If He Ever Cries (manxman / boyxboy)

Chapter 12

-Chapter 12-

When you try your best, but you don't succeed

When you get what you want, but not what you need

When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep

Stuck in reverse

—Fix You, Coldplay

The midday sun shone through the windows, reflecting a blue sky and scattered clouds on the screen of his cellphone. The device sat heavy in Adam's hand, as a representation of the difficult mission he was obligated to accomplish. It was as if the sky itself pushed the object down. He stared at it, ready to make the call, but the image in his vision was out of focus.

He was not ready. Any outsider would probably think that, after making a few calls like this one in the past few minutes, he would be more fluent with placing the call and with saying what he had to say. Not really. No dial was easier than the previous, and certainly neither the conversation.

Harder than receiving the news himself, it was to be the one to deliver them. To call all his bed partners so that they got tested too—and for them to make this same call themselves. He had only managed to call a handful, and he was drained. He had to first work up the courage to place the call. Then resist the urge to hang up, every single, painful second while the line rang. Next, the loathed talk.

Each conversation consumed the equivalent of a day's worth of energy. That's the feeling, when you know you've ruined someone's life.

The worst part was to hear them cry. He could speak with the calmest tone, choose the most appropriate words, and they still broke down on the other side of the line. They wouldn't listen, and he didn't blame them. If he could be glad of anything, it was that they weren't face to face.

He understood their reactions very well. He'd been on the verge of losing it back in Dr. Mackenzie's office. To a point, he did. Anger and fear dominated his stance. No level of reassurance got through to him. The doctor had to let Adam come down from the rage, before he got to explain him the details.

He cursed the length of his contacts list. More so because he knew there was no need to call most of the people in it. Dr. Mackenzie could say all the crap he wanted about Adam having to call everyone he has had sex with, because there was no way to know for sure who he got infected from. It was his duty to all of them, and to the rest of humanity.

Adam didn't have to think too hard to know who got this in him. He didn't think at all. He knew who. Now, he could count with his fingers the women he had bedded after Kaiden. The first week after his fling, he went from one woman to another. Then he could no more. And those were the only women he was going to call.

He let the cell phone slide off his hand and fall onto the desk, unable to dial that last number. He caught his face in his hands. No hair-pulling, no self-slapping, no self-loathing would change the chain of events that unleashed.

It had seemed so perfect that night. Their bodies together had felt so right. It had played behind his closed eyes over and over again. The desire to feel that skin to skin contact every time the skin of another touched his, drove him to a seclusion he refused to admit. Deep inside, with the passing days, and with his increasing dissatisfaction in bed, Adam had wanted to see Kaiden again. His fight against the temptation to go find the young man raged to levels of insanity. He hated that his bar had shifted, and suddenly he was measuring everyone against Kaiden—beautiful, sophisticated women, against someone who was nothing more than a hooker. And an irresponsible one at that.