I stared across my desk at the handsome young man who met my gaze without flinching. “Are you telling me you knew Bill wanted to kill himself and you?”

He nodded. “After he found out he had KS he told me we had AIDS. He talked about how much Waldo had suffered and that that’s all we had to look forward to. He couldn’t stop talking about how horrible it would be and then I’d walk down Castro and see these guys, no older than me, emaciated and covered with lesions, walking with canes or in wheelchairs. My world was so small by then. It was just Bill and me, really. I was barely talking to my family and I couldn’t tell them I had AIDS. So, when Bill started talking about suicide, I couldn’t come up with any good arguments against it. I know that sounds strange but like I said, I was isolated and terrified. Plus, being the youngest in my family, I always did what the grownups told me and Bill was the grownup in our relationship.”

“Bill had been manipulating you for a long time. If you felt isolated and terrified, it was because that’s where he wanted you. To keep you close.”

He looked down. “I understand that now.” He met my eyes. “I’ve been seeing a therapist. When I told her about my relationship with Bill, she told me he had abused me and I got really mad.” He half-smiled. “Not at Bill, at her.”

“Why?”

“I thought what Bill and I had was what all gay relationships were like because Bill was my first. I had nothing to compare it to and no idea of my own how things were supposed to work.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can see that. We don’t have roadmaps.”

“Plus,” Nick added, “Bill really did love me, in his own way. He wasn’t a bad man.”

“Nick, he tried to talk you into killing yourself.”

“I know, but even then…” His voice slipped and he paused to compose himself. “He thought he was protecting me from a worse death. I’m not saying what he did was right because it wasn’t. All I’m saying is that in his mind he thought he was doing a good thing.”

“But you didn’t go through with it,” I pointed out. “What happened?”