I couldn’t help my answering smile as I turned back to the stove long enough to flip the latest pancakes, this time in time to save them from burning. “Yeah. I’m ok,” I said through a suddenly thick throat.
“Oh my god.” He sank down into one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m so glad. I was so scared for you, that I gave it -” He broke off suddenly and yep, there it was, hitting him a little belatedly. “Oh shit. It was me this whole time. And we…oh god.” He was up and out of his chair before I could stop him, the door of the hall bathroom slamming behind him.
Alarm shooting through me, I turned the stove off - fuck the pancakes at this point - and followed him. “Hen?” I asked gently, knocking on the bathroom door. “You ok?”
A gagging cough answered me, and I winced. So, not ok. I tried the doorknob and was surprised to find that it turned; he hadn’t locked it behind himself. Slowly, carefully, I let myself into the bathroom. “Hen.”
He was hunched over the toilet, shoulders up around his ears and tears running down his face, whether from the gagging or from the revelation - or both - I couldn’t tell. I sank down on my knees beside him and rubbed his back gently. “You’re ok,” I soothed. “It’s ok.”
“You’re…” he gasped, then swallowed another gag. “You can’t be in here. I don’t know if vomit is…what if you catch it?” His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper at the end, the word ‘it’ ringing with horror. “It’s not safe.”
I plucked a tissue from the box on the back of the toilet and used it to wipe his mouth for him with my free hand, my other hand continuing to rub his back. “I can’t catch HIV from vomit, Hen. I promise. And even if I could, I'm still on PrEP. You’re fine.”
“Not fine. Never gonna be fine,” he half-sobbed, dropping his face into his hands on the toilet seat. “We…we…” A deep sob thistime, and his whole body shuddered. “We haven’t been using condoms.”
Oh. He had a point there. When we’d become exclusive, we’d agreed that with all the negative recent tests we’d both had, it was safe to go bare. That…probably wasn’t great. The good news was I’d stayed on my PrEP, mostly because at this point taking the pill was a daily habit, so I was probably still safe. But yeah, this meant there was probably more testing in my future. I bit back a tired sigh. I didnotneed to be exhibiting any less-than-positive emotions at this moment. “I’m still on PrEP, baby,” I soothed. “I’m ok.”
“I…I…” His shoulders shook under my arm. “Ramsey. It must have been Ramsey. I can’t…do I have to call him?” he asked in a tiny voice. “I do, don’t I.”
I gritted my teeth at the thought of sweet, gentle Hen having to get in touch with that cheating fucker. I bet the fucker would try to turn the blame around on him, too. “You can text him,” I suggested. “Or…or maybe I can call him for you? Or maybe there’s a service that will do the notification. That seems like the kind of thing that might exist.”
He shuddered. “I can’t believe this.”
“What, honey?” I asked.
He shook his head. “All of it. Any of it. How is this my life? I…I’m not high-risk. I don’t lead a crazy life. But I was careless and you could…you could have…” Another sob, and he lifted his head from his arms to bury it in my shoulder.
My lower legs were falling asleep. Tugging him along with me, I rolled off my knees onto my butt on the bathmat until we were curled up against the wall opposite the toilet. And then I held him as he cried some more. In the back of my mind, I knew that there was a storm of emotions waiting to hit me - fear, relief, worry, anger - but for now, they remained bundled up in the back of my consciousness, waiting for me to have time toexperience them. Right now, it was more important to get Hen through this than it was to have my own meltdown.
By the time the crying jag stopped, I’d hand-detangled Hen’s entire head of hair and my butt was asleep. He sagged against me limply, tiredly, and I wondered if the Xanax was still working and just how bad this would have been without it on board, if so. “Hey, baby.” I jostled him around in my arms until I could see his tear-stained face. He was pale, his eyelashes lying in a dark crescent against bruised-looking eyes. “Let’s get off the floor, ok?”
I managed to get him to his feet and lead him back into the kitchen, where I lowered him into the chair he’d been sitting in before and squatted in front of him. “You think you can eat a little? You haven’t had anything since first thing this morning.” And what was left of that had recently been ejected into the toilet.
His breath hitched, but he didn’t start crying again, and he managed a weak nod. “Yeah.”
I patted his knee. “Great. Give me a sec.” I stuck the plate of finished pancakes in the microwave for ten seconds and pulled the butter and syrup out of the fridge, placing all of it on the table in front of Hen. “Go on,” I urged, handing him a fork.
Obediently, he forked up a bite of food. I watched as he methodically downed the contents of the plate, not seeming to really recognize or care about what he was eating. Not the greatest - I’d prefer to see him participating in reality - but at least he was eating. I settled into a chair across from him and thought as he ate.
What did we need to do at this point? Hen might need to find a primary HIV-specializing point of care; I didn't know if his GP would handle it long-term. I needed to schedule re-tests in line with the time window we’d been going bare. We both needed to do research. And…I was pretty sure Hen needed a therapist. Imean, maybe he already had one for all I knew - it had never come up - but he needed one who could deal with his new fear and trauma. And the guilt. I wondered if his insurance even covered mental health. Surely it would, right? Surely in 2026 America it was understood even by insurance companies that mental health was health?
“Hen?” I ventured warily as he set down his fork without looking up.
He blinked slowly and raised his eyes to mine. “Hmm?”
“Do you have a therapist?”
He looked blank for a long moment, as if he was having to work through what those words meant. “Did,” he finally said. “For a long time. But then he retired and I was pretty stable so I didn’t find another one.” He sighed. “You’re going to tell me that needs to change, aren’t you.”
I nodded wordlessly. “Sorry.”
“Guess I should have seen that coming. I just thought, you know, I’d picked up a bunch of coping mechanisms, unfucked some brain fuckery…figured I was ok enough. Guess I didn’t take into account picking up a life-changing illness in my mid-30s.” He sighed again. “I don’t know how to even start looking for a therapist who’d be good for me. Like, do I need a specialist? An…LGBT+ or HIV expert? There can’t be many of those. Shit.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started tapping. “I probably need to call my insurance, and then they’ll want documentation, and then I’ll have to call around to therapists who take my insurance, and then…”
I put a hand over his screen and gently forced his hand back to his side. “You don’t need to do anything right this second. Relax.”
He sighed wordlessly and just looked at me. I wanted to wrap him in my arms - which was a little comical considering our sizedifference - and protect him from everything that was coming for him.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped out. “You didn’t sign up for this.”
