Never a Hero

if ever there was one, but it was all I had.
    “Hi.” He glanced down at my chest and smiled. “Nice shirt.”
    I’d intentionally worn the Superman shirt he’d given me on Halloween, hoping it would help ease the tension between us. It seemed to be working for him, but not so well for me. I hugged my ruined arm against myself. I took a deep breath and made myself ask, “Can we talk?”
    “Of course.” He motioned to a chair. “Have a seat.”
    I did, and then I sat there watching him, unsure of how to begin. How did you go about asking somebody the details of their HIV status? I thought about how often I’d seen people uncomfortable with me, unable to ask about my arm. I decided Nick’s approach was best: direct.
    “When we first met, you told me you’d been a shut-in for a while.”
    “For about a year.”
    “Because of the HIV?”
    He paused briefly in his chopping, then nodded and went on, slowly slicing a carrot into bits. “It was right after I was diagnosed.”
    “Will you tell me about it?”
    He was quiet for a moment, seemingly contemplating where to begin. “I was on vacation with my family, believe it or not. My parents and June and me. We went to Cancun. It was like being a teenager again, you know, going to the beach with my parents and playing in the ocean with my sister. But one night everybody else went to bed early, and I was bored, so I went online and I found a club nearby.” He swallowed and set his knife down. His hands were shaking. “And I hooked up with somebody. I took him back to my room. And I spent the next three days with my family, like before, but every night when I got back to my room, he’d be there waiting for me, and we . . .” He laughed bitterly. “God, we fucked like rabbits, is what we did.” He shook his head, looking sightlessly down at the pile of chopped vegetables on the counter. “And the first couple of times, we used condoms, but then we ran out, and we just kept going. It was stupid. That’s the worst part. I have no excuse whatsoever except I was young and stupid. I was having fun, and I guess I thought it couldn’t happen to me, as ridiculous as it sounds.” He began scooping the vegetables up and dropping them into a bowl. “I was diagnosed six months later.”
    “Did he know he was sick?”
    “I’ve wondered, but I have no idea. I never even knew his last name.” He leaned forward, his fingers white-knuckled on the countertop, closing his eyes. “Four nights with him, and I’ve been paying for it ever since.” He shook his head. “I can’t be that person, Owen. I won’t be the one who passes this disease on to somebody else. The only way it ends is if we stop spreading it. What happened between us the other night . . . God, Owen. I’m so sorry.”
    “Because you didn’t tell me about it first?”
    “Yes. And because I should never have let it happen at all.”
    “I did some research. I know you didn’t lie to me about the risks.”
    “I was careful, Owen. But I still feel terrible about it. I can’t ever let myself get carried away like that again.”
    I wasn’t quite ready to consider sex with him again, and yet his words bothered me. “But we just agreed there was almost no chance of me catching it.”
    “‘Almost’ no chance is still too much of one. I should never have done that to you.”
    “So, what? Your plan is to never have sex again?”
    He laughed, although there wasn’t much humor in it. “When you say it that way, it sounds ridiculous.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    He jerked into motion as if it pained him, sniffling and wiping at his eyes. I hadn’t realized he’d been crying. “Ridiculous or not, it’s the only thing that feels right. It’s the moral thing to do.”
    I suspected he was just trying to punish himself more for a few nights of carelessness in his youth, but it didn’t seem worth arguing about. “I’m sorry.”
    “Me too.”
    Bert padded across the room to nudge my hand. I scratched his ears and thought about Nick’s story so far. “So you caught it in Cancun. What happened after that?”
    “Well, I was lucky, in a way, because we caught it early. And because I had insurance, so I could start treatment right away.”
    “And you kept working?”
    “I did, but only because I couldn’t afford to lose my coverage. I was like a zombie. I went to work, and I had doctor appointments, and I came home, and that was it. I didn’t even spend Christmas with my family that year. All I