by Vicki Tharp
Demetri’s heart thudded so hard it made his ribs shudder, and his breath catch in his chest. The air felt too thin to breathe. “I’m poz. I have HIV. I didn’t want to fuck until I told you.”
Roman didn’t move. If it weren’t for his eyes blinking, Demetri might have thought he’d turned to stone.
“I’m undetectable.”
“Great.” Roman laughed. Without humor, the sound came out harsh, judgmental. “That makes all the lies better then.”
Yeah, Demetri had lied. And he couldn’t even say it had been to protect Roman because the only one the lies had protected from the pain of rejection was himself. It had been stupid and selfish. He saw that in full HD clarity now.
He’d never wanted to hurt Roman. But that’s what he’d done. Outside, one of his neighbors strode by walking two dogs. The setting sun threw beautiful hues of pinks and oranges and reds over the horizon, but that light couldn’t penetrate the dark cloud surrounding him.
“Come in. We can talk.”
“Did you ever see me as a person, or have I always been a pawn?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No. What’s not fair is you not treating me as if I had the right to know this about you. Know this about my boyfriend.” Roman shook his head. “You’re a fucking piece of work.”
He climbed into his car, started the engine with a roar, and backed out of the driveway. All Demetri could do was watch Roman drive away with his heart held hostage.
Punching the button on the wall, the garage door slowly lowered. Demetri went back into the kitchen, picked up his phone, and dialed Niko’s number.
When Niko picked up, Demetri had to clear the clog out of his throat before he said, “I’m never taking advice from you again.”
15
Roman took a long drive up the coast and back down, his windows wide open, his speakers blaring. He didn’t listen to what was playing. He only needed it to drown out the voices in his head. The ones that told him he wasn’t good enough, that he wasn’t trustworthy enough, that he wasn’t deserving enough.
It was his father all over again.
That old, festering wound now a gaping hole in the middle of his heart. How it kept beating, he didn’t know. If it stopped, would anyone notice? Would they care?
The hours passed in a stream of headlights and taillights and honking horns. Most of the honks he’d earned. Sometime in the night, he ended up on campus. He prowled the grounds, his long stride eating up the trail that looped around all the buildings and dorms. When he couldn’t walk fast enough to outpace his thoughts, he started running, his bare feet slapping on the concrete, the sweat pouring down his bare chest.
When he couldn’t go another step, he got back into his car and drove home. He unlocked the door to find Moses and two other guys in various stages of nakedness, the smell of weed thick in the air, and empty beer bottles on every surface.
“Oh, hey, man.” Moses took a drag from the joint and held it out to him. “You want a hit?”
“Get that the fuck out of my face.” Roman batted Moses’ hand away and headed for his bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind him. If he’d had anywhere else he could go, he would have gone there.
He flopped on his bed and rolled to his back, staring up at the dark ceiling as music played in the den, and the distinct sounds of people fucking came through the door. He held his hands over his ears to block the sound, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
How could he have put so much trust in one person so fast? How had he let his guard down? Everything had felt so right, and—
Bullshit. You knew something was off. That knot in your gut? It tried to warn you, but you refused to listen.
Because he’d wanted so badly for it to be real. For someone to love him without condition.
But unconditional love was a lie.
Or a myth.
It didn’t exist except within the cover of a book of fiction. A place where tales are spun, and people suspended all disbelief. Perhaps that’s why all the famous old poets and authors were drunks. They needed the alcohol to trick their numb minds and hearts into suspending their disbelief, even in the fantastical.
Roman didn’t know how long he lay there. Long enough for his sweat to dry and the burn of built-up lactic acid to dissipate from his muscles. At some point, he realized the music and the fucking had stopped. Odd. It wasn’t morning yet.
A knock came at his bedroom door.
“Go away.”
He heard the scrape of metal on metal, then the push button lock on his door popped, and Moses walked in, a straightened metal hanger in his hand. “What the hell happened?”
Roman groaned and rolled to his side, facing away from his friend. He didn’t want to think about it. And he definitely didn’t want to talk about it.
Moses didn’t take the hint and climbed onto the foot of the bed, sitting cross-legged. The light from the hall shined on his face, and Roman saw the heavy-lidded eyes and the slack face of a guy who looked too high and drunk to be vertical.
Moses pushed Roman’s legs out of the way and lay down on his stomach across the foot of the bed, his chin in his hands, his legs hanging over the side. Roman’s nose wrinkled. Moses smelled like pot and sex.
“The professor?”
Roman grunted.
“You get dumped? I mean, not a surprise. They like to fuck around, but that’s all it is. You can’t let your heart get involved. I figured you were smart enough to know that.”
Maybe Moses wasn’t as drugged out of his mind as Roman had at first thought. But in Roman’s defense, it was a Saturday—or Sunday, actually. Moses and sobriety usually didn’t reconnect until Monday came along.
Roman cradled his head in his arms. “Too late.”
“He cheat on you?”
Was he going to talk about this? With Moses of all people?
But who else could he talk to? Not Emily. She knew too much already, and though she liked Demetri, she had a protective streak, and Roman feared what she might do or say if she knew the truth.
Not the truth about Demetri’s HIV status. That wasn’t something Roman would tell anyone, no matter how mad he was.
“He lied. I thought I could trust him.”
Moses fell quiet for a long time. Roman thought he’d passed out, then Moses finally said, “You know. Not everything is about your father.”
But Moses couldn’t know that, not without knowing the truth about Demetri’s lie. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I probably know better than anybody. Maybe even you. I was there for a lot of it. At least the immediate aftermath. I watched as you pushed all your friends away, thinking that if you didn’t let anyone close that you wouldn’t get hurt again.”
Roman let Moses ramble. Not so much because Moses was right, or that Roman agreed, but because he was so fascinated that someone so clearly wasted could string a few coherent words together, much less make any sense.
“Well, it’s all bullshit,” Moses rattled on. “Life doesn’t work that way. People are going to disappoint you. They’re going to lie to you. They’re going to hurt you. And it’s going to feel like none of it is worth it...” Moses’ eyes rolled closed but opened again. “Maybe it isn’t. Fuck. I don’t know. Don’t listen to me. But bottom line, people fuck up.”
But some fuck-ups you couldn’t take back.
Roman didn’t know what to do or what to feel. All he knew was that he couldn’t face Demetri in... he checked the time on his phone, the battery at two percent. He couldn’t face Demetri at the community lot in three hours.
He fired off a text to Grant, so his boss would see it first thing when he woke up.
Roman: I’m not feeling well. I won’t be able to make it today.
The battery died, the phone powered down, and Roman didn’t bother to charge it. There wasn’t anyone he wanted to talk to anyway.
While Roman’s text skirted the lines of truth,
it wasn’t a flat-out lie. He felt like crap. His insides flattened as if he’d been steamrolled and left in the Mojave Desert sun to bake all day.
Tomorrow, after he’d had a chance to sleep and think more clearly, he’d come up with a plan.
Demetri was late, and he didn’t much care. He’d waited for Roman at the Center for thirty minutes, not that he’d expected Roman to show. Not after what Demetri had told him the night before.
You act like this is a surprise. You knew this would happen all along.
Instead of bypassing the lot, he ran the tires on the right side of his car over the curb behind Grant’s truck and lurched to a stop. Shouldering his door open, he shoved his sunglasses up his nose against the harsh glare of the sun to hide his bloodshot eyes and the bruised puffiness beneath them.
Grant turned and leaned against the tailgate, crossing his arms over his chest. “What did you do?”
“I just came here to work.”
“Hey Grant, I—whoa.” Tavi stopped mid-sentence, backed up a few steps, and went back to wherever he’d come from.
Demetri tried to brush past Grant, but Grant caught his shoulder. “Roman called in sick this morning. You know anything about that?”
“Should I?” Demetri shook off Grant’s hand. He considered Grant family now that Grant and Sebastian were engaged, but that only gave Grant a few privileges. A window into Demetri’s sex life wasn’t one of them.
“Roman’s a valuable member of my team. Whatever’s going on between you two, you need to fix.”
“Apparently, there’s nothing between us. I’m sure Roman will be feeling better by tomorrow.”
At least that’s what Demetri told himself. And kept telling himself the next afternoon as he waited, his gut twisted in knots, for Roman to walk into class. He kept his eye on the door, even as Emily came in alone, and as the minutes dragged on and on until class ended, and everyone left.
He almost stopped Emily at the door, but she hadn’t shot him a shitty look during class the way Grant had when he’d showed up to the community site the day before, so maybe Roman was sick.
By Wednesday, when Roman didn’t show up for class again, Demetri began to worry. He hadn’t called or texted Roman, wanting to give him space. If Roman had wanted to talk to Demetri, he knew how to get hold of him.
You say that like you haven’t spent every night with your thumb hovering above the keyboard on your phone, crafting your apology in your head.
He owed Roman an explanation, but he didn’t want to do it over text or to force one on Roman if he was done with Demetri. With the radio silence since Saturday night, it looked like Roman was.
Anything you say will be an excuse for the inexcusable.
Demetri should have gone with his gut and not listened to Niko. Not that any of this mess was Niko’s fault. His cousin had only been trying to help.
At the back of the class, Demetri sat staring at the empty seat and easel where Roman should be. The rest of the students worked diligently on their shading project due the next week. At this rate, Roman might miss turning in the assignment altogether. Demetri didn’t want Roman’s grade affected by something that he’d caused.
Or maybe Roman is in the hospital. You could have at least texted to find out if he was okay.
Class was coming to an end, and the students started cleaning up. The door to the classroom opened. Demetri’s heart stumbled for a beat. A student aide. Not Roman. Demetri drew a breath in through his nose and out through his mouth, steadying himself so his hand wouldn’t shake when he took the paper from the aide.
“What’s this?”
“Updated class roster.” The aide looked at him as if he’d lost one of his marbles, and it had fallen on the floor and rolled away. “Add/Drop ended Monday.”
Of course. Which probably explained why another one of his students had missed his classes that week. He’d totally spaced on the date. “Thanks.”
He hardly noticed the students or the aide leave as he held his breath and scanned the Add/Drop sheet for Roman’s name. There, near the bottom. Roman Reed.
He blew out the breath, part relief, part frustration. At least Roman hadn’t missed his class because he was in the hospital. But it meant that Demetri had hurt Roman so profoundly that he couldn’t stand to be in the same class with Demetri for the remainder of the semester. A class that Demetri knew Roman needed to graduate.
Demetri dropped into his desk chair before his knees gave way as nausea rolled through his belly. If Roman couldn’t graduate on time because of him, it would be hard to forgive himself for that.
This after promising Roman that sleeping with him wouldn’t affect his grade.
Demetri had hesitated to text Roman before, now he pulled out his phone and immediately fired one off. They were adults. They could work something out so that Roman could get the credit he needed for graduation.
Demetri: We need to talk.
He dropped his phone in the pocket of his pants, not expecting to hear from Roman for hours. The near-immediate chirp of his phone from an incoming text made his heart race and his palms get sweaty.
Roman: Now you want to talk.
Demetri: It’s about class.
And so many other things, but Demetri figured his greatest chance of getting a reply was if he kept things professional.
Like you should have from the moment you found out he was a student.
But in the seconds it took Demetri to fire off his response, Roman had blocked him.
Fuck.
Demetri strode to the registrar’s office to convince a friend to give him a copy of Roman’s schedule. Maybe if he could orchestrate a ‘chance meeting’ on campus after one of Roman’s classes, he could get somewhere face-to-face.
But somewhere between his classroom and the registrar’s office, some speck of sanity crept in, and he walked right past the registrar’s door. Demetri had office hours that afternoon, but with no one scheduled to come in, he skipped out on that and headed for his car. He needed to get as far away from campus as he could.
An hour later, like some sick, creepy stalker, he pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex across the street from Roman’s unit. He palmed his phone and pressed the number under one of his favorites.
When Niko answered on the second ring, Demetri said, “Stop me from doing something brain-numbingly stupid.”
“One second,” Niko said into the phone. Then all Demetri heard were a few muffled orders Niko gave to someone. Probably Vin. Then Niko uncovered his phone. “What’s going on?”
Demetri rubbed at the ache in his forehead. “You’re shooting, aren’t you? I’ll let you go. I—”
“We’re finishing up. Vin’s got it covered. He knows what I want anyway.” There was an echo to Niko’s voice, and Demetri pictured him going up the back stairwell at the studio to the wing that held Niko’s office and home. He heard a door open and close, and the background noise went silent. “What am I supposed to stop you from doing?”
“Roman wasn’t in class Monday or today. I got my roster update, and he dropped my class.”
“I guess I don’t have to worry about that gallery job sucking out your soul anymore.”
“You’re an asshole.” But Demetri couldn’t help the half-strangled laugh. That job would have been like combining water torture with peeling back his skin layer by layer.
Because if Roman hadn’t run? As ill-advised as it would have been, Demetri probably would have taken the job.
“I texted Roman and told him we needed to talk. He blocked me. Now I’m sitting in my car across from his apartment. It doesn’t look like he’s home, but...”
Demetri let the sentence trail off. He didn’t know where he’d planned on going with that. He grimaced and dug his thumb and forefinger into his temples again, trying to alleviate the searing headache that had signed a lease and set up permanent residence.
“I know you told me the other night that you don’t want any more of my bad advice
, but I’m just going to say this one thing. Him running when you disclosed told you everything important you needed to know about him as a person.”
‘But Roman’s not like that,’ Demetri wanted to say. But the fact that Roman had left, that he’d dropped the class and blocked his number, said that he was exactly like that.
Demetri blew out a breath through the stricture in his throat. “It still fucking hurts.”
“I know.” Niko’s voice went soft, and Demetri waited for whatever else he had to say. “He’s not the right man for you. No matter how good he made you feel.”
Demetri grunted, the hit coming hard even though Niko spoke the truth.
“Now put the car in reverse and go home, Demetri. Or come here, we can—”
“No.” The last thing Demetri wanted was an audience to his meltdown. And the way his head pounded, all he wanted to do was crawl beneath the covers and not wake up until next semester. “No. I’m going. Thanks. I think.”
Niko softly chuckled. “Anytime. And Demetri?”
“Yeah?”
“I really am sorry.”
Demetri cleared his throat and only managed another mangled, “Yeah. Me, too.”
16
Roman made it to the end of the school week and blindly loaded up his lunch tray with food he wasn’t hungry for. He poured himself a giant cup of sweet tea for a much-needed sugar rush. At the cashier, he scanned his card, giving the lady a half-hearted nod as he took his tray and went to find a table.
He hadn’t heard a thing from Demetri since the day before when he’d blocked him. But some heart-sick part of Roman thought that if Demetri wanted to talk to him badly enough, he would have found a way to contact him.
But he hadn’t.
There’s your answer.
Two women vacated a two-top table by one of the front windows, and Roman headed straight for it before anyone else could snag it.
From across the cafeteria, he heard Demetri call his name. Roman’s steps faltered, then he caught himself and kept going. Only someone paying close attention would have seen how that voice had affected him.