Click. I stopped the projector.

No.

No.

He didn't know I'd seen him. Awake in the middle of the night, I'd heard the window to the fire escape creak open. When I got there, I saw his leg go over the edge, the other slide up, then gone.

He didn't know that I screamed and ran to the edge, shouting his name, over and over, and no, no, NO, NO, NO!

And I stood there frozen staring at his broken body on the ground below until finally I had the presence of mind to call 9-1-1.

And he certainly didn't know that that scene played over and over on the backs of my eyelids at night, until I was far too tired to fall asleep and simply laid in numb anguish until morning.

He didn't know.

He didn't know he'd meant more to me than anyone else ever could and that I was closer to dying without him than I ever had without April or Mimi or because of the HIV.

He didn't know that I'd remembered to take my AZT all week only because I remembered him pestering me about it for months.

He'd really been the only thing keeping me alive.

But he didn't know that.

And it was clearly too late to tell him now.

He'd gone and jumped because he thought I was too far out of his grasp. And now I was on the brink of doing the same because I was so far in it he'd pulled me with him.

I hate irony.