke in. “You made a mistake, and that’s why your mother had a miscarriage? How is that possible?” What ridiculous stories had they been feeding him?

“Don’t interrupt,” he said. “Just listen to me, okay? You can ask questions later.”

“Okay.” I chewed my lip and kept silent.

“After she lost the baby, we moved to Germany, and my dad started drinking. Losing his son was more than he could handle, and then on top of it all, he hated having to be in Germany. And he blamed me for both of those things.

“He grew more and more dissatisfied and drowned all his problems in alcohol. Then, he started going out and picking up rent boys. Young guys, practically kids, selling their bodies on the cheap. My mother knew about it, and they argued about it a lot, but he kept bringing people home with him. More and more often, younger and younger. They’d have sex in my parents’ bedroom. My mother tried to sugarcoat that, too. She told herself they were just friends.”

He fell silent for a moment and shut his eyes. I wanted to take him in my arms, but I didn’t dare.

When he spoke again, his fingers were trembling. “I wasn’t quite eleven years old when he came to my bed for the first time. To ‘snuggle,’ as he called it. I had to let him touch me all over. He said I had to, or else he’d bring more boys back to the house, and my mother wouldn’t like that, so she’d divorce him, and then I’d get put in a home—things like that.”

As he spoke, all I could do was shake my head in horror, mouth hanging open.

“It escalated over time,” he went on. “He made me touch him, too, and then later he started raping me. He told me that if I didn’t do what he said, he would do it to my mom instead, and surely I didn’t want to be responsible for him hurting my mom.”

I shook my head. “What cheap, disgusting manipulation.”

“It was. But back then, I thought I had to protect my mother, so I went along with it. I didn’t really have a choice, anyway. Except for running away from home. I tried that a lot. I begged my mother to come with me, but she wouldn’t. And then my dad would find me and bring me back home—again and again—and everything would continue as before.” He looked at me uncertainly. “Do you even want to know all this? Maybe I should stop there.”

Jesus, you mean there’s more?

“I want to know,” I whispered and closed my eyes, bracing myself.

“He’d come into my room and undress me,” Danny said. “Sometimes he’d tie my hands behind my head with rope. Then he’d touch me everywhere. Not just with his hands—with his mouth, his tongue, his…” He shuddered, unable to finish the sentence.

I found myself wondering just how much damage his father had done to him, and whether at least part of it could be repaired. Images shot through my mind—thoughts I never wanted to have, that I would never be able to shake as long as I lived.

“My bed had two bedposts at the head,” he went on. “I was supposed to lie on my back and hold onto them without moving while he did whatever he wanted. But I couldn’t do it. The urge to pull in my arms, to shield myself from him, was just too great. And every time I let go, he’d hit me, and then we’d start again from the beginning. Of course, he could have just tied me up, but it was more fun for him this way. And when he finally left the room, I was supposed to stay in that position. So I did, sometimes for hours, because once in a while he’d stand in front of the door and listen. If he heard me turn over, he’d come in and beat me. With a stick or a length of rope…”

Was this where his automatic habit of crossing his arms at every opportunity came from?

“It was really awful, Jessica. Whenever he came back from the bar on Friday evening, I knew he’d come to my room. I’d sit there in bed like a trapped animal, wanting more than anything to get away. But where would I have gone? My room was upstairs, so there was no place to run. I’d hear the stairs creaking, and I’d know he was on his way up.

“At first, I’d hide in the closet out of desperation, but he’d just drag me out and shout at me to stop screwing around, that of course he knew I was in there. The older I got, the angrier he got. And the angrier he got, the harder he hit me…”

He hesitated for a moment before letting out a sigh of resignation. Then he stood up and jerked his T-shirt over his head roughly, as though forcing himself to do it before he changed his mind. He sat down beside me on the bed. “Look.” His voice was toneless.

“Oh my God!” was all I could manage to get out.

His back was covered in fine, white scars. They probably weren’t visible from far away, but they were definitely there, like an intricate spiderweb made flesh.

Without thinking, I ran a finger along the smooth, white lines.

“Don’t,” he whispered, putting his T-shirt back on before jumping up to pace around the room some more.

“He didn’t care about anything,” he murmured, shaking his head. Then, louder, “He wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted. Then he’d sit down on my bed and smoke a cigarette and want to chat. Eventually, he’d leave me crying in my room. It would stink of cigarettes and alcohol for days afterward.” Danny stopped in his tracks, crossed his arms, and glanced at me with an absent, distraught expression in his eyes. “Now you can ask your questions.”

I shook my head and buried my face in my hands. Unshed tears burned hot in my eyes. I couldn’t ask anything, couldn’t say anything. I didn’t have the words. “Come here.” I patted the bed.

He sat down beside me. He looked…confused. “The worst part is my mom. She never helped me. Just the opposite—she practically handed me to him on a silver platter. I hate them both. I should have killed my father when I had the chance.”

“What?” I whispered.

“There was this one huge fight. I was fifteen and already getting pretty successful in martial arts. He’d been drinking again and wanted to take his rage out on me, beat me for his own amusement, but suddenly, just this once, my mother stood in his way. It was the only time. She told him to leave me alone.

“My dad ordered her to move out of the way, but she stayed right where she was. So he hit her and knocked her to the ground. And I just blew a fuse. I got between them and started kicking my dad, again and again and again. I should have beaten him to death. But instead I left him bleeding on the ground, and went and reported him to the police. I never went back. They got Child Protective Services involved, and I ended up in the children’s home, and he ended up in prison.”

“You did the right thing,” I assured him. “There would have been no use ruining your own life over someone like him.” More than it already is, I added in my head. It was clear his childhood had ruined plenty for him without the added consequences of killing someone.

Danny snorted again. “I still wonder, all the time, why she never helped me. My mother. I’m never going to have children, but if I did, I’d do everything within my power to protect them. Everything. Not like her!”

I carefully filed away what I had just heard about kids so that we could come back to it later. First, I had to process all the rest of this somehow. My head was pounding. It was too much. Besides, all I wanted to do was hold him.

Carefully, I slid toward him and stroked his back. He turned and buried his face in my shoulder, sniffling. I moved closer so that I could wrap my arms around him, but he stiffened. He was too worked up from talking about his past to allow so much physical intimacy.

Take it slow, my inner voice warned me. He can’t learn to walk until he knows how to stand.

“I’m glad you told me all of this,” I whispered in his ear. “I understand. I’ll be patient. Someday, you’ll heal enough that you’ll be ready to let me touch you.”

He rested his forehead against my shoulder. “It’ll never happen. I’ve been this way for too long. I’ll never stop freaking out about being touched.”

“Yes, you will,” I promised in a confident voice. “Someday. I don’t care how long it takes. You can have all the time in the world.”

“Time!” he cried contemptuously, leaning away from me away so that he could look me in the face. His eyes were filling with tears. “Time,” he repeated slowly. “Time is exactly what I don’t have.”

Panic welled up within me. My palms began to sweat. “Why?” My voice was flat.

He gritted his teeth, still staring at me.

There was a lot still unsaid here, and it weighed heavily on my heart. “Danny? Tell me what’s wrong! Right now!”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You have to, in fact.” This time, I wasn’t going to let up. He’d said so much tonight already, but I wanted to know the rest. I needed to know the rest.

“I’m afraid you’ll jump up and run away and never come back.” His voice was trembling, and another tear was forming in the corner of his eye. He blinked it back hastily.

“Has that happened before? Did someone run away when they heard this?”

“Yeah.”

My heart squeezed at the pain in his voice. “I’m not running anywhere. I promise.” Under no circumstances would I run away from him. Not if the house was on fire.

His mood changed abruptly once again. “Never make promises you can’t keep,” he snapped, striding to the window, where he turned and scowled at me with what looked like rage.

“Just tell me what’s wrong,” I pleaded.

“Fine!” The defiance in his voice was scathing. He crossed his arms, uncrossed them to run his hand through his hair, and then crossed them again. It was several minutes before he finished fighting some inner battle. “Okay,” he said at last, sighing in resignation, the fight leaving him. “I’ll tell you.”

My heart was in my throat, and I’d bitten down on my lower lip so hard I tasted blood. “Well? What is it?”

“I’m HIV-positive.”

“What?” The words seeped into my brain slowly before bouncing back, shooting through my gut, and landing in my stomach, where they’re still sitting today. “What?” I asked again. “That’s impossible. The only people who get that are…”

Prostitutes. Gay men. And junkies…

“I know what you’re thinking right now,” he murmured. “But it’s not true. I didn’t get it from drugs. I’ve never done any drugs in my life.” He swallowed. My father gave it to me.”

The panic that had welled up within me before was growing steadily now.

Who cares who he got it from? my inner voice screeched. Run! Get away from him!

Sweat beaded on my brow, and my whole body felt hot. For a moment, I thought I was going to pass out. A wave of nausea washed over me as I recalled all that long, intense French kissing we’d done. “You have AIDS?” Even I didn’t know exactly why I was shouting at him like a lunatic.

“Not exactly,” he said calmly. “I’m HIV-positive. There’s a difference. I’m healthy, no symptoms. AIDS will develop eventually, but until it does, I can live a completely normal life.”

“But it’s contagious!” I screamed. “We’ve known each other for nearly a year, and you never said anything! How could you do this to me?”

He sat back down on the bed. “Don’t panic,” he said quietly. “You really have nothing to worry about. You don’t have it. There was never a situation where I could have given it to you. I promised to watch out for you, and to warn you before things ever got dangerous. And I always keep my promises. Always!”

“You should have told me!” I was still shouting at him. I couldn’t help it.

“I know.” How many times had he sighed over the course of the evening? Cautiously, he put an arm around me. “Is this okay?”

He was actually asking permission. My instinct was to shake him by the shoulders for even asking and then try to cuddle with him… Except…

I felt myself stiffen under the weight of his arm.

For the first time ever, I felt uncomfortable in his presence. I wanted to get out of his room—get away from him.

Sensing my discomfort, Danny withdrew his arm. “You can go if you want.” His voice was perfectly composed.

Every cell in my body was tense, prepared to flee. I felt like a coiled spring. Run, my inner voice said again. My internal warning system was shrilling and blinking in every color of the rainbow. Frantically, I looked around the room, evaluating all the ways I could escape this nightmare.

“You can leave,” Danny repeated. “It’s okay.”

That was my cue. I leaped up far too quickly and nearly ran into the hallway. Danny followed me out but stopped a safe distance away, arms crossed again. His expression was blank, giving no indication of what was going on in his mind. “It’s okay if you leave. But don’t be scared. You don’t have it. Really. You’re healthy.”

I realized in horror that my hands were shaking as they pulled on my shoes and retrieved my purse from the hook on the wall. Then I stopped for a second and looked back at Danny one more time. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything appropriate.

“You can come get your stuff on Monday while I’m at the gym,” he said quietly, making a motion in my direction. “That way, you don’t have to run into me.” He was extending his hand, and I couldn’t stop myself from flinching away. He let out a soft, joyless laugh, and I realized he was just reaching for the doorknob behind me.

That’s all it took to make me incredibly embarrassed by how I was acting. But I couldn’t help it. I was terrified.

“Should I drive you home?” Danny asked, opening the door for me. “You’re so worked up. Simon and I can drive your car down to you in the morning.”

Without replying, I slipped past him, taking meticulous care to avoid any physical contact. I ran out of the apartment, down the short, tiled hallway of the building, and out the front door. I unlocked my car remotely mid-run and finally collapsed in the driver’s seat, gasping for air. It took me three tries to start the car.

When I did, I backed out of the parking spot, tires squealing—something I never would have managed if I’d been deliberately trying to do it. My hands were so slick with sweat that they were slipping off the steering wheel. Radio on full blast, both windows down all the way, I maneuvered the Mercedes onto the highway. Oncoming traffic kept honking at me, which drove me insane—until I realized I was driving with my headlights off.

My phone beeped. I pulled it out of my bag and read the message.

Please send me a short text when you get home.

I just want to know you made it home safe.

Worried. Thanks.

I started laughing hysterically. The guy had some nerve. I felt like throwing the phone right out the window. Suddenly, I realized I was about to drive off the road and yanked the steering wheel back at the last second.

Jesus. Maybe I really shouldn’t be on the road in this condition.

I stopped at the next rest area I saw, parking haphazardly across two spaces, and stormed out of the car. My head was threatening to explode from all this information I was incapable of processing, and my legs started moving of their own accord. I started running, aimlessly, through the darkness. Danny had told me so much tonight, opened himself up to me so much, difficult though it was for him—and I’d just left him. Alone.

All at once, I realized I could run as much as I wanted, or drive to Alaska, or hide in the farthest corner of the Earth, but this nightmare would always catch up to me. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but someday, it would catch me. Stopping in my tracks, I planted my hands on my knees.

Think, Jessica! Think!

I racked my brain for all I had ever learned about HIV. They’d covered it in school once. “The gay plague,” the kids had called it. Suddenly, I remembered the modes of transmission: unprotected sex, sharing needles, blood transfusions…

Kissing, no matter what type, was completely risk-free, and so was living in the same household as an infected individual. Step by step, I went through the past year with Danny in my head.

We’d drunk from the same bottle, we’d eaten together, and I’d come into contact with his sweat. But none of that was dangerous. The virus wasn’t transmitted through saliva or sweat.

Oh my God. When we fell off Maya…

We’d fallen off, and he’d begun to bleed. And when I’d tried to help him… His violent reaction suddenly made perfect sense. He’d been protecting me.

Now I understood why he’d tried so desperately to keep me at a distance all this time. His abusive childhood had only been part of it.

I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. What else did I know about AIDS? It was an autoimmune disorder that destroyed the immune system little by little, sometimes over the course of years. It remained asymptomatic for a relatively long time, so it would be impossible to tell that someone had it—but as soon as they started showing symptoms, they often went downhill fast. How did someone actually die of AIDS, though?

I didn’t know, but it was probably terribly painful and horribly lonely.

The realization threw my thoughts right back to Danny.

How did he feel right now, after I’d just run off after I’d explicitly promised him I wouldn’t?

What the hell was I even doing here in this godforsaken parking lot?

I began walking back to my car slowly but picked up the pace when I remembered my windows were open and my purse was sitting on the passenger seat. Or, at least, I hoped it was still there. If not, well…whatever. After tonight, I couldn’t imagine myself worrying about trivial things like that.

It was all still there—nobody else was in the parking lot. Suddenly ravenous, I picked up my purse and headed for the vending machines beside the restrooms, where I bought a candy bar and a drink.

There was a condom vending machine beside the men’s toilet with a sticker reading, “Stop AIDS now. Wrap it up!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was too much irony. On a sudden childish impulse I put some coins into the condom machine and pulled out a small box.

Just then, a greasy-haired man with tattoos all the way to his neck stepped out of the restroom and hissed, “If you still need those tonight, I’m ready, baby!” He waggled his tongue obscenely.

I gave him the finger before tearing the box open, slipping one foil-wrapped package into my pants pocket, and dropping the rest in my purse. Then I walked away from the building and pulled out my phone. Although it was the middle of the night, I dialed Christina’s number.

She couldn’t have been asleep, because she answered on the second ring, sounding totally awake but worried.

“Tina!” I cried into the phone. “Something’s wrong—”

“What happened?” She was instantly on full alert.

“Danny…”

“What? What happened?” she cried, nearly hysterical.

“He has… He’s… Oh…G-God!” I stammered.

“He told you,” Christina said in a dry tone.

Of course. What kind of naive little girl was I? I should have known she already knew. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I shouted at her. “He has AIDS! You knew, and neither of you fucking egomaniacs ever said a word to me! Why?”

“To protect him from people reacting like you,” she said coldly.

“You’re both insane!”

“Are you with him?” She sounded worried.

“Of course not! I left!” All at once, I felt completely ridiculous.

She exhaled heavily into the receiver. “Jessica.” The urgency in her voice reminded me a lot of Danny. “Sit down and listen to me very carefully.”

“I’m sitting,” I snapped, dropping into the grass.

“This situation has always existed,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “The knowledge you have now doesn’t make it any realer than it was before he told you.”

It took a while for her words to seep into my agitated mind. “What do I do now?” I asked in desperation.

“Keep going as you were. Nothing has changed, apart from one thing in your head. I’ve been living with him for two years now, and I’ve never been at risk. At least not from AIDS,” she added dryly.

“But you don’t sleep with him!” I shrieked.

“Neither do you,” she retorted.

Fury rose up within me. Did she always have to know about everything between me and Danny?

“Jessica,” she said, still calmer than me by miles. “A known danger is much easier to face than the vague risks of everyday life.”

Really? Was that true? “What do I do now?” I repeated.

“Do you remember the promise you to made me just after we met?”

I nodded, though she couldn’t see it through the phone. She responded anyway. “Trust me,” she said in a voice as soft as butter. “If you break that promise, I’ll find you. No matter where you hide, I’ll find you. And you should be far more worried about that than catching anything from Danny.”

I turned her words over in my head. The situation had always existed. He’d had the virus in his blood all these months we’d been together. The fact that I knew about it now didn’t increase my risk of infection. Probably just the opposite.

“Jessica?” Christina jolted me back to reality. “Go back to him. Please. I’m going to hang up now. I need to call him.”

Still lost in thought, I stuck my phone back in my purse. I needed to change my CB radio handle from “Unicorn” to “Nightmare” as a way of reminding myself of this nightmare I would never escape. It would keep following me, hunting me down, from that day on. Probably for the rest of my life.

 

By the time I pulled up in front of Danny’s apartment building again, it was nearly morning. As usual, the blinds were open, so I could see that the lights were off inside, though that didn’t necessarily mean Danny was actually asleep. He often kept the lights off when he was at home. He’d once told me that the darkness made him feel safer. For some reason, that made sense to me now.

My parking spot directly in front of Danny’s bedroom window was still free, and I started maneuvering my large car into the space. Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but right now I just couldn’t do it. I was confused and exhausted.

“Crap,” I muttered, adjusting again. So much for three-point parallel parking. More like forty-two-point. “Fuck!” I shouted, slamming my hand against the wheel. If I kept lurching back and forth like this much longer, I’d wake Danny for sure—if he was asleep, anyway, which I highly doubted.

Finally, I gave up. The back of the car was sticking way out into the narrow street and would definitely be a problem for traffic. Whatever. Let the neighbors flip out in a few hours. I had other problems.

I removed my shoes at the door and crept into Danny’s apartment in my socks. Then I slipped into the bathroom to change into my sleep shorts and T-shirt. At first, I wondered if I should sleep on the couch so I wouldn’t wake him, but I decided against it.

As it turned out, Danny was still awake. He was lying on the bed with his arms folded behind his head. “You came back,” he remarked dryly. The streetlamp outside the window gave me enough light to see his face by. There was no joy on it. Not even relief.

“Of course I came back.”

Slowly, he sat up in bed. “Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“That’s pretty stupid of you.”

“Maybe, but that’s how it is,” I said. “Even if you were a man-eating alien from the planet Klendathu, I’d still have come back.”

“Why?” he repeated, shaking his head. He seemed to be directing the question at himself, but I answered it anyway.

“Because I love you. More than anything. More than my life!”

Danny got up from the bed and walked past me into the living room. I followed him out, carelessly dropping the clothes I was still carrying to the floor.

He pressed his forehead against the windowpane. “I’m going to die. You’re aware of that, right?”

“We all die sometime,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.

“Yeah,” he growled. “Some younger than others.”

“Danny, you’re healthy. You could be healthy for years to come. By the time you start to get really sick, they’ll have found a cure.”

“Or not,” he said quietly. “They research cancer treatments like crazy, but nobody’s interested in us. So I have to live with the knowledge that I could die at anytime.”

“None of us know when we’re going to die,” I whispered, though I knew Danny’s life already held acute awareness of his own mortality.

He was silent for a moment, still staring out the window. “What kind of parking job is that?” he asked suddenly. “You can’t leave it like that.”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t get into the spot.”

He grabbed his jogging pants off the couch, slipped them on, and walked to the door barefoot. “Give me your keys. I’ll park it properly.”

I gave in, rummaging around in my purse before pulling out the key and holding it out to him. He reached for it, and our fingers touched. We both stopped short, and our eyes met. Suddenly, all of the pent-up emotion from the past few hours exploded around us. The electricity would have been enough to power half the city. The need to touch him was overwhelming.

Danny felt it, too. I snatched the car keys out of his hand, tossed them into the corner along with my purse, and wrapped my arms around his neck, firmly pulling him in.

We stood there silently for a while, gazing deep into each other’s eyes. My pulse began to race, and I felt him breathing faster, too.

He opened his mouth to say something, and I used the opportunity to press my lips against his. He returned the kiss hesitantly, and my hands slid slowly over his shoulders toward his chest. He flinched and grabbed my wrists in a vise-like grip, holding them in place behind my back.

“We can’t do that,” he murmured against my lips.

“Oh, you’ll see how we can in a minute!”

He laughed softly. “Don’t be silly. I don’t even have condoms in the house.”

“Let go for a second, please?”

He released my wrists with great reluctance. I picked up the pants I’d left on the floor after changing, reached into the pocket, and held up the little foil square triumphantly.

“Oh, please!” He rolled his eyes. “No way. It’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t care,” I said, deliberately using the phrase he was so fond of. But it wasn’t entirely true. Of course I was afraid, but the fear would always be there, and I didn’t intend to let it get between us forever. So I turned a deaf ear to my inner voice, which was frantically trying to remind me that I’d bitten my lip bloody just a little while ago.

“Jessica.”

“Shh,” I said, kissing him again. He let it happen but stopped returning the kiss. Cautiously, I let my hands glide over his chest. I felt him stiffen, so I stopped. Instead, I reached for his hips, pulling him against me. I felt his erection and slid my hands back over him. He drew in a sharp breath and held it. His eyes were closed, and his lower lip was trembling slightly. I let my hands travel slowly.

He stepped away from me quickly, practically fleeing, retreating until his back was against the wall. I followed him. “Don’t back me into a corner,” he practically begged.

I guided him by the elbow back to the middle of the room. “You’re going to have to trust me tonight,” I whispered, my lips at his neck.

“The c-car,” he stammered. “I have to repark the car.” It was his last desperate attempt to prevent the inevitable.

Slowly, I pushed him toward the bedroom. “Fuck the car!”

 

***

 

The piercing sunshine and birdsong streaming in through the open window woke me. I blinked into the bright light. Then I realized that my head had been on Danny’s chest, and I immediately let it sink down again as I inhaled deeply. Warmth and contentment enveloped me, and I wished more than anything that the moment would never end.

His even breathing told me he was still asleep, so I took the opportunity to watch him. I found myself wondering, once again, how a person could get away with being so beautiful. Then again, he wasn’t exactly getting away with much of anything in life.

Our night together had been anything but brusque and emotionless, which had probably been because he’d let me set the pace, which I thought was a huge demonstration of trust. Even so, he’d held my wrists the entire time, only releasing them once he’d put enough distance between us that he felt halfway safe again. It wouldn’t have bothered me if it hadn’t been so frustrating that I couldn’t touch him in all the ways I wanted to.

He was still wearing the T-shirt he’d had on the day before, too. I’d tried to take it off of him twice, but he’d resisted vehemently. Having the material between us bothered me—I would have liked to touch his bare skin. Cautiously, I ran my fingers across his chest. Even that feather-light touch was enough to make him twitch and snap his eyes open.

For a moment, he stared at me in confusion but then his expression grew tender. “Good morning,” he rumbled.

“Morning,” I said, giving him a kiss on the cheek and stroking his arm with my fingertips. He made a contented snuffling sound and turned the inside of his arm toward me so that I could touch him there. I felt him shiver in pleasure under my fingers, and it made my heart leap for joy.

“How are you still sleeping?” I asked. It was already eight. Normally, at this hour on a weekend, he’d be out running or training.

“It’s just so nice,” he murmured, stretching languidly.

That was my cue. I sat up and bent over him. He returned my kiss, but when I laid my hand on his thigh, he bolted upright.

“What happened last night can never happen again.” His eyes sought mine, locking with them. “Do you hear me? It’s too dangerous!”

I quickly laid my index finger against his lips. “Stop. Don’t say anything. Don’t ruin it, please.”

To my relief, he fell silent immediately.

I didn’t understand what the problem was. Everything had gone well, much more easily than expected. The used condom was knotted neatly and safely packed away in the bathroom trash can. We’d both washed our hands afterward, a rather unromantic detail we hadn’t wasted any time discussing. I’d even managed to keep myself from thinking about the disease.

But now reality was crashing in with monstrous force. Thanks, in part, to Danny’s words.

Apparently placated by my reassurances, though, Danny reluctantly rose from the bed. “I’ll go park your car properly, and then I’m going to take a shower.” He tromped out of the room, and all at once, I felt sick. The whole situation was crashing back over me like a wave, making me seriously nauseated.

Deep breaths! Count to ten!

Why was I in such a panic? There was no way anything could have happened. I had to get myself under control before he came back. I couldn’t let him see my fear, or else he’d never touch me again.

Jumping out of bed, I stepped into the fresh air coming through the open window and started doing yoga.

Inhale, upward salute. Exhale, downward-facing dog. Inhale, cobra. Exhale, child’s pose...

Danny returned to the bedroom and eyed me skeptically as I stood there in my pajamas, stretching my hands toward the heavens. He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. The sight of him standing there left me completely speechless. Naked, except for a towel around his hips, he reached down and fished his clothes out of the pile of rubble that had once been his dresser. I kept gaping at him. I’d never seen him like that.

He gave me a taunting grin. “Everything okay?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

He knows perfectly well what effect he has on women, I suddenly realized. He knew all he had to do was snap his fingers and any girl would fall for him. But Christina was right: he didn’t snap. And, as of yesterday evening, I knew why.

While Danny made breakfast, I took a long shower. Maybe I was hoping it would allow me to escape reality for a few more minutes. But it didn’t quite work. I sat down at the breakfast table with damp hair. Danny was wearing a red—blood-red—T-shirt, and his own wet hair was uncombed as ever. When he leaned in to pour my coffee, he smelled like shower gel. I chewed my toast listlessly.

For a while, we sat at the table in silence, only the radio playing in the background. It was an uncomfortable silence, as though there were an invisible wall between us.

“Well, ask your questions already,” Danny said at last. “Not talking about things or tiptoeing around them won’t change the situation.”

My hands cramped around the coffee cup in front me. Goodbye, beautiful illusion of a carefree life.

“Things here aren’t all sunshine and roses!” Christina had said to me once. Thanks a lot, Tina. She could have gone ahead and expressed herself a little bit more clearly back then.

My list of questions was practically infinite, so I decided to start with the most harmless one. “Who all knows you have HIV?”

“My parents, of course. Christina, Jörg, Ricky, Simon… My boss at the gym knew, and Dogan, my trainer, knows, too. Nobody else.”

“Dogan knows? But he still took you to the world championships? Isn’t that dangerous? Didn’t you run the risk of infecting someone?”

Danny shook his head. “That would be practically impossible. My blood would have to spray directly into an open wound on my opponent’s body—and it would have to get there within a fraction of a second, because the virus dies immediately in the air. There’s probably a better chance of getting struck by lightning.”

“But, you still stopped doing knockout fights. Was it because you didn’t want to take that risk?”

“Not right away. Not until after the world championships. Everyone got tested before that, and after, things got difficult. Some event organizers banned me from participating in bigger competitions once they found out. So I decided it would be easier if I switched to light contact.”

He put his bare foot on the seat of the chair, drew his knee up to his chest, and rested his chin there.

He’s creating a protective barrier between himself and you, my rational mind informed me. I needed to make sure he didn’t withdraw completely.

“How long have you had it?”

“Nobody knows exactly. I didn’t have any symptoms after I was infected, or at least none that I noticed. Some people get something like the flu when they first contract it. But even if I’d had that, nobody would have thought it unusual. Worst-case scenario, I got it right at the beginning, when I was eleven...”

“When your father started doing that to you,” I murmured, finishing his sentence.

“Right. I assume that’s what happened.”

“Is that bad? Having had it longer? Because of the incubation time?”

“It’s not exactly incubation time,” he explained clinically. “They call it the latency period. It’s the stage where you have the virus and can infect others, but you’re completely healthy. It doesn’t affect me physically at all. Nobody can predict when it’ll break down my immune system enough that I develop AIDS. Everyone’s totally different—with some people, it happens within a few months. But there have been a few cases where it took almost fifteen years. There’s no standard.”

I was afraid the coffee cup would shatter under the pressure of my grip. “So maybe it will never happen to you?”

“That doesn’t happen.” His voice was calm and collected. “If you have HIV, you get AIDS. There’s no way around that.”

“And then? What happens then?” It came out as a whisper.

“You get symptoms. You get sick. Could be anything—nausea, dizziness, skin diseases, colds. Your immune system just hits a wall.” He described it like he was talking about how clouds form in the sky. “Eventually, it develops into full-blown AIDS. If you’re lucky, it kills you fast. If not, you waste away miserably for months, even years.”

My lips were trembling. I shut my eyes for a moment and wished myself far, far away, to some sunny Mediterranean beach. “What exactly do you die of?”

“That’s different for everyone, too. A lot of people die of lung infections or tuberculosis. Or some other harmless disease, because your immune system can’t handle it anymore. Isn’t that pathetic? Croaking from a cold?”

I shook my head, appalled at his crude choice of words. But he probably had to talk like that. It was his way of dealing with it, of taking some of the horror out of the whole thing. “How did you find out?” I asked quietly. I couldn’t make my voice go above this volume. “That you had it?”

He stood up and began clearing the table. I sensed that I was treading on dangerous territory. “My father told me. Just after I moved in here. He called. Told me he was sick, wanted me to visit him. But I refused. So he told me over the phone. Just like that. That I’d been infected for years and was going to die soon. Just like he was.” He banged the dish he was holding into the sink with a loud clatter and crossed his arms. Abruptly, he closed his eyes, and tears began running down his face.

“My dad knew the whole time,” he whispered. “He had to have known. He’d been messing around with prostitutes for years. It didn’t stop him. Sometimes I think maybe he infected me on purpose.”

“Jesus!” That was all I could think of to say. Things like that didn’t happen. Surely, surely, there was no way that actually happened.

Standing, I went to him, uncrossed his arms, and then drew him in gently. He buried his tear-streaked face in my hair, resting his forehead against my cheek, shoulders shaking. I stroked his back comfortingly, feeling his tears drip down into my cleavage and soak my T-shirt. I didn’t care. My fear of becoming infected had given way to boiling fury at Danny’s father, a person I didn’t know and would never meet, and yet I hated him more passionately than anything in the world. My rage continued to swell, growing ever hotter, and remained my constant companion.

“See?” he sniffled. “My life is one giant catastrophe. I told you. I didn’t want to drag you into it. I’m so sorry. We’ll never be able to have a normal relationship.”

“Sure we will,” I said stubbornly. “You saw that last night.”

He gave me a helpless look. Tears were still swimming in his eyes. “I don’t mean that. We’ll never be able to have children. We’ll never have a future.”

I had to smirk. “You’re twenty years old, and you’re thinking about children? Most guys don’t have kids until they’re in their thirties. A lot could happen between now and then.”

“But I really, really want kids.” His voice was equally stubborn.

“So do I, but not yet. Things will be different in ten years. By then, they may have a cure. By then, they may find a way for HIV-positive people to have healthy children. By then—”

“I’ll be dead.”

“Stop. Don’t even think things like that!”

He gritted his teeth.

“Have you been to an HIV counselor?” I asked.

“Yeah. But it’s been years.”

“Then let’s go to one together. Please.”

He ran a hand over his face, wiping his tears away, and took a moment to compose himself. Before my eyes, he transformed back into the calm, confident person I knew. “What do you think you’ll get out of it?”

“I think I’ll get information out of it.”

His silence lasted a little too long—I could tell he was against the idea.

“Please,” I said. “I need to learn how to deal with this, too.”

“Okay.” He nodded, suddenly determined. “I still know a few places. I’ll call around tomorrow and find out where we can get an appointment.”

I stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him on his lips, which tasted of salt. “Thank you. You’re the best.”

“I’m an idiot,” he said. “I never should have gotten you into this whole mess. Instead of just warning you, I should have stayed away from you!”

“Stop blaming yourself.” I poked him in the chest. “I’m an adult, I can make my own decisions. Your father’s the one who made you feel all of this guilt. Don’t let him continue to have that kind of power over you!”

He mumbled something under his breath.

Out of the blue, I told him, “I trust you, Danny. Completely and totally, in every respect. But you have to trust me, too. And if I think it’s not dangerous for us to sleep together, then please accept that.”

“But it is dangerous!”

“Everything in life is dangerous. I might go outside and get killed by a falling roof tile. Or run over by a mail truck. Or maybe I’ll get heat stroke.”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Why don’t we wait until we’ve talked to the counselor, and then decide from there?”

That seemed like a fair compromise. I didn’t expect they’d recommend chastity. “Okay.”

Danny took my hand and pulled me closer. “Last night, I realized I can. Trust someone else, I mean. For the first time in my life. Up until now, I always thought trusting other people was a mistake I would never make. I never thought I’d be able to let someone else get so close to me—physically and emotionally.” He looked down at the floor. “I trust you completely and totally, too,” he said. “I just need to work on putting it into practice. Be patient with me.”

I nodded and squeezed his hand to tell him that I understood, and that it was okay. Of course putting it into practice would take time. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said. “So you can tell me what happened with your mom, and why you think it was your fault.”

 

Back at my parents’ house that night, I lay awake in bed for a long time, barely restraining myself from booting up my computer and reading everything I could find about HIV. I was deliberately avoiding it, because I knew it would only make me crazier. I’d have rather discussed it with Christina, but we hadn’t crossed paths since I found out.

And that wasn’t all that was bothering me.

The story he’d told me that morning was still echoing in my head. Danny had told me he was responsible for his mother miscarrying his younger brother, and he’d said it calmly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. As though there were no reason anyone would think otherwise.

How could his parents say something like that? He’d only been ten. I could just see him standing there, at his family’s house in America, holding his heavily pregnant mother’s hand, begging to go back outside for a minute to look for his dog, who’d run off.

I could hear his father scolding him, refusing to let him leave. Of course Danny had ignored him and darted off. But how could he have possibly known that his mother would keep hold of him, that she would lose her balance and fall down the stairs? Not even an adult would have anticipated such a thing. How could they expect it of a child?

I tossed and turned. My head was pounding, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw a flaxen-haired boy with blue eyes…stretched out on a bed, counting the minutes and wondering if he could risk moving, even an inch, just to turn onto his side.

By the time I finally dozed off, it was already nearly morning.

 

I’m running and running. Up an endless staircase reaching into the radiant blue sky. But the faster I run, the faster the steps collapse. They’re falling apart one by one, up from the bottom, until the destruction catches up to me and the stone beneath my feet crumbles.

I reach out for the comforting blue of the sky, but the steps drag me down instead. Now I’m falling and falling, and no matter what I do, I can’t find anything to hold on to anymore.