Page 33 of Regret Me Not

Hal shook his head and buried his face in the hollow of Pierce’s shoulder. “You are,” he hiccupped. “You are a unicorn. You just won’t see….”

Pierce didn’t know what to do with that. He nuzzled Hal’s temple until his breathing quieted down some and Pierce could close his eyes and fall fast asleep.

Future Shocks

“YOU CANwait out in the car,” Hal said, fidgeting with his key fob. “This’ll take—”

“Anywhere from ten minutes to an hour,” Pierce gauged, looking the medical clinic over grimly. “Anything hospital inclined is a crapshoot.”

“I can drop you off at Walmart—it’s right down the road.” Hal still wouldn’t look at him.

“Dammit!” Pierce snapped. “Hal! This isn’t the end of the world! It’s an HIV test—I got my first one in college.”Oh God—Ass. Hole.Pierce took a deep breath and tried to be a unicorn, which was hard since Hal had been an evasive sprite all damned morning about the HIV test thing.

“I hate making you a part of my bad decision-making,” Hal said after a moment, and oh holy crap and pass the potatoes, somethingreal.

Pierce took a deep breath. “Forgetting the rubber happens.” He let out a laugh. “Ask my sister. I wasn’t joking when I said shaming people for sexual activity is high on my list of douchebag things to do.”

“But it wasn’t just once,” Hal muttered, staring out the window. “I broke up with Russ, and Russ called me all sorts of… you know, prude and baby, and I was a stupid dumbass kid about it and set out to….” He flailed, avoiding Pierce’s eyes like Pierce was a red-eyed dragon who hypnotized his prey.

“Set out to fuck everything that moved to prove him wrong?” Oh Lord, college.

Hal looked at him sideways—but at least he looked at him. “After Loren?” he said softly.

“After Katrina,” Pierce said with a grimace. “First relationship. Freshman year. True love always, until Derrick found out she’d done everybody at school while we were going out.”

“Ouch!”

Pierce shrugged—distance gave perspective. “You know, everybody has their damage. Whatever happened toherto make her need that? And I really do believe it was something she felt compelled to do—breaking up hurt her, mostly because she felt like she couldn’t help herself. But yeah. I went out to prove I could bang all the things.” Pierce did the unthinkable then—they’d had sexual activity and they’d even had kissing, but they hadn’t yet done this.

He reached out and grabbed Hal’s hand and brought the knuckles to his lips.

“I had a friend,” he said, smiling a little before holding Hal’s hand to his cheek. God, tenderness. He wanted to give Halallthe tenderness. “Derrick came to clubs with me and fucked all the things too. I forgot rubbers left and right and pretended I was hip and devil-may-care. Derrick forgot once and had a panic attack. So I… I said, ‘Hey, let’s just go check it out together, so we can not freak out about it,’ right?”

“You were both negative, right?”

“Right,” Pierce said, nodding. “I wouldn’t bullshit you. But I had blood tests run in the hospital anyway—I would have told you that first night, Hal.” He frowned. “Although I wish you’d asked.”

Hal swallowed and tugged at his hand. Pierce let him go with some disappointment, but then Hal turned his palm and cupped Pierce’s cheek.

“I’ll get tested now,” he said, stroking Pierce’s lower lip with his thumb. “And… and I’ll remember to ask the… if… uh, if I ever need to again.”

Pierce kissed the inside of his palm and moved away so he could open the door and climb out with his cane. He avoided saying the obvious thing, the thing neither of them were saying.

They had less than a week and a half. Unless they decided to make this a long-distance thing, he was getting tested so they could share a handful of nights together.

The thought left a terrible ache, an empty void in the center of Pierce’s chest.

Today. I’ll be with him today. And tomorrow. And the next day. It will have to be good enough.

FIFTEEN MINUTESlater they came out of the clinic, Hal looking disgustedly at his phone.

“They’ll call me in one or two days?” he asked, upset.

“That’s what they said,” Pierce said mildly.

“Two days.”

“So they said.”