Never a Hero

could do was sit at home and think, ‘This is my life. This is it. I’m going to die.’”
    “I can imagine it would be easy to give in to depression.”
    He nodded. “Exactly.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Pink Floyd.”
    “What?” I asked, laughing despite myself.
    He turned to face me for the first time, leaning back against the counter. He didn’t look sad anymore. He looked like himself. Like the Nick I’d come to know—confident and in control.
    And sexy. No matter what, still sexy.
    “I was listening to Pink Floyd. I know it sounds stupid, but I was depressed, and I was wallowing in it, and what’s better for that than Floyd, right? But then there’s this line about exchanging whatever problems you have for a life in a cage. And I thought, that’s me. That’s what I’m doing. I’m living in a cage. And I started to cry.” He blushed a bit at that, but he didn’t look away. He didn’t stop talking. “I started to think about how much of the world I hadn’t seen, and all the things I hadn’t done, and I realized that if I never did them, that if I died alone in that apartment, it wouldn’t be because of the HIV. It would be because of me . Because I was choosing the cage.” He reached up to touch his hair, a familiar, nervous gesture that made me smile. “So I decided to start over. I moved here and opened my clinic.” He crossed his arms and sighed, looking sheepishly down at the floor, suddenly seeming unsure of himself again.
    “I never meant for this to happen, Owen. I hope you know that. I’ve been so careful. I don’t go to clubs. I don’t date. I don’t flirt. You may laugh at this idea of being celibate, but it always felt right. But with you . . .” He looked up at me, his eyes full of anguish. “I wish I’d done better. I wish I’d told you from the beginning, but it’s not something I tell many people. Seth knows because he does my ink, but otherwise, I keep it to myself. I’ve never even told Paul, and I work with him every day.”
    I could understand why he wouldn’t want his HIV status to be common knowledge. “I suppose there’s never a good time to share information like that.”
    “There really isn’t. The problem was, I shouldn’t have had to. I shouldn’t have ever let it get that far. I shouldn’t have flirted with you or touched you. I just—” His words jerked to a halt, and he wiped his eyes again, his gaze locked on the floor at his feet. “Something about you makes me want to help you and protect you and spend time with you. It makes me want to . . . to . . .”
    “Sleep with me?”
    He nodded. “That’s not what I was going to say, but yes. That too. I was attracted to you from the very beginning.”
    “But you didn’t want to tell me about being HIV-positive.”
    “I kept trying to convince myself I didn’t need to. That I could be your friend and not your lover, but then I couldn’t ever keep my hands off you. All those years of abstaining, and suddenly I was like a horny teenager again. You’re like some kind of drug I can’t get out of my system. I don’t know. I realize it’s a lame excuse to say I couldn’t help myself, but it’s the truth.”
    “It’s not so lame,” I said, because ridiculous or not, it made my heart swell to hear him say it. “I’m sorry I freaked out on you.”
    “Please don’t apologize to me. You had every right to be mad.”
    I wasn’t sure that was true. “I have something to tell you, too.” I’d thought about this, and although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why it mattered, I knew that it did. “I’ve told you about my stutter, and my mother. But I didn’t tell you about what happened to me in high school.”
    He leaned back against the counter, watching me. Waiting. Patient, as always.
    “I met a boy. He was new to our school. He moved in around the block. It was summer break, and he didn’t know anybody else, so we became friends. He was patient, you know. The way you’re patient. He l-let me talk. He didn’t laugh or get annoyed when I stuttered.”
    “Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming on?”
    “About the time our junior year started, we began fooling around. It wasn’t much, because we were scared to death. Just touching each other. Making out a bit.”
    “And your mom caught you?”
    “Worse. We got caught at school. Under the bleachers. We were kissing. That’s all. We still had our clothes on and everything, but this was Wyoming, after all. The teacher