Hot Mess (23 page)

"Do you remember the year I turned sixteen? I went to visit my brother at UNT? I came back thinking I was hot shit, remember?"

She nodded. They had fought terribly after that visit and almost broken up.

"He took me out clubbing that weekend. You were right to be pissed at me when I got back, because I did everything you accused me of. I honestly have no idea how I contracted it, but I've narrowed it down to that weekend." His voice caught, and he breathed deeply. "I'm sorry, Rach."

"Kyle, it's so far in the past. It's my life, now. I'm dealing with it."

"How?"

"Well, I'm treating it. It's not progressing right now."

"You look good."

"Thanks."

"I saw the swing set in the yard. You have kids?"

"A daughter. She's ten."

His eyes looked hopeful, and she quickly reassured him. "She's not yours, Kyle. I would have told you. And she's negative." He nodded, silently.

Rachel's emotions were swirling around her. She had seen lots of patients living with AIDS in her line of work, at conferences and such. But Kyle was
Kyle
. He was the only one that she had also known
before
. The last time she'd seen Kyle, she thought he'd been disease-free. And now she was facing the man who'd infected her. She snorted.

"You know, I always thought I got it in college. My first semester, at a party."

"Perceptions change, with information."

"Yeah, they do." She saw Sam's Jeep pull into his driveway and watched him get out, look over at her house, staring for a good long while at the strange car in her driveway, and walk slowly up to his door. Kyle noticed her watching.

"Friend of yours?"

"Yeah. Sam's a good man."

"Good." He looked at her squarely, and the pain in the depths of his eyes rocked her to the core. "Does he know?"

She nodded.

They continued to look at each other for a little while, measuring each other. "Do you want to ask me anything, Rachel?" He said quietly.

Hundreds of questions raced through her head, but the one that she blurted out was, "Why did you disappear?"

He shrugged, and suddenly she was taken back to high school, and he was the same old Kyle, healthy, reckless, carefree.

"I wanted to party. And I did. I didn't just disappear, I got lost. And I'm still trying to find myself." His eyes met hers, and the sadness in them was almost more than Rachel could stand. "You were the last good thing that happened to me, Rachel. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

"How long have you known?"

"Ten years." He sighed and shifted in his seat. "I was diagnosed when I was twenty. By then, it was pretty established in my system. I didn't have a job or insurance or any way to afford the treatment." His short, stubby fingers played with a string from the frayed hem of his jeans. "I've thought about you a lot. I almost tried to find you so many times, but…I just…couldn't."

"So, why are you here now, Kyle?"

He looked at her, a sadness in his eyes that tore at her heart. "I won't be able to travel for much longer, and I wanted to see you one last time, to explain if I could. To tell you I'm sorry."

She wasn't sure what to say. What do you tell the person who was killing you slowly, who had taken everything you'd known about him and turned it on its ear? Do you say, "It's okay? No apologies necessary?"

She settled with, "I'm glad you came, Kyle."

The alarm went off on Rachel's phone. "I've got to go pick up Sophie. Can you stay?"

He shook his head. "No."

Rachel swallowed her disappointment. "Okay. Then, let me walk you to your car." She stood, and followed him to his rental, noticing once again, how thin he was, how weak. He walked like an elderly man, knees slightly bent, back hunched, holding on to things when he could.

At his door, he turned and faced Rachel. She couldn't help herself: she pushed her body into his arms, and hugged him around his chest, feeling each and every rib bone, her arms completely wrapping around him and grasping her own elbows.

He kissed the top of her head. "I'm glad I finally had the courage to come and see you, Rachel. I meant what I said. You were the light in my life, the only good thing that ever happened to me, and I ruined you. Like I did everything else."

She looked up at his face, arms still wrapped around him. "You didn't ruin me, Kyle. I have a good life." His eyes filled with tears.

"Good. You deserve it." He left a swift kiss on her forehead, before extricating himself from her grasp, and getting into his car. He gave her a silent wave as he drove off down the street.

Rachel watched his car until he disappeared around the corner. She was knocked for a loop. Everything she'd ever believed about how she'd become HIV positive had just been torn down, and she didn't know how to deal with it. Even though it didn't change much, she still was having a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that she'd gotten it from Kyle, of all people, the one person that she'd thought was her normalcy in a less than normal world.

She knew she should be angry. Most people were angry at the person that they'd contracted it from. But she couldn't bring herself to hate Kyle. She just didn't have the energy for that. She'd been fighting the depression for so long and was just starting to climb out of the abyss. She couldn't afford to sink back down into it. Rachel had to take care of Sophia. She had a life now that she had to live, she couldn't afford to turn around and go backwards any more.

The type of fire, the characteristics of the burn, and the manner in which fuel is being supplied are the determining factors in deciding the best attack. --From
Firefighter's Handbook, Essentials of Firefighting and Emergency Response

Sam had seen her visitor. He'd watched them through his front window. He'd seen them on the porch, talking. Then he'd seen Rachel walk the man to his car, and she'd hugged him. On the surface, it was just a hug. But there was something intimate in the way they'd held each other, and Sam just knew that there was more between them.

He'd never seen the man before, so he knew that he wasn't somebody from Rachel's present, which left her past. He was obviously sick. At first, Sam had thought that he'd been older, but the lack of gray hair, and something about the way he moved and dressed indicated youth.

Suddenly, realization dawned on Sam. He knew now, without a doubt this man was the one who'd gotten Rachel sick. The bastard.

Sam was still tamping down serious anger when he brought Amanda home from school, so he went out to the garage to try and let off some steam. Rachel hadn't called him, and he suspected she didn't want to talk to him. But that wouldn't stop Sam. He had to talk to her about this, or he would lose his mind.

After pushing his limits on his weight machine, he went inside and showered away the sweat, but not the emotions roiling inside of him.

Rachel was a good woman. She was a great mother, and she did so much for the people online with her work. Why couldn't other people see that and leave her alone?

If this man who'd visited upset her, he'd hunt him down and kill him. Sam didn't care if he was dying already. That's all there was to it.

After his shower, he walked over to her house and knocked on the door. She didn't answer.

"Rachel!" He yelled at the closed door. "Open up! It's Sam!"

"I know," he heard her say, from just beyond the other side of the door.

"Come on, let me in. I want to talk to you."

"Not tonight, Sam. I need to be alone, please."

"Did he hurt you? Did he say something to you?"

"No, Sam. He didn't. Please, just leave me alone. We'll talk later. Okay?"

"You're okay?" She didn't sound okay, and he wanted to help.

"No. I'm not, but there's not anything you can do about it."

"I'd like to try." He stared at the heavy wooden door, willing it to open to him, but he knew it wouldn't. She needed time. He'd pushed her before, and he told himself he couldn't do it again.

"Come back later, please? I'll call you." The pleading note in her voice was not lost on Sam. Defeated, he turned and walked home.

He liked Rachel, and could see them together. He wanted to be with her, but circumstances kept pushing her away. First it was him and his stupid ignorance. Then it was the newspaper article, which he still hadn't been able to talk to her about. Now, it was this guy, whoever he was.

He had watched her climb out of the abyss of depression that she'd sunk into, and now it looked like she had new demons to fight. There was no way that this visitor brought her good news. Not the way she had hugged him when he left, as if she were saying goodbye forever. It made him mad, because she didn't deserve it.

She deserved to be happy, and Sam wanted to be the one who made her laugh. He just needed her to let him into her life and let him try.

From Remainingrachel.com:

With the exceptions of politics and religion, perceptions can change with information. If you perceive one thing to be true, then receive information to the contrary, usually your perceptions will change. For example, if you spend ten years believing that your HIV status came from a particular instance in your life, then you meet somebody from another instance in your life who tells you that they gave it to you, then your perceptions of how you became HIV positive have changed. Consider your world rocked.

I have never met an AIDS patient that I knew in their "past" life, before being diagnosed with HIV or AIDS. I cannot explain to you the emotions running through my mind, as I try to reconcile the shriveled, shell of a man with AIDS with the high school line-backer that I remember. My brain says they are the same person, but my heart just can't draw the lines that connect the dots.

So running in the same perception vein, I've got some perceptions to change here in my own community. I've been outted, and word has spread about my advocacy. Unfortunately, I live in a small town that has a hard time letting go of its perceptions. So I'm feeling the need to change them. I am thinking about setting up some sort of Community Services Project that will educate the community that I live in, in an attempt to help them gain some understanding of HIV/AIDS.

This will alter the way I live my daily life, I'm sure, but it will hopefully allow me some personal peace, in that I won't be constantly hiding behind my façade all day, every day. I can be me. And that is a good thing.

The next day, Rachel tried to busy herself. She had told Kyle she had a good life, and she needed to do something good to illustrate that. Rachel decided that she needed an endorphin rush, and since she hadn't run in a few weeks, she decided to go for one after dropping Sophia off at school.

It was rough. She plodded along, willing the endorphins to kick in and take over, like they used to. But they never did. Thoughts of Kyle and Sam and her life kept her from succumbing to the adrenaline of the run. After a mile, Rachel gave up and went home to try to accomplish something.

She updated her blog posts, made an oatmeal cake for Sophia, and answered some questions online, trying to impart wisdom she didn't feel. She did some preliminary research into possible community outreach projects she could set up in Serendipity. After picking Sophia up from school, she took her to the park.

"You want to do your homework in some fresh air today? We can go to the park, and you can play afterwards. Then we'll go get some take-out somewhere. How does that sound?"

Sophia couldn't contain her joy. Not only was she getting a coveted trip to the park, but take-out was almost unheard of.

As she watched her daughter do her homework on a park bench, Rachel's thoughts raced back and forth between Kyle and Sam, as they had done all day.

Kyle had been her first boyfriend. Her high school sweetheart. Her only relationship, ever.

They had met her freshman year and started dating almost immediately. He quickly became her best friend. He was a sophomore and already driving. It wasn't long before they'd become intimate in the back of his pick-up.

The town she'd grown up in had been a lot like Serendipity. It was small, but not too small. High school football was big, and Kyle had been a local hero. He could do no wrong. Almost as soon as he'd moved there and been discovered by the coach, he'd been revered by the townspeople.

Something had happened to him on that trip to visit his brother, though. Rachel remembered that he'd been darker after that. Although, in retrospect, maybe the darkness had always been there. Kyle's dad had been hard on him, as the baby of the family. It didn't seem that Kyle lived up to Dad's expectations in some way.

Her memories drifted back to nights on the football field after the game, sweaty high school legs entwining together on the grass. To the backroads, in the back of the pick-up, drunken voices and laughter in the background, while they tried to muffle their moans and gasps.