“I trust you, Cal. You’re my best friend . . . you always were.”
Calum backed the van out of the space and spun around towards the road. “Some best friend. I wasn’t with you when you needed me most. You were in London when you found out, weren’t you? That’s why you came back here?”
Brix waited until Calum pulled onto the deserted road before he let out a sigh so deep it seemed like he’d been holding it for a hundred years. “Would you believe my dad came across me in much the same state as I did you? Except I made it to Ladock bus station. I wasn’t drunk, mind, though I imagine he thought I was, given the state I was in.”
“Had you just found out?” Calum kept his eyes on the road, easing the van around the tight, Cornish corners. “I mean—been diagnosed—is that the right word?”
Brix shrugged. “I don’t think it matters, but I’d known a few weeks by the time I crawled back down here. Do you remember that ink convention in Croydon? When Two-Minute Tony won?”
“No, I remember hearing about it, but I wasn’t there. It was my parents’ silver wedding anniversary.”
“Oh.” Brix sifted through memories that often felt like they belonged to someone else. “You weren’t there?”
“No, I was away for a week or so. You were gone when I came back, and no one seemed to know where.”
“I’m sorry.”
Calum’s hand briefly left the steering wheel and touched Brix’s, his fingertips tracing a burning trail across Brix’s knuckles. “Don’t be sorry. Just keep talking, eh? For as long as you need.”
“For as long as you need.” Brix felt numb. “I’ve never told anyone . . . except Jordan.”
Calum shot him another sideways glance. “Jordan?”
“Yeah. I was supposed to compete at Croydon, but I woke up that morning feeling like shit, so I didn’t go. Jordan went to work while I stayed in bed at his place. I thought it was just a hangover or something, but when he got home, I had a headache so bad I was screaming.”
Calum turned the van left, his expression inscrutable. Brix took a deep breath and continued. “At the hospital, my temperature was so high they said I had meningitis. They put me in an isolation ward and told Jordan to call my family . . . luckily, he didn’t have their number, because the next morning—” Brix faltered.
“Go on,” Calum said gently. “It’s okay.”
“They sedated me overnight so I could sleep, and the next morning, a different doctor came round. He said he was going to do some tests—he didn’t say what, and I didn’t ask. I was distracted, you see, because Jordan had decided he needed to go home and get changed.” Brix stopped and shook his head. “I—I should’ve known then that something was up, but at the time, I just didn’t want him to go. I was so fucking ill and scared.”
“He knew, didn’t he?”
“That obvious, eh?” Brix tipped his head back and briefly closed his eyes. Talking about this—with Calum—was easier than he’d expected, but the weight of keeping it to himself so long had left him drained. “Well, you’re right. He scarpered, and that was the last I saw of him for a while. The doctor came back that afternoon with a nurse from the GUM clinic. They told me I had a recent HIV infection that was probably what was making me so ill—conversion sickness, or something, not everyone gets it—then they gave me a number to call when I was discharged and left me to it.”
“They left you?”
Brix shrugged. “They didn’t boot me out, but there wasn’t much they could do for me. I left as soon as I could walk.”
“Where did you go?”
“To find Jordan.”
Calum fell silent as the sea came into view. His eyes remained on the road, but Brix could tell his mind was racing, drawing the same conclusions Brix had all those years ago.
“Don’t hurt your brain, Cal. Whatever you’re thinking is probably true.”
“You got it from Jordan?”
Brix nodded. “Yep. He’d known for six months but done nothing about it. We didn’t bareback often, but you know what things were like back then, with the drink and weed and shit. Stuff . . . happened, and the axe fell on me.”
“I’m so sorry, Brix.”
Brix turned to Calum as the van eased to a stop outside the cottage. “It ain’t your fault.”
“It isn’t yours either.”
“Isn’t it? I got tanked up and had unprotected sex—more than once—with someone I knew was sleeping around with half of Camden. You can’t deny how fucking stupid that was.”
