Where We Go From Here

by Lucas Rocha

I need to get my life back on track. It feels like I’m being diagnosed all over again, and I don’t know what to do with myself. Victor has made me as confused as I was in the first couple of days after I learned my status, my head spinning with what the future held for me.

  We have to try and be happy, no matter the cost!

  I still want to, but I’m starting to wonder if my happiness needs to be tied to a relationship. I have friends, a job, and a chaotic apartment, don’t I? I have my TV shows and movies, my songs and books, my medicine and my appointments with the doctor. That’s all I need to fill my moments of boredom, to widen my horizons, to stay healthy and make sure the bad times go by unnoticed.

  Henrique, I don’t want to … not be with you.

  I want to convince myself that I have a safety net ready to save me in case I decide to jump, but I’m not sure that’s enough. I don’t want to be one of those people who only feels complete when there’s someone by their side, and yet it’s inevitable to think about all the good things that could come from someone being there. But no, I can’t think about it.

  I love you.

  I love you, too, Victor. But I wish everything were different.

  +

  I decide to focus on work, to become one of those people with a rigid routine, a time to wake up and one to go to bed, no moment to go off script for a dinner or a casual conversation at the bus stop. I go to work, come home, go into my bedroom, eat my meals, and watch TV, surviving without living, forgetting to look both ways and about the good things that exist around me.

  I have an appointment with the doctor on Wednesday, and I go straight from work to his office to get my latest test results and talk. Dr. Glauco has been treating me since I was diagnosed, and with time he’s become a good friend. He’s one of those people who’s interested in what you have to say, asking questions not because he’s supposed to but because he really wants to know. He’s bald, and his head is shaped like an egg; he has a salt-and-pepper beard and wears glasses with thick lenses that magnify his pitch-black irises. His dark skin is smooth and shows no signs that he’s almost seventy, and his toned body makes him appear younger than fifty.

  “Henrique!” He welcomes me with a hug instead of a handshake and pats the top of my head like a grandfather would his grandchildren. “How have you been?”

  “Great!” I smile to hide my feelings, which I am now a pro at.

  “Shall we take a look at your exams?” he asks, pulling out his chair and sitting as he opens my file. He spends a few seconds with the results and nods. “All great, as always.” He circles my viral load of fewer than fifty copies and my CD4 levels, which are over six hundred. “It’s looking like you’ll outlive me by a while, boy!”

  “I know you’re a healthy man, but that is more or less what I have been aiming for,” I answer.

  He laughs and asks for my blood work next. I’ve already opened the file and taken a peek, so I know everything is fine with me.

  “Have you been exercising?” he asks, because he knows of my sedentary lifestyle and the long hours at work, where sometimes I stay late into the night.

  “You always have to pick on me for something! But I’ve started taking the stairs up to work instead of the elevator. Is that good enough?”

  “That’s a start, but you should be ashamed of yourself, Henrique! You live right next to a gym that’s open until midnight. I don’t believe you can’t find some way of going there at least three times a week!”

  I don’t know why I decided to be friends with this guy and tell him every detail about my personal life. He always ends up using it as ammunition.

  “My test results are great, stop judging me!”

  “I’m not judging you!” he answers, still smiling, then closes the file. He writes a prescription for the next couple of months of medicine and hands it to me. “Everything is well, it seems. How about the boys?”

  “Seriously?” I ask. “What are you, my great-aunt?”

  “I’m already sixty-seven, all my sons are married, and my grandkids aren’t old enough for me to nag them with this kind of question yet.” He shrugs. “All I have are my patients.”

  “There’s no one in sight,” I answer.

  “So things didn’t work out with that boy you mentioned during our last appointment?”

  Damn. Why is his memory so good? I forgot I’d mentioned Victor to him.

  “Too immature to deal with all that’s going on in my life.” I decide not to share any details. “But it’s okay.”

  “Is it?” He seems skeptical.

  “Mhm,” I answer, not inviting the conversation.

  “If nothing happened with him, I’m sure it will with a more mature and understanding someone.” He closes my file.

  “Yeah,” I say, resigned. I don’t know if that is the truth.

  +

  I’m about to enter the apartment, my stomach is growling, and I’m thinking about the yakisoba leftovers in the fridge but also about starting to go to the gym next Monday. I remember how Victor wrinkled his nose at yakisoba, and he said it tasted like something straight out of a squid’s intestine. I can’t help but laugh as I remember his face when I ordered a giant serving at a Japanese restaurant we went to after the movies, before everything started falling apart.

  It’s impossible not to think of him. At least that’s what I think as I turn the key and walk into the living room.

  I lose my appetite when I see Eric’s uncomfortable look. He’s sitting in the living room armchair with his hands on his knees, looking at a short blond guy unsuccessfully trying to make conversation. He’s younger than me and has tanned skin and perfect teeth that form a blinding smile. His full blond beard is longer than it was the last time I saw him and is messy in a way that looks somehow lazy and purposeful at the same time. He’s wearing a white T-shirt that reveals his arms and he has a Maori tattoo (also new) that reaches from his left shoulder all the way to his fist, covering the skin in between. His leg bounces up and down as he tries to talk to Eric, but I can see he’s impatient.

  “Henrique, hmm … we have a visitor,” Eric says as soon as I walk in, looking at Carlos, my ex.

  A string of questions starts swirling around in my head, shattering everything that was so organized into a million pieces. What is he doing here? Why did he show up all of a sudden, after so long?

  “Hi, Henrique.”

  His voice is deep and makes my pulse quicken. I remember him whispering in my ear and the days when he said we would be together forever. I feel my legs give way when he smiles and gets up to hug me. I let him wrap me in his now-stronger arms, and I know that he can feel my wild heartbeat. I revert to that eighteen-year-old from before the test results, dreaming about spending the rest of my life with someone and thinking everything was falling into the right place.

  “Hi” is all I manage.

  “I’ll let the two of you talk,” Eric says in a voice that couldn’t be further from his usual good mood. He doesn’t like Carlos but seems so shocked that his neurons still haven’t had time to activate his full irony mode. Instead, he acts polite. “Can I get you anything, Carlos? Water, coffee?”

  “No, man, thanks,” he answers, finally letting go of me and waving when Eric disappears into his bedroom. Then Eric comes back and walks quickly across the living room and out of the apartment, because he must think it’s not a good idea to be in the same environment as my ex and me. Not after all this time, not after all the wounds that can easily be reopened with a simple conversation.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. Not curtly but curiously. My stomach growls again, more out of nervousness than hunger now.

  “How is Eric doing?” asks Carlos without answering. I almost let out a laugh. If Kafka came down from the ceiling as a cockroach, it wouldn’t be as weird as seeing Carlos here, as if we are best buddies who haven’t seen each other in a couple of weeks. “Are those his wigs?”

  “Yeah. He’s been performing in drag shows.”
<
br />   “Cool,” he says, his eyes squinting with his attractive grin.

  I don’t really know how to react. This is my home, my living room, yet I feel like the stranger here. I thought I had broken free of the power Carlos had over me, but he is still my first love, and I wonder about his reason for being here. About everything he’s done and how he severed our connection so abruptly, to then return without even bothering to text first and ask if we could meet.

  He knows I hate surprises.

  “You haven’t changed a bit, Henrique,” he says, sitting back down on the chair and placing his hands on his knees.

  “And you’ve changed a lot. Is that a new tattoo?” I say, pointing at his arm.

  “Yeah! Do you like it? I got it in New Zealand.”

  And then the silence takes over the room when he realizes what he’s just said. How happily he said it, as if leaving had been a wonderful decision. As if I’d been just a meaningless detail in the equation that is his life.

  He looks away. I take a deep breath, trying to organize my thoughts.

  “Did you like it there?” I decide to make conversation, to pretend like he’s a neighbor I just ran into on the elevator and that we’re making small talk about the clouds in the sky, how blazing hot the weather is, or how rude it is when people don’t throw their trash down the chute, instead leaving the bags lying around in the hallways. “They say it’s a beautiful place.”

  “Henrique … I didn’t come here to talk about New Zealand.”

  He looks me in the eye, and I stare back. I want to turn away, I want to take him by the neck and strangle him, I want to scream and kick him out, but all I do is blink. I don’t let it show how it affects me, as much as it does. If this were a play, I’d be Macbeth, ruthless and cold, nothing inside me to let him think he still holds any kind of power.

  Even if he does. Even if, deep down, he still stirs me in a way I can’t quite explain.

  “What did you come here to talk about, then?” I ask, waiting for him to look away. And he does, at his flip-flops.

  “About … the two of us.”

  He doesn’t seem like the guy I fell in love with, who was so sure of himself. Instead, he seems to have been curbed by time, as if he’s reverted to being a teenager, full of doubts about himself and expectations for the future.

  “There’s no two of us, Carlos. You ended any possibility of two of us when you ran away to New Zealand.”

  I swallow it: the tears, the anger at his lack of maturity, the impulse to tell him to go fuck himself and to never show his face here again, the urge to throw myself on him and kiss him, to rip off those clothes to see what his body looks like after all that sun. All I do is remain still, staring at him as if I were in charge of a totally out-of-control situation.

  “I know, I … I panicked, okay?”

  I shake my head and smirk. “Poor you,” I say sarcastically. “I panicked, too. I was panicking, and for a long time, all there was to do was to face what had to be faced. Not run away without looking back. By the way, how’s your grandmother doing?” I ask with a smile.

  “Stop that, Henrique.” He knows that excuse wasn’t the best lie in the world, but he doesn’t even try to justify it. “I needed some time away from … from all of this. From all the drama and the things that weren’t doing me any good. I was a completely different person from who I am today, and I needed to find myself. I was confused, afraid of what my parents would say if they found out I was gay. But now it’s different!”

  “So you came out to your parents?”

  “I did,” he says matter-of-factly. I have to admit, I’m more than a little surprised to learn this. “It was hard at first—really hard. But eventually my mom grew to accept it, and because of her, I think my dad has started to come around. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. And it’s made me think about what I want in life, and what I want is to move on. With you.”

  “I’m happy for you, Carlos. Really, I am,” I say, and I mean it. “But it’s too late. I didn’t have the luxury of running away from the drama and the things that didn’t do me any good. I’ve never needed anyone as much as I needed you back then, and you disappeared without even a goodbye. You planned to disappear for eight months, and you didn’t even have the guts to be honest with me. And now you come back as if nothing happened, after all this time? Why no phone call or text about what you were thinking? Why no warning about planning to go away and leave everything we’d built behind? And why would you come back now?”

  “You may not believe it, Henrique, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you during all the time I was away. I know I was an asshole and that I don’t deserve anything from you—not your forgiveness or your trust—but time helped me digest everything that was happening and what my part was in your life. I had a kind of revelation, you know? I was in bed with a guy whose name I don’t even remember, and I realized I was fucking miserable. It didn’t matter that I was in Middle-earth or that I could open my window every day to the most beautiful view I’d ever seen in my life. I just wanted to come back. I was lonely; I had no one to talk to about the gorgeous things I saw every day. I tried to find someone, I swear I did, but no one was as good as you. So I realized I had to do this as soon as possible; I had to try to talk to you. I want to get back together, Henrique. I want to be in your life again, and to be by your side, no matter the risks I need to take to make that happen.”

  His narcissism knots my stomach: He was lonely, he wanted to get back together, he wanted to be a part of my life, he would make the sacrifice to be with me, he would take the risks, he wanted to run away. He, he, he. There was nothing in that mess of words that referred to us, nothing to make me see him with anything but a mix of curiosity and suspicion.

  I can’t believe anything he says. There’s nothing he can say that will make me forget all the pain he caused and all the time I needed for the wounds to heal. The beauty I found so attractive is now nothing but the shell of someone who’s ugly on the inside.

  I grew up learning that the best way to move forward is not to stew in your anger but to forgive those who have done you harm. Even though I don’t have a religion, certain Christian teachings are still rooted in me. But I’ve now learned that the philosophy behind them is true. I don’t hate Carlos. I’m scared, mad, and surprised, but all these temporary feelings are here only because he showed up unannounced; they are nothing more than tall flames that, with time, will die out. I’ve come to realize that burning hatred that remains hot even through roaring winds is not a part of me anymore. Not like before.

  “There’s nothing between us anymore, Carlos,” I say, feeling a peace that astonishes me. “We had our chance, and you let it escape.”

  He seems surprised and, in a way, offended.

  “But you don’t understand, Henrique. I came back for you! I want you back, whether you have HIV or not!”

  I laugh, because he really does think everything boils down to what he wants.

  “Of course I understand, Carlos. But in your calculations, you’re forgetting to add something really important: what I want.”

  He blinks frenetically, as if that hadn’t occurred to him yet. He opens and shuts his mouth, trying to articulate something, and a few seconds pass before he can say anything.

  “You found someone, didn’t you?”

  “That’s irrelevant, Carlos.”

  He shakes his head and frowns, disappointed. “That’s exactly what it is. And that’s so … unfair. I came back for you, Henrique. I don’t care that you have HIV, I … I want to be with you.”

  “But I’ve moved on with my life, Carlos. I’m sure you’ll find someone.”

  “No!” he yells, making me jump and shrink back. Tears well up in his eyes, and they’re not sad but frustrated tears. His shoulders seem tense, his posture like that of a child who didn’t get ice cream after a walk in the park, and the look on his face scares me. “You think I haven’t tried to find someone? I want you, Henrique. Of all the p
eople in the world, I am choosing you because you are the one I want. How hard can that be to understand?”

  “It’s not hard, but I also need you to understand that my wishes need to be fulfilled, and right now, I don’t need you.”

  Carlos goes silent for almost half a minute, staring at me as if I were an alien. At last, he answers, his eyes downcast and his pride hurt. “I hope you understand the consequences of your choice, Henrique. You’ll never find someone who’ll make you as happy as I can.”

  “Only time will tell,” I answer, getting up from the couch and walking to the front door. “I don’t think we have anything left to say to each other, Carlos.”

  He gets up with a weight on his shoulders, but before he walks through the door and out of my apartment, he looks me in the eye, and I notice that there is something there, something beyond his hurt pride or disbelief, something … different. Something I’ve only seen once in my life, when I stared into my mother’s eyes when I left home.

  “You’re going to regret this,” he mutters, and I feel a chill down my spine, because that was the exact same sentence my mother said to me. The same words, the same tone of voice, the same cold, spiteful eyes.

  Carlos leaves, and I try not to worry. My mom was wrong. I’ve never regretted leaving her house, not for one second. I also won’t regret that I—finally—got rid of the person who was once the biggest love of my life.

  IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO GET VANESSA to calm down in the days leading up to her college entrance exam. She paces around the house, always with an open book in front of her, like an actress about to play Isolde who still hasn’t memorized any of the lines. She eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner with those books. And when she’s too tired of the weight of the pages full of infographics of cells and nervous and digestive systems, she grabs her tablet and puts on earbuds, then watches videos about biomedicine for university students. I have no idea how she’s able to understand all the bizarre eight-syllable terms.

  “Vanessa, calm down!” I say, sitting at the dining room table and trying to stand my ground. Mom’s blueprints have almost taken over the table, and I’m scribbling some calculations for a microeconomics assignment. “Everything is going to be fine!”