Seeing Shane Gray ✓

twenty two | break

*.*.*.*.*.*

October 28

"Maybe it's not as bad as you think."

"He doesn't agree."

"If he gets treatment and you guys are careful ..."

Marla sighs, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulder.

"What if you guys don't have sex but stay together anyway?" I suggest. "Surely there's more to your relationship than just sex."

Marla averts her gaze and bites her lip.

"What?" I press, slightly scared.

"We've never ..."

I wait, holding my breath.

"You've never had sex?" I gasp.

I stare. Marla and Hashir have always been the perfect couple. For years, I've thought they'd been at it. I can't believe I didn't know my friend is still a virgin.

"He said we'll wait till marriage," she mumbles.

My heart swells and almost explodes. "But then there's no problem."

Marla lifts her red eyes to meet mine. "That's what I said," she tells me. "I told him we can keep trying long distance. I love him, Tay. I don't want to leave him just because he's sick. You know what he said? He said this changes everything. He's fucking crazy and thinks this is the end."

"Does he have AIDS or is it just HIV?" I ask, not really knowing the details.

"He said the doctor he's seeing said it's AIDS."

"There has to be a cure, right?"

"There's management." Marla chews on her lower lip. "Hashir thinks that means he's as good as dead."

I don't answer, knowing Hashir has probably thought this through better than I ever can. He must have gone over these in his head multiple times, slowly building up his argument, gathering up his strength to do what needed to be done. AIDS might be killing him, but letting go of Marla for her own good probably killed him more.

Marla drops her head in her hands.

"We fought," she's mumbles, her voice low and stifled. "We never fight and yet we fought. We cried and we yelled and we broke things before we just sat in each other's arms and cried some more. He said he can't be selfish and ruin my life just because he wants me to stay beside him through his painful years."

I don't say anything.

"Is it wrong that I want him to be selfish?" she asks.

My heart tears at the thought of it, images of Marla and Hashir together flashing in my mind's eye. I can still see it, the first time Marla told me she had a crush on her neighbor. We'd been sitting on a thick branch in her yard, overlooking the street.

'He comes through here every Friday,' Marla had told me, swinging her legs as she knotted her hands in her lap. 'You'll see him. He looks so cute in white.'

It was a strange time, when he turned around the street with his father, the two of them dressed in white and wearing prayer caps on their heads. I'd never seen such a sight before, their long white shirts and open slippers, faces glowing as the older man whom I later learned was Hashir's father talked and Hashir listened. He's looked up as he passed us by, unsmiling and unspeaking, probably confused to see the two fourteen-year-old girls giggling as he passed by. Every Friday we'd wait there and it wasn't until Marla was fifteen that she actually plucked up the courage to talk to him.