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“You hungry?” I asked.
“I could eat.”
“Well, if you’ll stop worrying about me, I’ll buy you a hot dog with chili from the cafeteria.”
Windy lifted his nose in the air. “Thanks, I’ll pass.”
“A package of taffy?”
He hesitated. “Saltwater?”
“Of course.”
He frowned. “I still think doing it raw with him is a bad idea, but I guess you’re both grown men—”
“With a terminal disease, and we know what we’re doing.” I rose from my bed and grabbed his hand. “C’mon. This will all go down easier with a spoonful of sugar… or taffy.”
Windy followed me out of my room and into the elevator that would deposit us in the lobby. We were alone as the numbersflashed by. When the car came to rest at the ground floor, he whispered, “I’m scared for you.”
“I’m scared for me too.”
“Just please be careful.”
I said nothing as I led the way from the elevator to the dorm cafeteria.
I’d already told him a dozen times or more. I didn’t want to be careful. Careful was for people with a future.
Danger was for me.
***
Luke
“Hey.” Minty’s voicewas sleepy and sweet from his end of the line.
I glanced around Knox Supplies & News. The only customer was our regular, Terry Jackson, and he wasn’t going to buy anything. He never did. He’d just look through the latest porn mags that had “mysteriously” worked their way out of their black, plastic wrapping.
“Good job keeping our phone appointment.”
Minty’s hesitation made me wonder if I’d already misstepped in praising him. Still, this wasn’t a scene, it was a check-in.
“It’s not like sitting around in my dorm room doing my homework and listening to my neighbor play Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ on repeat for the last five hours is so much fun that I’d forget about it. Did you know his mind is not for rent?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Hi.”
“Hi.” I cleared my throat and shifted on my stool by the cash register. The scent of plastic, rubber, and berries filtered up from the trash can at my feet. Earlier, while restocking, I’d found a two-pack of strawberry-flavored condoms had been ripped open and thesickly-sweet contents dropped onto the floor. Between the torn wrapping on the porn mags and now this, I was starting to think the morning-shift employees were sleeping on the job.
“I’ve missed you,” Minty confessed.
I couldn’t say I’d missed him, even though I’d done nothing but think about him all day. Missing, for me, required more familiarity, a spot in my life that had been filled but no longer was. I missed Jerome, I missed Benji, I missed my father, and sometimes I missed Betsy, even though she was just a phone call and an hour and forty-five-minute drive away.
“What’s that mean to you? Missing someone.”
“It means I think I’d be a lot happier if I were with you. Especially if I were naked with you, and you had me tied down to one of those contraptions in your basement. Speaking of,”—his tone changed from seductive to curious—“how did you afford all that stuff? Isn’t it expensive?”
“It is,” I agreed. “But, for the most part, I inherited it.”
