“I have to go back to the house and get my headache medicine,” I tell him. I can’t see; the scotoma is like a sizzling white starburst that takes more than half my field of vision from each eye, leaving me with blind spots. I hang a U-turn, careening the car crazily. Despite the headache it occurs to me that Alex has left his seat belt unfastened. I imagine hurtling into one of the thick, old elms that line the street—a horrible accident while crazed with a migraine, and poor little Alex, his seat belt undone, becomes a Scud missile. I envision him shooting through the windshield, impacting the tree. A lightning storm of pain blazes in my brain.

I pull the car over.

“Put your seat belt on, Alex,” I say, panting, leaning my head on the steering wheel. Snot streams from my nose to my lap. “Safety first,” I say. He nods and fastens it, and I manage to get us back to Curtis’s house.

“I’m going to take my medicine and rest,” I tell Alex. I lie down on the living room sofa and he goes to watch television in the den. I fall asleep and wake to find him standing over me, pale and worried looking.

“I’m okay,” I say.

“Do you want a drink of water?”

“That’d be nice.” He brings me water in a plastic Pokémon cup, arranges his blanket on my legs, and puts his hand on my forehead. I tell him again that I’m fine and he goes back to watch TV. I think of how his body felt in my arms, how it pulled at something in me. I wonder if I could ever love him, if I could ever love anything. I vomit the water I’ve just swallowed, and Alex brings paper towels and mops it up. I tell him again I’m fine.

By the time Curtis gets home in the afternoon my headache is gone and Alex and I have eaten pizza and watched cartoons. I tell Curtis about the morning, how sick I was, and how Alex took such good care of me. Alex listens, pink with pleasure, his eyes downcast and shy. Curtis, of course, is crying.

Later I’ll go home and write Curtis a letter to tell him that it’s over. He won’t recognize it as the only decent thing I’ve done for as long as I can remember. I’ll call Artie and tell him I’ve gotten off the gravy train and he’ll come over. “So,” he’ll say, “I guess we’re back in business.”

I’ll get the metal box from the bottom of my closet, the one I keep locked up. I’ll find the key in my jewelry box and open it.

“Make it hurt,” I’ll tell him.

ALICIA GIFFORD

on “Surviving Darwin,” first published in Best American Erotica in 2005