This stops him as I knew it would. I can see his legs shake, the blood drain from his face, his breath hitch.

Don’t be a little shit, Michael, he says, but his quivering voice doesn’t match the force of his words.

He walks over and sits on my bed, leans over elbows to knees.

Please, please, please, tell me you didn’t have sex with him, my brother pleads. That you didn’t let him have sex with you.

Since when do you care about my sex life? I ask, wishing I had a sex life for him to care about. Or not to care about. Whatever.

He rubs the back of his neck and looks at the floor when he answers, Since my little brother is chasing the ass of someone I saw go in the back room at Beat Box a few months ago with Matt Sloan. And since Matt Sloan died yesterday in the fucking AIDS ward at fucking St. Vincent’s.

I walk into the living room to try to clear my head. My stomach threatens to puke up the coffee that’s still floating around in there.

Gabriel isn’t sick, I say to Connor who has followed me, but it’s hard to hear any conviction in my voice.

And you know this because he told you? Connor asks. How the hell would he even know? Just because he’s fine now, doesn’t mean he’ll be fine tomorrow. Don’t you get it? No one even knows how this thing spreads.

I glare at my brother who is trying to be the voice of reason, and my head spins, disoriented by the sudden reversal of our relationship as much as anything else.

Look, I say, I trust him.

But then I wonder, if that’s true, wouldn’t he still be here?

And I remember what that booklet said. It isn’t about knowing your partners, it’s about a disease that doesn’t care if he’s a good guy who loves his little sister.

Connor sighs and looks for someplace to sit. Choosing a blue patterned chair we didn’t have the last time he was here, he says, Michael, I’m not saying he’s a jerk or anything. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been putting himself out there. We all have. Stop thinking with your dick for ten minutes and find someone else.

Like you’re one to talk, I throw back.

For a minute he looks hurt, and I know I’ve gone too far. Connor, I ask finally, dreading his answer. Are you okay?

My brother holds my eyes for a minute. Answer me, I think. But he doesn’t, he just throws me a bottle of pills.

What is this? I ask.

Antibiotics, he says. Someone told me they might help fend off an infection. Or help if you have one. Or something.

The bottle is unmarked, and I’m too afraid to ask where he got them. I throw it back and say, It doesn’t matter. Gabriel and I didn’t have sex, and I don’t know if I’m even going to see him again.