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“What the fuck?” I say. “How did we not use one?”
Except I know the answer. I was crazed with lust. “I didn’t think about it,” she admits, looking guilty, as if it’s somehow her fault that I fucked her raw.
I thought you could use protection this time. Because I didn’t use it last night. That’s never happened before. I always use a condom. Everyone knows to be safe these days, but I’m extra careful. It’s not just about accidentally knocking someone up.
It’s about creating a life that has my cursed genes.
If the disease only stripped years out of my life, that would be one thing. It does more than that. It will take my dignity. It’s taken my father’s dignity. He’s a prisoner in his own mind. I swore a long time ago that I would never force that on someone.
Which means using a condom like it’s a religion.
Last night Eva became my religion.
I push out of bed, away from her, away from the weakness she creates in me. My clothes are strewn around the room. I pick them up with jerky motions. Part of me recognizes that I’m acting abrupt. Surly, even. She doesn’t deserve this behavior from me, but I feel too jittery inside to stop it. “I don’t suppose you’re on birth control,” I say, not facing her.
“No.” Her voice has cooled fifteen degrees. “I didn’t need to be.”
She wouldn’t have needed it, not after being celibate for over a decade. I’m the one who’s been having sex. I know enough to use protection. “Fuck.”
“Listen,” she says, and I look back to see her sitting up in bed. She has the white sheet pulled up over her breasts, as if she needs a shield. As if she needs protection from me. “I’m sure it’s fine. It was only one time.”
I give her a dark look.
“A few times,” she amends.
I kept her up half the night, taking her again and again. “I’ll send you a morning-after pill.”
Her cheeks turn pink. “I’m sure I can find one on my own.”
“And you can take a pregnancy test… I don’t know when they start working.” I know exactly fuck-all about pregnancy. “We’ll figure this out.”
She stands, and all the uncertainty is gone. The pain, the grief from her past? Gone. She’s draped in a white sheet, looking like a goddess. Her shoulders are back, her chin held high. Her black hair spills around her bare shoulders.
Roman sculptors would beg to use her as their model.
“I’ll be the one to figure this out,” she says. “Which will probably be nothing at all. But either way, you’re absolved. Released. So you can stop looking like someone shot you.”
She crosses the room with the bearing of a queen.
“Eva.” It occurs to me that I may have been intense in my reaction. People forget condoms sometimes. It’s fine. Nothing happens. Like she said, it was only once. I probably could have asked her to take a morning-after pill without stomping around like an asshole.
Too late. The bathroom door closes in my face. I hear the sound of water being turned on. Steam begins pouring from the bottom of the bathroom door. She isn’t coming back out anytime soon. And she sure as hell isn’t inviting me to join her.
I’m pretty sure that was an invitation for me to fuck right off.
Chapter Seventeen
Finn,
I got your delivery, and I’ve taken it.
–Eva
Eva,
I’m sorry I lost my shit. Please forgive me.
–Finn
