Sometimes I don't tell him the things I want. Tonight, I hope he won't notice that I don't help him unroll a condom; that I throw it over the side of the bed. It's these times that he's at his strongest and at his weakest. He won't notice, I tell myself. He won't care.

But my actions stop him dead.

"Wait," he says, stiffening, but not just from passion. "What about…"

"Not tonight."

He doesn't get it. "But what about protection?"

I can't help but snort. "Come on, Roger, what's going to happen? I'll get AIDS? You'll get AIDS? We don't need it."

"But… what about…the other thing?"

I don't answer him. Instead, I pull him in, bringing him to a place of 'Protection? What protection?'

Afterword, he looks at me funny, as if he can't quite believe it. But he smiles a bit, and I do too. Maybe, finally, I can get what I want. And maybe he could even be ok with it.

X

I run home, hiding the box under my coat. Inside, I slam the door of my empty apartment and bolt to the bathroom. I stare at the box. My very own pregnancy test. I'm almost a week late, late enough to hope. Slowly, I slide it out of the package, and hope with all my might that it'll give me that little plus sign.

I pull down my jeans. Blood stains my light purple panties. My whole body goes numb. Nothing there. Nothing to grow within me for the next nine months. And I was so sure. I'd thought that maybe if I hoped hard enough, someone would have heard me. But my prayers fell on deaf ears, or else they were sent back to me in the form of a red stain as some kind of cosmic joke.

I stuff the useless test away in its box, hiding it under the counter. Minutes before, the box had threaded excitement through me. Now, the sight of it makes me sick. It wasn't fair. So many unplanned pregnancies, so many abortions, and I blew my chance at having my child.

All I wanted was that little cross. I, Mimi Marquez, HIV+ wants nothing more than to be positive.

X

"Why?" he croaks, holding my tried-to-be-forgotten test from a month ago, his eyes flashing from my face to my belly, as if he expects to see a bulge, a growth of some foreign thing growing inside of his girlfriend. "Are you…Did we…"

I shake my head, and I feel my throat close up. "I'm not," I choke out, and the tears overflow. Relief fills his face and he closes the distance between us, holding me as if for a moment, I had been lost.

"No more scares," he says. "From now on we're careful. From now on, we use protection. It's ok. We're ok."

I let myself nod into his shoulder, agreeing with him, accepting his words.

Sometimes I don't tell him the things I want.

It's not much, but reviews are still welcome.