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“Fuck your father.”
“Ha,” Minty wiped at his face. “Already did that.” He gulped, eyes cutting to me. I kept my face as impassive as possible, not wanting anything to slip, not wanting to let him know that Daniel had told me. “He said I’d get AIDS and, look, Pa, I did, and with no hands, too.” He waved his arms around like he was balancing on a bike.
“You don’t have AIDS,” Daniel corrected. “You have HIV and that’s…” he choked, but managed to go on by saying, “Manageable. Or it can be for some time. There are guys who were diagnosed early on who still haven’t developed full-blown AIDS yet. We’ll just need to get you on AZT as soon as your T-cells—”
“No way.”
“I can help you pay for—”
“No. The cost is too much. Besides, don’t you see what that shit does to people?” Minty asked. “It makes them look like shit.”
“Minty—”
“Don’t,” Minty said, holding his hand out. “If I’m going to die, I’m going to be as beautiful as I can for as long as possible, and then I’ll go out quick and fast. Step in front of a train or jump from a building. I’m not going to waste away. I won’t.”
Daniel seemed to sense it was better to lose this battle right now than to lose the whole war, so he dropped that line of discussion. “What did Barry say to you? He told me he’d handle you.”
“He said…” Minty blushed, actuallyblushedand looked down at his coffee mug. “He said if I needed pain and punishment to get through this, then he’d help me get hurt.”
“Barry?” I asked, confused. “Barry wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Not him personally, but a friend of his who specializes in hurting people, but, like, safely.”
“Like what? BDSM?” Daniel asked.
I winced. A memory of the scene I’d gotten into with Adam in the spring came to mind. It’d been upsetting and sexy, hot and conflicted.
Minty nodded. “He said that if I need that, then there’s a better way to get it, not with…not with people like my…my lover, Kyle.”
“‘Yourlover, Kyle.’” Daniel lifted a brow. “You do realize that the term ‘lover’ implies love, and nothing he does to you is love.”
“He loves the way it feels to come in my ass,” Minty said with another of those sharp, scary smiles. “He loves that.”
“And he hates it,” Daniel said, repeating what Minty had told us at Tilt-a-Whirl.
Minty nodded. “He’d probably kill me if he knew I was positive, even though getting it that way is…” He shrugged. “Whatever. He’d kill me anyway.”
“And you like that feeling?”
“No? Yes? I don’t know. I just want to forget,” Minty said. “When I’m rushing on that adrenaline high, when he’s hitting me hard enough it really hurts, and he’s got his hands around my throat—” he touched the mottled bruises on his white skin. “When he fucks me so hard I just see stars? I can forgeteverythingbut that moment. I exist only there. It’s like heaven.”
“And when it’s over?”
Minty’s shoulders slumped. “Then it’s like heaven beat the hell out of me. Which feels right, you know? God would do the same if He had the chance. And He will. When I die, He’ll punish me forever.”
“He wouldn’t,” I said, even though I didn’t believe in God. “Don’t they teach that God loves everyone?”
Minty rolled his eyes. “That’s a lie they tell children so they’ll fall asleep quicker at night. The truth is, God—if there even is one—is a sadist who enjoys seeing people suffer. Because that’s the only thing that can explain this world and all the bad things that go on in it. Like what happened to me back when I was a kid.” He caught my gaze again. “What happened to you, too, right? The times you got beaten up? What kind of loving God allows for that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t the right person to be having this conversation with him right now. “I don’t believe in God.”
Minty laughed for the first time since he’d arrived. “Then why are you defending Him?”
“I just don’t like seeing you think such terrible things about yourself. If there is a God, he’d love you. You’re very lovable, Minty. If there is a God, he’d be the one who sent you here to earth made of magic moonbeams and covered in fairy stamps, right? It doesn’t make sense that he’d do that if he didn’t love you and want you to be like that.”
“I told you. God’s a sadist.” Minty’s lips quivered, and he took another sip of coffee to hide it. Putting the mug down, he rubbed his fingers over his eyes, smearing mascara and makeup. “Holy shit, I’m going to die.”
Daniel took hold of his hand. “How long have you known?”
